Paris, 1487); _Compendium logicae_
(Venice, 1489); _Quaestiones in viii. libros physicorum_ (Paris, 1516); _In
Aristotelis Metaphysica_ (1518); _Quaestiones in x. libros ethicorum
Aristotelis_ (Paris, 1489; Oxford, 1637); _Quaestiones in viii. libros
politicorum Aristotelis_ (1500). See K. Prantl's _Geschichte der Logik_,
bk. iv. 14-38; Stoeckl's _Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters_, ii.
1023-1028; Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_, s.v. (1897).

BURKE, EDMUND (1729-1797), British statesman and political writer. His is
one of the greatest names in the history of political literature. There
have been many more important statesmen, for he was never tried in a
position of supreme responsibility. There have been many more effective
orators, for lack of imaginative suppleness prevented him from penetrating
to the inner mind of his hearers; defects in delivery weakened the
intrinsic persuasiveness of his reasoning; and he had not that commanding
authority of character and personality which has so often been the secret
of triumphant eloquence. There have been many subtler, more original and
more systematic thinkers about the conditions of the social union. But no
one that ever lived used the general ideas of the thinker more successfully
to judge the particular problems of the statesman. No one has ever come so
close to the details of practical politics, and at the same time remembered
that these can only be understood and only dealt with by the aid of the
broad conceptions of political philosophy. And what is more than all for
perpetuity of fame, he was one of the great masters of the high and
difficult art of elaborate composition.

A certain doubtfulness hangs over the circumstances of Burke's life
previous to the opening of his public career. The very date of his birth is
variously stated. The most probable opinion is that he was born at Dublin
on the 12th of January 1729, new style. Of his family we know little more
than his father was a Protestant attorney, practising in Dublin, and that
his mother was a Catholic, a member of the family of Nagle. He had at least
one sister, from whom descended the only existing representatives of
Burke's family; and he had at least two brothers, Garret Burke and Richard
Burke, the one older and the other younger than Edmund. The sister,
afterwards Mrs French, was brought up and remained throughout life in the
religious faith of her [v.04 p.0825] mother; Edmund and his brothers
fo