akened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted
myself with so much exultation, my lord,--your lordship's most
humble, most obedient servant. SAM. JOHNSON."

Boswell's life of Dr. Johnson when you come to read it, as you will be
sure to do by and by, has left a living picture of this great and good
man for all future generations to enjoy, extenuating nothing to his
quaintness, directness, and proneness to contradiction for its own sake,
yet unveiling everywhere the deep piety and fine magnanimity of his
character. He suffered much, but never complained, and certainly must
be numbered among the great men of letters who have found true
consolation and support in every circumstance of life in an earnest and
fervent faith.

Your loving old
G.P.

12

MY DEAR ANTONY,

Edmund Burke was born in 1730, and therefore was twenty-one years
younger than Dr. Johnson, and he survived him thirteen years. He was
a great prose writer, and although some of his speeches in Parliament
that have come down to us possess every quality of solid argument and
lofty eloquence, there must have been something lacking in his delivery
and voice, for he so frequently failed to rivet the attention of the
House, and so often addressed a steadily dwindling audience, that the
wits christened him "the dinner bell."

All men of letters, however, acknowledge Burke as a true master of a
very great style.

We see in him the first signs of a breaking away from the universal
restraint of the older writers, and of the surging up of expressed
emotion.

His splendid tribute to Marie Antoinette and his panegyric of the lost
age of chivalry are familiar to all students of English prose.

"It is now (1791) sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen
of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more
delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating
and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in
glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and
joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to
contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little
did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of
enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be
obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in
that bosom; l