ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one of William Cobbett most sustained and significant engagements with his literary predecessors to suggest a more central place for his work within the literature of the long eighteenth century. It argues that Cobbett's literary status, to Hazlitt, 'not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language', is inseparable from his reading and influences. Hazlitt compares Cobbett's style not to his contemporaries, with the significant exception of Paine but to an earlier set of writers. The chapter offers an account of Swift's significance within Cobbett's career, evaluating his claims and looking at patterns of contradiction as well as intersection. It examines their intertwined critical legacies, to ask why such abrasive and often reactionary writers have remained so enduringly popular, and particularly among modern writers on the progressive left.
