SOURCE: "Character of Cobbett," in The College Book of Essays, edited by John Abbott Clark, Henry Holt and Company, 1939, pp. 517-28.

One of the most important commentators of the Romantic age, Hazlitt was an English critic and journalist. He is best known for his descriptive criticism in which he stressed that no motives beyond judgment and analysis are necessary on the part of the critic. In the following essay, originally written in 1821, Hazlitt examines Cobbett's character as reflected in his writings, offering numerous illustrations.

People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers, and he "fillips the ear of the public with a three-man beetle." He is too much for...