Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

EDMUND BURKE.14

Burke died in 1797, and yet, after the lapse of almost half a century, the world is eager to treasure every recollection of his name. This is the true tribute to a great man, and the only tribute which is worth the wishes of a great man. The perishable nature of all the memorials of human hands has justly been the theme of every moralist, since tombs first bore an image or an inscription. Yet, such as they are, they ought to be given; but they are all that man can give. The nobler monument must be raised by the individual himself, and must be the work of his lifetime; its guardianship must be in the hands, not of sacristans and chapters, but in those of the world; his panegyric must be found, not in the extravagance or adulation of his marble, but in the universal voice which records his career, and cherishes his name as a new stimulant of public virtue.

We have no intention of retracing the steps by which this memorable man gradually rose to so high a rank in the estimation of his own times. No history of intellectual eminence during the latter half of the nineteenth century – the most troubled, important, and productive period of human annals since the birth of the European kingdoms – can be written, without giving some testimonial to his genius in every page. But his progress was not limited to his Age. He is still progressive. While his great contemporaries have passed away, honoured indeed, and leaving magnificent proofs of their powers, in the honour and security of their country, Burke has not merely retained his position before the national eye, but has continually assumed a loftier stature, and shone with a more radiant illumination. The great politician of his day, he has become the noblest philosopher of ours. Every man who desires to know the true theory of public morals, and the actual causes which influence the rise and fall of thrones, makes his volumes a study; every man who desires to learn how the most solemn and essential truths may not merely be adorned, but invigorated, by the richest colourings of imagination, must labour to discover the secret of his composition; and every man who, born in party, desires to emancipate his mind from the egotism, bitterness, and barrenness of party, or achieve the still nobler and more difficult task of turning its evils into good, and of making it an instrument of triumph for the general cause of mankind, must measure the merits and success of his enterprise by its similarity to the struggles, the motives, and the ultimate triumph of Edmund Burke.

The present volumes contain a considerable portion of the correspondence which Burke carried on with his personal and public friends during the most stirring period of his life. The papers had been put in trust of the late French Lawrence the civilian, and brother to the late Archbishop of Cashel, with whom was combined in the trust Dr King, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, both able men and particular friends of Burke. But Lawrence, while full of the intention of giving a life of his celebrated friend, died in 1809, and the papers were bequeathed by the widow of Burke, who died in 1812, to the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Hon. W. Elliot, and Earl Fitzwilliam, for the publication of such parts as had not already appeared. This duty chiefly devolved upon Dr King, who had been made Bishop of Rochester in 1808. Personal infirmity, and that most distressing of all infirmities, decay of sight, retarded the publishing of the works; but sixteen volumes were completed. The bishop's death in 1828, put an end to all the hopes which had been long entertained, of an authentic life from his pen.

On this melancholy event, the papers came into the possession of the late Earl Fitzwilliam, from whom they devolved to the present Earl, who, with Sir Richard Bourke, a distant relative of the family, and personally intimate with Burke during the last eight years of his life, has undertaken the present collection of his letters. Those letters which required explanation have been supplied with intelligent and necessary notes, and the whole forms a singularly important publication.

Many of Burke's earliest letters were written to a Richard Shackleton, the son of a Quaker at whose school Burke with his two brothers had been placed in 1741. In 1743, he was placed in the college of Dublin, and then commenced his correspondence with Shackleton. Even those letters exhibit, at the age of little more than fifteen, the sentiments which his mature life was spent in establishing and enlarging. He says of sectaries, and this was to a sectary himself, "I assure you, I don't think near so favourably of those sectaries you mentioned, (he had just spoken of the comparative safety of virtuous heathens, who, not having known the name of Christianity, were not to be judged by its law,) many of those sectaries breaking, as they themselves confessed, for matters of indifference, and no way concerned in the only affair that is necessary, viz. salvation; and what a great crime schism is, you can't be ignorant. This, and the reasons in my last, and if you consider what will occur to yourself, together with several texts, will bring you to my way of thinking on that point. Let us endeavour to live according to the rules of the Gospel; and he that prescribed them, I hope, will consider our endeavours to please him, and assist us in our designs.

"I don't like that part of your letter, wherein you say you had the testimony of well-doing in your breast. Whenever such notions rise again, endeavour to suppress them. We should always be in no other than the state of a penitent, because the most righteous of us is no better than a sinner. Read the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who prayed in the temple."

We next have a letter exhibiting the effect of external things on the writer's mind, and expressed with almost the picturesque power of his higher days. He tells his friend, that he will endeavour to answer his letter in good-humour, "though every thing around," he says, "conspires to excite in him a contrary disposition – the melancholy gloom of the day, the whistling winds, and the hoarse rumbling of the swollen Liffey, with a flood which, even where I write, lays close siege to our own street, not permitting any to go in or out to supply us with the necessaries of life."

After some statements of the rise of the river, he says, "It gives me pleasure to see nature in those great though terrible scenes; it fills the mind with grand ideas, and turns the soul in upon herself. This, together with the sedentary life I lead, forced some reflections on me, which perhaps would otherwise not have occurred. I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command any thing. What well laid, and what better executed scheme of his is there, but what a small change of nature is entirely able to defeat and abolish. If but one element happens to encroach a little upon another, what confusion may it not create in his affairs, what havoc, what destruction: the servant destined to his use, confines, menaces, and frequently destroys this mighty, this feeble lord."

One of those letters mentions his feelings on the defeat of the luckless Charles Edward, whose hopes of the British crown were extinguished by the battle of Culloden, (April 16, 1746.) "The Pretender, who gave us so much disturbance for some time past, is at length, with all his adherents, utterly defeated, and himself (as some say) taken prisoner. 'Tis strange to see how the minds of the people are in a few days changed. The very men who, but a while ago, while they were alarmed by his progress, so heartily cursed and hated those unfortunate creatures, are now all pity, and wish it could be terminated without bloodshed. I am sure I share in the general compassion. It is, indeed, melancholy to consider the state of those unhappy gentlemen who engaged in this affair, (as for the rest, they lose but their lives,) who have thrown away their lives and fortunes, and destroyed their families for ever, in what, I believe, they thought a just cause." Those sentiments exhibit the early propensity of Burke's mind to a generous dealing with political opponents. He was a Protestant, a zealous admirer of the constitution of 1688, as all Irish Protestants were in his day, whether old or young; and yet he feels an unequivocal, as it was a just compassion for the brave men, who, under an impulse of misapplied loyalty, and in obedience to a mistaken sense of duty, went headlong to their ruin, for a prince who was a Papist, and thus would have been, like his father, a most hazardous sovereign to the liberties and religion of England.

In allusion to his collegiate career, he describes himself as having taken up every successive subject, with an ardour which, however, speedily declined.

"First, I was greatly taken with natural philosophy, which, while I should have given my mind to logic, employed me incessantly, (logic forming a principal part of the first year's studies.) This I call my furor mathematicus. But this worked off as soon as I began to read it in the college. This threw me back to logic and metaphysics. Here I remained a good while, and with much pleasure, and this was my furor logicus– a disease very common in the days of ignorance, and very uncommon in these enlightened times. Next succeeded the furor historicus, which also had its day, but is now no more, being absorbed in the furor poeticus, which (as skilful physicians assure me) is difficultly cured. But doctors differ, and I don't despair of a cure." Fortunately, he at last accomplished that cure, for his early poetry gives no indications of future excellence. His prose is much more poetic, even in those early letters, than his verse. A great poet unquestionably is a great man; but Burke's greatness was to be achieved in another sphere. It is only in the visions of prophecy that we see the Lion with wings. Burke entered his name at the Middle Temple in April 1747, and went to London to keep his terms in 1750. He was now twenty-two years old, and his constitution being delicate, and apparently consumptive, he adopted, during this period of his residence in England, a habit to which he probably owed his strength of constitution in after-life. During the vacations, he spent his time in travelling about England, generally in company with a friend and relative, Mr William Burke. Though his finances were by no means narrow – his father being a man of success in his profession – Burke probably travelled the greater part of those journeys on foot. When he found an agreeable country town or village, he fixed his quarters there, leading a regular life, rising early, taking frequent exercise, and employing himself according to the inclinations of the hour. There could be no wiser use of his leisure; exercise of the frame is health of the mind, open air is life to the student, change of scene is mental vigour to an enquiring, active, and eager spirit; and thus the feeble boy invigorated himself for the most strenuous labours of the man, and laid the foundation for a career of eminent usefulness and public honour for nearly half a century of the most stirring period of the modern world.

Some of his letters touch, in his style of grave humour, on these pleasant wanderings. – "You have compared me, for my rambling disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is the term time, in London, and part in Croydon in Surrey. About the beginning of the summer, finding myself attacked with my old complaints, I went once more to Bristol, and found the same benefit." Of his adventures at Monmouth, he says they would almost compose a novel, and of a more curious kind than is generally issued from the press. He and his relative formed the topic of the town, both while they were there and after they left it. "The most innocent scheme," said he, "they guessed, was that of fortune-hunting; and when they saw us quit the town without wives, the lower sort sagaciously judged us spies to the French king. What is much more odd is, that here my companion and I puzzled them as much as we did at Monmouth, [he was then at Turlaine in Wiltshire,] for this is a place of very great trade in making fine cloths, in which they employ a great number of hands. The first conjecture, for they could not fancy how any other sort of people could spend so much of their time at books; but finding that we receive from time to time a good many letters, they conclude us merchants. They at last began to apprehend that we were spies from Spain on their trade." Still they appeared mysterious; and the old woman in whose lodgings they lived, paid them the rather ambiguous compliment of saying, "I believe that you be gentlemen, but I ask no questions." "What makes the thing still better," says Burke, "about the same time we came hither, arrived a little parson equally a stranger; but he spent a good part of his time in shooting and other country amusements, got drunk at night, got drunk in the morning, and became intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised nobody, no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the parish-clerk himself."

About the year 1756, Burke, still without a profession – for though he had kept his terms he was never called to the bar – began to feel the restlessness, perhaps the self-condemnation, natural to every man who feels life advancing on him without an object. He now determined to try his strength as an author, and published his Vindication of Natural Society– a pamphlet in which, adopting the showy style of Bolingbroke, but pushing his arguments to the extreme, he shows the fallacy of his principles. This work excited considerable attention at the time. The name of the author remained unknown, and the imitation was so complete, that for some time it was regarded as a posthumous work of the infidel lord. Burke, in one of his later publications, exclaims – Who now reads Bolingbroke? who ever read him through? We may be assured, at least, that one read him through; and that one was Edmund Burke. The dashing rhetoric, and headlong statements of Bolingbroke; his singular affluence of language, and his easy disregard of fact; the boundless lavishing and overflow of an excitable and glowing mind, on topics in which prejudice and passion equally hurried him onward, and which the bitter recollections of thwarted ambition made him regard as things to be trampled on, if his own fame was to survive, was incomparably transferred by Burke to his own pages. The performance produced a remarkable sensation amongst the leaders of public opinion and literature. Chesterfield pronounced it to be from the pen of Bolingbroke. Mallet, the literary lord's residuary legatee, was forced to disclaim it by public advertisement; but Mallet's credit was not of the firmest order, and his denial was scarcely believed until Burke's name, as the author, was known. But his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and Beautiful, brought him more unequivocal applause. His theory on this subject has been disputed, and is obviously disputable; but it was chiefly written at the age of nineteen; it has never been wholly superseded, and, for elegance of diction, has never been equaled. It brought him into immediate intercourse with all that may be called the fashion of literature – Lyttleton, Warburton, Soame Jenyns, Hume, Reynolds, Lord Bath, Johnson, the greatest though the least influential of them all, and Mrs Montague, the least but the most influential of them all. There must have been a good deal of what is called fortune in this successful introduction to the higher orders of London society; for many a work of superior intelligence and more important originality has been produced, without making its author known beyond the counter of the publisher. But what chance began his merits completed. The work was unquestionably fit for the hands of blue-stockingism; the topic was pleasing to literary romance; the very title had a charm for the species of philosophy which lounges on sofas, and talks metaphysics in the intervals of the concert or the card-table. It may surprise us, that in an age when so many manly and muscular understandings existed at the same time in London, things so infinitely trifling as conversaziones should have been endured; but conversaziones there were, and Burke's book was precisely made to their admiration. It is no dishonour to the matured abilities of this great man, that he produced a book which found its natural place on the toilet-tables, and its natural praise in the tongues of the Mrs Montagues of this world. It might have been worse; he never thought it worth his while to make it better; the theory is worth nothing, but the language is elegant; and the whole, regarded as the achievement of a youth of nineteen, does honour to the spirit of his study, and the polish of his pen.

A change was now to take place in Burke's whole career. He might have perished in poverty, notwithstanding his genius, except for the chance which introduced him to Fitzherbert, a graceful and accomplished man, who united to a high tone of fashionable life a gratification in the intercourse of intelligent society. Partly through this gentleman's interference, and partly through that of the late Earl of Charlemont, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton, who shortly after went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-lieutenant, Lord Halifax. However, this connexion, though it continued for six years, was evidently an uneasy one to Burke; and a letter written by him in the second year of his private secretaryship to Hamilton, shows how little they were fitted for cordial association. A pension of L.300 a-year was assigned to Burke as a remuneration for his services, which, however, he evidently seemed to regard in the light of a retaining fee. In consequence of this conception, and the fear of being fettered for life, Burke wrote a letter, stating that it would be necessary to give a portion of his time to publication on his own account.

"Whatever advantages," said he, "I have acquired, have been owing to some small degree of literary reputation. It would be hard to persuade me that any further services which your kindness may propose for me, or any in which my friends may co-operate with you, will not be greatly facilitated by doing something to cultivate and keep alive the same reputation. I am fully sensible that this reputation may be as much hazarded as forwarded by a new publication; but because a certain oblivion is the consequence to writers of my inferior class of an entire neglect of publication, I consider it such a risk as must sometimes be run. For this purpose some short time, at convenient intervals, and especially at the dead time of the year, it would be requisite to study and consult proper books. The matter may be very easily settled by a good understanding between ourselves, and by a discreet liberty, which I think you would not wish to restrain, or I to abuse."

However, it will be seen that Gerard Hamilton thought differently on the subject. We break off this part of the correspondence, for the purpose of introducing a fragment of that wisdom which formed so early and so promising a portion of the mind of Burke. In writing of his brother Richard to his Irish friend, he says – "Poor Dick sets off at the beginning of next week for the Granadas, [in which he had obtained a place under government.] He goes in good health and spirits, which are all but little enough to battle with a bad climate and a bad season. But it must be submitted to. Providence never intended, to much the greater part, an entire life of ease and quiet. A peaceable, honourable, and affluent decline of life must be purchased by a laborious or hazardous youth; and every day, I think more and more that it is well worth the purchase. Poverty and age suit very ill together, and a course of struggling is miserable indeed, when strength is decayed and hope gone. Turpe senex miles!"

Burke's quarrel with Hamilton ended in his resigning his pension. His feelings appear to have been deeply hurt by Hamilton's superciliousness, and his demand for the right to employ the whole time of his private secretary. In a long explanatory letter to Hutchinson, a leading member of the Irish parliament, and father of the late Lord Donoughmore, he says, indignantly enough – "I flatter myself to let you see that I deserved to be considered in another manner than as one of Mr Hamilton's cattle, or as a piece of his household stuff. Six of the best years of my life he took me from every pursuit of literary reputation, or of improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune, a very great one; and he has also taken to himself the very little one which I had made. In all this time you may easily conceive how much I felt at being left behind by almost all my contemporaries. There never was a season more favourable for any man who chose to enter into the career of public life; and I think I am not guilty of ostentation in supposing my own moral character and my industry, my friends and connexions, when Mr H. first sought my acquaintance, were not at all inferior to those of several whose fortune is at this day upon a very different footing from mine."

It is evident that Burke's mind was at this period turned to authorship, and that his chief quarrel arose from the petty and pragmatical demand of Hamilton, that he should abandon it altogether. Burke soon had ample revenge, if it was to be found in the obscurity into which Hamilton rapidly fell, and the burlesque which alone revived his name from its obscurity. The contrast between the two must have been a lesson to the vanity of the one, as pungent as was its triumph. If ever the fate of Tantalus was realized to man, it was in the perpetual thirst and perpetual disappointment of Hamilton for public name. The cup never reached his lips but it was instantly dry; while Burke was seen reveling in the full flow of public renown – buoyant on the stream into which so many others plunged only to sink, and steering his noble course with a full mastery of the current. "Single-speech Hamilton" became a title of ridicule, while Burke was pouring forth, night after night, speech after speech, rich in the most sparkling and most solid opulence of the mind. He must have been more or less than man, to have never cast a glance at the decrepitude of the formal coxcomb whom he once acknowledged as his leader, and compared his shrunk shape with the vigorous and athletic proportions of his own intellectual stature. Hamilton, too, must have had many a pang. The wretched nervousness of character which at once stimulated him to pine for distinction, and disqualified him from obtaining it, must have made his life miserable. If the magnificent conception of the poet's Prometheus could be lowered to any thing so trivial as a disappointed politician of the eighteenth century, its burlesque might be amply shown in a mind helplessly struggling against a sense of its own inferiority, gnawed by envy at the success of better men, and with only sufficient intellectual sensibility remaining to have that gnawing constantly renewed.

Burke's letters to the chief Irishmen with whom his residence in Dublin had brought him into intercourse, long continued indignant. "Having presumed," said he, in one of those explanatory letters, "to put a test to me, which no man not born in Africa ever thought of taking, on my refusal he broke off all connexion with me in the most insolent manner. He, indeed, entered into two several negotiations afterwards, but both poisoned in their first principles by the same spirit of injustice with which he set out in his first dealings with me. I, therefore, could never give way to his proposals. The whole ended by his possessing himself of that small reward for my services which, I since find, he had a very small share in procuring for me. After, or, indeed, rather during his negotiations, he endeavoured to stain my character and injure my future fortune, by every calumny his malice could suggest. This is the case of my connexion with Mr Hamilton."