Select Works of Edmund Burke: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and The Two Speeches on America. Edmund Burke
candid and profound judgment, which give body and worth to the “alternate coruscations” of verbiage in which Johnson delighted. If we imagine Bolingbroke—whom nature intended for a demagogue, and endowed with a natural flow of exquisite and expressive language, coupled with a natural flimsiness and quackery of reasoning—possessed, instead, of this Johnsonian sense and judgment, we have something approaching to the manner of Burke. To write in the closet with the ardour inspired by the surroundings of the senate; to be copious, even to a fault; to flow in a torrent, regardless of measure and symmetry, unstudious of phrase and parenthesis; to shift the argument into different lights, as careless of the “harmony” or “unity” of the picture, and as successful in the effect of it, as Rubens; there is nothing of Johnson, nor of Gibbon in this. Gibbon set before himself a higher literary ideal tan ever governed the pen of Burke. Whatever may be faults of the style of Gibbon, it possesses one excellence of a high order—that its graces are not destroyed by translation. The censure of unnaturalness and affectation is, in general, unjustly applied to it. There is a constant elevation of expression: if monotonous, it is always dignified. But the tastes, studies, and objects of Burke were wholly diverse from those of Gibbon: [xlvii] and there are too few points at which their works can be said to touch to enable us, as to their style, to draw a just comparison
Of authors who were Burke’s contemporaries, the most characteristic of the manner of his age, but as manifested in an upper and non-literary class, is Walpole. The best literary artist is Goldsmith. The few first-class men of the time stand towards the popular authors of the day in a fixed relation which will be best understood by comparing Goldsmith as a writer of fiction with Richardson and Sterne. The literary vice of the age was a sickly and demoralising species of sentimentality. In oratory, it may be traced in some passages of Sheridan’s Indian speeches. Hardly one of the sentimental poets of the century is free from the taint. What it was in its culmination the reader may see in the once popular poems of Charlotte Smith. Bowles and Coleridge illustrate it at the time when it was about to disappear before the examples of Cowper, Rogers, and Wordsworth. A hundred forgotten novels exemplify it in prose. Rousseau, Goethe, and many others, show in what way it spread to the literature of neighbouring countries. Fielding and Smollet afford evidence of it, even whilst protesting against it by their example. A large section of the literature of the age is turned by it into a mass of unqualified rubbish, as worthless as the copper-plate page illustrations that adorned the volumes which contained it. Yet without reference to these it would be impossible to estimate the greatness of Reynolds and his school. Similarly, to estimate the importance of the manly tone of thought which Burke and Johnson exhibit, the student should glance at some of the best known among the didactic works of the age, such as Hervey’s Meditations, once one of the most popular books in the world. “The distemper of the age,” said Burke on one occasion, “is a poverty of spirit and of genius”: and he went on to say that it was characterised by “the politics and morals of girls at a boarding-school, rather than of men and statesmen.”50
Johnson and Goldsmith, who were original thinkers by nature, and men of letters by profession, derived no literary stimulus from communication with Burke, and there is, in fact, a balance on the other side of the account. It was otherwise with Reynolds. Attracted by the profound appreciation of the fine arts expressed in the Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, the [xlviii] great painter had sought Burke’s acquaintance at an early period in his career. The powers of Burke as a critic and philosopher of art are clearly proved by that work, and by his letters to the painter Barry. But their best testimony is the fact that the Discourses of Reynolds are guided by a method, and expressed in a manner, which none who are familiar with Burke’s writing can hesitate for a moment in pronouncing to be his. Until the appearance of Malone’s edition of the works of Reynolds, it had been generally believed that Burke was the sole author of these Discourses. Many years afterwards, Northcote, who had good means of knowing, avowed his belief in what Malone had denied, that Burke had supplied much that was necessary to complete their literary form. To the reader of the present day, judging from these works themselves, it seems more probable that Burke composed them with facts supplied by Reynolds, than that the work of Reynolds was brought into shape and finished off by Burke. But the direct evidence is wholly in favour of the latter view. The “Discourses” are, however, pervaded by the mode of thought, as well as full of the expressions and illustrations, with which the reader of Burke is familiar. They bear evidence of a double influence. The philosophical critic guided the views of the artist, and his friendly pen corrected and embellished the writings in which they were expressed. Whatever may have been the exact share of Burke in them, they are models, in their kind, of style and expression, and part of the standard literature of England; and Sydney Smith, without any reference to Burke, has described them by the terms which Goldsmith so justly applied to his friend, as “full of all wisdom.”
Burke, in the history of English letters, represents the transition from the former style of the early part of the early part of the last century to the far less constrained one which has prevailed in the present. He restores to literature, in some measure, the wealth and freedom which it had enjoyed in the days of the great dramatists and philosophical divines. In the spirit of his writings, however, he is distinctly the son, and not the changeling, of his age. His philosophy recalls the didactic school of Young, Johnson, and Armstrong; he sometimes partakes the satirical vein of Churchill and Smollett; more rarely we trace in him a tone akin to that of the “patriot poets,” of Thomson, Akenside, and Glover. The influence of the great literary school of France, and of the [xlix] English copyists of their style and phrase, is often noticeable. He has, however, none of that habitual stiffness on which Johnson sometimes congratulated his contemporaries,51 which had been diffused by the effect of French examples. If the aims of writing could be reached by simple reasoning and description, closely and concisely expressed, much of the poetry and the prose of the last century would be unsurpassable. The more sensitive elements in human nature, however, will not consent to be thus desolated, and the formal writer is thwarted at every step by the recoil of his own mechanism. In the literary art, as in all others, nature must be patiently studied. Burke, who never aimed at merely literary fame, and never once, in his mature years, cherished the thought of living to future ages in his works, was well acquainted with the economics of his art. He devoted himself solely to the immediate object before him, with no sidelong glance at the printing press or the library shelf. He reasoned little, or not at all, when he conceived reason to be out of place, or insufficient for his purpose. He never rejected a phrase or a thought because it did not reach the standard required by literary dignity. With all this, his writing always reaches a high standard of practical excellence, and is always careful and workmanlike. It is, moreover, well attuned to the ear. The cadence of Burke’s sentences always reminds us that prose writing is only to be perfected by a thorough study of the poetry of the language. Few prose writers were so well acquainted with the general body of English verse, and few have habitually written so fully, so delicately, and so harmoniously.
This slight general sketch could not be better concluded than with the beautiful inscription composed by Dr. Parr for a national monument to Burke. Such a monument was demanded by public opinion, and the project was favoured by most of Burke’s friends and admirers; but the House was never moved in the subject, partly from a scruple lest the wishes expressed in Burke’s will should be violated, and partly on account of the disturbed state of popular opinion. The inscription is considered the best that Parr ever wrote: and as that eminent scholar was most eminent in inscriptions, it may be regarded as a masterpiece.
[1] EDMUNDO . BURKE
VIRO
MULTIS . ET . EXQUISITIS . LITTERIS . IMBUTO
ET . SUMMA . INGENII . PRAEDITO . GLORIA
SODALI
SUIS . AMABILI
ET . IN . OMNI . GENERE . FACETIARUM . ORNATISSIMO
CIVI
QUI . REMPUBLICAM . PROPRIAM . BRITANNORUM
IDCIRCO . ESSE . OPTIMAM . STATUEBAT
QUOD . REGALIS . SENATORII . POPULARISQUE . JURIS
CONSENSU . FUNDATA . ESSET
ET . COMMUNIONE . UTILITATIS . STABILITA
CRITICO