the evil of sufferance; that conjunctures must be awaited, and can rarely or never be forced on; that political genius consisted in a great measure in knowing where uniformity was necessary, and where inequalities might be tolerated; that there was a difference between legislation and government, between parsimony and economy, between taxation and revenue. He did not think much of the inherent wisdom of the masses. He thought the people always had either too much or too little action. 'Quelquefois avec cent mille bras il renverse tout; quelquefois avec cent mille pieds il' ne va que comme les insectes1.' He had equally small faith in appeals to the reason of mankind in the mass. He more than eulogised the English constitution; and said with equal wit and truth of Harrington, what might be said of all who plan new forms of government without understanding the excellences of the old, that he had built Chalcedon when he had the shore of Byzantium before his eyes. He has been accused, like Burke, of degenerating into a solemn and mysterious enunciation of truisms. But there are some truths which are considered unimportant, because they are undisputed; so true that they may be safely neglected, or even tossed into the limbo of the most exploded errors. When they are brought to light, they are called truisms. Such truisms neither Montesquieu nor Burke disdained.

The political essays of Hume exhibit an order of mind equally rare with that of Burke. Both had derived their stimulus in different ways from the restless intellect of Bolingbroke. But Hume's metaphysical studies, which had produced his marvellous power of contracting the mental eye to the subtleties of abstraction, had weakened the power of dilating it so as to take in the wide and complicated relations of fact. Hume, in dealing with contemporary topics, was an acute observer, but a bad reasoner: his mind played idly, and, as it were, in patches, on the surface of things which the less exquisite intellect of Burke penetrated in their depths and illuminated in their entirety. Burke stands apart from the metaphysical politics of Sidney and Locke, from whom the Whig writers of the early part of the century, and notably Hoadly and Tindal, had derived their tone, though he is occasionally indebted to them for an idea.

He was familiar with Swift; but no trace is to be found in Swift's writings of the large way of thinking which

1 Liv. ii. c. 21

pervades Burke's.

6

The former is almost as remarkable for his reluctance to commit himself to broad and general views, as the latter for his eagerness to fortify his particular case by appealing to them. Swift indeed usually reasoned by a chain of minute particulars, and made his arguments turn in some form on personalities, which Burke, as far as was possible, avoided. Swift laboured, says Jeffrey, 'not to point out the wrongs of Ireland, in the depression of her Catholic population, her want of education, or the discouragement of her industry; but to raise an outcry against an amendment of the copper or the gold coin, or against a parliamentary proposition for remitting the tithe of agistment.' Burke, like Demosthenes, preferred to treat a variety of topics in such a way as to bear with irresistible force on a single argument. Gordon, the English Machiavelli, supplied him with some hints; and from Bolingbroke he learned a philosophical mode of treatment, and an easy and powerful style. The Vindication of Natural Society' is a singular proof that genius is, if not the child, at least the fosterchild of imitation. But though Burke was never ashamed of borrowing a good idea, the sum of his obligations to the strictly political writers of this or any other country is small. He had the run of a wider field. The literature of England is remarkable for the extent in which it is pervaded by political ideas. Poets, divines, dramatists, and historians, alike illustrate the leading tendency of the English mind. In the two former of these classes Burke had an especial interest. Hooker and South, Milton and Dryden, were often to him a real fount of inspiration. His philosophical mind readily' discerned any analogy which was convertible to his own purpose, and this faculty in him was rarely misused. Burke knew general English literature well; and he turned all his knowledge to such account that next to facts and reasonings upon facts, it became his chief resource. Burke moreover, like Cicero, had received the training, not of a politician, but of a man of letters. When Cicero first appeared in the character of a statesman, politicians used contemptuously to call him 'the Greek,' and 'the Scholar.' Every one of Burke's productions exhibits a mind thoroughly tinctured with scholarship, in the widest sense of the word, and perfected in it by continuous practice. His scholarship is of the Roman rather than the Greek model. Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus were familiarised to

He was equally

him by sympathy with their subject-matter. acquainted with the poets, and was often indebted to them for an illustration.

The general resemblance which may certainly be traced between the style (though not the method) of Burke and that of Cicero, is due rather to similarity of circumstances than to intentional imitation. There is an amusing passage in Boswell's Life of Johnson1, which contains the opinion of the great critic on this point in 1773. Being asked what was the particular excellence of Burke's eloquence, Johnson says, 'Copiousness and fertility of allusion; a power of diversifying his matter by placing it in new relations. Burke has great information, and great command of language; though in my opinion it has not in every respect the highest elegance.' Boswell: 'Do you think, Sir, that Burke has read Cicero much?" Johnson: "I don't believe it, Sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas; so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes, nor like any one else, but speaks as well as he can.' What Johnson indicated by this deficiency in the highest elegance was the familiarity of Burke's style. In his own writings he rarely lost a certain formal and academical air, which does not disappear altogether in his conversations. Even in the delightful writings of Goldsmith there is a constant savour of the press. Burke's political writings, on the other hand, have always the air of a spoken appeal from man to man. He is always forcible and earnest, but, in spite of the compass of his thought and the prodigality of his illustrations, the absence of self-consciousness is as remarkable as in the writings of Hooker and Taylor. As is usual in the case of men of good feeling, strong conviction, and high principles, there is no sense of labour or display in anything that he writes, and in this respect he even contrasts advantageously with such comparatively unambitious writers as Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, and Swift.

Changes have been traced in the progress of Burke's style, but they are not worth considering. A remarkable identity connects his earliest and his latest works, but the greater diffuseness of the latter is attributable, of course, to the habit of public speaking.

Burke's eloquence introduced a new model into Parliament. The conventional style of speaking in the middle of the last century may be best described in the words of Lord Hervey, who thus characterises the speaking of Lord Lyttelton, whose speech on the Jew Bill was considered a model of oratory: 'He had a great flow of words, that were uttered in a lulling monotony, and the little meaning they had to boast of was generally borrowed from commonplace maxims of moralists, philosophers, patriots, and poets, crudely imbibed, half digested, ill put together, and confusedly refunded.' Walpole describes this nobleman as 'talking heroics through his nose, with the gesticulations of a puppet.' Nothing can be more removed from this mixture of commonplace and falsetto, than the candour and profundity which mark the manner of Burke. He expressed his ideas with all the grandeur in which they were conceived; but the expression was always natural, and occasionally agreeably relieved by familiarity. It approaches to that manner of 'good conversation' which he himself attributes, as a high excellence, to Cicero. Burke reprehended any attempt to separate the English which is written from the English which is spoken1. Plautus and Terence, and the 'beautiful fragments of Publius Syrus,' he considered to be models of good speaking and writing. He often casts to the winds all literary formality, and writes just as he may have spoken in public or private, freely and unrestrainedly. In this way Burke gave a lasting stimulus to English prose literature, as Wordsworth soon afterwards gave a stimulus to poetry, by the introduction of a fresher and more natural diction. His writings have ever since been the model of all who wish to say anything forcibly, naturally, freely, and in a comparatively small space. The common-sense politician recognises him as his master, and modern satire is indebted to him for originating the 'Saturday Review' style2. He fell naturally into that manner which was best adapted to take and to keep hold of the

1 See his letter to Murphy, upon his Translation of Tacitus.

2 See, for instance, the Letter to W. Elliott, Esq., 1795. There may be sometimes too much even of a good thing. A toast is good, and a bumper is not bad; but the best toast may be so often repeated as to disgust the palate; and ceaseless rounds of bumpers may nauseate and overload the stomach. The ears of the most steady-voting politicians may at last be stunned with "Three times three."

practical English mind, and he brought that manner at once to its perfection.

The chief art of the speaker and writer consists in giving every part of his work its due degree of force, and its proper shade of colour1. This is remarkably exemplified in the products of the pen of Burke. 'His words,' says Hazlitt, 'are the most like things: his style is the most strictly suited to the subject. He unites every extreme and every variety of composition: the lowest and the meanest words and descriptions with the highest.' This is strictly true. Shakspere is no less conspicuously equal to himself whether drawing his greatest or his least characters, than Burke, on the occasion of the impeachment of Hastings, now preparing the highest flights of his rhetoric, and now employed upon the humble task of the legal draftsman 2. His addresses to the King and to the American Colonists should be noticed as specimens of the most difficult of all eloquence, that which produces its effect by extreme gravity and simplicity, avoiding all rhetorical ornament. There is a passage in the former which Lord Grenville thought the finest that Burke ever wrote-perhaps the finest in the English language-beginning, 'What, gracious Sovereign, is the empire of America to us, or the empire of the world, if we lose our own liberties?' which was evidently suggested by the passage in St. Matthew, 'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' In the sections of his works in which this grave simplicity is most prominent, Burke frequently employed the impressive phrases of the Holy Scriptures, affording a signal illustration of the truth, that he neglects the most valuable repository of rhetoric in the English language who has

...

1 'Is erit eloquens,' says Cicero, qui poterit parva summisse, modica temperate, magna graviter dicere.. Qui ad id, quodcunque decebit, poterit accommodare orationem. Quod quum statuerit, tum, ut quidque erit dicendum, ita dicet, nec satura jejune nec grandia minute nec item contra, sed erit rebus ipsis par et aequalis oratio' (Orat. c. 29, 36).

2 There is a product of his pen which is raised by the nature of the subject from that description, but which is altogether a lawyer's work, full of patient research and mature judgment, the Report of the Committee to examine the Lords' Journals in relation to proceedings on the same occasion. Charles Butler, the eminent conveyancer, considered this an ample refutation of the notion that he was not equal to the subtleties of abstract jurisprudence. 'It is one of the most valuable productions of his pen. It abounds in learning and profound observation, and embraces the whole of the subject' (Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 139). 3 xvi. 26.