adth of judgment which had
been ripened in him by literature and his practice in it. He showed that
books are a better preparation for statesmanship than early training in the
subordinate posts and among the permanent officials of a public department.
There is no copiousness of literary reference in his work, such as
over-abounded in the civil and ecclesiastical publicists of the 17th
century. Nor can we truly say that there is much, though there is certainly
some, of that tact which literature is alleged to confer on those who
approach it in a just spirit and with the true gift. The influence of
literature on Burke lay partly in the direction of emancipation from the
mechanical formulae of practical politics; partly in the association which
it engendered, in a powerful understanding like his, between politics and
the moral forces of the world, and between political maxims and the old and
great sentences of morals; partly in drawing him, even when resting his
case on prudence and expediency, to appeal to the widest and highest
sympathies; partly, and more than all, in opening his thoughts to the many
conditions, possibilities and "varieties of untried being," in human
character and situation, and so giving an incomparable flexibility to his
methods of political approach.

This flexibility is not to be found in his manner of composition. That
derives its immense power from other sources; from passion, intensity,
imagination, size, truth, cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on
charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness
of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and
over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly
always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As
is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true
pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the
victim than to anger against the cause. Again, there are some gratuitous
and unredeemed vulgarities; some images that make us shudder. But only a
literary fop can be detained by specks like these.

The varieties of Burke's literary or rhetorical method are very striking.
It is almost incredible that the superb imaginative amplification of the
description of Hyder Ali's descent upon the Carnatic should be from the
same pen as the grave, simple, unadorned _Address to the King_ (1777),
where each sentence falls on