ts, got drunk at night, got drunk in the morning, and
became intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised
nobody, no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the
rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange
country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no
acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable
as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the parish-clerk himself."

About the year 1756, Burke, still without a profession--for though he
had kept his terms he was never called to the bar--began to feel the
restlessness, perhaps the self-condemnation, natural to every man who
feels life advancing on him without an object. He now determined to
try his strength as an author, and published his _Vindication of
Natural Society_--a pamphlet in which, adopting the showy style of
Bolingbroke, but pushing his arguments to the extreme, he shows the
fallacy of his principles. This work excited considerable attention at
the time. The name of the author remained unknown, and the imitation
was so complete, that for some time it was regarded as a posthumous
work of the infidel lord. Burke, in one of his later publications,
exclaims--Who now reads Bolingbroke? who ever read him through? We may
be assured, at least, that one read him through; and that one was
Edmund Burke. The dashing rhetoric, and headlong statements of
Bolingbroke; his singular affluence of language, and his easy
disregard of fact; the boundless lavishing and overflow of an
excitable and glowing mind, on topics in which prejudice and passion
equally hurried him onward, and which the bitter recollections of
thwarted ambition made him regard as things to be trampled on, if his
own fame was to survive, was incomparably transferred by Burke to his
own pages. The performance produced a remarkable sensation amongst the
leaders of public opinion and literature. Chesterfield pronounced it
to be from the pen of Bolingbroke. Mallet, the literary lord's
residuary legatee, was forced to disclaim it by public advertisement;
but Mallet's credit was not of the firmest order, and his denial was
scarcely believed until Burke's name, as the author, was known. But
his _Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and
Beautiful_, brought him more unequivocal applause. His theory on this
subject has been disputed, and is obviously disputable; but it was
chiefly written at the age of nineteen; it has