Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford

Advice to Young Men

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Title: Advice to Young Men And (Incidentally) to Young Women in
the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed
to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a
Subject.
Author: William Cobbett
Release Date: March 30, 2005 [eBook #15510]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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YOUNG MEN***
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COBBETT'S ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN
And (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks
of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a
Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
by
WILLIAM COBBETT
(From the Edition of 1829) London Henry Frowde 1906 Oxford:
Horace Hart Printer to the University

INTRODUCTION
1. It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience to
warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience. When
sailors have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck
to escape with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or
barbarians as well as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of
buoys and of lights, in order that others may not be exposed to the
danger which they have so narrowly escaped. What man of common
humanity, having, by good luck, missed being engulfed in a quagmire
or quicksand, will withhold from his neighbours a knowledge of the
peril without which the dangerous spots are not to be approached?
2. The great effect which correct opinions and sound principles,
imbibed in early life, together with the good conduct, at that age, which
must naturally result from such opinions and principles; the great effect
which these have on the whole course of our lives is, and must be, well
known to every man of common observation. How many of us, arrived
at only forty years, have to repent; nay, which of us has not to repent,
or has not had to repent, that he did not, at an earlier age, possess a
great stock of knowledge of that kind which has an immediate effect on
our personal ease and happiness; that kind of knowledge, upon which
the cheerfulness and the harmony of our homes depend!
3. It is to communicate a stock of this sort of knowledge, in particular,
that this work is intended; knowledge, indeed, relative to education, to
many sciences, to trade, agriculture, horticulture, law, government, and
religion; knowledge relating, incidentally, to all these; but, the main
object is to furnish that sort of knowledge to the young which but few
men acquire until they be old, when it comes too late to be useful.
4. To communicate to others the knowledge that I possess has always
been my taste and my delight; and few, who know anything of my
progress through life, will be disposed to question my fitness for the
task. Talk of rocks and breakers and quagmires and quicksands, who
has ever escaped from amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own
will, indeed) on the wide world at a very early age, not more than
eleven or twelve years, without money to support, without friends to
advise, and without book-learning to assist me; passing a few years
dependent solely on my own labour for my subsistence; then becoming

a common soldier and leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts,
for eight years; quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion,
and with, for me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going
at once to France to acquire the French language, thence to America;
passing eight years there, becoming bookseller and author, and taking a
prominent part in all the important discussions of the interesting period
from 1793 to 1799, during which there was, in that country, a
continued struggle carried on between the English and the French
parties; conducting myself, in the ever-active part which I took in that
struggle, in such a way as to call forth marks of unequivocal
approbation from the government at home; returning to England in
1800, resuming my labours here, suffering, during these twenty-nine
years, two years of imprisonment, heavy fines, three years
self-banishment to the other side of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of
fortune, so as to be left without a