William Burke

“ As it is now fully understood that all proceedings of a criminal nature [Pg 209] against William Hare have terminated, it has appeared to the Lord Advocate that the community have a right to expect a disclosure of the contents of the confessions made by William Burke after his conviction. I have, therefore, to place those confessions in your lordship’s hands with the view to their being given to the public, at such a time, and in such a manner, as you may deem most advisable.... ”

“ We know pretty nearly the amount of evil subsequently perpetrated by William Burke,—name of fear, and which even yet only passes in a whisper,—but we do not know (for all we have said is only an inkling,) and never will know, the amount of that other evil which his deeds were to be the means of bringing to an end. The cry had for years gone up to the great white throne of the outraged feelings of a [Pg 79] Christian nation. There was only the exception of those who appealed to the pride of science, and man’s natural love of life and a sound living body. ”

“ There have been few men in history with whom personal objects counted for so little as they counted with Burke. He really did what so many public men only feign to do. He forgot that he had any interests of his own to be promoted, apart from the interests of the party with which he acted, and from those of the whole nation, for which he held himself a trustee. What William Burke said of him in 1766 was true throughout his life, "Ned is full of real business, intent upon doing solid good to his country, as much as if he was to receive twenty per cent from the Empire." ”

“ On the other hand, to read selections here and there, as most of us do, is to get a wrong idea of the man and to join either in fulsome praise of his brilliant oratory, or in honest confession that his periods are ponderous and his ideas often buried under Johnsonian verbiage. Such are the contrasts to be found on successive pages of Burke's twelve volumes, which cover the enormous range of the political and economic thought of the age, and which mingle fact and fancy, philosophy, statistics, and brilliant flights of the imagination, to a degree never before seen in English literature. ”

“ For Burke belongs in spirit to the new romantic school, while in style he is a model for the formal classicists. We can only glance at the life of this marvelous Irishman, and then consider his place in our literature.
Life. Burke was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish barrister, in 1729. After his university course in Trinity College he came to London to study law, but soon gave up the idea to follow literature, which in turn led him to politics. He had the soul, the imagination of a poet, and the law was only a clog to his progress. ”

“ No author more profoundly influenced the thought of his time; no author of that time is likely to exercise a more enduring influence upon succeeding generations. Of all the men of that busy and brilliant age, Burke has advanced the most steadily in the general knowledge and favor. While other men, his rivals in eloquence, his peers in the opinions of his contemporaries, come year by year to be less used as influences and appealed to as authorities, the wisdom of Burke is more frequently drawn upon and more widely appreciated than ever. ”

“ Burke did not take a prominent part in the debates of the house. ‘As an orator,’ H. Walpole says, ‘he had neither manner nor talents, and yet wanted little of his cousin's presumption’ (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 274) . He was an active pushing man, well acquainted with the leaders of the whig party, though generally disliked by them. He lived much with his cousin Edmund, first in Queen Anne Street and afterwards at Gregories, and a strong attachment existed between them. For a time Burke's stockjobbing transactions prospered. ”

“ A change was now to take place in Burke's whole career. He might have perished in poverty, notwithstanding his genius, except for the chance which introduced him to Fitzherbert, a graceful and accomplished man, who united to a high tone of fashionable life a gratification in the intercourse of intelligent society. Partly through this gentleman's interference, and partly through that of the late Earl of Charlemont, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton, who shortly after went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-lieutenant, Lord Halifax. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been contended, and not unreasonably, that as an orator Burke is not merely in the first rank, but that he is himself the first, that he stands alone, without a rival, without a peer, and that none of the orators of antiquity can be said even to contest his unquestionable supremacy. But it is in no sense necessary to Burke's fame that the fame of others should be in any way impugned or depreciated. It is sufficient praise to say that Burke is one of the greatest orators the world has ever held. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The oppressor of the poor has wept at a representation of affecting generosity. Any one may fill up the list without perhaps including a hypocrite. The imagination has its emotions, and the sense its feelings, or, perhaps, no feelings. The why and the wherefore touch the ultimate, and we are lost; but the fact remains, as proved by evidence, that William Burke could, in song, be pathetic.
[Pg 116] Recurring to our real tragedy, the effect of the drink soon again sent the creature from her lyrics into a condition which might have suited the purpose of the men ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not without reluctance that we speak of the vices and infirmities of such a mind as Burke’s: but the poison of high example has by far the widest range of destruction: and, for the sake of public honour and individual integrity, we think it right to say, that however it may be defended upon other grounds, the political career of that eminent individual has no title to the praise of consistency. Mr. Burke, the opponent of the American war, and Mr. Burke, the opponent of the French Revolution, are not the same person, but opposite persons—not opposite persons only, but deadly enemies. ”

“ Burke’s family to London, which he eagerly embraced. This took place some time in the year 1764, when he was twenty-three years of age, and with one of those advantages which do not always fall to the lot of young artists on their arrival in the British capital, that of being recommended to the acquaintance of the most eminent men in the profession by the persuasive eloquence of a man who, to genius in himself, added the rare and noble quality of encouraging it in others ”

“ In this period Burke's labor seemed all in vain; he lost his cause, and England her greatest colony.
The second period is one of denunciation rather than of prophecy. England had won India; but when Burke studied the methods of her victory and understood the soulless way in which millions of poor natives were made to serve the interests of an English monopoly, his soul rose in revolt, and again he was the champion of an oppressed people. His two greatest speeches of this period are "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts" and his tremendous "Impeachment of Warren Hastings." ”

“ 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” ”

“ Burke attributes, by way of emphasis, to the thorough-bred metaphysician. [112] The two characters are evidently distinct, and proceed from very different and even opposite causes, which ought not to have been confounded. It would have been a task worthy of the Edinburgh Reviewers to have pointed out the sources of each, and to have shewn how both appear to have united in the present instance with the natural levity of the French character, to produce that “faultless monster which the world ne’er saw” before. [113] Much is undoubtedly to be given to accidental and local circumstances. ”

“ Burke says, that we ought to ‘cherish our prejudices because they are prejudices;’ but this view of the case will satisfy the demands of neither party, for prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason, or abstract undeniable truth: and again, in the eye of reason, if all prejudices are to be equally respected as such, then the prejudices of others are right, and ours must in their turn be wrong. ”

“ Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common-places. On this I venture to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar, democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nobody will accuse the principles of his present Majesty, or the general measures of his reign, of inconsistency. If they had no other merit, they have, at least, that of having been all along actuated by one uniform and constant spirit: yet Mr. Burke at one time vehemently opposed, and afterwards most intemperately extolled them: and it was for his recanting his opposition, not for his persevering in it, that he received his pension. He does not himself mention his flaming speeches in the American war, as among the public services which had entitled him to this remuneration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Burke has it, a sort of ‘public creature.’ He lives in the eye of the world, and the world in his. If he witnesses less of the details of private life, he has better opportunities of observing its larger masses and varied movements. ”