raise of his brilliant oratory,
or in honest confession that his periods are ponderous and his ideas often
buried under Johnsonian verbiage. Such are the contrasts to be found on
successive pages of Burke's twelve volumes, which cover the enormous range
of the political and economic thought of the age, and which mingle fact and
fancy, philosophy, statistics, and brilliant flights of the imagination, to
a degree never before seen in English literature. For Burke belongs in
spirit to the new romantic school, while in style he is a model for the
formal classicists. We can only glance at the life of this marvelous
Irishman, and then consider his place in our literature.

LIFE. Burke was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish barrister, in 1729.
After his university course in Trinity College he came to London to study
law, but soon gave up the idea to follow literature, which in turn led him
to politics. He had the soul, the imagination of a poet, and the law was
only a clog to his progress. His two first works, _A Vindication of Natural
Society_ and _The Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_,
brought him political as well as literary recognition, and several small
offices were in turn given to him. When thirty-six years old he was elected
to Parliament as member from Wendover; and for the next thirty years he was
the foremost figure in the House of Commons and the most eloquent orator
which that body has ever known. Pure and incorruptible in his politics as
in his personal life, no more learned or devoted servant of the
Commonwealth ever pleaded for justice and human liberty. He was at the
summit of his influence at the time when the colonies were struggling for
independence; and the fact that he championed their cause in one of his
greatest speeches, "On Conciliation with America," gives him an added
interest in the eyes of American readers. His championship of America is
all the more remarkable from the fact that, in other matters, Burke was far
from liberal. He set himself squarely against the teachings of the romantic
writers, who were enthusiastic over the French Revolution; he denounced the
principles of the Revolutionists, broke with the liberal Whig party to join
the Tories, and was largely instrumental in bringing on the terrible war
with France, which resulted in the downfall of Napoleon.

It is good to remember that, in all the strife and bitterness of party
politics, Burke held steadily to the nobles