ceased to see each other, or to correspond, a good while before you left London. He then commenced, through the intervention of others, a negotiation with me, in which he showed as much of meanness in his proposals as he had done of arrogance in his demands; but as all these proposals were vitiated by the taint of that servitude with which they were all mixed, his negotiation came to nothing. He grounded those monstrous claims (such as never were before heard of in this country) on that pension which he had procured for me through Colonel Cunninghame, the late Primate, and Lord Halifax; for through all that series of persons this paltry business was contrived to pass. Now, though I was sensible that I owed this pension to the goodness of the Primate, in a great degree, and though, if it had come from Hamilton's pocket, instead of being derived from the Irish Treasury, I had earned it by a long and laborious attendance, and might, in any other than that unfortunate connexion, have got a much better thing, yet, to get rid of him completely, and not to carry even a memorial of such a person about me, I offered to transmit it to his attorney in trust for him. This offer he thought proper to accept. I beg pardon, my dear Flood, for troubling you so long, on a subject which ought not to employ a moment of your thoughts, and never shall again employ a moment of mine." Hamilton caused his solicitor, Mr. Colthurst, to assign the pension to Mr. Jephson, one of Hamilton's new friends; for thus, in those days, were these matters jobbed.

In 1764 Burke returned permanently to London, and resided in a house in Queen Anne Street. He betook himself again to his literary avocations, to frequenting the gallery of the House of Commons, and to perfecting the powers of his oratory by attending various debating associations in the metropolis. Among others he frequented the Robin Hood Society, then popular with most men of information or fluency aspiring to be orators. He practised there the replies and contentions of eloquence. A baker of considerable argumentative powers was, at the time, the great genius of the

Society; him Burke frequently encountered, and though now and then, by his own confession, the incipient statesman was defeated, he derived from the contest commensurate advantage in acquiring readiness of reasoning and expression. Oliver Goldsmith, often a spectator of his friend's hard rhetorical struggles with the man of dough, used to declare that the baker ought to become lord chancellor. In the February of 1764 was founded the celebrated social union first known as the Turk's Head, and afterwards called the Literary Club; Burke was one of its earliest members. The club originated in a suggestion of Sir Joshua Reynolds to Dr. Johnson, who united in its formation. The members, at its establishment, besides the two founders and Burke, were Dr. Nugent, Burke's father-in-law; Topham Beauclerk; Mr. Langton, a Lincolnshire squire and a distinguished favourite and friend of Johnson; Oliver Goldsmith; Mr. Chamier, a learned stockbroker; and Sir John Hawkins, a literary pretender, subsequently the executor and biographer of Johnson, and the writer of a History of Music. It had been Dr. Johnson's first intention that the association should consist of nine members only; but on the return from abroad of Mr. Samuel Dyer (subsequently supposed to be Junius), who had belonged to the old Ivy Lane Club, an exception was made in his favour, and he was also included. This gave rise to more extended admissions. Thus constituted, the club met every Friday evening at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, at the early hour of seven; but it was generally late before the members parted, a concession made, it may be presumed, to the peculiar habits of Dr. Johnson, who seems to have been as little willing to go to bed as to leave it when once he was there. The conversation was miscellaneous, but for the most part literary, politics being rigorously excluded. In a short time the celebrity of the associates brought many applicants to join them.

Soon after the institution of the club, the great actor David Garrick, who had been travelling, returned to England; and

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He will be

Burke, who

being well acquainted with most of the members, gave intimation that he would be one of their number, supposing that the least hint of such desire would be eagerly embraced. Dr. Johnson, though an early friend of Garrick, who had been one of his pupils when he kept his school at Lichfield, undervalued the actor's profession, and was offended at what he esteemed the presumption of an offer where he ought to have made a request. one of us! How does he know we will let him?" regarded Garrick with greater affection, and thought much more highly of theatrical talents, wished he might be introduced; but Johnson exclaimed, "He will disturb us with his buffoonery." Neither Burke nor others, who were disposed to let him in, dared insist on his immediate admission; but he was afterwards received, and he continued a member to his death. One evening Sir John Hawkins attacked Burke so rudely on the merit of Fielding's novels, which Burke advocated, that all the company testified their displeasure. At their next meeting they received Hawkins very coolly, and thus prevented his future visits. The club itself continued to increase, as it went on, in numbers and popularity.

Burke owed his next advance in politics to the favourable impression he maintained at the club. An old and close ally of Dr. Johnson, a Mr. Fitz Herbert, struck with the varied and wondrous powers of Burke's intellect, had become his friend, and had not only the will but the power to serve him. A word or two about this patron. William FitzHerbert, Esq., of Tissington, in Derbyshire, elected M.P. for Derby in 1762 and in 1768, was, though himself a Protestant, sprung from the very ancient Catholic family of Fitz Herbert of Swinnerton, and was the grandfather of the present Sir Henry FitzHerbert, Bart., of Tissington. A younger son of Mr. William FitzHerbert, Alleyne FitzHerbert, had been created a peer by the title of Lord St. Helens, but had died unmarried. Mr. William Fitz Herbert wedded Mary, eldest daughter of Littleton Poyntz Meynell, Esq., of Bradley, Derbyshire. Both the husband and wife were particular friends of Dr. Johnson.

Their memories live in his observations about them. Of the lady he said she had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being. Touching the gentleman he was not quite so enthusiastic; yet he spoke thus: "There was no sparkle, no brilliancy in FitzHerbert, but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made every body quite easy; overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents; made no man think the worse of himself by being his rival; seemed always to listen; did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said;"—just, in fact, the kind of character the Doctor would be likely to admire.

Mr. Fitz Herbert was a man of high political standing and influence, and a lord of trade and plantations under the Rockingham and other administrations of that period. Aware how valuable Mr. Burke's services would be to Government, he urged his claims on the notice of the then distinguished leader of the aristocratic section of the Whigs-the upright and amiable Marquess of Rockingham-who had just come into power with his party. Burke was introduced to the marquess, and won favour at once. The peer found his principles completely correspond with his own, and he determined to avail himself of his abilities. Lord Rockingham had become Prime Minister, for the first time, on the 10th July, 1765. He had Burke appointed his private secretary within a week afterwards. Another friend of Mr. FitzHerbert's, and a warm admirer of Burke's (Ralph, second Earl Verney), had Burke elected member of Parliament for his Buckinghamshire borough of Wendover, the very place that, in 1626, sent Hampden to the senate. Biographers follow one another in asserting that Lord Verney admitted Burke to the borough for the paltry consideration of being himself named a privy councillor. As his lordship really did not become one of the Council till some time after, is it not more fair to believe that he was led to the act because he felt, with Mr. Fitz Herbert, the vital importance of attaching so able a man as Mr. Burke to a party so feeble in talent as that of the Marquess

BURKE AGAIN A SECRETARY.

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of Rockingham then was? Edmund Burke had now got his foot upon the threshold of his fame: a curious circumstance threatened to put a fatal stop to his farther progress. The well-known peer and politician, Henry second Duke of Newcastle, who had accepted office as Lord Privy Seal, hearing of Burke's nomination, hurried down to Lord Rockingham, and urged his lordship to be on his guard against this adventurer, whose real name was O'Bourke, and whom his grace understood to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a Papist, and a concealed Jesuit. The calumny was startling. The marquess, somewhat surprised, sent for his new secretary. Burke, with earnest indignation and a conscious spirit of rectitude, refuted the charges, stated he was a member of the Church of England, and declared his inviolable loyalty to the House of Brunswick. He had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and had never been in any way under Jesuit tutorship. There was no such name as O'Bourke. Lord Rockingham readily admitted the explanation; but after it was given, found a diffi-' culty in preventing Burke from resigning his office, as doubt and suspicion had been cast upon his principles. The kind consideration the peer displayed in soothing Burke's agitated feelings won' him the heart of the latter. Burke, as might be supposed, was true in what he said, and never swerved from his fealty; but gratitude drew him still nearer to the marquess. His devotion to Rockingham while living, and his eloquent sorrow for him when dead, remain on record among the brightest instances of his affec tionate and noble nature.

Most biographers of Burke have regarded this affair as a piece of pure folly on the part of the Duke of Newcastle, and have enlarged upon the absurdity of the general rumour that so long existed as to Burke's particular limits of political and religious faith; yet the duke's conduct was not quite so irrational as is surmised. Burke, like his friend Dr. Johnson, had, probably unknown to himself, a tinge of the Catholic and the cavalier. No doubt both he and Johnson were loyal supporters of the sovereigns whom the

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