Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he spoke in public, his style, if style it can be called, being the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written. And for this reason, when we are aweary of the style of the stylist, where the living breathing body becomes of less consequence than its beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment, to turn from the precious and delicate expression, the implicit word, sought for high and low and at last found, the balance of every sentence and perfect harmony of the whole work--to go from it to the simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides. A classic, and as incongruous among classics as a farmer in his smock-frock, leggings, and stout boots would appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionable dress. The powerful face is the main thing, and we think little of the frock and leggings and how the hair is parted or if parted at all. Harsh and crabbed as his nature no doubt was, and bitter and spiteful at times, his conversation must yet have seemed like a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer friend. Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him of Malthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that the increase in food production did not keep pace with increase of population; then a quieting down, a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price of eggs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, until politics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the glorious demagogue in his tantrums. At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and go to bed, and early next morning write down what he had said to his friend, or some of it, and send it off to be printed in his paper. That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and that is why it seems so fresh to us to this day, and that to take it up after other books is like going out from a luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass. But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing of his farmer friend. Blount, I imagine, must have been a man of a very fine character to have won the heart and influenced such a person. Cobbett never loses an opportunity of vilifying the parsons and expressing his hatred of the Established Church; and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite capable of seeing the good that is in it.