4. A graceful, finished, and ornate style, embellished by tropes and
metaphors.
5. Lastly, as that which completes all the rest,--the structure of
periods, in dignity and grandeur.
These five sources of the sublime, the same philosophical critic
distinguishes into two classes; the first two he asserts to be gifts
of nature, and the remaining three are considered to depend, in a great
measure, upon literature and art. Again, if we may linger for a moment
in the attractive region of classical authorship, how justly applicable
are the words of Cicero in his "De Oratore," to the vastness and variety
of Burke's attainments! "Ac mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni
laude cumulatus orator, nisi erit OMNIUM RERUM MAGNARUM ATQUE ARTIUM
SCIENTIAM CONSECUTUS."--Cic. "De Orat." lib. i. cap. 6. Equally
descriptive of Burke's power in raising the dormant sensibilities of our
moral nature by his intuitive perception of what that nature really
and fundamentally is, are the following expressions of the same great
authority:--"Quis enim nescit, maximam vim existere oratoris, in hominum
mentibus vel ad iram aut ad odium, aut dolorem incitandis, vel, ab
hisce, iisdem permonitionibus, ad lenitatem misericordiamque revocandis?
Quare, NISI QUI NATURAS HOMINUM, VIMQUE OMNEM HUMANITATIS, CAUSASQUE
EAS QUIBUS MENTES AUT EXCITANTUR, AUT REFLECTUNTUR, PENITUS PERSPEXERIT,
DICENDO, QUOD VOLET, PERFICERE NON POTERIT."--Cic. "De Orat." lib. i.
cap. 12.
But to return. If a critical analysis of Burke, as an exhibition of
genius, be attempted, his characteristic endowments may, probably, be
not incorrectly represented by the following succinct statement.