1771. "with great distinctness, truth, and humour; "* listening to that "ridiculous duet" between the giant and the dwarf Æt. 43. which was so popular at the time among the country labourers. and their children; observing the man without hands or legs convert his stumps to the most convenient purposes; marvelling to see two white negroes born of black parents; laughing at the monkey amusing itself in imposing on the gravity of a cat; unspeakably amazed when he first saw the size of the elephant; admiring the canary-bird that had been taught, at the word of command, to pick up letters of the alphabet so as to spell any person's name in company; attracted by the hare on his hind legs with such "a remark"able good ear," who used his forepaws as hands, beat the drum, danced to music, and went through the manual exercise; and, though doubting "the credibility of the person "who showed" the bonasus, and thus letting him feel that a showman's tricks would not always pass upon travellers, yet not the less ready with a pleasant candour to admit that he had "seen sheep that would eat flesh, and a horse that "was fond of oysters." t Leaving him to such labours or simple enjoyments here, events which preceded the publication of his English History bring us back for a while to London. * However, this raven did not turn his accomplishments to such excellent practical use as another bird of Goldsmith's acquaintance, as to which he relates this anecdote. "I have seen a parrot, belonging to a distiller, who had suffered "pretty largely in his circumstances from an informer who lived opposite him, very "ridiculously employed. This bird was taught to pronounce the ninth commandment, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' with a very "clear, loud, articulate voice. The bird was generally placed in its cage over "against the informer's house, and delighted the whole neighbourhood with its "persevering exhortations." Animated Nature, iv. 213. 66 For these various personal allusions in the order in which I have introduced them, see Animated Nature, iii. 240-3, iv. 315, iii. 229, 19-21, 257-62, ii. 405, 413, 212, 109, iv. 174, ii. 103-110, iii. 329, ii. 94-5, iii. 310, 334, iv. 31, iii. 122, ii. 246, and 160. And for further notices see post, 336-7, and chaps. xvi. and xvii. CHAPTER XI. 1771. EDMUND BURKE. 1771. THIS brief chapter I devote chiefly to Edmund Burke, not Et. 43. only because the part he has played in my narrative requires that such a sequel should be given, but because the reader should also have the means of observing what now fell within the observation of Goldsmith, and led to that imaginary epitaph in which the whole career as well as character of his friend was expressed, in which with a singular forecast the future was all seen from the present, and the loftiest admiration only served with exquisite art to indicate defects which were to spring, as too surely and soon they did, from the very wealth and exuberance of this great statesman's genius. Burke had just resumed those farmer occupations at Beaconsfield into which he threw himself with as much energy as if they had been party politics, after a session of unprecedented violence, but which had not ended in vehement speeches alone. Impelled and supported by the excitement out of doors, which had risen to an unexampled pitch, and high above whose loudest storm the triumphant thunder of Junius was heard rattling against the treasury benches, he, and the minority with whom he acted, had been 1771. able at last to crush Lord North's majorities. The battle t. 43. of the session was fought upon the right of the press to publish reports of what was passing in Parliament; and if Junius and Wilkes had done nothing more than help us to a few years' earlier enjoyment of that popular right, such brawling mischief as undoubtedly attended them might claim to have received some sort of expiation. It was in vain that Lord North walked out into the lobby with his splendid majorities; the opposition went back two hundred years for a precedent, and, strong in public opinion, invoked the orders of the House against its own tyranny. On the question of bringing what Colonel Onslow, with a proper sense of sport, "called three brace"* of printers to the bar, Burke and Barré divided three and twenty times; and when they left at the close of the struggle, between five and six o'clock in the morning of Saturday the 12th of March, they knew that the privilege was won. Posterity," exclaimed Burke at the next meeting of the House, " will bless the pertinaciousness of that day." In which faith he was quite content to receive the abuse of his contemporaries. 66 It was not sparing. Conway recommended him to carry that line of tactics in future to Hockley in the Hole. Charles Fox grieved that he should turn the House into a bear-garden.§ 66 66 *Cavendish Debates, ii. 378. Ibid. The day was the 14th March, 1771. Says Mrs. Peachum to Filch, "You should go to Hockley in the Hole, and to Marybone, child, to learn valour. These are the schools that have bred so many brave men." Beggar's Opera (Ed. 1729), 7. Hockley in the Hole was the place for encounters in the ring. It is now a part of Clerkenwell Green. "In the phrase of Hockley in the Hole," writes Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, laughing at Boswell's shrinking from his once eagerly proposed Baltic expedition, "it is 66 a pity he has not a better bottom." Mrs. Piozzi's Letters, i. 367. § Yet Charles Fox soon changed his tone; and Horace Walpole does not scruple to say that his motives were his father's application for an earldom, and his uncle Ilchester's for a place in which to put O'Brien out of the way—both received unfavourably by Lord North. Who would suppose that the poor actor's bonne 1771. 66 "I am George Onslow asked what else but ignorance of its orders Et. 43. could the House expect from a man who was not descended from parliamentary men. Burke owned that insolent impeachment. not descended from members of parliament," he said. "I am not descended from any "distinguished character whatever. My father left me "nothing in the world but good principles, good instruction, "good example, which I have not departed from." Nor was it in the House alone, or simply upon public grounds, that such attacks were made.* A churchman, Doctor Markham, fortune (ante, 377-9) would have proved such a sad piece of ill-fortune to all the great people it so sorely discomposed? But the incident is really one of the most characteristic of the time, showing as it does what important acts hinged on motives the most contemptible. See Lord John Russell's Memorials of Fox, i. 16, and 74-5. And see the Selwyn Correspondence, iii. 51. * No man in public life was ever subjected to more unscrupulous attacks on his private character than Burke. In the very year to which I have brought my narrative, so foul was the bitterness of party strife, that even the respectable Advertiser opened its columns to the most gross imputations on "the brothers "and their cousin" (by which expression Edmund and Richard Burke, and their relative William, were well understood), as part of a "knot of knaves" engaged in disreputable schemes to raise the price of India bonds. Unfortunately a certain colour had been given to such charges by the undoubted fact that William and Richard Burke, with their friend Dyer and others, had speculated in the new stock and lost considerably. It involved poor Dyer's utter bankruptcy; and Hawkins alludes either to William or Edmund Burke, whom he always does his best to avoid naming directly, when he remarks that "the last office of humanity towards "him was performed by one of those who had been accessary to his ruin." (Life of Johnson, 231.) But Edmund afterwards most solemnly averred that he was not himself involved in these transactions, and I implicitly believe him. Even the statement which Mr. Nicholls makes in his Recollections and Reflections (i. 54-5), and which I quote as the sum of what one of the bitterest of Burke's opponents could collect and retail on this head, he is obliged to confess, "I know "only from the relation of others," though he adds, "I believe it to be true." Here it is. "Soon after Mr. Edmund Burke became a political character, he, and "his cousin William Burke, embarked in a speculation in India stock. They pre"vailed on many of their friends to join them, among others, on Earl Verney" [Verney was an Irish peer, who represented Buckinghamshire in several later parliaments, but at this time sat for Carmarthen], "who fell a victim to this con"nection. They used much solicitation with Sir Joshua Reynolds to join them, "but he was dissuaded from it by Anthony Chamier, for which Anthony Chamier, as he told me himself, was never forgiven by the Burkes." [How loose and little to be depended upon are assertions so worded, under which Edmund may or 66 1771. who had been his own early associate and was god-father to his son, had lately received a mitre from Lord Mansfield, Et. 43. and abuse of his seventeen years' friend might seem to have may not be included, needs not be pointed out.] "This speculation was at first "extremely successful, but at last it failed. William Burke and Lord Verney (6 were announced as the defaulters; and Edmund Burke's name was concealed." Yet the man who wrote this passage, on mere hearsay, took afterwards an active personal part against Burke in the House of Commons on the impeachment of Hastings, whom he was put forward to defend against two of the leading charges; and is it credible that with the desperate resentments which then sprung up against the originator of that impeachment, and which arrayed against him in unrelenting animosity the countless clients and satellites of the still powerful ex-Governor-General, Burke could have remained uncrushed by the proof of imputations of that kind, if any means of proof existed?-Since this note was written, I have regretted to observe these scandals against Burke revived by an able and well-informed writer in the Athenæum (17th December 1853), who finds it difficult otherwise to account for his purchase of Gregories so soon after his entrance into political life, &c. As this writer, however, does not carry the matter beyond the sort of suspicion already remarked upon above, I will only add, as to the Beaconsfield purchase, and the sudden rise into political notoriety, what we receive on even the unfavourable testimony of the Recollections and Reflections above quoted. Nicholls says that, on Lord Rockingham first coming into office, his inexperience in regard to public business was such as to render it absolutely necessary to have a person about him acquainted with political subjects, and accustomed to laborious application, and that every one felt the selection of Burke to be a discreet and natural one at that time. "He was an author in the service "of Mr. Dodsley the bookseller; he had conducted for that gentleman the Annual "Register," &c. . . "His political knowledge might be considered almost as an "Encyclopædia".. "Every man who approached him received instruction from his "stores; and his failings were not visible at that time," &c. &c. "When Mr. "Burke entered into the service of the Marquis of Rockingham he was not rich, "but the munificent generosity of that nobleman," &c. &c. . . “Mr. Burke “purchased a beautiful villa at Beaconsfield, which was paid for by the Marquis "of Rockingham," &c. . . "But his liberality was not confined to the person of "Mr. Burke; he procured for Mr. William Burke, his cousin and most confidential "connexion, the employment of Under Secretary of State to General Conway; "and he gave to Mr. Edmund Burke's brother, Richard Burke, the place of "Collector to the Customs at Grenada. I mention these circumstances to show," &c. &c. (i. 20-21.) Nicholls had at least the means of knowing personally what he thus relates, for with Lord Rockingham he was in the habit of personal intercourse. He was the son of George the Second's physician, and sat in three parliaments in George the Third's reign. I may add that Richard Burke had already gone out to the West India Islands before his brother's formal connection with Lord Rockingham-a fact which might perhaps be so construed as to explain some apparent inconsistencies in the date of his appointment. On the 17th July, 1764, Edmund announces to their friend Shackleton that "poor Dick" was to set off the next week for the Grenadas; and he proceeds to write of the uncertainty of his prospects, and |