Windham made an entry in his diary of
his reception of the new book. "What shall be said," he added, "of the
state of things, when it is remembered that the writer is a man decried,
persecuted and proscribed; not being much valued even by his own party, and
by half the nation considered as little better than an ingenious madman?"
But the writer now ceased to be decried, persecuted and proscribed, and his
book was seized as the expression of that new current of opinion in Europe
which the more recent events of the Revolution had slowly set flowing. Its
vogue was instant and enormous. Eleven editions were exhausted in little
more than a year, and there is probably not much exaggeration in the
estimate that 30,000 copies were sold before Burke's death seven years
afterwards. George III. was extravagantly delighted; Stanislaus of Poland
sent Burke words of thanks and high glorification and a gold medal.
Catherine of Russia, the friend of Voltaire and the benefactress of
Diderot, sent her congratulations to the man who denounced French
philosophers as miscreants and wretches. "One wonders," Romilly said, by
and by, "that Burke is not ashamed at such success." Mackintosh replied to
him temperately in the _Vindiciae Gallicae_, and Thomas Paine replied to
him less temperately but far more trenchantly and more shrewdly in the
_Rights of Man_. Arthur Young, with whom he had corresponded years before
on the mysteries of deep ploughing and fattening hogs, added a cogent
polemical chapter to that ever admirable work, in which he showed that he
knew as much more than Burke about the old system of France as he knew more
than Burke about soils and roots. Philip Francis, to whom he had shown the
proof-sheets, had tried to dissuade Burke from publishing his performance.
The passage about Marie Antoinette, which has since become a stock piece in
books of recitation, seemed to Francis a mere piece of foppery; for was she
not a Messalina and a jade? "I know nothing of your story of Messalina,"
answered Burke; "am I obliged to prove judicially the virtues of all those
I shall see suffering every kind of wrong and contumely and risk of life,
before I endeavour to interest others in their sufferings?... Are not high
rank, great splendour of descent, great personal elegance and outward
accomplishments ingredients of moment in forming the interest we take in
the misfortunes of men?... I tell you again that the recollection of the
manner in which I