lo!7 



BUHKB, KDMtlND. 



RDRKE, EDMUND. 



eolUeUd edition* of hit work*, baring probably been withdrawn in 

 order that it might be incorporated in the life of him long promised 

 bv hit principal executor, Dr. King, the lato bUhop of Rochester, 

 which however liu never appearrd. The paMage relating to the matter 

 now before ui U ai follow* : " He was daily vilified u an obecure 

 and needy adrenturer, jti he did not tell, what be bad in hi* hand* 

 the meant of substantiating, that he wai sprung from a family anciently 

 ennoblrd in several of ita branches, and pnitesslng an ample estate, 

 which hu graiMlfather had actually enjoyed ; nor that he had hinuelf 

 tunk a handsome competency in nit adherence to his party. Once, 

 and bat once, in debate, he wai prorokod to declare bin priratc , 



stances, He said, that by the death of a brother whom 



he loved and lamented he had succeeded to upwards of 20,0001. ; part 

 of which he bad spent, and the rest then remained to be spent in the 

 independent support of his principles." It may be observed that 

 what U here affirmed about hit grandfather Laving actually enjoyed 

 the ancestral estate it contrary to the common statement Sir 

 account it, that the estate in question, which was in the county of 

 Limerick, had been forfeited "some time in the troubled period 

 between 1641 and 1653," and that Edmund's greatgrandfather was 

 the first of the faintly who removed to the county of Cork, where he 

 had another property, which he left to his descendants. This last 

 estate was of comparatively small value. 



Young Burke, whoee health in his childhood was very delicate, 

 being sent to live with his grandf.ith.-r iu the county of Cork, was 

 first put to school at the village of Castletown Roche, where he is 

 supposed to have remained about five years. On hU return to Dublin 

 he was sent to a school in that city ; but he was removed in Hay 1741, 

 along with his two brothers, to the classical academy at Rallitore in 

 the county of Kildare, which had been established some years before 

 by John liarcroft and Amos Strettel, two members of the Society of 

 Friends, and has ever since subsisted under the direction of persons of 

 that communion. When Burke was tent there the institution cnjy, >1 

 a very high reputation under the management of Abraham Shackloton, 

 a Quaker of superior talents and learning, who had been brought over 

 from Yorkshire to conduct it about fifteen years before. Here Burke 

 remained for about three years, during which time he always con- 

 Mileretl that he had acquired the most valuable of his mental habits. 

 With Richard Shacldeton, the only son of his master, and afterwards 

 bin successor in the school, he preserved an intimate friendship to the 

 end of his life. 



On leaving Ballitore, Burke proceeded in April 1744 to Trinity 

 College, Dublin, where he does not appear to have greatly distinguished 

 himself; but on the 26th of May, 1746, ho was elected a scholar of 

 the house. He commenced A.B. the 23rd of February 1748, and pro- 

 ceeded A.M. in 1751. Meantime, having been intended for the English 

 bar, he bad entered at the Middle Temple on the 23rd of April 1747; 

 and in the beginning of 1750 he left Dublin for London. 



Of bis legal studies nothing is known with certainty; but it is 

 probable that the attractions of literature and politics soon withdrew 

 him from all thoughts of the law as a profession. It is believed that 

 he became a writer in the newspapers and periodical publications 

 almost immediately on his arrival in London. About 1752 or 1753 he 

 is said to have offered himself as a candidate for the professorship of 

 logic in the University of Glasgow, and to have been unsuccessful ; 

 but the whole of this story is considered very doubtful, and the records 

 of the university do not afford the means of settling the question, as it 

 U not the practice in elections to register any names but those of the 

 lUooMtful candidates, About the year 1755 he had formed the design 

 of going to America, when tome place under government had been 

 offered him in one of the province*. This project however, which he 

 emnt to have entertained for upwards of two years, he finally gave up 

 in consequence of the opposition of his father, whom he had already 

 displeased by his abandonment of the bar. 



II u first separate literary work, so far as is known, appeared in 

 1756, in the form of an octavo pamphlet of 106 pages, entitled 'A 

 .>tion of Natural Society, or a view of the miseries and evils 

 arising to mankind from every species of artificial society, in a letter 

 to Lord by a late noble writer.' This is especially for a 

 young man of twenty-eix in all respects a very remarkable produc- 

 tion. In the first place, the imitation of the style and manner of Lord 

 Bolingbroke, by whom the 'Vindication' affect* to be written, is so 

 skilfully managed that when it first appeared, without the preface 

 explaining the design which now introduces it, even nome persons 

 eminent in the literary world Lord Chesterfield and Bishop Warbur- 

 ton among others are laid to have taken it for a genuine production. 

 But, without reference to its merit as an imitation, the style is through- 

 out singularly flowing and brilliant; and indeed it would, we ;>ppr- 

 head, be difficult to mention any piece among Lord Bolingbroko's 

 composition* in which the tame spirit and eloquence are so long sus- 

 tained. The performance however is chiefly deserving of attention a* 

 indicating the peculiar direction that the mind of the author had 

 already taken in speculating upon the subject* which be bandies, and 

 as proving bow early there had been formed in it at least the germs of 

 that philosophy of morals and of society which may be traced in all 

 Li- writings and his subsequent public conduct The following 

 pSMsag*, containing the key to the purpose of the pamphlet, will bo at 



> rrcoguwd by all who are familiar with hi* writings on the French 



Revolution, as identical in spirit with the whole tenor of those hi* 

 latest productions ; and his various speeches on the American war are 

 all marked and pervaded by the came out of thought, which may be 

 defined generally as a deep sense of the inoompetency of the human 

 mind when giving itself up to tpecuUtive ingenuity, and rejecting all 

 liitht and guidance from the experience of past ages, and all regard for 

 actually established, to cope with the complex problem of 

 re-arranging society; and, derived from these feelings, a vehement 

 aversion to the introduction into the practice of statesmanship of any- 

 thing appertaining to what may be called the metaphysics of social 

 philosophy : " The editor is satisfied that a mind which bat no 

 restraint from a sense of its own weakness, of its subordinate rank in 

 the creation, and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination 

 loose upon some subject*, may very plausibly attack everything the 

 most excellent and venerable ; that it would not be difficult to criticise 

 the creation itself; and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics 

 by our idea* of reason and fitness, and to use the same method of 

 attack by which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might, 

 with as good colour and with the same success make the wisdom 

 and power of Qod in the creation appear to many no bettor than 

 foolishness." 



A few month* after this pamphlet he published his ' Philosophical 

 Inquiry into the Origin of our Id- M of the Sublime and Beautiful,' 

 which however he is said to have begun when he was only nineteen. 

 The leading doctrine propounded in this essay is, that the fooling of 

 the itMime means the delight we experience whenever we have an 

 idea of pain and danger, without being actually in xuch circumstances; 

 and that the feeling of the beautiful means the delight that is excited 

 in us by all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense of affection 

 and tenderness, or some other passion the most nearly resembling these, 

 while we are yet altogether unaffected by the physical pnimioii tin- 

 object of which is the beauty of women. These views are illu.-- 

 by many ingenious and striking observations ; but the spirit of the 

 work on tha whole is certainly rather critical than metaphysical. It 

 was however very well received by the public, and immediately brought 

 the author into much notice. 



This year, Burke, having gone to Bath to re-establish bis health 

 after on attack of illness, and having there taken up his residence with 

 his countryman and distant relation, Dr. Christopher Nugent, a 

 physician, formed an attachment to that gentleman's daughter, and 

 married her. Dr. Nugent was a Roman Catholic, but his daughter 

 had been brought up a Presbyterian by her mother, who is said to 

 have been a very rigid one. 



In April 1757 Dodsley, who had been the publisher of the ' Inquiry 

 into the Sublime and Beautiful,' brought out 'An Account of the 

 European Settlements in America/ in 2 vols. Svo, a performance of 

 which, although it has not found a place in the collected editions of 

 his works, there can be little doubt that Burke waa the author. 

 Indeed his receipt to Dodsley for the copy money, fifty guineas, was 

 nold a few yean ago by Evans at an auction of autographs. The work, 

 although somewhat unequally written, is an animated an<l interesting 

 sketch of American history up to the date of its publication; th.. 

 general views are often ingenious and comprehensive, and the informa- 

 tion is the result of considerable reading. The fondness for the study 

 of the subject of commerce, by which Burke was afterwards so much 

 distinguished, is strongly displayed in this early production. "My 

 principal view," he says in his preface, " in treating of the several 

 settlements, was to draw everything towards their trade, which is the 

 point that concerns us the most materially ;" and one of his remarks 

 in the body of the work is, that whereas at the time when settlement* 

 iu America were first formed by the Spaniards and Portuguese, " the 

 opeculative knowledge of trade made no part of the study of the 

 elevated or thinking part of mankind, now it may be justly reckoned 

 amongst the liberal sciences, and it makes one of the most considerable 

 branches of political knowledge." 



There is every reason to believe that Burke had already seriously 

 determined to devote his whole strength to the attainment of political 

 distinction. With such views he set to work vigorously to store his 

 mind with the knowledge most necessary for an orator and statesman, 

 making his labours as a writer for the press, a* well a* his private 

 studies, subservient to this ambition. He had been for some time 

 employed on a history of Kngland, and this year eight sheet* of the 

 work were printed by Dodsley in quarto ; but although as much more 

 was written as brings down the narrative to the end of the reign of 

 John, the publication was for some reason or other given up. The 

 whole has been printed from the author's papers since his death. He 

 soon after engaged in a work which occupied much of his attention 

 for many year*, and which indeed he is understood to have in some 

 degree superintended to the end of his life, the ' Annual Register,' the 

 first volume of which for the year 1753 was published by Dodsley in 

 June of the following year. For the preparation of this work, which 

 from the first wss highly successful, Burke appears to have ben 

 by Dodsley at the rate of 100/. per volume. Ho at first wrote the 

 whole work, but after a few years he is believed to have confined his 

 pen to the historical articles, the greater port of tin- work i.rin^ . 

 .M : r his general superintendence by Mr. English and Dr. afterwards 

 Bishop King. 



Burke had now become very generally known in the literary circles 



