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EDMUND BURKE.

"Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon to attain civil greatness."-DR. JOHNSON, in 1766.

CONTENTS.

Burke's Brilliant Ability-His Character-Comparison with other leading Statesmen of his Time-Birth and Early Ederation-Castletown Roche-Trinity College, Dublin-Literary Labour and Legal Studies in London-MarriageConnection with Gerard Hamilton-Appointed Secretary to the Marquess of Rockingham-Elected M.P. for Malton in January, 1766-His Patriotism; Speeches on the Subject of the American Quarrel-Purchase of the Estate of Butler's Court, or "Gregories"-Burke in Private Life-His Good Humour and Generosity-His kindly Patronage of By the Painter-Burke and "Junius"-His Kindness to Crabbe the Poet-The Gordon Riots of 1780-Lord Shellene-The Coalition Ministry-Its Fall-William Pitt, Prime Minister-Burke and Warren Hastings-The Famous Trial-Burke's Eloquence, and its Effect-Long Continuance of the Trial-Mortifications of Burke-His PersistencyThe Result-Beginning of the French Revolution-Burke's Horror of that Event-His Writings on the SubjectExtrangement from his Friends, and Change of Political Opinion-His Retirement from Public Life-Misfortunes of ka Later Years-Death of his Friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, his Brother (Richard Burke), and his only Son Talicious Political Attacks by his Enemies; His Defence-His Death in 1797.

A PICTURE OF AN HONEST AND UPRIGHT

STATESMAN.

IB, there is no wonder at all! We, who

S know Mr. Burke, know that he one

d the first men in the country!"

Such was the hearty reproof thundered out by rough, honest, warm-hearted old Dr. Johnson, to a supercilious member of the Literary Club, who, smarting under a memorable defeat inflicted upon him in argument by Edmund

Burke, affected astonishment at the immediate and brilliant oratorical success attained by cha luminous genius in Parliament. The self-asserting lexicographer, among whose faults a want of power in judging of the moral and intellectual worth of men could certainly not be included, justly said of the friend whom he loved better and respected more than any of that brilliant circle of admirers who assembled round his chair at those famous meetings at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, "I do not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he is the first everywhere. . . . No man of sense could meet Burke by accident under a gateway to avoid a shower, without being convinced that he was the first man in England. . . . If he should go into a stable, and talk a few minutes with the ostlers about horses, they would venerate him as the wisest of human beings. They would say, 'We have had an extraordinary man here.'"

...

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And the sturdy old Doctor was right. Among the great men who adorned the English senate, and toiled for fame and for their country during the closing half of the eighteenth century, Burke stands out as the brightest in intellect, the most unsullied in character. Each of the great "Parliament men" who surrounded him had his fame darkened by some grave fault, amounting even to a vice. "Physician, heal thyself," would be the natural taunt addressed to Charles James Fox, who, while denouncing recklessness in his political rivals, was ruining himself with the dice-box. Sheridan, also, while aspiring to manage the affairs of a nation, was hopelessly and inextricably involved by his own extravagance and waste; and in William Pitt, the arrogance and self-sufficiency developed from too early a possession of power, led to the gravest consequences to his country, and indirectly had no small share in bringing about his premature decease. Of Burke, it may be said, as an enthusiastic admirer said of the great Lord Chatham, "He stood alone; modern degeneracy had not touched him." His countrymen, especially, could point to him with pride as a specimen of the very best and highest type of the Irish character,-ardent, enthusiastic, full of genius, with wit tempered by restraining wisdom, and above all full of ardent zeal for good, and a healthy and uncompromising detestation of wrong. Throughout his long and chequered career we may sometimes be conscious of the presence of error; but no biographer, writing of the life and deeds of Edmund Burke, has ever been obliged to apologise for or to extenuate trime. "Too fond of the right to pursue the

expedient," as Goldsmith graphically and truly describes him, he was sometimes involved in difficulties, and darkened by calumnies a less ardent man would have escaped. In his later years he was sometimes goaded into bitterness by sneering adversaries, or even betrayed into absurdity by the phantoms of his over-excited imagination, as, for instance, on that memorable occasion, made the most of by his enemies, when he flung a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons. But there was no taint of self-seek. ing or of meanness in his great heart or his majestic intellect. From first to last, the idea of duty, the love for the thing that is right and true, was before him. His friends might sometimes be bewildered and embarrassed by his impetu osity; but they never had to blush for him, or anxiously to explain away inconsistency be tween his profession and his conduct. Sorely wounded was this good knight in the long life conflict; but never did a Du Guesclin or a Bayard keep his honour more untarnished, through evil and through good report, than Edmund Burke.

The record of his life is honourable alike to himself and to the public history of the time of which he was the most distinguished ornament. In one respect this story resembles that of the great Lord Chatham. It shows how in the England of the eighteenth century, in spite of aristocratic prejudices and the strong influence of hereditary caste, a man might make his way and achieve the highest influence and consideration by the force of industry, ability, and integrity. Speaking from his place in Parliament at that me:norable period when the duty of introducing a measure for the retrenchment of public expenditure was entrusted to him by his colleagues, Burke emphatically said: "For my own part, I have very little to recommend me for this or for any task, but a kind of earnest and anxious perseverance of mind, which, with all its good and all its evil effects, is moulded in my constitution." He did himself injustice; the quality for which he modestly took credit wa only one among many qualifications for a grea carcer; but it was in his as in the case of nin aspiring men out of ten, the one thing in dispen sable; that concomitant of the highest geniu "the faculty of taking an enormous amount o trouble," was pre-eminent in him. "Tout vier à la fin à qui sait attendre," says the Frenc axiom; and the triumph of perseverance ha seldom been more brilliantly exhibited than this great statesman's life.

EDMUND BURKE'S EARLY YEARS. Land Burke, the greatest orator, and one fte greatest statesmen of his time, was born the 1st of January, 1728 (old style, 12th sary, 1729, new style, as recorded on his cate) in the house of his father, Mr. Lihard Burke, an attorney in Dublin. He wered his first rudiments of education from M:. O'Halloran, the village schoolmaster Castletown Roche, who many years afterrds used to pride himself on having taught

Latin. Like Sir Walter Scott and other praguded men, he was prevented by delicate tan his childhood from joining in boyish ca and was always reading and pondering,

by himself in corners. His brother hard Burke, wondering many years afterards how it was that Edmund seemed to have plized the family brains, explained the meron by the reflection, "To be sure, when w at play, he was always at work." At Ballitore, near Kildare, Edmund Burke, This two brothers, Richard and Garret, was and under the care of a most kindly and

as schoolmaster, Abraham Shackelton, a am, who had penetration enough to discern appreciate the great abilities of the quiet

ve boy. All through life Burke was aly amenable to and grateful for any real "pathy and kindness. He kept up a corres

ve with Abraham Shackleton and his son -uri, throughout the most brilliant period of ariamentary success, and declared in the of Commons his indebtedness to Abraham kleton for the education that had made him ath anything.

etown Roche was to some extent classic It was only a few miles from the ruins Liman Castle, whence Spenser the poet -- been driven on the breaking out of Tyrone's

1598. Edmund Burke himself could i kaired, through his mother, with the the Faery Queen; whose immortal * 2: favourite book. "Whoever relishes da benser as he ought to be read, will ngh ld of the English language," he ; athing worthy of remembrance

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lazy and exceedingly impecunious person, much given to neglecting the severer parts of the curriculum, having a terrible hatred for dry Burgendicius and Euclid, and much given to wasting his time with "the draggle-tailed Muses," and writing halfpenny ballads. His name was Oliver Goldsmith; unlike Burke, he was continually in scrapes, once even running away from college, and selling his books. Burke, on the contrary, seems to have passed a decorous though merry three years at Trinity; and we have glimpses of him, as airing his oratory in a debating society, perhaps with aspirations, even then, towards that larger debating society-that listening senate, whose applause he was destined one day to command.

After completing his college course, and becoming entitled in the usual way to the letters B.A., he left Ireland, and procceded to London to study for the bar; entering as a student at the Middle Temple, April, 1747. His observations on London, as preserved in letters to his friends, are always apt, and frequently shrewd. They also exhibit the tendency to the florid rhetorical style for which his speeches and his writings afterwards became famous. To him the turrets of hospitals and charitable institutions appear as "piercing the skies like so many electrical conductors to avert the wrath of heaven from the great arched city." Already he instinctively haunts the Houses of Parliament, the chosen temples of fame; though with all admiration for the eloquence he hears there, he shrewdly observes that, after all, "a man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade winds, and then he may sail secure over Pactolean sand." Law soon disgusted him, however, with its dry details, though he toiled manfully at it for some years, on the common-sense ground that a middling lawyer had better hope of success than a middling poet. After refusing, in deference to his father's opinion, a position offered him in New York, he settled down to the London life of a lettered student, writing for Dodsley, of Pall Mall, an account of the European settlements in America, and various other works. The first work he published was somewhat in the nature of a literary mystification. It was entitled "The Vindication of Natural Society," by a late noble writer; and appeared in the shape of a capital imitation of Lord Bolingbroke's style and manner. It aimed, and most successfully, at combating the infidel philosophy of Lord Bolingbroke's works, by showing that the creation itself may be criticised by an unscrupulous man, who

is bold enough "to examine the divine fabrics by his ideas of reason and fitness." The book was well-timed; for there had recently appeared the works of Bolingbroke, published by Mr. David Mallet, to the intense disgust of Dr. Johnson, who thus pithily expressed his opinion alike of the writer and editor: "Sir, he (Bolingbroke) was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death." Burke did good service by showing that the specious arguments of Bolingbroke, carried out to their ultimate issues, might be used against all human institutions, and would prove society itself to be an evil. So masterly was the imitation of the style, that it deceived many, who took the work for a genuine effusion of Bolingbroke. Among these were the polite Lord Chesterfield, Bolingbroke's intimate friend, and the learned Bishop Warburton. "You see, sir, the fellow's principles," cried the angry church dignitary; "they now come out in a full blaze!" "The imitation, indeed," says Mr. Prior, "was so complete as to constitute identity rather than resemblance. It was not merely the language, style, and general eloquence of the original that had been caught; but the whole mind of the peer, his train of thought, the power to enter into his conception, seemed to be transferred into the pen of his imitator with a fidelity and grace beyond the reach of art."

It must have been a pleasant life that Burke led in London during this period. He became acquainted with men of eminence who appreciated his genius, and in whose conversation he took delight. The genial Arthur Murphy; the versatile Garrick, who gave him some valuable hints on oratory, and at whose table he met men of sense and position; and lastly, Samuel Johnson and Mr., afterwards Sir Joshua, Reynolds; men as different from each other as they could be in manners and appearance, but alike in the possession of sterling worth, and in the power of recog. nizing and appreciating it in others.

The immediate occasion of his introduction to the great chain of literature "was the publication of a work which at once brought him into notice; his famous Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful." The originality of treatment and elegance of style in his work attracted general attention and approbation. Goldsmith reviewed the work favourably in the Monthly Review; Johnson declared it to be an example of true criticism;

Murphy declared the style to be in many passages "sublime and beautiful," while he disputed some of its positions; old Mr. Burke marked his appre ciation of the copy dutifully despatched to him, by sending his son a hundred pounds.

MARRIAGE AND LITERARY INDUSTRY. At the house of his friend and countryman, Dr. Nugent, at Bath, whither he had gone to recruit his health, weakened by strenuous application, Edmund Burke met the lady who became his wife, and from the time of their marriage until death parted them, was the com. fort and solace of his chequered life. "Every care vanished the moment he entered under his own roof," was Burke's emphatic declaration, made in the stormiest part of his career; and in his will, in which he left his whole estate to her he speaks of her with the highest admiration and gratitude. Even his female friends, Mis Hannah More and Miss Burney, allowed tha Mrs. Burke was an admirable and a beautifu woman. This paragon among wives was Mis Mary Jane Nugent, the daughter of the physician His connection with the worthy bookseller Dodsley, became more intimate as the necessity for lucrative exertion increased with his mar riage; and for some time he had to look to the "excellent crutch," literature, as his chief sup port. When the Annual Register, that mos long-lived of periodicals, was established, Burk became the editor and chief contributor. rary labour was not highly paid in those day when Johnson was glad to be "fed with guiness. that is, to receive his pay in small sums. hundred pounds a year was all Burke receive for superintending the work, and writing th historical chapters. He certainly had some fr things to chronicle as historiographer; for 175 the first year of the appearance of the Regi ter, was emphatically an annus mirabilis, full of splendid triumphs that intoxicated t nation with joy and pride; the taking Ticonderoga and Fort Niagara-the splen li achievements of Hawke in the defeat of Co flans, on a dangerous and rocky coast-t victory purchased by the death of the bers Wolfe in Canada; successes at Guadaloup Havre, Cape Lagos; and, on the other side, t tremendous struggle of the seven years' w in full operation, with the crushing defeat Kunnersdorf, that unnerved for a time even t iron-hearted Frederick of Prussia. And in et directions this first Annual Register could bet of special attractions; for in it Burke wretc review of Johnson's Rasselas, not with out

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y represented the guests under the emblem of dishes, and was content, with his own good tur, himself to figure as the "gooseberry fv" while he dubbed the versatile Garrick the

," in whom opposite ingredients, the sweet i the scur, are found united, Burke, the great conversation, is most appropriately tongue, with a garnish of brains." Indeed, Goldsmith and Burke's abilities in conversation above

of Johnson himself, who, it must be confi, owed some of his success in the wordy 4ments at the club to his impressive and dicral manner. "His sayings would not appear atra, rdinary," said Lord Pembroke to Bos

hat for his bow-wow way;" and Goldhimself, while acknowledging Johnson's erational gifts, pithily asked, "Is he like Jaz, who winds into a subject like a serpent?" BURKE AND SINGLE-SPEECH" HAMILTON.

But before the establishment of the Literary Cab, where he was best appreciated, Burke had ady gained influential friends, and after waiting, obtained an introduction into al life, for which he had by close study of mercial and financial questions, diligently pared himself. Among the influential public of the time was a certain Mr. William

Hamilton, afterwards known by the nickof Single-Speech Hamilton, from the fact hat on the night of a memorable debate he tarded the House of Commons by an oration 1 quite exceptional power and eloquence; and farfal perhaps of disturbing the favourable effect e had prodared, he never afterwards repeated

t. To this Gerard Hamilton, who in I accompanied Lord Halifax, the lord lieuteat to Ireland, young Edmund Burke had

introduced by Lord Charlemont; and went ws Gerard Hamilton as his private secretary. Eere his knowledge of political economy, which was great as to command the respectful ad

of Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations, was of the greatest practical , and Hamilton was compelled to acknow.

ledge the inferiority of his own knowledge as compared with that of his secretary. In 1763, accordingly, Burke was rewarded by a pension of £300 a year on the Irish Establishment, a usual method, at that time, of repaying political services.

Gerard Hamilton, essentially a coarse-minded and, as subsequent events showed, far from a scrupulous man, considered that by this pension he had bound his brilliant secretary to him body and soul. Indeed, it is curious to note in a certain order of minds the strong reluctance to believe in the existence of merit, unaccompanied by wealth. Thus pompous Sir John Hawkins, admitted into the Literary Club because, having belonged to a former gathering from which the new society was formed, he could not well be kept out, always affected to regard Edmund and Richard Burke as "adventurers," a terrible term, involving the dark imputation that they had their fortunes still to make; and the said Sir John was obliged to withdraw from the club altogether, in consequence of the way in which his rudeness to Edmund Burke was resented by the members who judged by another standard, and showed Hawkins very clearly that they considered him a "snob." Burke had already been irritated and galled by the knowledge that envy and malice sncered at him as "Hamilton's Jackal" and "Hamilton's Genius." This made him especially anxious to maintain his independence; and he wrote to Hamilton, stipulating for time to continue his literary labours. Hamilton, on the other hand, proposed to retain him -to use his own expression-"in a sort of domestic situation." "Would you dare to attempt to bind your footman to such terms?" was Burke's indignant protest. He at once made over the pension by power of attorney to Hamilton, who accepted the money, and retained it until the pension was struck out of the list some two years and a half later. The breach between Burke and Hamilton was irreparable, and again the young aspirant for political honours had to bide his time.

SECRETARY TO LORD ROCKINGHAM.

That time soon came. George Grenville, the prime minister, and his colleagues, especially the Duke of Bedford and his followers, the "Bloomsbury Gang," as they were nicknamed, had offended the king grievously, in the matter of a Regency Bill; for already George III. had been attacked with preliminary symptoms of the mental disease which afterwards darkened the closing years of his life. Overtures were made

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