“THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.” 269 ance of its author, who, on his list of friends, was soon able to read such names as Hume, Lord Lyttelton, Soame Jenyns, the author of the 'Origin of Evil,' Bishop Warburton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Johnson. The author of 'Rasselas' seems to have loved Burke next to Topham Beauclerk. He spoke of him at one time as the only man whose common conversation corresponded with the general fame he had in the world. At another time he would assert that no man of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident, under a gateway, without being convinced that he was the first man in England. And he was one of the earliest to acknowledge the merits of the Philosophical Inquiry,' pronouncing it a model of true and refined criticism. Posterity, however, has not endorsed this high eulogium. On the contrary, it holds that many of the rules laid down are erroneous, and that many of the illustrations brought forward are inappropriate. Exception may be taken at the very outset to Burke's definitions of beauty and sublimity; which are neither very accurate nor very precise. Nor are we satisfied with his analysis of their effects upon the mind. Then, again, the style is curiously cold and bare, and the most attractive lines of thought are treated with the dryness which previously had been supposed peculiar to a theologian's statement of dogmatic difficulties. Macaulay remarks that it is the most unadorned of all Burke's works; and this, though written at a period of life when authors are generally prone to luxuriance of language. He writes on the emotions produced by mountains, forests, and cascades; by the glorious masterpieces of art, and the face and bosom of Beauty, 270 BURKE'S MARRIAGE. with an aridity which chills and dissatisfies the reader. But from all points of view, a page of Ruskin's 'Modern Painters' is worth the whole of Burke's once celebrated Essay. Continued ill-health compelled Burke to place himself under the care of Dr. Nugent, of Bath, a man not less eminent as a scholar than as a physician. Under his roof he made the acquaintance of his daughter; the intimacy soon ripened into an affectionate attachment. Burke offered his hand, and was accepted. The union secured his domestic happiness; for Mrs. Burke was in all respects that 'perfect wife' whom Tennyson has described in 'Isabel,' and those who knew her agreed that her husband's fond portrait of her charms did not err from exaggeration.* * It is allowable to suppose that Tennyson, when he wrote 'Isabel,' had in his mind Edmund Burke's celebrated 'Character.' Here are a few similarities. Burke writes:-" She discovers the right and wrong of things not by reasoning, but by sagacity." Tennyson: Burke:- "She never disgraces her good nature by severe reflections on anybody, so she never degrades her judgment by immoderate or ill-placed praises." Tennyson: "A hate of gossip parlance." Burke:- -"Her voice is a low, soft music, not formed to rule in public assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a crowd." Tennyson : "An accent very low In blandishment." Burke: Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe you when she A LABORIOUS MAN OF LETTERS. 6 271 Though Burke had gained the ear of the reading public, and the respect of literary society, he had still to struggle hard to make a position. He continued to exercise his pen with laborious perseverance, writing for Dodsley the Annual Register,* in which it is difficult to say whether his sketches of contemporary history or his dispassionate judgments of public men deserve the greater praise. He also compiled an Account of the European Settlements in America,' and began an 'Abridgment of English History.' As an historian, however, he would hardly have risen into the first rank. His genius and his inclination alike pointed to a political career; and he waited eagerly for an opportunity of appearing on that stage where he felt he could best command the attention of the audience. To every man, sooner or later, comes his opportunity. Burke's came in 1759, and was not misused. His friend, the Earl of Charlemont, an Irish nobleman of the most enlightened patriotism, introduced him to Gerard Hamilton, better known as Single-speech Hamilton, in allusion to a remarkable oration with which he had electrified the House of Commons, afterwards becoming as silent as an extinct pleases; they command like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue." Tennyson: "Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed Clear, without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane Of her still spirit." * At first Burke received for the Register £100 per annum. + Eight sheets of this work were printed for Dodsley in 1757, and it was then discontinued. It shows strong traces of Burke's study of Montesquieu. 272 QUARREL BETWEEN BURKE AND HAMILTON. volcano *. Hamilton quickly detected Burke's remarkable powers; and and having been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, invited him to accompany him partly as a friend, and partly as a private secretary. His services in both capacities were so highly esteemed that in March, 1763, he was rewarded with a pension of £300 per annum on the Irish Establishment. But within a twelvemonth this payment was made by Hamilton the excuse for claims which Burke could not recognise, and for conduct which he warmly resented. Immediately he broke off his connection with his patron, and relinquished his pension. "The occasion of our difference," he wrote to a friend, "was not any act whatsoever on my part; it was entirely on his, by a voluntary but most insolent and intolerable demand, amounting to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole course of my life, without leaving me at any time a power either of getting forward with honour, or of retiring with tranquillity." Burke took leave of Hamilton + in an eloquent farewell letter, which, many years afterwards, Hamilton candidly confessed was one of the finest compositions he had ever read. The definite cause of the * He made several remarkable speeches, however, in the Irish Parliament. + “Hamilton's character is a problem to this hour. A single effort of eloquence had placed him among the hopes of the British Senate. He never repeated it. Its reputation, and the friendship of Lord Halifax, then President of the Board of Trade, made him a member of the Board in 1756. But Hamilton still continued silent. In four years after he was made Secretary for Ireland, on the appointment of his noble friend as Lord Lieutenant. In the Irish House, the necessities of his situation as Prime Minister of the Viceroyalty, overcame his nervousness, and he spoke, on several occasions, with effect. But on his return to the English THE LITERARY CLUB. 273 rupture between patron and protégé has never been ascertained; but it is known that Burke to the last conceived he had been unjustly and even insolently treated. Returning to England in 1764, Burke renewed his friendly intercourse with men of letters. In conjunction with Reynolds, he founded, in May, the Literary Club, in imitation of that famous gathering at "the Mermaid," which had witnessed the wit-combats of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, and that other coterie at Will's Coffee-house, where Pope knelt at the feet of Dryden. Of this new club Oliver Goldsmith was a member. Burke's experience of public life, brief as it was, had disinclined him for the pastoral career in the wilds of America, which he had sometimes dreamed of in former days of despondency. And it was, no doubt, with a feeling that he had in him the power to serve his country, and make a name, that he accepted the post of private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, when that honest but narrow-visioned nobleman was appointed Premier in 1765. "Being in a very private station," said Burke, some nine years later, "far enough from any line of business, and not having the honour of a Parliament, his powers were again shut up; and, by a strange pusillanimity, a tenderness of oratorical repute, unworthy of the member of an English public assembly, during the remainder of his life his voice was never heard. Yet, probably, no man led a more anxious and self-condemning life. During this period, public distinction, and distinction peculiarly by eloquence, seems to have never left his thought . . . Literary history has seldom afforded an example of self-opinion so completely its own punisher; his extravagant sense of the merit of a single effort, strangled every effort to come; he was stifled in his own fame; his vanity was suicidal."-DR. CROLY, 'Memoir of Burke,' i. 33. VOL. I. 18 |