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MARCH 6, 1858.

BOOKS.

NACHNIGHT'S LIFE AND TIMES OF BARRE.* IT is curious how little is known of one half and how much mys- tery on one point hangs over the other half of the life of a man who was born of a respectable family, was educated at a university, became distinguished in contemporary literature, and for thirty years was one of the most active orators and politicians of a stirring period. Of Johnson, Goldsmith, Savage, and even of Mallet and many other men of the last century, certainly in nowise equal to Edmund Burke, affection, curiosity, or acci- dent has preserved more precise particulars than of the greatest political philosopher and orator of our country. It is known that his father was a Dublin solicitor ; but the old gentleman's reli- gion, patrimony, family, and property, are matters of conjecture or dispute. The very year of Burke's birth cannot be established; and the time of his actually becoming a student of Trinity has been questioned, though we suppose the entry of his name in the books on the 14th April 1-743 would be deemed proof in law; and this entry not only fixes the date of his birth early in 1728, but indicates a more likely period than 1729 or 1730, unless— which is perhaps the solution—that he was born in January 1728-'9. The professional pride of his father decided on making the youthful Edmund a barrister. According to Mr. Macknight, his name was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747; but he did not take his degree of B.A. till 1748, and he does not seem to have reached London till very late in 1749 or early in 1750. Fifteen years later—July 1763—he was introduced to the Marquis of Rockingham, and shortly became his pri- vate secretary • but the story of the introduction is strange and vague ; the intermediate period, though by no means a blank, exhibits great want of fulness and precision. For the early part of the time Burke was simply a young Irish law student, so far as we know without connexion, and with a limited allowance. Such obscurity is therefore not strange ; but when in 1756 he had published, though anonymously, his parody of Bolingbroke—the "Vindication of Natural Society,” and his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, and, besides intermediate works, had two years later projected the Annual Register, he must have known persons enough who could have told all about him when he became famous. Neither was he, like some great writers or speakers, naturally or affectedly reserved and silent in society, but quite the reverse. Yet so great is the want of preci- sion as regards this time of his life, that the very particulars of his marriage are unknown. The time has been disputed ; but Mr. Macknight .cems to fix it rightly in the latter half of 1756

or very early in The place is still a question : Bath, Bristol, London, have each been suggested, but no research has discovered the registry.

From the 27th January 1766, when Burke as Member for Wendover rose to address the House of Commons on the prin- ciples of Colonial Government and the Repeal of the Stamp Act, in a style of eloquence at once new and philosophical, and to re- ceive the compliments of the elder Pitt on the effort, there is no difficulty in tracking the stages of his career. But now his cir- cumstances become the puzzle. Up to within a few years of this time though a similar want of precision exists about his income

as about the particulars of his life, there is no doubt that it was narrow. While he continued a student professedly aiming at the bar, his father appears to have made him a regular though limited allowance. As his aversion to the law, and his desultory habits, as the old attorney, would think, (they were in reality various studies,) became palpable, this allowance became fitful and irre- gular, till the father's death in 1760. But with the discontinu- ance of his regular allowance, some income, though, according to the practice of the time, only a scanty one, arose from his pen. On his marriage the expense of housekeeping was probably little ; for the couple resided will Dr. Nugent, Burke's father-in-law. In 1739 he became acquainted with Single-Speech Hamilton, and a connexion ensued which lasted till the earlier part of 1765. Like other points of Burke's career, its nature has been disputed; but he seems to have acted as a modern " secretary " and as a sort of conversational or friendly tutor to a grown-up man who was to be "taught as if you taught him not. When Ha-Milton went to Ireland as Chief Secretary under the vicerovalty of the Earl of Halifax, Burke accompanied him ; and in that school of unprincipled corruption and trimming politics must have acquired the knowledge of public business which enabled him to fill sa- tisfactorily his position under Rockingham, and perhaps to suc- ceed so rapidly in the House of Commons. In 1763 Hamilton procured Burke- a pension of 300/. a year, which on their quarrel • History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke. By Thomas Macknight, Author of" The Right Hon. B. Disraeli, ALP., a Literary and Political Biography," 86c• &e. Volumes L and II. Published by Chapman and Hall.

[MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT.]

and separation in 1763 Burke persisted in resigning. Imme- diately after this resignation, his elder brother Garret died, and Edmund succeeded to an Irish property called Clohir, (worth, it is said, about the same sum he had given up,) of which Garret had—still with a sort of mystery—obtained possession.

Thus far, everything, if not minutely precise, is perfectly in- telligible; and when Burke in the summer of 1765 became con- nected with so generous a man as the Marquis of Rockingham, there can be no doubt that his pecuniary appointment would, with or without his own income, have enabled him to live re- spectably even as a Member of Parliament. But in 1768 the orator bought the celebrated place at Beaconsfield, six hun- dred acres of land, the farm-house, (in which Waller, a rich and comfort-loving man, was said to have lived,) and a mansion re- sembling Buckingham Palace only smaller, with, says Mr. Mac- night, "noble colonnades and. graceful porticoes, statuary, paint-. ings, gardens, conservatory, and pleasure-grounds." He had also a house in town ; and to maintain the consistency of the whole he drove a coach-and-four. The puzzle tube resolved is where the money came from. Large sums, beyond all doubt, were pre- sented to l3orke by Lord Rockingham ; and, lest any claim should be made after his death, all advances were cancelled by a special codicil the day before the Prime Minister expired. From private information, Mr. Macknight conceives that these advances amounted to thirty thousand pounds in fourteen years, namely., from the purchase at Beaconsfield in 1768 to the death of the Marquis in 1782. Burke's expenditure for the succeeding fifteen years (for he lived till 1797) may perhaps be accounted for by debts he was said to be encumbered with when he forsook the Whigs on the question of the French Revolution, that is, if Beaconsfield was mortgaged, if two thousand a year would sup- port his style of living, and he could raise money at a common rate of interest. Reports, however, were widely spread about the time of the purchase of Beaconsfield, that the Burkes—Ed- mond, his brother Richard, and his kinsman William—were gam- bling in East India stock. In 1769 a panic ensued ; the stock fell 60 per cent, and when the ruin came Edmund was charged with sad- dling it on his associates. Lord -Verney, an intimate of Burke's kinsman William and the patron of Wendover, was jointly en- gaged in the speculation and smash, and in some Chancery pro- ceedings which he took implicated Burke ; circumstances to which Meredith alluded in the House of Commons. The public character of Burke—at least till he parted from the Whigs—is so pure, his fidelity to a fallen party and an apparently hopeless cause so great, and his disdain of what were considered the legitimate pro- fits of office is so remarkable that it is more than probable the charges brought against him i were groundless. But whether groundless or the reverse, it was Mr. Macknight's bounden duty, while professing to throw a fuller light upon Burke's life, to have thoroughly exhausted the subject in every possible way ; whereas he shirks it. The Irish Chancery proceedings touching the Clohir property should also have been fully exhibited, whether interest- ing or not ; the charge being, it would appear, that Garret Burke bought the property of some Catholic relations (it was the time of the Penal Laws) at an insufficient price, and one of the family who turned Protestant endeavoured to set aside the sale. The impu- tation was probably false enough, the tale doubtless tedious enough ; but in a life which is apparently to extend to four bulky volumes, room might have been found for the digest of episodes like these.

The spirit traceable in these omissions characterizes the whole work ; it is done upon the principle of panegyric. Burke is the centre to which everything tends, the test by which everything is tried. It was Burke who not only overthrew the penal laws, but who actually created the feeling against them ; Burke superseded Hume as a political economist, and forestalled Adam Smith ; in the political matters that Burke was engaged in, the good emanated from him, the bad from other people ; whatever he said or did was right, and those who think otherwise are wrong : and in this way the whole proceeds. Such is not the principle on which the life of a statesman should be written still less memoirs of the political events in. which he was engaged. Burke was undoubtedly a great genius and of a universal kind ; he was also a man of vast acquire- ments. He looked at politics from a loftier vantage-ground- than any practical politician had reached before ; he introduced into their discussion a broader and. more philosophic spirit than had perhaps ever been attained at all, and while cautiously guarding himself from mere abstract theories, based politics on morality and. expediency. On these grounds he surpassed not only all his con- temporaries but most other men : in the practical arts of govern- ment and administration he was excelled by some of his own age as well as in most times. An Irish quickness of temper rendered his judgments frequently exaggerated, if his anger did not impel him to injustice, while his pride rejected the evidence that would have set him right. hl like manner, his imagination was too little under his command, and in the graver parts of his speeches or writ- ings was apt to overlay his arguments with ornaments, not alss in the best taste, while in passages of what Mr. Mackaight eis wit and humour there was mostly something forced and heavy with a dash of unrelieved virulence—his wit peppery rather than salt. In spite of all Mr. Macknighes labours we suspect the few couplets of Goldsmith that make the biographer wroth present a truer picture of Burke's intellectual character than will be derived from several bulky volumes. Another fault of Mr. Afacknight's work is a disposition to un- due expansion. To some degree this was a necessary part of his plan, which was not only to write a life of Burke but a memoir of his times. The Parliamentary and political history of the pe- riod becomes therefore much more conspicuous—not than Burke, for he is the hero of it, but than the life of Burke. Characters in politics, in literature, and sometimes in other walks of life, are introduced, and painted at full length, after the fashion of Mr. Forster's "Life of Goldsmith." These are not always brought in with skill, and occasionally they disturb the march of the narra- tive, as well as cause some confusion especially in chronology. This expansion, however, is that of subject and matter. The style of Mr. Macknight is fluently verbose ; and when deficient in facts, he is very prone to indulge in conjectures, or proba- bilities' or mere argumentative inferences, and, that upon points which he cannot settle, or finally abandons as of no moment. The fresh information that Mr. Macknight furnishes is scanty ; the clearings-up that he speaks of being rather matter of judg- ment than of fact. For example, the statement with a circum- stance, that Burke and Hume had been candidates for the chair of Logic at Glasgow vacated by Adam Smith, and were both rejected for Mr. Clow, was substantially denied by the great Professor himself; it did not therefore need the reasoning derived from Burke's whereabouts and other circumstances. But upon the whole, the work accomplishes the author's intention. From the letters and writings of Burke Mr. Macknight induces the parti- culars of his hero's life, tastes, feelings,, and friendships. From the Cavendish Debates and our Parliamentary history he exhibits Burke's Parliamentary career at large. Walpole, Wraxall, and many other writers, including previous biographers of course, supply facts and particulars that illustrate or exhibit the life of the public man, if not very much of the private individual. Were it not for the fault of over-partiality, a tone of too high a pitch, and a tendency to subordinate truth and fact to sounding phrases, the book might be strongly recommended as a painstaking account of a remarkable man, and a curious picture of a curious time.

The work is always readable and the matter mostly interest- ing, for the characters it introduces, the manners it indicates, and the public men and measures it brings before us. Here is " Single-Speech " Hamilton —a misnomer by the by, for he often spoke in the Irish Parliament. The reader, however, should bear in mind that Burke and Hamilton quarrelled, and that when such is the case the biographer dips his pen in gall.

"His mind was highly cultivated ; his taste only too fastidious. So careful was he in the choice of his diction, that if on consideration he thought a single expression in an ordinary note might be improved,. he would recall his servant, and deliberately rewrite the whole composition. Positive convictions he had none. On politics he had even scarcely an opinion. That which he stated in his Parliamentary Logic seems to have constituted his whole political creed : he tells the young aspirant to Parliamentary renown, that so much was to be said both for and against any measure, it was impossible to declare beforehand what was good or what was evil, and that it was only when a choice had been made it should be acquiesced in and defended. On this principle of negation, this base scepticism of a narrow mind and of a cold heart, he systematically acted throughout a long life. So far from speaking in the House of Commons, for many years, when the greatest con- stitutional principles were at stake, he refrained even from expressing in private, to his most intimate acquaintances, any opinion which might com- mit him to either one side or the other. He had many admirers and flat- terers, to some of whom he gave much ; but he never had, as he never de- served to have, a friend ; nor did he over know what true friendship was. To then who m any way depended on him' if they showed the slightest manliness and dignity, he would be tyrannical and insolent; to those who had no occasion for his good offices and who ventured even to treat him ill, he would be humble and respectful In person he was tall ; his counte- nance was even handsome; there was an air of aristocratic grace and lofty superiority in all he said and did ; he was sarcastic ; he was clever; he was remarkably intelligent; he wrote well ; he talked well ; he did his best in all societies to be prepossessing and fascinating : but, in spite of himself, his presence chilled; and an acute observer could not but see that, notwith- standing all his endeavours to please, and all his varied accomplishments, William Gerard Hamilton was one of the meanest, most selfish, timid, crafty, and deceitful of human beings."

Take another picture, not of a Parliament man, but of Par- liament itself, on Lord North's downfall.

"A week later, on the 8th of April, the Houses again met for business. Ministerk appeared on the Treasury-bench, and then the full extent of the change was prominently displayed. A new generation had grown up in the period during which Lord North had been in power ; people could scarcely remember a time when he was not the leader of the Commons' and Mem- bers could at first scarcely realize the situation, or believe the evidence of their senses' as they beheld, on that evening, the unaccustomed aspect of the popular branch of the Legislature. The old Ministers were dispersed on the 4ek benches of the Opposition side of the House. Instead of being carefully attired in full dress' or betraying in their habits their immediate intercourse with the Court, they appeared in greatcoats and heavy boots, like mere ordinary mortals. To the astonishment of everybody, even Wel- bore Ellis, for the first time, it was said, in his life, was beheld without his Court suit. But strange as was the appearance of the fallen Ministers, the Members composing the new Government, on the Treasury-bench, formed a still more startling and even ludicrous sight. Their buff and blue uniforms and rusty frock-coats were thrown aside, and, having just been at Court, they came down in full dress, with their hair carefully powdered, lace on their shirt-frills, ruffles on their wristbands, swords at their sides, and buckles shining brilliantly in their shoes. They, being quite eunuch sur- prised as the spectators, stared at their vanquished foes, and at one another. A joke made at their expense was circulated all over London' and occasioned much merriment. Lord Nugent's house had recently been broken open. Among other articles stolen, )vere several pairs of lace ruffles' which had been particularly advertised by the nobleman, with the rest of his missing valuables, in the newspapers. When Pwrliamest met after Easter, he was asked by a friend, whether he had found any of the property. I can't say I have ; but,' said the old Lord, indicating Fox and Burke, I shrewdly suspect that I have seen some of my, laced ruffles on the hands of the gentle- men who now occupy the Treasury-bench.'"

Lord Rocldngham's release of Burke from all pecuniary obliga- tions has been already alluded to : the deathbed of the generous Premier is worth reading.

" Lord Rockingham had been so frequently ill and had recovered, that neither Burke nor Fox were at all prepared for their leader's departure. But, on the last dap of June, the Marquis himself knew that he was dying. He prepared himself for the summons with all that calm courage and unpre- tending resignation which were so admirably in harmony with the other fine features of his character. One thing there was upon his mind. On the 29th of June, he sent an express for John Lee, then Solicitor. General. Lee was on the following morning at the Marquis's bedside. My dear Lee,' said Lord Rockingham,. 'there is a piece of business I wish you to execute immediately, as there 18 no time to be lost. Various pecuniary transactions have passed between me and my admirable friend Edmund Burke. To the best of my recollection, I have given up every bond or other document, and also added the fullest discharges ; but lest my memory should have failed me I desire you, as a professional man, to make out a codicil to my will, cancelling every paper that may be found containing any acknow- ledgment of a debt due to me from Edmund Burke.' Lee immediately drew up the codicil. The next day Lord Rockingham gently expired."

The Ministerial reception of the news of Cornwallis's surrender is a at-liking little bit. "Nearly five weeks after the surrender at Yorktown, a hackney-coach was seen on a Sunday morning, the 25th of November, leaving the door of Lord George Germaine's mansion in Pall Mall. In that humble vehicle was the noble Secretary himself. He was driving during church. time to communicate to his colleagues the disastrous intelligence which had just arrived at the War-office in Whitehall. He first called on Lord Sloe- raont in Portland Place ; and thence the two Ministers drove to the resi- dence of the Lord Chancellor in Great Russell Street. The bold Thurlow, though the keeper of the Royal conscience, was not at his public devotions. These high officials jumped into the same hackney-coach, of which the dri- ver was at least in luck that morning, and the three Ministers went in a body to the official residence of their chief in Downing Street. The easy temper, which had so often buoyed up Lord North amid the ruin which his policy had inflicted on the country, at last gave way. He saw at a glance the enormity of the crimes he had committed. Ile saw that no Royal favour could at last shield him from the deserved reprobation of all future gene- rations in both hemispheres. The news was to him like the receipt of a bullet in his bosom. He stretched forth his arms, and paced wildly to and fro, exclaiming repeatedly, in the deepest agony of mind, 0 God! it is all over.'"

We close with a portrait of Burke in Parliament, appropriate to the theme, but partly given to dissipate the "mistaken no- tion" which Goldsmith's celebrated character has "contributed to originate and perpetuate."

" Two or three epigrammatic sentences in rhyme have stood in the place of all argument and all reason. They were at once adopted as true by those who were jealous of Burke and this metrical description of his orations has been regarded as correct, wIlileit is not at all improbable that Goldsmith never heard Burke make a single speech in the House of Commons, or in any other place. That in later years he was heard with some impatience by the younger and less reflecting portion of the assembly, is undeniable. But it isnot more undeniable that no other orator, long after Goldsmith's poem was familiar to everybody, produced greater immediate effects ; or that in the whole course of his career in Parliament none ever achieved, according to the tes- timony of such men as Chatham, Gibbon, Wellesley, and even Fox himself, purer and more incontestable oratorical triumphs.

"Tall, and apparently endowed with much vigour of body, his pre,sence was noble, and his appearance prepossessing. In later years, the first pe- culiarity which caught the eye as Burke walked forwards, as his custom was to speak in the middle of the House, were his spectacles, which, from shortness of sight, seemed never absent from his face. But as yet he had no habitual occasion for such useful optical auxiliaries, and his bright eyes beamed forth with all their overpowering animation. A black silk riband, by which an eye-glass was suspended, appeared on his frill and waistcoat. His dress, though not slovenly, was by no means such as would have suited a leader of fashion. His coat was not very smart. He had the air of a man who was full of thought and care, and to whom his outward aPpear- ance was not of the slightest consideration; but as a set-off to this disad- vantage, there was in his whole deportment a sense of personal dignity and habitual self-respect which more than compensated for the absence of the graces of the tailor. His brow was massive, and Intellect seemed to have made it her chosen temple, so illuminated it appeared with genius and ex- pression. They who knew how amiable Burke was in his pnvate" life, and how warm and tender was the heart within, might expect to see these softer qualities depicted on his countenance. But they would have been disap- pointed. It was not usual at any time to see his face mantling with smiles; he decidedly looked like a great man, but not like a meek or gentle one. He might advise an anxious gentleman to live pleasant ' ; he might, espe- cially at this time, seem to Johnson a model of cheerful equanimity., but, assuredly, he did not seem like a man to whom the world had been easy. Nor had it been. His life had been a constant struggle and he knew it well. He had been calumniated; he had been thwarted. His means had been and continued to be scanty. He had to fight for and to make good every step he made in advance. He had to supply by his energy the languor of Ins friends. He was constantly under arms, and his life' more than that of almost any other man, was truly a march and a battle. All his troubles were impressed on his working features, and gave them a somewhat severe expression, which deepened as he advanced in years, until they became to sonic observers unpleasantly hard. The marks about the jaw, the firmness of the lines about the mouth, the stern glance of the eye, and the furrows on the expansive forehead, were all the sad ravages left by the difficulties and sorrows of genius, and by the iron which had entered the soul. "It was only, however, as years rolled on, and his natural vehemence grew with the prejudices which were industriously excited in certain quar- ters against him, that these harsher peculiarities grew painfully obvious. From the first his Hibernian accent might very perceptibly be distinguished whenever he began to address the House, and was not always forgotten by those who listened to him even when they were under the influence of his most eloquent inspirations. His voice was of great compass, and,. express- ing the depth of his convictions, gave much energy to the communication of his ideas. He never hesitated for want of words. His utterance was rapid

and vehement; but, quick as it was, his thoughts flowed forth with still greater freedom, and threatened to overcome the power of speech. As he spoke, his head was continually in motion, and appeared now to rise and fill, and now to oscillate from side to side, in a very singular manner, with the nervous excitement of the speaker."