and brilliant genius of the
declamations for Archias the poet and for Milo, against Catiline and
against Antony, the author of the disputations at Tusculum and the orations
against Verres. Cicero was ever to him the mightiest of the ancient names.
In English literature Milton seems to have been more familiar to him than
Shakespeare, and Spenser was perhaps more of a favourite with him than
either.

It is too often the case to be a mere accident that men who become eminent
for wide compass of understanding and penetrating comprehension, are in
their adolescence unsettled and desultory. Of this Burke is a signal
illustration. He left Trinity in 1748, with no great stock of well-ordered
knowledge. He neither derived the benefits nor suffered the drawbacks of
systematic intellectual discipline.

After taking his degree at Dublin he went in the year 1750 to London to
keep terms at the Temple. The ten years that followed were passed in
obscure industry. Burke was always extremely reserved about his private
affairs. All that we know of Burke exhibits him as inspired by a resolute
pride, a certain stateliness and imperious elevation of mind. Such a
character, while free from any weak shame about the shabby necessities of
early struggles, yet is naturally unwilling to make them prominent in after
life. There is nothing dishonourable in such an inclination. "I was not
swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator," wrote Burke when very
near the end of his days: "_Nitor in adversum_ is the motto for a man like
me. At every step of my progress in life (for in every step I was traversed
and opposed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my
passport. Otherwise no rank, no toleration even, for me."

All sorts of whispers have been circulated by idle or malicious gossip
about Burke's first manhood. He is said to have been one of the numerous
lovers of his fascinating countrywoman, Margaret Woffington. It is hinted
that he made a mysterious visit to the American colonies. He was for years
accused of having gone over to the Church of Rome, and afterwards
recanting. There is not a tittle of positive evidence for these or any of
the other statements to Burke's discredit. The common story that he was a
candidate for Adam Smith's chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow, when Hume
was rejected in favour of an obscure nobody (1751), can be shown to be
wholly false. Like a great many other youths with an eminent destiny before