Cobbett's American
Gardener
[From the Herald
of Freedom of July 15, 1842; Miscellaneous
Writings 227-229]
A lovely manifesto
for plain English prose and good American gardens.
This book, which is
one among a thousand, and one of the few worth buying, or having, or that are
not worse than nothing., among the inundation of books with which the press is
flooding the world, I ought to have noticed before. Luther Hamilton of this
place, bookseller, has recently published a stereotypes edition of it. He sent
me in a copy, for which I sincerely thank him - as well as in behalf of the
community for giving them an edition of this rare and valuable work.
John Randolph said William
Cobbett was the first genius living. He told the truth, though he was a
slaveholder - and his testimony is the more valuable because he hated Cobbett.
He hated him because he was a friend of humanity and human liberty, and
Randolph himself an aristocrat and a tyrant. Cobbett had a bad reputation, for
the reason, I have no doubt, that he deserved a good one. The clergy hated him,
for his independence, and his defiance of aristocracy, of whom the clergy are
always the hangers on and sycophants, where they have not the power of
controlling them. When they can rule them, they do - as they do every body in
their power; and when they cannot domineer over them, by force of their
jugglery, they fawn on them, and help them trample down the people. Cobbett was
a formidable antagonist to the tyrant classes, and hence they hated him, and
have given him a bad name, which is an honor to any man in a priest-ridden
world.
This work on
gardening is a modest, unpretending book, like all sterling productions. It is
written in a style as beautiful as the subject, and as natural as a garden
ought to be. It is worth buying for the style of it, aside from the information
it contains. Every body can understand it at a glance, without a dictionary.
And the book that can't be, ought never to be read. These books that abound in
dictionary words, are learned nonsense and imposition. Cobbett's Gardener is
full of short, every day words, which the people can understand, as readily as
they can tell an onion stalk, or a cabbage plant. It is like Pierpont's poetry
in that - abounding in monosyllabled words. You will find whole lines of them
uninterrupted, every one as full of meaning, as it can hold - the beautiful,
strong, old Saxon - the talk-words - words for use, and not for show. Every
young man and woman, who has been injured in their talk and writing by going to
school, ought to buy Cobbett's Gardener, or some other of his works. A young
collegian should read it twice a day, till he gets well of his pedantry.
Cobbett will cure him if any body can.
"Do you teach
your sons Latin, Mr. Cobbett?" asked a gentleman. "No," said the
common-sense sage - "but I learn them to shave with cold water!" A
bit of learning worth more to a man with a beard, than all the Latin the Monkery
ever preserved from the ruins of Rome.
You can understand the
"Gardener" with once reading, just as readily as you could talk of a
sensible gardener himself - and those who have followed it, say it turns out to
be true - contrary to the fact of most agricultural books, which are mere
speculations and theorizing, which no body can afford to practise. The subject
of this book is a beautiful one to read of and talk of, if you have not any
ground to work it out on.
Gardening - nothing is more interesting or profiting. We associate Paradise
always with the idea of it. The great Lord Bacon (by the way not half the man
that Cobbett was) said "Gardening was the purest of human pleasures."
One of his famous "Essays" was "Of Gardening," if I
remember the title. But he wrote
of a garden for kings and princes, - Cobbett's gardens are for men - for families
- and that speaks of the difference between the two authors . Bacon was a
worshipper and slave of kings, - Cobbett a friend of man. The learned world
call the one "The great Sir Francis Bacon," and the other Cobbett or Bill Cobbett.
A glorious garden, whether
small or large, is a sort of Eden, and it is a fine idea, whether it was a
literal fact, or an allegory merely, to show God's kindness to the man and
woman He had made, that He put them, at their beginning, into a garden,
"to dress it and to keep it." We fancy Eden was every thing a garden
could be; but I dare say it would not have hurt Adam and Eve to have put into
their hands a copy of Cobbett,
written in the primeval language of humanity, which, whatever it was, they
spoke, no doubt, in the same style Cobbett writes. They had not been to College
- Adam to a University, nor Eve to a Boarding School.
I cannot help saying here,
what a pity it is that our cities and large towns are crowded together, so that
they cannot have gardens. What a glorious sight a city would be, interspersed
with them, - and how refreshing and healthful to live in it, compared with them
now, crowded with stones and bricks, like an old, overstocked grave yard. A
good, large garden, where every family could raise all their vegetables, and
have them fresh and sweet, and have the exercise of carrying the garden on, as
well as the recreation and health and enjoyment of straying among its alleys.
What a luxury and a blessing! A garden and a lawn, - a city could enjoy them both
as well as the country, but for a miserable avarice, which holds the land so
high nobody can buy it, except for the site of their hateful piles of building.
Thus selfishness always cheats itself.
Newburyport has a good many
gardens; but if the twon should flourish as they call it - commerce would pile up a great brick store in
every one of them, as Boston has. And our little city of Concord [NH] is trying
to crowd out all the gardens, and fill up with edifices - because a garden is
not profitable! They can
afford a meeting-house in almost every street; but a garden, with its
refreshing opening, and its indescribable beauty, can't be afforded! One good
garden of a quarter of an acre, or a quarter of that, is in my opinion worth
more to a village than a dozen meeting-houses! It furnishes some food, as well as gratification, - the
meeting-house nothing but spiritual starvation - and it don't cost so much to
maintain the gardener neither.
Buy "Cobbett's
American Gardener," every body that has got the money.
N.P. Rogers