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MR. BURKE.

THE contrast which Lord Mansfield presented to another school of lawyers, led us to present, somewhat out of its order, the character of Sir Vicary Gibbs as representing the latter class, and from thence we were conducted, by way of contrast (by the association, as it were, of contrariety), to view the model of a perfect judge in Sir William Grant. It is time that we now return to the group of Statesmen collected round Lord North. His supporters being chiefly lawyers, we were obliged to make our incursion into Westminster Hall. When we turn to his opponents, we emerge from the learned obscurity of the black letter precincts to the more cheerful, though not less contentious, regions of political men; and the first figure which attracts the eye is the grand form of Edmund Burke.

How much soever men may differ as to the soundness of Mr. Burke's doctrines or the purity of his public conduct, there can be no hesitation in according to him a station among the most extraordinary persons that have ever appeared; nor is there now any diversity of opinion as to the place which it is fit to assign him. He was a writer of the first class, and excelled in almost every kind of prose composition. Possessed of most extensive knowledge, and of the most various description; acquainted alike with what different classes of men knew, each in his own province, and with much that hardly any one ever thought of learning; he could either bring his masses of information to bear directly upon the subjects to

which they severally belonged-or he could avail himself of them generally to strengthen his faculties and enlarge his views or he could turn any portion of them to account for the purpose of illustrating his theme or enriching his diction. Hence, when he is handling any one matter, we perceive that we are conversing with a reasoner or a teacher, to whom almost every other branch of knowledge is familiar. His views range over all the cognate subjects; his reasonings are derived from principles applicable to other matters as well as the one in hand; arguments pour in from all sides, as well as those which start up under our feet, the natural growth of the path he is leading us over; while to throw light round our steps, and either explore its darker places or serve for our recreation, illustrations are fetched from a thousand quarters; and an imagination marvellously quick to descry unthought-of resemblances pours forth the stores which a lore yet more marvellous has gathered from all ages and nations and arts and tongues. We are, in respect of the argument, reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge and the exuberance of his learned fancy; while the many-lettered diction recalls to mind the first of English poets, and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils of all sciences and all times.

The kinds of composition are various, and he excels in them all, with the exception of two, the very highest, given but to few, and when given, almost always possessed alone,-fierce, nervous, overwhelming declamation, and close, rapid argument. Every other he uses easily, abundantly, and successfully. He produced but one philosophical treatise; but no man lays down abstract principles more soundly, or better traces their application. All his works, indeed, even his controversial, are so informed with general reflection, so variegated with speculative discussion, that they wear the air of the Lyceum as well as the Academy. His narrative is excellent; and it is

impossible more luminously to expose the details of a complicated subject, to give them more animation and interest, if dry in themselves, or to make them bear, by the mere power of statement, more powerfully upon the argument. In description he can hardly be surpassed, at least for effect; he has all the qualities that conduce to it-ardour of purpose, sometimes rising into violence-vivid, but too luxuriant fancy-bold, frequently extravagant conception-the faculty of shedding over mere inanimate scenery the light imparted by moral associations. He indulges in bitter invective, mingled with poignant wit, but descending often to abuse and even scurrility; he is apt moreover to carry an attack too far, as well as to strain the application of a principle; to slay the slain, or, dangerously for his purpose, to mingle and dilute the reader's contempt with pity.

As in the various kinds of writing, so in the dif ferent styles, he had an almost universal excellence, one only being deficient the plain and unadorned. Not but that he could, in unfolding a doctrine or pursuing a narrative, write for a little with admirable simplicity and propriety; only he could not sustain this self-denial; his brilliant imagination and wellstored memory soon broke through the restraint. But in all other styles, passages without end occur of the highest order-epigram-pathos-metaphor in profusion, chequered with more didactic and sober diction. Nor are his purely figurative passages the finest even as figured writing; he is best when the metaphor is subdued, mixed as it were with plainer matter to flavour it, and used not by itself, and for its own sake, but giving point to a more useful instrument, made of more ordinary material; or at the most, flung off by the heat of composition, like sparks from a working engine, not fire-works for mere display. Speaking of the authors of the 'Declaration of Right,' he calls them "those whose penetrating style has

engraved in our ordinances and in our hearts the words and spirit of that immortal law."* So, discoursing of the imitations of natural magnitude by artifice and skill-" A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods."† "When pleasure is over we relapse into indifference, or rather we fall into a soft tranquillity, which is tinged with the agreeable colour of the former sensation."-"Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent on them; and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or resist its growth during its infancy."§-"Faction will make its cries resound through the nation, as if the whole were in an uproar."|| In works of a serious nature, upon the affairs of real life, as political discourses and orations, figurative style should hardly ever go beyond this. But strict and close metaphor or simile may be allowed, provided it be most sparingly used, and never deviate from the subject matter, so as to make that disappear in the ornament. "The judgment is for the greater part employed in throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination (says Mr. Burke), in dissipating the scenes of its enchantment, and in tying us down to the disagreeable yoke of our reason." He has here at once expressed figuratively the principle we are laying down, and illustrated our remark by the temperance of his metaphors, which, though mixed, do not offend, because they come so near mere figurative language that they may be regarded, like the last set of examples, rather as forms of expression than tropes. "A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion,' -a

*Reflections on the French Revolution. † Sublime and Beautiful, II. § 10.

Ibid. I. § 3.

§ Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents. Discourses on Taste.

** Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents.

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Ibid.

most apt illustration of his important position, that we ought to be as jealous of little encroachments, now the chief sources of danger, as our ancestors were of 'Ship Money' and the 'Forest Laws.' "A species of men (speaking of one constant and baneful effect of grievances), to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestiné disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in return, those disorders which are the parents of all their consequence."*"We have not (he says of the English Church Establishment) relegated religion to obscure municipalities or rustic villages-No! we will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments." But if these should seem so temperate as hardly to be separate figures, the celebrated comparison of the Queen of France, though going to the verge of chaste style, hardly passes it. "And surely, never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in-glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy."+

All his writings, but especially his later ones, abound in examples of the abuse of this style, in which, unlike those we have been dwelling upon with unmixed admiration, the subject is lost sight of, and the figure usurps its place, almost as much as in Homer's longer similes, and is oftentimes pursued not merely with extravagance and violence, but into details that offend by their coarseness, as well as their forced connexion with the matter in question. The comparison of a noble adversary to the whale, in which the grantee of the crown is altogether forgotten, and the fish alone remains; of one Republican

• Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents. † Reflections on the French Revolution.

+ Ibid.

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