egmen habebat."

"He loved humour," writes Mrs. Leadbeater,[561] "and my father was very
witty. The two friends sharpened their intellect and sported their wit
till peals of laughter in the schoolroom often caused the reverend and
grave master to implore them, with suppressed smiles, to desist, or he
should have to turn them out, as their example might be followed, where
folly and uproar would take the place of humour and wisdom."

His hatred of oppression and injustice was also manifested about this
time. A poor man was compelled to pull down his cabin, because the
surveyor of roads considered that it stood too near the highway. The boy
watched him performing his melancholy task, and declared that, if he
were in authority, such scenes should never be enacted. How well he kept
his word, and how true he was in manhood to the good and holy impulses
of his youth, his future career amply manifests.

Burke entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1744; Goldsmith entered
college the following year, and Flood was a fellow-commoner; but these
distinguished men knew little of each other in early life, and none of
them were in any way remarkable during their academic career. In 1753
Burke arrived in London, and occupied himself in legal studies and the
pursuit of literature. His colloquial gifts and his attractive manner
won all hearts, while his mental superiority commanded the respect of
the learned. Even Johnson, who was too proud to praise others, much as
he loved flattery himself, was fain to give his most earnest word of
commendation to the young Irishman, and even admitted that he envied
Burke for being "continually the same," though he could not refrain from
having a fling at him for not being a "good listener"--a deadly sin in
the estimation of one who seldom wished to hear any other voice but his
own. Burke, sir, he exclaimed to the obsequious Boswell--Burke is such a
man, that if you met him for the first time in the street, and conversed
with him for not five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner, that,
when you parted, you would say that is an extraordinary man.[562]

Some essays in imitation of Dr. Charles Lucas, and a translation of part
of the second Georgic of Virgil, which, in finish of style, is, at
least, not inferior to Dryden, were among the earliest efforts of his
gifted pen; and, no doubt, these and other literary occupations gave him
a faculty of expressing thought in cultivated language, which was stil