The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
The _Cockney_ lives in a go-cart of local prejudices and positive
illusions; and when he is turned out of it, he hardly knows how to stand
or move. He ventures through Hyde Park Corner, as a cat crosses a
gutter. The trees pass by the coach very oddly. The country has a
strange blank appearance. It is not lined with houses all the way, like
London. He comes to places he never saw or heard of. He finds the world
is bigger than he thought for. He might have dropped from the moon, for
any thing he knows of the matter. He is mightily disposed to laugh, but
is half afraid of making some blunder. Between sheepishness and conceit,
he is in a very ludicrous situation. He finds that the people walk on
two legs, and wonders to hear them talk a dialect so different from his
own. He perceives London fashions have got down into the country before
him, and that some of the better sort are dressed as well as he is. A
drove of pigs or cattle stopping the road is a very troublesome
interruption. A crow in a field, a magpie in a hedge, are to him very
odd animals—he can’t tell what to make of them, or how they live. He
does not altogether like the accommodations at the inns—it is not what
he has been used to in town. He begins to be communicative—says he was
‘born within the sound of Bow-bell,’ and attempts some jokes, at which
nobody laughs. He asks the coachman a question, to which he receives no
answer. All this is to him very unaccountable and unexpected. He arrives
at his journey’s end; and instead of being the great man he anticipated
among his friends and country relations, finds that they are barely
civil to him, or make a butt of him; have topics of their own which he
is as completely ignorant of as they are indifferent to what he says, so
that he is glad to get back to London again, where he meets with his
favourite indulgences and associates, and fancies the whole world is
occupied with what he hears and sees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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