demons that for centuries had indeed been torturing Frenchmen were strangled and overthrown.* The earlier and later days of Edmund Burke were nevertheless in closer sympathy than either friends or enemies have thought. He was too honest as well as great to be a renegade, though not to avoid self-deception; or effectually to resist those influences which all English society sanctioned, which hung around and depressed him in every step of his progress, which only at times he was able to thrust thoroughly aside, and which at last almost wholly overshadowed him. Let us measure by the uses to which the practical philosophy of his politics is still available, the nobler political uses to which, while he lived, he might have applied such genius. Its limited service is surely the proof of its misdirection. If he had not made himself the sport of his fancy and mere plaything of his imagination, instead of sovereign ruler over both, he could never have ministered throughout life, as he did, to the aristocratic requirements of these Rockinghams and Richmonds. He consented to do this, and the end was but a part of the beginning. Already it was manifest, to one who could pierce through the over-refinings of his genius to its unavailing and unpractical issues. Was it strange that Goldsmith should have been that one? Was it strange, that, among all the men His friend Philip Francis in vain remonstrated; but his letter on the proof sheets of the Remarks on the French Revolution, made public in the late additions to Burke's correspondence (iii. 128-32), remains a masterpiece for us. "The loss of a single life in a popular tumult, excites individual tenderness and pity. No "tears are shed for nations. When the provinces are scourged to the bone by a mercenary and merciless military power, and every drop of its blood and sub"stance extorted from it by the edicts of a royal council, the case seems very "tolerable to those who are not involved in it. When thousands after thousands are dragooned out of their country for the sake of their religion, or sent to row "in the galleys for selling salt against law,-when the liberty of every individual "is at the mercy of every prostitute, pimp, or parasite, that has access to the "hand of power, or to any of its basest substitutes,—my mind, I own, is not at once prepared to be satisfied with gentle palliatives for such disorders." Correspondence, iii. 168-9. 1771. Æt. 43. 1771. in familiar intercourse with him, or belonging to the society Et. 43. of which he was the leading ornament, he should first have heard the truth from that member of the circle whose opinions on such a theme perhaps all would have hailed with laughter? Burke was only upon the threshold of his troubled though great career; he had yet to live twenty-seven years of successes in every means employed, and of failures in every object sought; when Goldsmith conceived and wrote his imaginary epitaph. But its truth was prophetic.* Through the exquisite levity of its tone appeared a weight and seriousness of thought, which was found applicable to every after movement in Burke's subsequent life; and which now confirms as by the judgment of his time, the unsparing verdicts of history. As yet, however, it was Goldsmith's alone. What hitherto had fallen from Johnson showed no such perception as this; and it may be doubtful if the rest knew much more of the likeness, than that the statesman's long speeches did detain him sadly from his dinner, and he too often arrived at table when his mutton was cold. It was not till many years later he obtained the name of the dinner-bell. Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. * "We then spoke of Retaliation, and praised the character of Burke in par"ticular as a masterpiece.. Nothing that he had ever said or done but what was "foretold in it; nor was he painted as the principal figure in the foreground with "the partiality of a friend, or as the great man of the day, but with a back-ground " of history, showing both what he was and what he might have been." Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, 169-70. Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, Tommy Townshend had confirmed in the last session the claim he formerly put forward to a mention here. Again he had attacked Johnson, with allusion to his pamphlet on the Falkland Islands, as a pensioner paid to abuse the opposition; and again Burke had remained silent, leaving his friend's defence this time to Wedderburne, a recent deserter from the whigs.* And yet Burke might fairly enough, if less anxious at the moment for Townshend's go-between service, have spurned the charge against the great pamphleteer, that his pension had lately been increased to reward a hireling advocacy. Johnson laughed at it himself when Boswell named it to him, and said (justly enough) that Lord North had no such friendly disposition that way. But he added a curious illustration of the temper of the time. A certain "airy lady" (Peg Woffington's sister, formerly named as one of Goldsmith's personal critics, and who had married the honourable and reverend George Cholmondeley), had given him proof that even the private visitings of members of parliament were now watched; and when he went himself to the prime minister on the business of that pamphlet, though he went after dark and with all possible secrecy, he was quietly told in a day or two, "Well! you have "been with Lord North."t Sir James Mackintosh alleges another cause of offence in the fact of his having persisted in clearing the gallery of the house, against Burke and Fox's remonstrance, when Garrick was present. Boswell, v. 214. + Boswell, iv. 271-2. 1771. Et. 43. 1771. Et. 43. Some such suspicion against even poor Goldsmith, unpensioned as he was, broke out on the appearance of his English History in August. Yet a more innocent production could hardly have been imagined. It was simply a compilation, in his easy flowing style, from four historians whom he impartially characterised in his preface; and with as little of the feeling of being influenced by any, his book throughout had been written. "They have each," he says, speaking of Rapin, Carte, Smollett, and Hume, "their peculiar "admirers, in proportion as the reader is studious of political antiquities, fond of minute anecdote, a warm partizan, or a "deliberate reasoner.' Nevertheless, passages of very 66 * He adds that he had particularly taken Hume for his guide, as far as Hume went; and that wherever he had abridged any passages from him, he had done it with reluctance, as he scarcely cut out a single line that did not contain a beauty. In the same preface he expresses with such charming grace and ease the principle which guided him in these abridged histories, and which renders them still so delightful, in spite of errors corrected and information extended since their first publication, that the reader will thank me for transferring some sentences to this place. After mentioning the favourable reception of his Roman History, and that the booksellers had told him how much they wanted an English History of the same kind, where the narrative, though very concise, should be not totally without interest, and the facts, though crowded, be yet distinctly seen, he proceeds: "The business of abridging the works of others has hitherto fallen to the lot of very dull men; and the art of blotting, which an eminent critic calls the most "difficult of all others, has been usually practised by those who found themselves "unable to write. Hence our abridgments are generally more tedious than the "works from which they pretend to relieve us; and they have effectually embar"rassed that road which they laboured to shorten. As the present compiler starts "with such humble competitors, it will scarcely be thought vanity in him if he "boasts himself their superior. Of the many abridgments of our own history, "hitherto published, none seems possessed of any share of merit or reputation; some have been written in dialogue, or merely in the stiffness of an index, and some to answer the purposes of a party. A very small share of taste, therefore, was sufficient to keep the compiler from the defects of the one, and a very small "share of philosophy from the misrepresentations of the other. It is not easy, "however, to satisfy the different expectations of mankind in a work of this kind, "calculated for every apprehension, and on which all are consequently capable of "forming some judgment. Some may say that it is too long to pass under the "deno nination of an abridgment; and others, that it is too dry to be admitted as a history it may be objected that reflection is almost entirely banished to make "room for facts, and yet, that many facts are wholly omitted, which might be harmless narrative were displayed in the party papers as of very questionable tendency; he was asked if he meant to be the tool of a minister, as well as the drudge of a bookseller; he was reminded that the favour of a generous public (so generous always at other people's cost), was better than the best of pensions; and he finally was warned against betraying his "necessary to be known. It must be confessed that all those objections are 66 46 1771. Æt. 43. |