At eleven he was employed in clipping the boxedgings in the gardens of Farnham Castle, and, hearing from one of the gardeners of the glories of Kew, he started for that place with 1_s._ 1½_d._ in his pocket, 3_d._ of which sum he spent in buying “Swift’s Tale of a Tub.” The book produced a “birth of intellect” in the little rustic. He carried it with him wherever he went, and at twenty-four lost it in a box which fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, a “loss which gave me greater pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.” He returned home, and continued to work for his father till 1782, attending fairs and hearing Washington’s health proposed by his father at farmers’ ordinaries. In that year he went on a visit to Portsmouth, saw the sea for the first time, and was with difficulty hindered from taking service at once on board a man-of-war. He returned home “spoilt for a farmer,” and next year started for London. He served in a solicitor’s office in Gray’s Inn for eight months (where he worked hard at grammar), then enlisted in the 54th regiment, and after a few weeks’ drill at Chatham embarked for Nova Scotia, where the corps were serving. Here his temperate habits, strict performance of duty, and masterly ability and intelligence, raised him in little more than a year to the post of sergeant-major over the heads of fifty comrades his seniors in service. His few spare hours were spent in hard study, especially in acquiring a thorough mastery of grammar. He had bought Lowth’s Grammar, which he wrote out two or three times, got it by heart, and imposed on himself the task of saying it over to himself every time he was posted sentinel. When he had thoroughly mastered it, and could write with ease and correctness, he turned to logic, rhetoric, geometry, French, to Vauban’s fortification, and books on military exercise and evolutions. In this way, by the year 1791, when the 54th was recalled, he had become the most trusted man in the regiment. The colonel used him as a sort of second adjutant; all the paymaster’s accounts were prepared by him; he coached the officers, and used to make out cards with the words of command for many of them, who, on parade, as he scornfully writes, “were commanding me to move my hands and feet in words I had taught them, and were in everything except mere authority my inferiors, and ought to have been commanded by me.” Notwithstanding the masterfulness already showing itself, Cobbett was a strictly obedient soldier, and left the army with the offer of a commission, and the highest character for ability and zeal.