Produced by Paul Murray, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
London
1907
Printed 1888. Reprinted 1892, 1897, 1902, 1907
(A Library Edition, of the book published in the "English Men ofLetters Series)
The present writer published a study on Burke some twenty years ago.It was almost entirely critical, and in no sense a narrative. Thevolume that is now submitted to my readers first appeared in theseries of English Men of Letters. It is biographical ratherthan critical, and not more than about a score of pages have beenreproduced in it from the earlier book. Three pages have been insertedfrom an article on Burke contributed by me to the new edition of theEncyclopoedia Britannica; and I have to thank Messrs. Black forthe great courtesy with which they have allowed me to transcribe thepassage here. These borrowings from my former self, the reader willperhaps be willing to excuse, on the old Greek principle that a manmay once say a thing as he would have it said, [Greek: dis de oukendechetai]—he can hardly say it twice.
1888.
It will soon be a hundred and twenty years since Burke first took hisseat, in the House of Commons, and it is eighty-five years since hisvoice ceased to be heard there. Since his death, as during his life,opinion as to the place to which he is entitled among the eminent menof his country has touched every extreme. Tories have extolled him asthe saviour of Europe. Whigs have detested him as the destroyer of hisparty. One undiscriminating panegyrist calls him the most profound andcomprehensive of political philosophers that has yet existed in theworld. Another and more distinguished writer insists that he is aresplendent and far-seeing rhetorician, rather than a deep and subtlethinker. A third tells us that his works cannot be too much our study,if we mean either to understand or to maintain against its variousenemies, open and concealed, designing and mistaken, the singularconstitution of this fortunate island. A fourth, on the contrary,declares that it would be hard to find a single leadi