SOURCE: "Current Literature," in The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. XXI, No. 517, January 18, 1941, pp. 62, 64.

Pritchett, a modern British writer, is respected for his mastery of the short story and for what critics describe as his judicious, reliable, and insightful literary criticism. In the following excerpt, he focuses on the paradoxical nature of Cobbett's character as reflected in his writings.

In the panorama of English history from the time of the French revolution to the Reform, the huge steam-rolling person of Wm. Cobbett stands out among his contemporaries like a figure drawn out of scale. There are more sensational, more momentous and more intricate characters in the picture than his, yet as a man he dwarfs them. He is one of Morland's farmers who appears in a Whig drawing-room, twinkling with pleasure at the memory of a good sight of swedes, and hectoring the company with the temper (if...