The following speech is perhaps the fairest specimen I could give of Mr.
Burke's various talents as a speaker. The subject itself is not the most
interesting, nor does it admit of that weight and closeness of reasoning
which he displayed on other occasions. But there is no single speech which
can convey a satisfactory idea of his powers of mind: to do him justice,
it would be necessary to quote all his works; the only specimen of Burke
is, _all that he wrote_. With respect to most other speakers, a specimen
is generally enough, or more than enough. When you are acquainted with
their manner, and see what proficiency they have made in the mechanical
exercise of their profession, with what facility they can borrow a simile,
or round a period, how dexterously they can argue, and object, and rejoin,
you are satisfied; there is no other difference in their speeches than
what arises from the difference of the subjects. But this was not the case
with Burke. He brought his subjects along with him; he drew his materials
from himself. The only limits which circumscribed his variety were the
stores of his own mind. His stock of ideas did not consist of a few meagre
facts, meagrely stated, of half a dozen common-places tortured in a
thousand different ways: but his mine of wealth was a profound
understanding, inexhaustible as the human heart, and various as the
sources of nature. He therefore enriched every subject to which he applied
himself, and new subjects were only the occasions of calling forth fresh
powers of mind which had not been before exerted. It would therefore be in
vain to look for the proof of his powers in any one of his speeches or
writings: they all contain some additional proof of power. In speaking of
Burke, then, I shall speak of the whole compass and circuit of his
mind--not of that small part or section of him which I have been able to
give: to do otherwise would be like the story of the man who put the brick
in his pocket, thinking to shew it as the model of a house. I have been
able to manage pretty well with respect to all my other speakers, and
curtailed them down without remorse. It was easy to reduce them within
certain limits, to fix their spirit, and condense their variety; by having
a certain quantity given, you might infer all the rest; it was only the
same thing over again. But who can bind Proteus, or confine the roving
flight of genius?
Burke's writings are better than his speeches, and indeed his speeches are
writings. But he seemed to feel himself more at ease, to have a fuller
possession of his faculties in addressing the public, than in addressing
the House of Commons. Burke was _raised_ into public life: and he seems to
have been prouder of this new dignity than became so great a man. For this
reason, most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble to
them: there is an air of affected modesty, and ostentatious trifling in
them: he seems fond of coqueting with the House of Commons, and is
perpetually calling the Speaker out to dance a minuet with him, before he
begins. There is also something like an attempt to stimulate the
superficial dulness of his hearers by exciting their surprise, by running
into extravagance: and he sometimes demeans himself by condescending to
what may be considered as bordering too much upon buffoonery, for the
amusement of the company. Those lines of Milton were admirably applied to
him by some one--"The elephant to make them sport wreathed his proboscis
lithe." The truth is, that he was out of his place in the House of
Commons; he was eminently qualified to shine as a man of genius, as the
instructor of mankind, as the brightest luminary of his age: but he had
nothing in common with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and
burgesses. He could not be said to be "native and endued unto that
element." He was above it; and never appeared like himself, but when,
forgetful of the idle clamours of party, and of the little views of little
men, he appealed to his country, and the enlightened judgment of mankind.
I am not going to make an idle panegyric on Burke (he has no need of it);
but I cannot help looking upon him as the chief boast and ornament of the
English House of Commons. What has been said of him is, I think, strictly
true, that "he was the most eloquent man of his time: his wisdom was
greater than his eloquence." The only public man that in my opinion can be
put in any competition with him, is Lord Chatham: and he moved in a sphere
so very remote, that it is almost impossible to compare them. But though
it would perhaps be difficult to determine which of them excelled most in
his particular way, there is nothing in the world more easy than to point
out in what their peculiar excellences consisted. They were in every
respect the reverse of each other. Chatham's eloquence was popular: his
wisdom was altogether plain and practical. Burke's eloquence was that of
the poet; of the man of high and unbounded fancy: his wisdom was profound
and contemplative. Chatham's eloquence was calculated to make men _act_;
Burke's was calculated to make them _think_. Chatham could have roused the
fury of a multitude, and wielded their physical energy as he pleased:
Burke's eloquence carried conviction into the mind of the retired and
lonely student, opened the recesses of the human breast, and lighted up
the face of nature around him. Chatham supplied his hearers with motives
to immediate action: Burke furnished them with _reasons_ for action which
might have little effect upon them at the time, but for which they would
be the wiser and better all their lives after. In research, in
originality, in variety of knowledge, in richness of invention, in depth
and comprehension of mind, Burke had as much the advantage of Lord Chatham
as he was excelled by him in plain common sense, in strong feeling, in
steadiness of purpose, in vehemence, in warmth, in enthusiasm, and energy
of mind. Burke was the man of genius, of fine sense, and subtle reasoning;
Chatham was a man of clear understanding; of strong sense, and violent
passions. Burke's mind was satisfied with speculation: Chatham's was
essentially _active_: it could not rest without an object. The power which
governed Burke's mind was his Imagination; that which gave its _impetus_
to Chatham's was Will. The one was almost the creature of pure intellect,
the other of physical temperament.
There are two very different ends which a man of genius may propose to
himself either in writing or speaking, and which will accordingly give
birth to very different styles. He can have but one of these two objects;
either to enrich or strengthen the mind; either to furnish us with new
ideas, to lead the mind into new trains of thought, to which it was before
unused, and which it was incapable of striking out for itself; or else to
collect and embody what we already knew, to rivet our old impressions more
deeply; to make what was before plain still plainer, and to give to that
which was familiar all the effect of novelty. In the one case we receive
an accession to the stock of our ideas; in the other, an additional
degree of life and energy is infused into them: our thoughts continue to
flow in the same channels, but their pulse is quickened and invigorated. I
do not know how to distinguish these different styles better than by
calling them severally the inventive and refined, or the impressive and
vigorous styles. It is only the subject-matter of eloquence, however,
which is allowed to be remote or obscure. The things in themselves may be
subtle and recondite, but they must be dragged out of their obscurity and
brought struggling to the light; they must be rendered plain and palpable,
(as far as it is in the wit of man to do so) or they are no longer
eloquence. That which by its natural impenetrability, and in spite of
every effort, remains dark and difficult, which is impervious to every
ray, on which the imagination can shed no lustre, which can be clothed
with no beauty, is not a subject for the orator or poet. At the same time
it cannot be expected that abstract truths or profound observations should
ever be placed in the same strong and dazzling points of view as natural
objects and mere matters of fact. It is enough if they receive a reflex
and borrowed lustre, like that which cheers the first dawn of morning,
where the effect of surprise and novelty gilds every object, and the joy
of beholding another world gradually emerging out of the gloom of night,
"a new creation rescued from his reign," fills the mind with a sober
rapture. Philosophical eloquence is in writing what _chiaro scuro_ is in
painting; he would be a fool who should object that the colours in the
shaded part of a picture were not so bright as those on the opposite side;
the eye of the connoisseur receives an equal delight from both, balancing
the want of brilliancy and effect with the greater delicacy of the tints,
and difficulty of the execution. In judging of Burke, therefore, we are to
consider first the style of eloquence which he adopted, and secondly the
effects which he produced with it. If he did not produce the same effects
on vulgar minds, as some others have done, it was not for want of power,
but from the turn and direction of his mind.[134] It was because his
subjects, his ideas, his arguments, were less vulgar. The question is not
whether he brought certain truths equally home to us, but how much nearer
he brought them than they were before. In my opinion, he united the two
extremes of refinement and strength in a higher degree than any other
writer whatever.
The subtlety of his mind was undoubtedly that which rendered Burke a less
popular writer and speaker than he otherwise would have been. It weakened
the impression of his observations upon others, but I cannot admit that it
weakened the observations themselves; that it took anything from their
real weight and solidity. Coarse minds think all that is subtle, futile:
that because it is not gross and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is
therefore light and frivolous, and of no importance in the real affairs of
life; thus making their own confined understandings the measure of truth,
and supposing that whatever they do not distinctly perceive, is nothing.
Seneca, who was not one of the vulgar, also says, that subtle truths are
those which have the least substance in them, and consequently approach
nearest to nonentity. But for my own part I cannot help thinking that the
most important truths must be the most refined and subtle; for that very
reason, that they must comprehend a great number of particulars, and
instead of referring to any distinct or positive fact, must point out the
combined effects of an extensive chain of causes, operating gradually,
remotely, and collectively, and therefore imperceptibly. General
principles are not the less true or important because from their nature
they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the
less necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that secret
influence which binds the world together, and holds the planets in their
orbits. The very same persons who are the most forward to laugh at all
systematic reasoning as idle and impertinent, you will the next moment
hear exclaiming bitterly against the baleful effects of new-fangled
systems of philosophy, or gravely descanting on the immense importance of
instilling sound principles of morality into the mind. It would not be a
bold conjecture, but an obvious truism to say, that all the great changes
which have been brought about in the moral world, either for the better or
worse, have been introduced not by the bare statement of facts, which are
things already known, and which must always operate nearly in the same
manner, but by the development of certain opinions and abstract principles
of reasoning on life and manners, on the origin of society and man's
nature in general, which being obscure and uncertain, vary from time to
time, and produce correspondent changes in the human mind. They are the
wholesome dew and rain, or the mildew and pestilence that silently
destroy. To this principle of generalization all religious creeds, the
institutions of wise lawgivers, and the systems of philosophers, owe their
influence.
It has always been with me a test of the sense and candour of any one
belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great
man. Of all the persons of this description that I have ever known, I
never met with above one or two who would make this concession; whether it
was that party feelings ran too high to admit of any real candour, or
whether it was owing to an essential vulgarity in their habits of
thinking, they all seemed to be of opinion that he was a wild enthusiast,
or a hollow sophist, who was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart
logic, by shrewd questions, and idle songs. They looked upon him as a man
of disordered intellects, because he reasoned in a style to which they had
not been used and which confounded their dim perceptions. If you said that
though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you thought him an
admirable reasoner, and a close observer of human nature, you were
answered with a loud laugh, and some hackneyed quotation. "Alas! Leviathan
was not so tamed!" They did not know whom they had to contend with. The
corner stone, which the builders rejected, became the head-corner, though
to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; for indeed I
cannot discover that he was much better understood by those of his own
party, if we may judge from the little affinity there is between his mode
of reasoning and theirs.--The simple clue to all his reasonings on
politics is, I think, as follows. He did not agree with some writers, that
that mode of government is necessarily the best which is the cheapest. He
saw in the construction of society other principles at work, and other
capacities of fulfilling the desires, and perfecting the nature of man,
besides those of securing the equal enjoyment of the means of animal life,
and doing this at as little expense as possible. He thought that the wants
and happiness of men were not to be provided for, as we provide for those
of a herd of cattle, merely by attending to their physical necessities. He
thought more nobly of his fellows. He knew that man had affections and
passions and powers of imagination, as well as hunger and thirst and the
sense of heat and cold. He took his idea of political society from the
pattern of private life, wishing, as he himself expresses it, to
incorporate the domestic charities with the orders of the state, and to
blend them together. He strove to establish an analogy between the compact
that binds together the community at large, and that which binds together
the several families that compose it. He knew that the rules that form the
basis of private morality are not founded in reason, that is, in the
abstract properties of those things which are the subjects of them, but in
the nature of man, and his capacity of being affected by certain things
from habit, from imagination, and sentiment, as well as from reason.
Thus, the reason why a man ought to be attached to his wife and children
is not, surely, that they are better than others, (for in this case every
one else ought to be of the same opinion) but because he must be chiefly
interested in those things which are nearest to him, and with which he is
best acquainted, since his understanding cannot reach equally to every
thing; because he must be most attached to those objects which he has
known the longest, and which by their situation have actually affected him
the most, not those which in themselves are the most affecting, whether
they have ever made any impression on him or no; that is, because he is by
his nature the creature of habit and feeling, and because it is reasonable
that he should act in conformity to his nature. Burke was so far right in
saying that it is no objection to an institution that it is founded in
_prejudice_, but the contrary, if that prejudice is natural and right;
that is, if it arises from those circumstances which are properly subjects
of feeling and association, not from any defect or perversion of the
understanding in those things which fall strictly under its jurisdiction.
On this profound maxim he took his stand. Thus he contended, that the
prejudice in favour of nobility was natural and proper, and fit to be
encouraged by the positive institutions of society; not on account of the
real or personal merit of the individuals, but because such an institution
has a tendency to enlarge and raise the mind, to keep alive the memory of
past greatness, to connect the different ages of the world together, to
carry back the imagination over a long tract of time, and feed it with the
contemplation of remote events: because it is natural to think highly of
that which inspires us with high thoughts, which has been connected for
many generations with splendour, and affluence, and dignity, and power,
and privilege. He also conceived, that by transferring the respect from
the person to the thing, and thus rendering it steady and permanent, the
mind would be habitually formed to sentiments of deference, attachment,
and fealty, to whatever else demanded its respect: that it would be led to
fix its view on what was elevated and lofty, and be weaned from that low
and narrow jealousy which never willingly or heartily admits of any
superiority in others, and is glad of every opportunity to bring down all
excellence to a level with its own miserable standard. Nobility did not
therefore exist to the prejudice of the other orders of the state, but by,
and for them. The inequality of the different orders of society did not
destroy the unity and harmony of the whole. The health and well-being of
the moral world was to be promoted by the same means as the beauty of the
natural world; by contrast, by change, by light and shade, by variety of
parts, by order and proportion. To think of reducing all mankind to the
same insipid level, seemed to him the same absurdity as to destroy the
inequalities of surface in a country, for the benefit of agriculture and
commerce. In short, he believed that the interests of men in society
should be consulted, and their several stations and employments assigned,
with a view to their nature, not as physical, but as moral beings, so as
to nourish their hopes, to lift their imagination, to enliven their fancy,
to rouse their activity, to strengthen their virtue, and to furnish the
greatest number of objects of pursuit and means of enjoyment to beings
constituted as man is, consistently with the order and stability of the
whole.
The same reasoning might be extended farther. I do not say that his
arguments are conclusive; but they are profound and _true_, as far as they
go. There may be disadvantages and abuses necessarily interwoven with his
scheme, or opposite advantages of infinitely greater value, to be derived
from another order of things and state of society. This however does not
invalidate either the truth or importance of Burke's reasoning; since the
advantages he points out as connected with the mixed form of government
are really and necessarily inherent in it: since they are compatible in
the same degree with no other; since the principle itself on which he
rests his argument (whatever we may think of the application) is of the
utmost weight and moment; and since on whichever side the truth lies, it
is impossible to make a fair decision without having the opposite side of
the question clearly and fully stated to us. This Burke has done in a
masterly manner. He presents to you one view or face of society. Let him,
who thinks he can, give the reverse side with equal force, beauty, and
clearness. It is said, I know, that truth is _one_; but to this I cannot
subscribe, for it appears to me that truth is _many_. There are as many
truths as there are things and causes of action and contradictory
principles at work in society. In making up the account of good and evil,
indeed, the final result must be one way or the other; but the particulars
on which that result depends are infinite and various.
It will be seen from what I have said, that I am very far from agreeing
with those who think that Burke was a man without understanding, and a
merely florid writer. There are two causes which have given rise to this
calumny; namely, that narrowness of mind which leads men to suppose that
the truth lies entirely on the side of their own opinions, and that
whatever does not make for them is absurd and irrational; secondly, a
trick we have of confounding reason with judgment, and supposing that it
is merely the province of the understanding to pronounce sentence, and not
to give in evidence, or argue the case; in short, that it is a passive,
not an active faculty. Thus there are persons who never run into any
extravagance, because they are so buttressed up with the opinions of
others on all sides, that they cannot lean much to one side or the other;
they are so little moved with any kind of reasoning, that they remain at
an equal distance from every extreme, and are never very far from the
truth, because the slowness of their faculties will not suffer them to
make much progress in error. These are persons of great judgment. The
scales of the mind are pretty sure to remain even, when there is nothing
in them. In this sense of the word, Burke must be allowed to have wanted
judgment, by all those who think that he was wrong in his conclusions. The
accusation of want of judgment, in fact, only means that you yourself are
of a different opinion. But if in arriving at one error he discovered a
hundred truths, I should consider myself a hundred times more indebted to
him than if, stumbling on that which I consider as the right side of the
question, he had committed a hundred absurdities in striving to establish
his point. I speak of him now merely as an author, or as far as I and
other readers are concerned with him; at the same time, I should not
differ from any one who may be disposed to contend that the consequences
of his writings as instruments of political power have been tremendous,
fatal, such as no exertion of wit or knowledge or genius can ever
counteract or atone for.
Burke also gave a hold to his antagonists by mixing up sentiment and
imagery with his reasoning; so that being unused to such a sight in the
region of politics, they were deceived, and could not discern the fruit
from the flowers. Gravity is the cloke of wisdom; and those who have
nothing else think it an insult to affect the one without the other,
because it destroys the only foundation on which their pretensions are
built. The easiest part of reason is dulness; the generality of the world
are therefore concerned in discouraging any example of unnecessary
brilliancy that might tend to show that the two things do not always go
together. Burke in some measure dissolved the spell. It was discovered,
that his gold was not the less valuable for being wrought into elegant
shapes, and richly embossed with curious figures; that the solidity of a
building is not destroyed by adding to it beauty and ornament; and that
the strength of a man's understanding is not always to be estimated in
exact proportion to his want of imagination. His understanding was not the
less real, because it was not the only faculty he possessed. He justified
the description of the poet,--
"How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute!"
Those who object to this union of grace and beauty with reason, are in
fact weak-sighted people, who cannot distinguish the noble and majestic
form of Truth from that of her sister Folly, if they are dressed both
alike! But there is always a difference even in the adventitious ornaments
they wear, which is sufficient to distinguish them.
Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, that he was one of
the severest writers we have. His words are the most like things; his
style is the most strictly suited to the subject. He unites every extreme
and every variety of composition; the lowest and the meanest words and
descriptions with the highest. He exults in the display of power, in
shewing the extent, the force, and intensity of his ideas; he is led on by
the mere impulse and vehemence of his fancy, not by the affectation of
dazzling his readers by gaudy conceits or pompous images. He was
completely carried away by his subject. He had no other object but to
produce the strongest impression on his reader, by giving the truest, the
most characteristic, the fullest, and most forcible description of things,
trusting to the power of his own mind to mould them into grace and beauty.
He did not produce a splendid effect by setting fire to the light vapours
that float in the regions of fancy, as the chemists make fine colours with
phosphorus, but by the eagerness of his blows struck fire from the flint,
and melted the hardest substances in the furnace of his imagination. The
wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the
materials, but from the rapidity of their motion. One would suppose, to
hear people talk of Burke, that his style was such as would have suited
the "Lady's Magazine"; soft, smooth, showy, tender, insipid, full of fine
words, without any meaning. The essence of the gaudy or glittering style
consists in producing a momentary effect by fine words and images brought
together, without order or connexion. Burke most frequently produced an
effect by the remoteness and novelty of his combinations, by the force of
contrast, by the striking manner in which the most opposite and
unpromising materials were harmoniously blended together; not by laying
his hands on all the fine things he could think of, but by bringing
together those things which he knew would blaze out into glorious light by
their collision. The florid style is a mixture of affectation and
common-place. Burke's was an union of untameable vigour and originality.
Burke was not a verbose writer. If he sometimes multiplies words, it is
not for want of ideas, but because there are no words that fully express
his ideas, and he tries to do it as well as he can by different ones. He
had nothing of the _set_ or formal style, the measured cadence, and
stately phraseology of Johnson, and most of our modern writers. This
style, which is what we understand by the _artificial_, is all in one key.
It selects a certain set of words to represent all ideas whatever, as the
most dignified and elegant, and excludes all others as low and vulgar. The
words are not fitted to the things, but the things to the words. Every
thing is seen through a false medium. It is putting a mask on the face of
nature, which may indeed hide some specks and blemishes, but takes away
all beauty, delicacy, and variety. It destroys all dignity or elevation,
because nothing can be raised where all is on a level, and completely
destroys all force, expression, truth, and character, by arbitrarily
confounding the differences of things, and reducing every thing to the
same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff uniformity can add any
thing to real grace or dignity, is like supposing that the human body in
order to be perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright
posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it confounds all ranks
in literature. Where there is no room for variety, no discrimination, no
nicety to be shewn in matching the idea with its proper word, there can be
no room for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art of writing,
when every sentence is to be cast in the same mould: where he is only
allowed the use of one word, he cannot choose wrong, nor will he be in
much danger of making himself ridiculous by affectation or false glitter,
when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat of it in the same way.
This indeed is to wear golden chains for the sake of ornament.
Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I have here endeavoured
to expose. His style was as original, as expressive, as rich and varied,
as it was possible: his combinations were as exquisite, as playful, as
happy, as unexpected, as bold and daring, as his fancy. If any thing, he
ran into the opposite extreme of too great an inequality, if truth and
nature could ever be carried to an extreme.
Those who are best acquainted with the writings and speeches of Burke will
not think the praise I have here bestowed on them exaggerated. Some proof
will be found of this in the following extracts. But the full proof must
be sought in his works at large, and particularly in the "Thoughts on the
Discontents"; in his "Reflections on the French Revolution"; in his
"Letter to the Duke of Bedford"; and in the "Regicide Peace." The two last
of these are perhaps the most remarkable of all his writings, from the
contrast they afford to each other. The one is the most delightful
exhibition of wild and brilliant fancy, that is to be found in English
prose, but it is too much like a beautiful picture painted upon gauze; it
wants something to support it: the other is without ornament, but it has
all the solidity, the weight, the gravity of a judicial record. It seems
to have been written with a certain constraint upon himself, and to shew
those who said he could not _reason_, that his arguments might be stripped
of their ornaments without losing any thing of their force. It is
certainly, of all his works, that in which he has shewn most power of
logical deduction, and the only one in which he has made any important use
of facts. In general he certainly paid little attention to them: they were
the playthings of his mind, he saw them as he pleased, not as they were;
with the eye of the philosopher or the poet, regarding them only in their
general principle, or as they might serve to decorate his subject. This is
the natural consequence of much imagination: things that are probable are
elevated into the rank of realities. To those who can reason on the
essences of things, or who can invent according to nature, the
experimental proof is of little value. This was the case with Burke. In
the present instance, however, he seems to have forced his mind into the
service of facts: and he succeeded completely. His comparison between our
connection with France or Algiers, and his account of the conduct of the
war, are as clear, as convincing, as forcible examples of this kind of
reasoning, as are any where to be met with. Indeed I do not think there is
any thing in Fox (whose mind was purely historical) or in Chatham, (who
attended to feelings more than facts) that will bear a comparison with
them.
Burke has been compared to Cicero--I do not know for what reason. Their
excellences are as different, and indeed as opposite, as they well can be.
Burke had not the polished elegance, the glossy neatness, the artful
regularity, the exquisite modulation of Cicero: he had a thousand times
more richness and originality of mind, more strength and pomp of diction.
It has been well observed, that the ancients had no word that properly
expresses what we mean by the word _genius_. They perhaps had not the
thing. Their minds appear to have been too exact, too retentive, too
minute and subtle, too sensible to the external differences of things, too
passive under their impressions, to admit of those bold and rapid
combinations, those lofty flights of fancy, which, glancing from heaven to
earth, unite the most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest
illustrations from things the most remote. Their ideas were kept too
confined and distinct by the material form or vehicle in which they were
conveyed, to unite cordially together, or be melted down in the
imagination. Their metaphors are taken from things of the same class, not
from things of different classes; the general analogy, not the individual
feeling, directs them in their choice. Hence, as Dr. Johnson observed,
their similes are either repetitions of the same idea, or so obvious and
general as not to lend any additional force to it; as when a huntress is
compared to Diana, or a warrior rushing into battle to a lion rushing on
his prey. Their _forte_ was exquisite art and perfect imitation. Witness
their statues and other things of the same kind. But they had not that
high and enthusiastic fancy which some of our own writers have shewn. For
the proof of this, let any one compare Milton and Shakspeare with Homer
and Sophocles, or Burke with Cicero.
It may be asked whether Burke was a poet. He was so only in the general
vividness of his fancy, and in richness of invention. There may be
poetical passages in his works, but I certainly think that his writings in
general are quite distinct from poetry; and that for the reason before
given, namely, that the subject-matter of them is not poetical. The finest
part of them are illustrations or personifications of dry abstract
ideas;[135] and the union between the idea and the illustration is not of
that perfect and pleasing kind as to constitute poetry, or indeed to be
admissible, but for the effect intended to be produced by it; that is, by
every means in our power to give animation and attraction to subjects in
themselves barren of ornament, but which at the same time are pregnant
with the most important consequences, and in which the understanding and
the passions are equally interested.
I have heard it remarked by a person, to whose opinion I would sooner
submit than to a general council of critics, that the sound of Burke's
prose is not musical; that it wants cadence; and that instead of being so
lavish of his imagery as is generally supposed, he seemed to him to be
rather parsimonious in the use of it, always expanding and making the most
of his ideas. This may be true if we compare him with some of our poets,
or perhaps with some of our early prose writers, but not if we compare him
with any of our political writers or parliamentary speakers. There are
some very fine things of Lord Bolingbroke's on the same subjects, but not
equal to Burke's. As for Junius, he is at the head of his class; but that
class is not the highest. He has been said to have more dignity than
Burke. Yes--if the stalk of a giant is less dignified than the strut of a
_petit-maitre_. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Junius, but
grandeur is not the character of his composition; and if it is not to be
found in Burke, it is to be found nowhere.
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