20 Se M42. Bunke /not so! d. A. Bull. taught his audink in the county- first bo'l alloran aftermaker by mm. Ditzgerald.... who at all endal sine Edmund Burkering th charpe brogue which death crues not silence

there were fifteen, were at play, he was always at work. In 1741 he was sent to an academy kept at Ballitore by a learned and honest Quaker named Abraham Shackleton. Shackleton taught him to hate oppression and instilled into him a passion for civil and religious liberty. He did not need to teach him books, for Edmund made the reading of the classics his diversion rather than his business. Augustine Birrell says that Shackleton was also responsible for Burke's acquisition of an Irish brogue which lasted as long as Burke himself, but, as Shackleton was an Englishman from Yorkshire, the credit for this accomplishment probably belongs elsewhere. At all events, the master won the pupil's lifelong love and respect, a feat of which any teacher might be proud.

From Ballitore Burke went in 1744 to Trinity College, Dublin. His tutor within a month set him at work reading Burgersdicius, the six last Aeneids, Enchiridion, and Tabula Cebetus, all of which interfered considerably with his real studies. Burke himself worried a good deal because his interests were so varied that he was afraid he could master nothing. He also found it harder to study in town than in the country; the townsman, he said, is beset on every side. In spite of these difficulties he passed in May, 1746, a severe examination of two days in all the Greek and Roman authors of note and was consequently elected to a scholarship which gave him his board free, fifty shillings a year in the college cellar, the right to vote for members of Parliament, the rent of his rooms, his college dues, and upon graduation a chance for fifteen pounds a year more. His favorite studies at this time were Greek, Latin, philosophy, general literature, and metaphysics. He even read a few novels. Bacon's Essays, Shakespeare, and Addison were, however, his chief companions in his hours of relaxation. Demosthenes' orations, Plutarch's Lives, the plays of Euripides and Sophocles, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the poems of Horace and Virgil also won and kept his admiration. He joined a debating club, where these subjects among others were discussed:

(a) The sailors in a ship turning pirates (Dennis for, Burke against).

(b) Catiline to the Allobroges.

Of all his studies, however, perhaps that which had the most direct and lasting influence on his style as an orator was that of Milton's prose and poetry. His admiration of Milton led him to write poetry, which was not in Milton's style, but in that of Pope, and was neither better nor worse than that of dozens of other gifted youths. Its quality may be inferred from one couplet:

Jove claim'd the verse old Homer sung,
But God himself inspired Young.

He himself compared his poetic enthusiasm to the itch and evidently did not allow it to interfere with his studies, for he took his A. B. 1748, and his A. M. 1751.

Before receiving the latter degree he had already begun his residence in the Middle Temple, London, as a law student. English architecture, English agriculture, and Englishmen at once impressed him favorably, the first two because of their superiority to Irish, the last because they perform more than they promise. He studied law hard, but enjoyed himself, too, in a variety of profitable ways, falling in love, like the sensible Irishman he was, with Peg Woffington; rambling about England during his vacations, putting up at quaint old inns with motherly landladies, who mistook him for an author until they discovered that he always paid his bills and never got drunk; attending debating clubs; and gradually getting acquainted with a circle of great men-David Garrick, the first actor of his day; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first painter; Oliver Goldsmith, the greatest writer; and Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first real dictionary of the English language and one of the most brilliant conversationalists in all history. He was everlastingly interested in everything from agriculture to abbeys. His letters to Arthur Young on the former, says Birrell, still tremble

with emotion. Of the latter he wrote to a friend: I have not the least doubt that the finest poem in the English language, I mean Milton's 'Il Penseroso,' was composed in the long-resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister or ivy'd abbey. Yet after all do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets."

Five years went by in this fashion and the elder Burke, we may fancy, was beginning to wonder if Edmund was ever going to amount to anything. The answer came in 1756, when there appeared under his name an octavo pamphlet of 106 pages called a "Vindication of Natural Society." This was an ironical defense of the doctrines of Bolshevism written a century before the birth of Trotzky and Lenine. It is an almost perfect imitation of the style of Lord Bolingbroke, who had previously written a "Vindication of Natural Religion," in which he had attacked Christianity. Burke sought to show that, if Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion were sound, they were equally sound with respect to all the institutions of civilized men. It is worth remembering that Burke thus, at the beginning of his public career, made a brilliant attack upon the monstrous doctrine which to-day threatens with annihilation the civilization of Europe.

A few months later he followed this performance with an even more celebrated work entitled A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful." Unlike the "Vindication," the "Sublime and Beautiful" is strictly original both in style and matter. Burke had toiled upon it for seven years. It was toil well spent. His ideas won both public and private approval. Critics agreed that he had laid afresh the foundations of literary criticism, and from his father there came a check for one hundred pounds, conduct which, under the circumstances, says Birrell, was both sublime and beautiful.

Exhausted by these labors, Burke took refuge in the home of Dr. Christopher Nugent, who resided with his daughter

Mary Jane at Bath. The result was that he regained his health and lost his heart. Doctor Nugent was a Catholic but his wife and daughter were Presbyterians. Consequently, when Burke married Mary Jane, though both of them were Protestants, each had a Catholic parent. Their union was very happy. Every care vanishes the moment I enter under my own roof," he said. Here let us leave them, in Birrell's words, where man and wife ought to be left, alone.

Marriage drove Burke back to his pen. In 1757 he published in two volumes "An Account of the European Settlements in America," which ran through seven editions and shows, if it shows nothing else, that even then Burke had made himself familiar with the subject he was to treat with such lofty genius seventeen years later. In 1758 Dodsley, the publisher, employed Burke to edit a year-book called "The Annual Register," which had two distinct advantages. It added one hundred pounds a year to Burke's income, and it forced him to become familiar with current politics.

By this time Burke's growing reputation had attracted the attention of two remarkable but very different men. Both appreciated his talents. One of them was Dr. Samuel Johnson. The other was Gerard Hamilton.

On Christmas day, 1758, Arthur Murphy dined at the table of David Garrick and received the surprise of his life. Doctor Johnson was contradicted by a man twenty years his junior, and submitted to it. The subject was India and the young man was Edmund Burke. Indeed, no great man ever praised another more highly than Johnson praised Burke. On one occasion, when he was ill, he said of Burke's conversation: That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now, it would kill me." On another he said: "No man of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident under ? a gateway to avoid a shower without being convinced he was the first man in England."

Gerard Hamilton was a man of a different type. In 1755 he had made in Parliament a speech of such brilliance that

he was appointed in 1756 a Lord of Trade and never afterward ventured to open his mouth in public. From this circumstance he acquired the nickname of Single-speech Hamilton. If, however, he was unwilling to give his country his advice, he did not hesitate to take its money. Being appointed to a lucrative sinecure in Ireland in 1761, he asked Burke, of whose intellectual powers he evidently had a keen appreciation, to become his secretary. Burke accepted and for two years served his master so well that he obtained for his aide a pension of 300 pounds a year. Hamilton entertained the idea that he could thus make Burke his bondman for life, but when Burke discovered his employer's purpose he repudiated both Hamilton and the pension. His letters at this time flame with indignation. In one of them he calls Hamilton a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, canker-hearted, envious reptile. Augustine Birrell says of these outbursts that he thanks Burke for permitting him, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years, to warm his hands at this righteous wrath.

With the Hamilton episode Burke passed from private to public life. He speedily obtained the position of secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, who was then the head of the Whig party. Though amiable and honorable, the Marquis was neither energetic nor great, but he won Burke's lasting esteem. He also paid his debts, which were neither few nor small. In return Burke became almost immediately the real leader of the Whig party by virtue of his knowledge, his judgment, and his energy. In order to understand the importance of the services which Burke thus rendered to mankind, it is necessary to get firmly in mind the political situation when, in 1765, he entered Rockingham's service.

In 1714 the throne of England had fallen to a German prince of the House of Hanover. This monarch reigned as George I until 1728. His successor, George II, died 1760. Both were content to be figureheads. But George III, who ascended the throne 1760, had a Prussian soul, thought Shakespeare sad stuff, and possessed female relatives. One