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applicable on the occasion. The humour touching the Munny Begum flowed something in this way: Age has its comforts-the consolations of debility and ugliness may be found in brandy. The old lady had therein a monopoly. She was a great dealer in the article. But mark the transition -a youth of sentiment and love; an old age reposing upon the brandy-cask.' He then ironically adverted to the passion of great men for strumpets. 'Antony had his Cleopatra, and Mr Hastings his Munny Begum. It might be so; for aged, shrivelled, bony deformity had its relish for some palates; but, good God! no man ever fell in love with his own banyan1!'"

We have seen that he compared Hastings to a wallowing sow. He also compared him to "the keeper of a pig-stye, wallowing in filth and corruption." Towards the conclusion he became so violent as to apply the epithets "rogue, common cheat, swindler;" and to declare "You must repeal this Act of Parliament, you must declare the Legislature a liar, before you can acquit Warren Hastings."

Taste. In his more excited compositions Burke frequently offends against good taste. His abuse of the Duke of Bedford, of Warren Hastings, and of the principal actors in the French Revolution, is often outrageously coarse. His comparison of the Duke to a whale, his comparison of Hastings to a sow, and his imagining Carnot to have drunk the blood of a king, and to be snorting away the fumes of indigestion" in consequence, cannot be paralleled except from "the scolding of the ancients;" and these are not perhaps his worst violations of taste. Lord Brougham produces the following tit-bit concerning Mr Dundas :

"With six great chopping bastards" (Reports of Secret Committee'), "each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or to use a more fit, as well as a more poetical, comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, is expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as evidence of her delicate amour."

These occasional infractions of taste, gross though they be, must not be allowed to detract from his just fame as "the supreme writer of his century." Taste is certainly not the special virtue of English literature: there is none of our greatest masters of prose that does not offend in some particular. Burke was far from being prone "to revolve ideas from which other minds shrink with disgust," at least in cold blood; only when excited he could not find images too disgusting to express his aversion.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Description.-Burke's descriptive forte is very like Macaulay's. There is no method in his descriptions; his works contain none of "Money-broker."

the elaborate word-painting to be found in Carlyle; but he details impressive circumstances with his characteristic fulness of expression, and profusion and boldness of imagery.

He gives the following picturesque account of the ancient manner of catering for the royal household :

on a third principle, still They were formed, sir, on In former days, when the precarious, the royal pur

"These old establishments were formed also more adverse to the living economy of the age. the principle of purveyance, and receipt in kind. household was vast, and the supply scanty and veyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provision with power and prerogative instead of money, brought home the plunder of a hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding country; and deposited their spoils in a hundred caverns, with each its keeper."

The present condition of the royal palaces he describes as follows:

"But when the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burthen of them. Our palaces are vast, inhospitable halls. There the bleak winds, there 'Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus, and Argestes loud,' howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of deserted guard-rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up the grim spectres of departed tyrants-the Saxon, the Norman, and the Dane; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries-who stalk from desolation to desolation, through the dreary vacuity, and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us that this was once a place of trade, and sounding with the busy hum of men,' though now you can only trace the streets by the colour of the corn; and its sole manufacture is in members of Parliament."

Persuasion. Our author's qualifications as an orator are elaborately analysed by Mr Rogers, from whom we make the following extracts:

"As an orator, Burke will never be ranked among the very first masters of the art, so long as the professed object of oratory shall be conviction and persuasion. Not that we for a moment assert that the degree of eloquence possessed by an orator is always to be estimated by his success. By no means; for as on the one hand there are many cases in which the divinest eloquence will in vain contend against the prejudices of an audience predetermined. not to be convinced, so there are many where the passions have already spoken more eloquently than the orator. The question, in such instances, is not how much, but how little, oratorical skill is necessary to success."-Treating eloquence and oratorical skill as synonymous—a somewhat questionable usage-Mr Rogers goes on to remark that Burke's eloquence was not "adapted to produce. success."

For purposes of persuasion he erred in not appealing to principles of action. He allowed his reason and his imagination to

play freely upon the subject, and did not confine himself to the orator's chief end-namely, to guide his audience to a particular resolution. "He can seldom confine himself to a simple businesslike view of the subject under discussion, or to close, rapid, compressed argumentation on it. On the contrary, he makes boundless excursions into all the regions of moral and political philosophy; is perpetually tracing up particular instances and subordinate principles to profound and comprehensive maxims; amplifying and expanding the most meagre materials into brief but comprehensive dissertations of political science, and incrusting (so to speak) the nucleus of the most insignificant fact with the most exquisite crystallisations of truth; while the whole composition glitters and sparkles again with a rich profusion of moral reflections, equally beautiful and just." "His exuberance of fancy" was "equally unfavourable to the attainment of the highest oratorical excellence. When a speaker indulges in very lengthened or elaborate imagery, a suspicion is sure to be engendered (and, except in one or two instances of very extraordinary mental structure, that suspicion is uniformly just) that he is scarcely in earnest ; that if he has an object, it is to commend his own eloquence rather than to convince his audience; that his inspiration is not the inspiration of nature; and for this very sufficient reason, that it is not natural for intense emotion to express itself in the fantastic forms of laboured imagery. When illustration is very abundant and elaborate, even the admiration it may excite will often be anything but friendly to the speaker's professed object, nay, the very reverse; the admiration will resemble that which is excited by a fine piece of poetry. That it is possible to

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indulge in such exuberance of illustration, as to suspend the current of strong passions, and defeat the orator's avowed object, it is needless to say."

Farther, he was either ignorant of the feelings of his audience, or too vehement and self-willed to try to conciliate them. "As a political tactician, Burke was far inferior to many of his contemporaries. There was, in fact, a singular disproportion between his knowledge of human nature in general, and his knowledge of individual character; or, if he possessed the latter at all, he was strangely incapable of using it to any practical purpose. None understood better than he did, that abstract principles of policy must be modified by actually existing circumstances; yet this very same maxim, of such profound truth and such immense value, he showed a singular inability to apply to individual conduct, on the small scale and within the limited sphere of parties. In the conduct of any measure, he never deigned to consult prejudices or to soften enmity. He had no patience to bear with folly; So far from any attempt to conciliate

he was only irritated by it.

his political opponents, he often exasperated hostility by setting them all at open defiance, and would frequently pour out the most bitter scorn and invective, when the most guarded and temperate style of expression was essential to success. Never checking the impetuosity of his passions, he often contended for mere trifles with a pertinacity which could only have been justified in the defence of principles of vital importance; trifles, the timely and graceful concession of which would have insured success, which would have far more than counterbalanced such a sacrifice. He never seemed nicely to calculate, with a view to his own conduct, the temper and conduct of the House, or the exact relation of parties in it; thus he never cared to conceal or disguise his opinions on any subject whatever, but uniformly expressed them boldly and fully. Now, though we may admire the blunt honesty of such conduct, none can commend its prudence; nothing but the most imperious necessity could justify it."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1728-1774.

Goldsmith's life offers an exception to the usual even tenor of the literary career. His fortunes were as chequered as restless imprudence and romantic generosity could make them. His father was a good-hearted Irish clergyman, the supposed original of Dr Primrose in the Vicar of Wakefield,' and of the kindly old preacher in the Deserted Village.' Oliver was born at Pallas, in Longford, the fourth of a family of seven. When he was two years old his father removed to the more comfortable living of Lissoy, in West Meath. His first teacher was a garrulous old soldier, who had served under Marlborough, and delighted to entertain the boys with tales of marvellous adventure. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar, in the year of the great Jacobite rising, 1745. What he afterwards said of Parnell's college course may be applied to his own-"His progress through the college course of study was probably marked with but little splendour; his imagination might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius; but it is certain that as a classical scholar few could equal him.” He had no liking for mathematics, but, as he afterwards boasted, he could "turn an ode of Horace with any of them." He is said to have more than once been in difficulties with the heads of the college from his love of boisterous frolic. He left college with no fixed aim. His father designed him for the Church, but after he had spent two years at home in preparation, he failed to give satisfaction to the bishop, and could not obtain orders. He next thought of the law, and set off for London; but falling into good company at Dublin, he spent all his money there, and returned

home in disgrace. He was then fitted out for the study of medicine in Edinburgh, but was much too restless to pass decorously through the ordinary curriculum and settle down into a quiet practice. After studying (or at least staying) two years in Edinburgh, he went off to the Continent, and spent some time in the medical schools of Leyden and Louvain. Thereafter, in a restless spirit of adventure, he wandered through Switzerland, Italy, and France, supporting himself mainly, it is said, by playing on the flute for food and lodging. In 1756 he returned to London, and there tried various ways of making a livelihood; being successively assistant to an apothecary, physician (among the poorer orders), proof-corrector in Richardson's press, usher in Dr Milner's school at Peckham, critic for the Monthly Review,' and usher again. In 1758 he tried to pass at Surgeon's Hall as a hospital mate, but was rejected, and thus driven back finally on literature. His first independent work was 'The Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe,' which appeared anonymously in 1759. From that date till his death, in 1774, he received steady work from the booksellers, and but for his imprudent generosity and love of finery, might have lived in comfort, if not in luxury. His chief productions were 'The Bee,' a weekly periodical, which reached only eight numbers, lasting through October and November, 1759; 'Chinese Letters,' contributed to Newbery's 'Public Ledger in 1760, and afterwards published separately under the title of 'The Citizen of the World;' The History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son,' 1762; The Vicar of Wakefield,' written and sold in 1764, but not published till 1766; The Traveller,' 1764; the comedy of The Good-Natured Man,' performed in 1768; History of Rome,' 1769; "The Deserted Village,' 1770; History of England,' in four volumes, 1771; 'She Stoops to Conquer,' performed in 1773; History of Animated Nature,' 1774.

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"The Doctor," as he was called, had not a handsome exterior. Miss Reynolds once toasted him as "the ugliest man she knew." Boswell says "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of the scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman." Judge Day's description is more favourable: "In person he was short-about five feet five or six inches; strong but not heavy in make; rather fair in complexion, with brown hair-such, at least, as could be distinguished from his wig. His features were plain but not repulsive certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. His manners were simple, natural, and perhaps on the whole, we may say, not polished; at least, without the refinement and good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect.”

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