rian notoriety, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, dying in 1751, bequeathed his manuscripts for publication to his friend, the poet David Mallet. Mallet brought them out in 1753; but scarcely had they appeared when a general cry was raised against them on account of their attack on Christianity and their infidel tone and tendency. The grand jury of Westminster, on the 16th of October, 1754, presented them as tending to the subversion of religion, government, and morality, and as being also against his Majesty's peace. The sensation about these productions still existed, when Edmund Burke, ever ready to enter the lists against profanity, adopted the like plan of confuting Bolingbroke, which he had before employed in the case of Dr. Lucas. This was to imitate (and he admirably did so) the style of Bolingbroke, which he had heard called inimitable, and to carry on a course of ironical argument in the same language and the same mode of persuasion as his model, so as to show that the system of reasoning used by the noble writer against religion might be urged with equal strength and equal falsity against any institution, whether human or divine. The Vindication of Natural Society displayed at once the extent of its author's knowledge in the historical statements, the versatility of his genius in the happy mimicry of Bolingbroke, and the force of his sagacity in perceiving, though hitherto unguided by experience, the tendency of seepticism to dissolve the bands of society. So absolute was the imitative art of Burke, that Mallet, who had ushered the disgraceful writings of Bolingbroke into public notice, actually went to Dodsley the publisher's shop, when crowded, to make an open disclaimer as to Bolingbroke or he being author or editor of the insidious production. One fault only may be attributed to this Vindication of Natural Society, and that lies in its very cleverness; for, so concealed is the irony throughout, that the reader runs the risk of taking the whole for earnest, and being led by the fascinating elegance and energetic eloquence of the diction to a conclusion far different from the one intended. This pamphlet attracted much attention, and had a fair success. It

DR. JOHNSON'S OPINION OF BURKE'S ESSAY.

23

brought Burke, when he came to be known as its author, such favour and encouragement as induced him to make, in the same year, another literary venture of a very different nature. This was his celebrated "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful"-an essay which at once established its author's eminence as a writer, and which has never ceased to retain its merited popularity. This charming production is a valuable addition to English literature. It displays the learning of a scholar, the invention of a poet, and the wisdom of a philosopher. Dr. Johnson considered it a model of philosophical judgment. "We have," he said, "an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. There is no great merit in showing how many plays have ghosts in them, or how this ghost is better than that; you must show how terror is impressed on the human heart."

In this famous essay the author's design is to lay down such principles as may tend to ascertain and distinguish the sublime and the beautiful in any art, and to form a sort of standard for each. In his mode of doing this, he exhibits a mind feelingly alive to each fine impulse, able to investigate its own operations, their effects and causes. He unites Longinus and Aristotle. Burke is a philosophical anatomist of human sensations. Whoever turns his attention to subjects of taste must see that his enumeration of the qualities which constitute sublimity and beauty is exact. Of the sublime he says, "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime."

When he comes to speak of beauty, he propounds a theory, of which the following is the substance. Beauty is that quality, or those qualities, of bodies by which they cause love, or some passion. similar to it. This idea cannot arise from proportion, since, in vegetables and animals, there is no standard by which we can

measure our ideas of proportion, and in man exact proportion is not always the criterion of beauty; neither can it arise from fitness, since then all animals would have beauty, for every one seems best adapted to its own way of living; and in man strength would have the name of beauty, which, however, presents a very different idea. Nor is it the result of perfection, for we are often charmed with the imperfections of an agreeable object; nor, lastly, of the qualities and virtues of the mind, since such rather conciliate our esteem than our love. Beauty, therefore, is no creature of reason, but some merely sensible quality acting mechanically upon the mind by the intervention of the senses." It is needless, however, to enter further, or perhaps thus far, into the contents of a production so generally read and known, and every where to be had. What resulted from its first publication is more appropriate to the present subject.

The appearance of the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful proved a grand epoch in Burke's life. From it date his eminence as a writer and his position as a public man. He had achieved the manifestation of his intellectual powers; and great people sought to know him. Among them Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson courted intimacy with the author of the Sublime and Beautiful. Warm, intimate, life-lasting friendship followed swiftly in the track of this acquaintance with the illustrious painter and with the colossus of English literature. Reynolds was rich and hospitable, and his house was the favourite resort of talent. Among the moral and wise, Johnson stood like Saul among the people. The potent Doctor from the commencement discovered in Burke that extraordinary genius and knowledge which the world afterwards saw. He it was who declared that Burke was the greatest man living; and that if one were to be driven to seek shelter from a shower of rain under the same gateway with him, one must in a few minutes perceive his superiority over common This observation showed not only Johnson's exalted idea of Burke, but also his own discernment. He perceived in Burke

men.

DR. JOHNSON.-GOLDSMITH.

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both a surprising facility of communicating and applying his intellectual stores, and a wonderful versatility in adapting his explanations and discourses to the subject, and to the capacity of his hearers. 66 "If,” said Johnson, "Burke were to go into a stable, and talk for a short time with the ostlers, they would venerate him as the wisest man they had ever seen." Indeed, in every company, of whatever rank or capacity, Burke poured out the fulness of his mind in no stream of pedantry, but in a clear glittering effusion of knowledge.

Though mentioned here in anticipation, Johnson's acquaintance with Burke began somewhat later than just after the publication of the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. At the house of David Garrick, on Christmas-day 1758, Dr. Johnson first dined in company with Mr. Burke. It was even then observed that the Doctor would, from his new associate, bear contradiction, which* he would tolerate from no other person. The principal subject of conversation was Bengal, concerning which, though then a topic hardly known, Burke had ready, accurate, and extensive information.

Among those who hailed the dawn of Edmund Burke's brilliant day, no one came to him with more cordial congratulation— the fervid ebullition of a heart warm and loving to the core-than his former fellow-collegian and ever-devoted friend, poor, excellent, inimitable Oliver Goldsmith, who was then, as indeed he always was, scribbling for a bare existence from the London publishers-seeking life from those to whom he was about to give things immortal in exchange for daily bread. Strange does it now seem, when one reverts to Goldsmith, and finds him looked down upon by Johnson, Reynolds, Horace Walpole, Garrick, and other celebrities of his day. Johnson loved him, but treated him as he would a wayward and foolish schoolboy. Walpole tempered his admiration by calling him an inspired idiot. Posterity has done Goldsmith justice; for who dreams now of want of sound common sense and the sanest intellect in the author of The De

serted Village, She Stoops to Conquer, and that purest, most perfect of novels, The Vicar of Wakefield, where the writer, with fervid inspiration, rich imagination, and boundless fancy, makes beautifully rational the love of every domestic virtue, and instils into his reader the sweetest philosophy that ever warmed the heart of man? Poor Goldsmith! It was his perfect good-nature and utter want of selfishness, his boyish spirits, and his droll inconsiderateness, that made him appear to men, few of them his equals, none his superiors, as a person more simple and less sensible than he really was. His fond reliance upon others gave an additional semblance of weakness to his character; this confidence he often misplaced, but he showed his discernment when he enthusiastically fixed it on Johnson and Burke. Goldsmith thought them the greatest men in the world. He looked up to, and delighted in their society with all the earnest affection of a schoolboy, feeling something of the awe of school-hours in the presence of the Doctor, while all was pleasure and playtime in his association with Edmund Burke. Goldsmith's poetry presents one well-known and remarkable instance of how he appreciated Burke and Johnson. In the "Haunch of Venison," partially an imitation of the third satire of Boileau, when Goldsmith came to the French poet's line, announcing the non-arrival of the promised grand guests

"Nous n'avons, m'a-t-il dit, ni Lambert ni Molière,"

he put in place of the original names those of the two supreme objects of his own admiration:

"My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come." Of Goldsmith's further verse touching Burke and his family, more hereafter.

To another standard writer of comedy, the author of The Man of the World and Love à la Mode, Charles Macklin, Burke owed his first opportunity of speaking before a public audience.