Select Works of Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke Select Works of Edmund Burke

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Burke is represented by the names of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Macaulay, Arnold, and Whately.1 These few names will suffice to indicate approximately Burke’s peculiar place in general literature; but his influence in every way extends far more widely than any line which could be usefully drawn.

      Considering that Burke stands unapproachably the first of our political orators, and indeed in the very first rank as a writer and a thinker, it seems strange that so few express and formal tributes have been paid to his memory. Had Burke been a Frenchman, nearly every French critic, great or small, would have tried his hand on such a subject, not in parenthetical allusion, or in a few brief words of ardent praise, but in regular essays and notices without number. Where we have placed a stone, they would have piled a cairn. Thus have the Cousins, Saint-Beuves, Guizots, and Pontmartins taken every opportunity for long disquisition upon their Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, Molière, La Fontaine, and the other great authors of France. With us, moreover, the editions of Burke have been few, considering his fame; and his direct praises have been for the most part confined, here to a page, there to a paragraph. It is necessary for an Englishman to know Burke’s writings well if he would be enabled to judge of the extent of his influence on the leading minds of this country. Only know [lxix] Burke, and you will find his thoughts and expressions gleaming like golden threads in the pages of distinguished men of the generations which have succeeded his own. This is the form in which Burke has chiefly received his honours, and exercised his authority.1

      The art of speaking and of writing in that grand old style, of which Burke was so great a master, is now wellnigh unknown. As in the case of the English dramatists, and of the Italian painters, it is the fault of a broken tradition, of a forgotten training, and of changed habits of life. That which was once the treasure of the few has somewhat suffered in the general diffusion. Arts appear to languish in an atmosphere of contagious mediocrity. There is no one to teach, either by word or by example, the perfect design of Correggio, or the powerful brush-play of Tintoret. When we glance over the treasures of those great English masters of prose, among whom Burke stands almost last, our hearts may well sink within us. We have to study as well as we can, and strive to pick up piece by piece the fragments of a lost mystery. It may be said that we have developed qualities which are more real, more enduring, and more valuable. Cuyp and Hals were doubtless greater masters in certain departments of their art than Rubens; and Hallam presents us with a variety of political method which contrasts in many respects advantageously with that of Burke. It is an interesting task to represent faithfully and minutely the features of a distant scene, to magnify it and artificially to approximate it to the eye of the observer, to blend its shadows carefully and easily with a mild and uniform light, to balance the composition without the appearance of artifice, and so nearly to lose and discard the effects of perspective that the picture shall almost assume the proportions of a geometrical elevation. A sense of repose and of completeness mingles perceptibly with our satisfaction at these works half of art, half of antiquarianism. Burke is a Rubens rather than a Cuyp. The objects are distinct and near at hand: the canvas is large, the composition almost coarse in its boldness and strength, and the colours are audaciously contrasted and dashed in with a sort of gallant carelessness. The human face is exaggerated in its proportions, and we attribute more to the [lxx] quick imagination of the artist than to the mere influence of the objects which he proposes to himself to delineate. More than all, however, in the writing of Burke, is the effect due to a certain firm and uniformly large method of manipulation. His thoughts run naturally, as it were, into large type out of the “quick forge and working-house” of his thought. Profound as they are, they never appear as the forced and unmellowed fruit of study. Objective as they are, they come nearer to the lively impress of the man who thinks, than to the mere portraiture of the thing he is contemplating. We feel that we are in the presence of une âme à double et triple étage. Such is, in great measure, the general characteristic of what De Quincey has denominated the Literature of Power, the stimulating, fructifying, and if its seed should fall on a fit soil, the self-reproducing. On looking at a picture of Velasquez, said Northcote, you almost lose the powerlessness of the undisciplined and unassisted hand. “You feel as if you could take up the brush and do anything.” It is in like wise with the fine living and speaking performances of Cicero and Burke, of Virgil and Dryden. It is in writers such as these that we find the self-continuing impulse, the lost power of school and tradition, the communication of a precious secret, the touch of the coal from off the altar. But as in the case of a rapidly-touched work of a great painter, we see the genius, though we trace little or nothing of the intellectual and manual toil which has developed it. Let it never be forgotten that the greatest masters have been the most patient, anxious, and assiduous students, and he who aspires to be of their number must be prepared to accept the conditions. The nature and extent of the studies of Cicero and Burke can only be adequately estimated from their writings. They aimed at a close contact with realities, at uniting in themselves literature, philosophy, and a high standard of practical life, at facilitating this happy combination in others, and at justifying their position as statesmen by being the wisest as well as the cleverest men of their day. The conception of such aims is rarely found with power of mind and body to accomplish them, nevertheless; “So toil the workmen that repair a world.”

      London, March 11, 1875.

      In the Introduction to the previous volume was inserted an inscription, written by Dr. Parr, intended for a national monument to Burke. It may be interesting to add here the equally masterly one inserted by Parr in the Dedication to his edition of Bellendenus.

      EDMUNDO . BURKE

      VIRO . TUM . OB . DOCTRINAM . MULTIPLICEM . ET . EXQUISITAM

      TUM . OB . CELERES . ILLOS . INGENII . MOTUS

      QUI . ET . AD . EXCOGITANDUM . ACUTI . ET . AD . EXPLICANDUM

      ORNANDUMQUE . UBERES . SUNT

      EXIMIO . AC . PRAECLARO

      OPTIME . DE . LITTERIS . QUAS . SOLAS . ESSE . OMNIUM . TEMPORUM

      OMNIUMQUE . LOCORUM . EXPERTUS . VIDIT

      OPTIME . DE . SENATU . CUJUS . PERICLITANTIS

      IPSE . DECUS . ET . COLUMEN . FUIT

      OPTIME . DE . PATRIA . IN . CIVES

      SUI . AMANTISSIMOS . EHEU . INGRATA

      NUNQUAM . NON . PROMERITO

      LIBRUM . HUNCCE . EA . QUA . PAR . EST . OBSERVANTIA

      D.D.D.

      A.E.A.O.

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      [Published in October, 1790. Eleventh Edition, Dodsley, 1791.]

      [Argument

      PART I, pp. 88–269.

       The Sentiments and Political Doctrines of Englishmen compared withthose of the French Revolutionists

      INTRODUCTION. The Constitutional Society and the Revolution Society, p. 89. The Sermon of Dr. Price, p. 96. It misrepresents the English Constitution, p. 99. The Right “to choose our own governors” disclaimed and refuted as a practical doctrine, p. 102. The Right “to cashier them for misconduct” disclaimed, &c., p. 114. The Right “to form a government for ourselves” disclaimed, &c., and English liberties shown to be essentially an inheritance, p. 119. Comparison of the proceedings of the English Revolutionists in 1688 with those of the French Revolutionists in 1789, p. 123. The latter accounted for by the composition of the National Assembly, p. 129. Character of the representatives of the Tiers État, p. 129;

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