real, as constant, as overmastering in Fox
as they were in Burke. No man was ever more deeply imbued with the
generous impulses of great statesmanship, with chivalrous courage,
with the magnificent spirit of devotion to high imposing causes. These
qualities we may be sure, and not his power as a debater and as a
declaimer, won for him in Burke's heart the admiration which found
such splendid expression in a passage that will remain as a stock
piece of declamation for long generations after it was first poured
out as a sincere tribute of reverence and affection. Precisians, like
Lafayette, might choose to see their patriotic hopes ruined rather
than have them saved by Mirabeau, because Mirabeau was a debauchee.
Burke's public morality was of stouter stuff, and he loved Fox because
he knew that under the stains and blemishes that had been left by a
deplorable education, was that sterling, inexhaustible ore in which
noble sympathies are subtly compounded with resplendent powers.

If he was warmly attached to his political friends, Burke, at least
before the Revolution, was usually on fair terms in private life with
his political opponents. There were few men whose policy he disliked
more than he disliked the policy of George Grenville. And we have seen
that he criticised Grenville in a pamphlet which did not spare him.
Yet Grenville and he did not refuse one another's hospitality, and
were on the best terms to the very end. Wilberforce, again, was one
of the staunchest friends of Pitt, and fought one of the greatest
electioneering battles on Pitt's side in the struggle of 1784; but it
made no difference in Burke's relations with him. In 1787 a coldness
arose between them. Burke had delivered a strong invective against
the French Treaty. Wilberforce said, "We can make allowance for the
honourable gentleman, because we remember him in better days." The
retort greatly nettled Burke, but the feeling soon passed away,
and they both found a special satisfaction in the dinner to which
Wilberforce invited Burke every session. "He was a great man," says
Wilberforce. "I could never understand how at one time he grew to be
so entirely neglected."

Outside of both political and literary circles, among Burke's
correspondents was that wise and honest traveller whose name is as
inseparably bound up with the preparation of the French Revolution, as
Burke's is bound up with its sanguinary climax and fulfilment. Arthur
Young, by his Farm