So the attempt to crush him was a failure. Rather, they read defiance in every page; and, as time wore on, it was seen that the silence of defeat was on the side of Mr. Cobbett’s foes. The Press ignored him; that Press which had, from envy at his superior talents and his unexampled success, ransacked the vocabulary of Billingsgate in order to abuse a man they could not answer; which had so goaded and inflamed the persecuting spirit of the time, that none dared speak or write who were not sheltered by privilege, or who had not bartered independence for the favour of those in power. Not for several years after this date was there much desire shown, on the part of a ministerial writer, to attract the glance of this rampant lion. And they might well be quiet. If this imprisonment had neither killed nor cured him, Mr. Cobbett came out of Newgate an altered man. He was now fifty years of age, and a few grey hairs were just appearing. The enormous expenses which he had been put to (amounting, from first to last, to more than six thousand pounds), and the discovery that his business affairs were hopelessly involved, made up a bundle of difficulties which began to tell upon his temper. Good-natured sarcasms made place for bitter ones; and an air of spitefulness would come over his writings when there was more than ordinary cause for resentment. His essays were, albeit brilliant as ever, sometimes marred by the introduction of coarse epithets; and, during the remainder of his career, this cause alone sufficed to estrange many of his friends, and to put a stone into the hand of opponents. Mr. Cobbett’s writing must be considered as at its very best during the years 1810-12. He probably gave some time to revision; a point which he had been inclined to neglect, and a matter concerning which he seemed utterly heedless in later years; the exclusive devotion to his pen, now so far removed from rural distractions, necessarily produced better work. But it cannot be said that there was any deterioration in Cobbett’s literary style, beyond the warmth of expression engendered by fiercer animosity. The best known works of William Cobbett belong to the last twenty years of his life; and if they are painfully full of personal hatreds, it must be recollected that those were, indeed, times to try men’s souls; the oppressor and the oppressed had seldom been, in England, in such close conflict; and a leader and guider of men, on the side of the latter, had need to be fierce and uncompromising. The soldier, foremost of your storming-party, has little time to spare for consideration of the personal merits of the foe, whose gunstock is swinging o’er his head. * * * * *