rcourse
between the two heroes was at an end. When they met in the Managers'
box in Westminster Hall on the business of Hastings's trial, they met
with the formalities of strangers. There is a story that when Burke
left the House on the night of the quarrel it was raining, and Mr.
Curwen, a member of the Opposition, took him home in his carriage.
Burke at once began to declaim against the French. Curwen dropped
some remark on the other side. "What!" Burke cried out, grasping the
check-string, "are you one of these people! Set me down!" It needed
all Curwen's force to keep him where he was; and when they reached his
house Burke stepped out without saying a single word.

We may agree that all this did not indicate the perfect sobriety and
self-control proper to a statesman, in what was a serious crisis both
to his party and to Europe. It was about this time that Burke said to
Addington, who was then Speaker of the House of Commons, that he was
not well. "I eat too much, Speaker," he said, "I drink too much, and I
sleep too little." It is even said that he felt the final breach with
Fox as a relief from unendurable suspense; and he quoted the lines
about Aeneas, after he had finally resolved to quit Dido and the
Carthaginian shore, at last being able to snatch slumber in his ship's
tall stern. There can be no doubt how severe had been the tension.
Yet the performance to which Burke now applied himself is one of
the gravest and most reasonable of all his compositions. He felt it
necessary to vindicate the fundamental consistency between his present
and his past. We have no difficulty in imagining the abuse to which
he was exposed from those whose abuse gave him pain. In a country
governed by party, a politician who quits the allies of a lifetime
must expect to pay the penalty. The Whig papers told him that he was
expected to surrender his seat in Parliament. They imputed to him
all sorts of sinister motives. His name was introduced into ironical
toasts. For a whole year there was scarcely a member of his former
party who did not stand aloof from him. Windham, when the feeling was
at its height, sent word to a host that he would rather not meet Burke
at dinner. Dr. Parr, though he thought Mr. Burke the greatest man upon
earth, declared himself most indignantly and most fixedly on the side
of Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Fox. The Duke of Portland, though always
described as strongly and fondly attached to him, and Gilbert Elliot,
wh