Note 54 — Chapter IV · IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 1845-1849

Mr. Briggs was highly entertained by the French exercise, and asked: “Who is your master? But never mind. Let me recommend you to an incomparable one who had the honor of teaching Talleyrand a new language (English) to help him conceal his thoughts. I mean Cobbett. If you have never seen his French grammar, get it by all means and read it, if you do not study it; and then read his English grammar, which you will find more amusing than the Comic Latin Grammar.” Lowell does not seem to have followed his advice immediately. At least he wrote to me three or four years before his death: “I never read any English grammar in my life, thank God, except Cobbett’s a few years ago, and in that I found errors of ignorance,—as was to be expected.”