The act by which he signalized his reappearance in England no one but Cobbett would or could have done. It was in the highest degree idiosyncratic.
He had achieved so much by self-help that he treated the experience of other men with about as little respect as a millionaire would the gift of a sixpence. For forms of literary ability which were not his he professed contempt. Thus he sneered at Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and said that Shakespeare and Milton were overrated.
But let some circumstance open his eyes, let him imagine himself a new Columbus, let him awake to the existence of a fresh continent of knowledge, and in, the very degree he had before depreciated it he now proceeded to laud and magnify its importance. William Cobbett was not the man to bow before other people's idols. He must make them for himself, or they were no gods at all. He found an author believed in by every one. He stood stiffly up in the crowd and cursed the image to its face. The time came when the idol was forsaken and cast down from its throne. Cobbett saw it lying in the dirt; some circumstance induced him to pick it up, and to his amazement he perhaps found that its head really was made of gold. Astonished at his own good fortune and sagacity, he at once sets about rehabilitating the poor ill-used thing; and placing it again on its pedestal, he commanded, in a loud tone, all men, on pain of being demonstrated fools or knaves, to fall down and worship the golden image which he, their great teacher, had set up.
When he first went to America he found the democrats bowing low at the shrine of Tom Paine. Without more ado he went to the nearest gutter, filled his hands with mud, and threw it all over their idol. When he returned the worship had died down, Paine's reputation lay in the dirt, and no one would soil his fingers to lift it out.
Cobbett, however, had meanwhile become deeply interested in the currency question, and had found out that Paine had written an able and masterly book on the subject. Paine then, whom he had so abused, was, after all, a great man, a man who had long ago seen the true principles of a national currency, and had exposed the fallacies of Pitt and the stock-jobbers. He was just
