never been wholly
superseded, and, for elegance of diction, has never been equaled. It
brought him into immediate intercourse with all that may be called the
fashion of literature--Lyttleton, Warburton, Soame Jenyns, Hume,
Reynolds, Lord Bath, Johnson, the greatest though the least
influential of them all, and Mrs Montague, the least but the most
influential of them all. There must have been a good deal of what is
called fortune in this successful introduction to the higher orders of
London society; for many a work of superior intelligence and more
important originality has been produced, without making its author
known beyond the counter of the publisher. But what chance began his
merits completed. The work was unquestionably fit for the hands of
blue-stockingism; the topic was pleasing to literary romance; the very
title had a charm for the species of philosophy which lounges on
sofas, and talks metaphysics in the intervals of the concert or the
card-table. It may surprise us, that in an age when so many manly and
muscular understandings existed at the same time in London, things so
infinitely trifling as conversaziones should have been endured; but
conversaziones there were, and Burke's book was precisely made to
their admiration. It is no dishonour to the matured abilities of this
great man, that he produced a book which found its natural place on
the toilet-tables, and its natural praise in the tongues of the Mrs
Montagues of this world. It might have been worse; he never thought it
worth his while to make it better; the theory is worth nothing, but
the language is elegant; and the whole, regarded as the achievement of
a youth of nineteen, does honour to the spirit of his study, and the
polish of his pen.

A change was now to take place in Burke's whole career. He might have
perished in poverty, notwithstanding his genius, except for the chance
which introduced him to Fitzherbert, a graceful and accomplished man,
who united to a high tone of fashionable life a gratification in the
intercourse of intelligent society. Partly through this gentleman's
interference, and partly through that of the late Earl of Charlemont,
Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton, who shortly after
went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-lieutenant, Lord Halifax.
However, this connexion, though it continued for six years, was
evidently an uneasy one to Burke; and a letter written by him in the
second year of his private secretar