Chapter II: Part 2

At this time, and for many years afterwards, he was employed in the most curious physiological inquiries; and at the same time forming that museum, which remains the most surprising proof both of his genius and perseverance. It is strange that Sir Everard Home should have considered this collection as a proof of the patronage Hunter received. He had many admirers, and many persons were grateful for his professional assistance; but he had no patrons. The extent of his museum is to be attributed solely to his perseverance; a quality which is generally the companion of genius, and which he displayed in every condition of life. Whether under the tuition of his brother, or struggling for independence by privately teaching anatomy, or amidst the enticements to idleness in a mess-room, or as an army surgeon in active service, he never seems to have forgotten that science which was the chief end of his life. Hence the amazing collection which he formed of anatomical preparations; hence too the no less extraordinary accumulation of important pathological facts, on which his principles were raised.

It was only towards the close of life that Hunter’s character was duly appreciated. His professional emoluments were small, until a very few years before his death, when they amounted to £6000 a year. When this neglect is the portion of a man of distinguished merit, it has sometimes an unhappy influence on his profession. Men look for prosperity and splendour as the accompaniments of such merit; and missing it, they turn aside from the worthiest models, to follow those who are gaining riches in the common routine of practice. Dr. Darwin said, that he rejoiced in Hunter’s late success as the concluding act of a life well spent: as poetical justice. But throughout life he spent all his gains in the pursuit of science, and died poor.

His museum was purchased by government for £15,000. It was offered to the keeping of the College of Physicians, which declined the trust. It is now, committed to the College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; where it is open to the inspection of the public during the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The corporation has enlarged the museum, instituted professorships for the illustration of it, and is now forming a library. The most valuable part of the collection is that in the area of the great room, consisting of upwards of 2000 preparations, which were the results of Mr. Hunter’s experiments on the inferior animals, and of his researches in morbid human anatomy. All these were originally arranged as illustrative of his lectures. The first division alone, in support of his theory of inflammation, contains 602 preparations. Those illustrative of specific diseases amount to 1084. There are besides 652 dried specimens, consisting of diseased bones, joints, and arteries. On the floor there is a very fine collection of the skeletons of man and other animals; and if the Council of the College continue to augment this collection with the same liberal spirit which they have hitherto shown, it will be creditable to the nation. The osteological specimens amount to 1936. But the most interesting portion, we might say one of the most interesting exhibitions in Europe to a philosophical and inquiring mind, is that which extends along the whole gallery. Mr. Hunter found it impossible to explain the functions of life by the investigation of human anatomy, unaided by comparison with the simpler organization of brutes; and therefore he undertook the amazing labour of examining and preparing the simplest animals, gradually advancing from the lower to the higher, until, by this process of synthesis, the structure of the human body was demonstrated and explained. Let us take one small compartment in order to understand the effect of this method. Suppose it is wished to learn the importance of the stomach in the animal economy. The first object presented to us is a hydatid, an animal, as it were, all stomach; being a simple sac with an exterior absorbing surface. Then we have the polypus, with a stomach opening by one orifice, and with no superadded organ. Next in order is the leech, in which we see the beginning of a complexity of structure. It possesses the power of locomotion, and has brain, and nerves, and muscles, but as yet the stomach is simple. Then we advance to creatures in which the stomach is complex: we find the simple membraneous digesting stomach; then the stomach with a crop attached to macerate and prepare the food for digestion; then a ruminating stomach with a succession of cavities, and with the gizzard in some animals for grinding the food, and performing the office of teeth; and finally, all the appended organs necessary in the various classes of animals; until we find that all the chylopoietic viscera group round this, as performing the primary and essential office of assimilating new matter to the animal body.

Mr. Hunter’s papers and greater works exhibit an extraordinary mind: he startles the reader by conclusions, the process by which they were reached being scarcely discernible. We attribute this in part to that defective education, which made him fail in explaining his own thoughts, and the course of reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusions. The depth of his reflective powers may be estimated by the perusal of his papers on the apparently drowned, and on the stomach digested after death by its own fluids. The importance of discovering the possibility of such an occurrence as the last is manifest, when we consider its connexion with medical jurisprudence, and the probability of its giving rise to unfounded suspicions of poisoning. His most important papers were those on the muscularity of arteries; a fine piece of experimental reasoning, the neglect of which by our continental neighbours threw them back an age in the treatment of wounded arteries and aneurisms. But the grand discovery of Mr. Hunter was that of the life of the blood. If this idea surprise our readers, it did no less surprise the whole of the medical profession when it was first promulgated. Yet there is no doubt of the fact. It was demonstrated by the closest inspection of natural phenomena, and a happy suite of experiments, that the coagulation of the blood is an act of life. From this one fact, the pathologist was enabled to comprehend a great variety of phenomena, which, without it, must ever have remained obscure.

Mr. Hunter died of that alarming disease, _angina pectoris_: alarming, because it comes in paroxysms, accompanied with all the feelings of approaching death. These sensations are brought on by exertion or excitement. In St. George’s Hospital, the conduct of his colleagues had provoked him; he made no observations, but retiring into another room, suddenly expired, October 16, 1793.

After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr. Baillie, nephew to these brothers, contributed largely to the improvement of pathology, and afforded an instance of the most active benevolence joined to a plainness of manner most becoming in a physician. Joanna Baillie, his sister, still lives, honoured and esteemed, and will survive in her works as one of our most remarkable female writers.

The portrait from which the annexed engraving is made was painted at the suggestion of the celebrated engraver Sharpe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was among his last works. There could not indeed be a more picturesque head, nor one better suited to the burin. The original picture is in the College of Surgeons. It exhibits more mildness than we see in the engraving of Sharpe.

_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._

PETRARCH.

_From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen,
after a Picture by Tofanelli._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

PETRARCH.

Francesco Petrarca, whose real name is said to have been Petracco, was born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, July 20, 1304. His father was a notary at Florence, who had been employed in the service of the state; but in the civil strife excited by Corso Donati, chief of the faction of the Neri, he, with the rest of the Bianchi, including Dante, whose friend he is recorded to have been, was banished from the Republic in 1302. When the death of the Emperor Henry VII. deprived the exiles of all hope of return, Petracco took his family to Avignon, at that period the seat of the Pontifical Court. The boy Francesco then saw for the first time scenes and objects, with which his destiny was irrevocably connected; and he has left on record the impression which at ten years of age the fountain and wild solitude of Vaucluse had made upon his imagination. He was sent to study the canon law at the University of Montpellier, where he remained four years, devoting his time to Cicero, Virgil, and the Provençal writers, much more than to the doctors of jurisprudence. From Montpellier he went to Bologna; and formed an acquaintance with the celebrated Cino da Pistoia, from whom, although distinguished no less as a jurist than as a poet, Petrarch learned more poetry than law. On his father’s death, which occurred when he was about twenty years old, he returned to Avignon. His mother died soon after; and the moderate patrimony which he inherited was so much diminished by the dishonesty of his guardians, that at the age of twenty-two, he found himself without fortune or profession, and with no resource, but that of entering the church.

Avignon was then the chosen abode of fashion, luxury, and vice. Petrarch mingled in its gay society, without yielding to its corruptions, or withdrawing himself from the philosophical studies which interested him above all other pursuits. A great conformity of tastes, and a common superiority to the low objects of ambition with which they were surrounded, made him the friend of Jacopo Colonna, afterwards Bishop of Lombez. This prelate introduced Petrarch to his brother, the Cardinal Colonna, who resided at Avignon; and in whose palace, in 1331, the poet acquired the friendship of old Stefano Colonna, the illustrious head of that family, and drew from his discourse a stronger love of Italy, of freedom, and of glory. But his affectionate, enthusiastic temper was not to be exhausted even by these objects: soon, without ever being entirely diverted from the interest of friendship or patriotism, he became the vassal of that long and illustrious passion to which he owes the immortality of his name. April 6, 1327, on Easter Monday, in the church of the Nuns of Santa Clara, Petrarch, being then twenty-three years of age, saw for the first time, and loved at sight, Laura de Noves, the bride of Hugo de Sade, a young patrician of Avignon. From this time his life was passed in wandering from place to place, sometimes at the several courts of Italian princes; sometimes in solitary seclusion at Vaucluse; often at Avignon itself, where from the lofty rock on which stands the old Pontifical Palace, he could see Laura walking in the gardens below, which with all the adjacent part of the town belonged to the family of de Sade.

Few subjects have been discussed more largely, with greater minuteness of examination, or with greater licence of conjecture, than the history of the love of Petrarch. Some have chosen to treat with ridicule the idea of a passion, subsisting through a long and eventful life, without gratification, and nearly without hope; others have thought the difficulty obviated by supposing, in defiance of all apparent evidence, that Laura was not so insensible as the laws of morality required. A few have wished to rescue the character of the poet from the imputation of having loved a married woman, and have dragged certain obscure spinsters out of doubtful epitaphs and registers, to dispute the claim of Laura de Sade. A few more, and but a few, although the race is not extinct, have denied the existence of Laura altogether; either considering her as a mere poetical fancy, or still more boldly resolving her into some allegory, political or religious. But none of these theories, maintained at various times, and with various degrees of ingenuity, almost from the age of Petrarch until the present day, have shaken the received opinion on the four main points of the question; namely, that Laura was no creation of the poet’s brain, but a woman; that she was married; that Hugo de Sade was her husband; and that her virtue was proof against the passion of Petrarch. When all the circumstances of the case, including the peculiarities of sentiment which characterize the time, are fairly taken into consideration, there will appear no such miraculous improbability as has been presumed in the duration of Petrarch’s attachment. That it partook of the vehement character of true passion, is evident from many passages in his epistles and philosophical works, where he may be supposed to speak with less disguise than in his Canzoniere; but a natural vanity, the habit of refining his feelings into intellectual notions, and the then prevalent fashion of poetical constancy to a real object, may have contributed more than he could himself be aware to the durability of the sentiment. It is not to be forgotten, however, that at different periods of his life he had two natural children, a son and a daughter: still he maintained that notwithstanding these irregularities, he never loved any one but Laura. The Sonnets and Canzones, which, separately published, now together form the Canzoniere, soon elevated their author to the highest rank among living poets, and gave him in the eyes of his admirers a place beside the “creator della lingua,” the author of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch, however, whose mind was full of veneration for antiquity, and who was ardently desirous to recover all the monuments of classic literature that still preserved a hazardous existence in convents and other receptacles of the little learning of an ignorant age, for a long time, if not to the end of life, prided himself more on his Latin compositions, than on being the founder of a school of poetry in his native language. At one time he had commenced a Latin history of Rome, from the foundation of the city to the reign of Titus. But he was diverted from this work, by conceiving the idea of an epic poem, entitled ‘Africa,’ founded on the events which marked the close of the second Punic war, of which Scipio was the hero. For a year he laboured on it with enthusiasm; and it was received with admiration: but like most works of imagination composed in languages not rendered familiar to the writer in all their delicacy by vernacular and hourly use, and on subjects not consecrated by any feelings of national and domestic interest, they have long since been forgotten by all but the learned.

On one and the same day, August 23, 1340, he received at Vaucluse a letter from the Roman Senate, inviting him to accept the honour of a public coronation in the Capitol, and one from the Chancellor of the University of Paris, offering the same distinction. It has been said, and there is at least negative evidence in favour of the assertion, that this last invitation was unauthorized by any corporate decision of the university: if so, it probably resulted from the personal enthusiasm of the chancellor, Roberto Bardi, who was a Florentine, and a private friend of the poet. Either from a knowledge of this, or from a natural preference of the Imperial City, Petrarch decided at once in favour of Rome; and embarked for Naples, to demand a preliminary examination from Robert of Anjou, the reigning prince, himself devotedly attached to literature. The King and the Poet conferred on poetical and historical subjects: during three days questions were formally proposed, and triumphantly answered; after which Robert pronounced solemnly that Petrarch was worthy of the honour offered to him, and taking off his own royal robe, entreated the poet to wear it at the ceremony of his coronation. On Easter-day, April 8, 1341, Petrarch ascended the stairs of the Capitol, surrounded by the most illustrious citizens of Rome, and preceded by twelve young men chosen from the highest families, who repeated at intervals various passages of his poetry. After a short oration, he received the crown from the hands of the senator, Orso, Count of Anguillara, and recited a sonnet on those heroes of the ancient city, whose triumphal honours, after a cessation of centuries, he first was come to share, and to renew. Then, amidst the acclamations of the multitude, he was conducted to the church of St. Peter’s, where, taking from his head the laurel, he deposited it with religious care on the altar. After this ceremony he returned by land to Avignon, carrying with him letters patent of the King of Naples and of the senate and people of Rome, conferring on him by their joint authorities the full and free power of reading, discussing, and explaining all ancient books, composing new works (especially poems), and wearing on all occasions, as he might prefer, a crown of laurel, of ivy, or of myrtle. Shortly afterwards he was again at Naples, under very different circumstances. Appointed by Clement VI. to urge the claims of the Holy See to the Regency of that state, during the minority of Joanna, the grand-daughter of Robert of Anjou, he was treated with no less distinction and kindness than on the former visit; but, unsuccessful in his mission, and scandalized by the debauchery and cruelty which prevailed in the dissolute court, he soon quitted Naples and Italy for his beloved Vaucluse. There, however, at no great distance of time, a new excitement awaited him. In 1347, Rienzi, the famous demagogue, who began his career so nobly, and closed it with such circumstances of disgrace, obtained his brief and singular dominion. All the hopes of Italian independence, all the reverence for antiquity which had ever animated the spirit of Petrarch, now strongly impelled him to admire the restorer of those ancient names, which he trusted would realize his visions of ancient freedom and majesty. Even the massacre of the Colonna family, which Petrarch heard at Genoa as he was hastening to join the tribune at Rome, did not destroy these feelings, although it materially weakened them. But the fabric of Rienzi’s power was sapped by his own extravagances in less than a year; and nearly at the same time a more severe affliction fell upon Petrarch even than the disappointment of his hopes for the restoration of Italian liberty.

In April, 1348, Laura expired of the dreadful malady which then ravaged Europe, and which is described by Boccaccio in the introduction to the Decameron. The second half of the Canzoniere is the monument of his glorious sorrow; which is however more calmly, and, to the apprehensions of many, more convincingly expressed, in the pathetic note to his own MS. of Virgil, now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It would be unjust to him not to relate this event in his own words. “Laura, illustrious for her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, was seen by me for the first time in my early manhood, in the year 1327, April 6, at six in the morning, in the church of S. Clara, at Avignon. In the same city, in the same month of April, on the same sixth day, and at the same hour, in 1348, this light was taken from the world, while I was at Verona, alas! ignorant of my unhappy lot. The melancholy news reached me in a letter from my friend Louis: it found me at Parma the same year, May 19, in the morning. That body, so chaste, so fair, was laid in the church of the Minor Friars on the evening of the day of her death. Her soul, I doubt not, is returned, as Seneca says of Scipio Africanus, to heaven, whence it came. To preserve the grievous memory of this loss, I write this with a sort of pleasure mixed with bitterness; and I write by choice upon this book, which often comes before my eyes, that hereafter there may be nothing for me to delight in in this life, and that, my strongest chain being broken, I may be reminded by the frequent sight of these words, and by the just appreciation of a fugitive life, that it is time to go forth from Babylon; which, by the help of God’s grace, will become easy to me by vigorous and bold contemplation of the needless cares, the vain hopes, the unexpected events which have agitated me during the time I have spent on earth.” The authenticity of this note has been contested: to us it bears internal evidence of being genuine, not merely in the unpretending pathos of the conclusion, but in the minuteness of the earlier details. It is the luxury of grief to connect the memory of the dead with our thoughts, and employments, and even abodes at the moment of their death; and the pen of the literary forger is not likely to trace so simple and unpretending a statement.

The jubilee of 1350 led Petrarch again to Rome. When he passed through Arezzo, the principal citizens of the town led him with pride to the house in which he was born; declaring that nothing had been changed there, and that the municipal authorities had enforced this scrupulous respect for the great poet’s birth-place by injunctions to the successive proprietors of the mansion. Not long afterwards, Boccaccio, his friend and his compeer in the great literary triumvirate of Italy, came to him at Padua, to announce in the name of the senate at Florence that he was restored to his rights of citizenship, and to offer him the superintendence of the recently established university. Petrarch did not accept the proposal. Twice in the course of his remaining life his name is found connected with great events. Admitted to the counsels of Gian Visconti, he accepted the mission of reconciling the republic of Genoa, which had yielded to that prince, with the state of Venice, elated by recent victories. But Petrarch was destined to be unsuccessful as a statesman. This embassy had no effect; nor were his subsequent efforts to infuse into the mind of Charles IV. the lessons of magnanimity, when that weak and avaricious emperor entered Italy, more beneficial either to Charles or to his country. Once, however, when employed by Galeazzo Visconti in a subsequent mission to the same prince, he was able to dissuade him from recrossing the Alps: unless we suppose that the distracted state of Germany had more to do with keeping the emperor at home, than the eloquence of the poet, or the skill of the politician. The second plague in 1362 deprived the now aged poet of the few early friends who remained to him, Azo of Correggio, and the two who in his letters are usually denominated Lælius and Socrates, and had, like himself, been intimate with Jacopo Colonna. He was then resident in Venice; where, in 1363, Boccaccio came to visit him in company with Leontius Pilatus of Thessalonica, who had instructed the Florentine novelist in Greek. At a former period Petrarch had commenced the study of that language under a Grecian monk named Barlaam; and though now sixty years of age, he returned to the task with enthusiasm and with perseverance. He was hospitably and honourably received by the republic, to which he presented his valuable collection of manuscripts.

After some more adventures and wanderings the old man fixed his residence at Arquà, a village situated on the Euganean hills, at four leagues distance from Padua. Here he led a life of abstinence and study, reposing from the toilsome vicissitudes to which he had been subjected, but not from his thirst for knowledge and desire of glory. His last years were solaced by his intimacy with Boccaccio, who seemed to supply the place of those numerous and valued early friends whom he had survived, and by the filial attentions of his daughter Francesca. The last important act of his life was his appearance before the Senate of Venice, in behalf of Francesco of Carrara, who had been forced to conclude a humiliating peace with the republic in 1373. It is said that he was so much awed by the majesty of the assembly, that on the first day on which he appeared before it, he was unable to deliver his address. The next day he recovered his spirits, or more probably his strength, and his speech in behalf of Carrara was loudly applauded. He returned to his retirement in a failing state of health, and his complaints were aggravated by imprudence, and disregard of medical advice. July 18, 1374, he was found dead in his library, his head resting on an open book. A stroke of apoplexy had thus suddenly terminated his life. All Padua assisted at his obsequies, and Francesco of Carrara led the funeral pomp. A marble tomb, which still exists, was raised to him before the door of the church of Arquà.

Such was the death and such the life of Francesco Petrarca, than whom few men have exerted more influence over their own times; have contributed more to form and polish the language of their native land; or have given a more decided tone to the literature of succeeding generations. This is not the place to enter into a minute analysis of his merits as a poet. If he did not create the kind of poetry in which he excelled, at least he carried it to perfection: if he could not save his style from being disfigured by feeble imitators, at least he left it in itself a noble work: if he did not avoid the false conceits and strained illustrations, which at the rise of a new literature are almost always found to possess irresistible attractions, he redeemed and even ennobled them by strains of simple passion, imagination, and melody, which will live as long as the language in which they are composed. His Latin writings, on which he wished his reputation to rest, are now much neglected. They are not indeed calculated for general reading; but they are highly valuable as records of the time and of the man. His letters form the most interesting, because the most personal, portion of them. Few men have laid bare their hearts so completely as Petrarch. His vanity, his dependence on the sympathy of others, led him to commit to writing every incident of his life, every turn in the troubled course of his feelings. But he gains rather than loses by this voluntary exposure. His Christian faith and Christian principles of philosophy, however swayed by occasional currents of passion, stand out beautifully amidst the corruptions of that age. It is as impossible to rise from a perusal of Petrarch’s poetry, and even more perhaps of his prose, without a feeling of love for the man, as of admiration for the author.

In early life he was distinguished for beauty, of which he was himself not insensible; for he left, in his ‘Letter to Posterity,’ a description of his own person, which we quote from Ugo Foscolo’s translation. “Without being uncommonly handsome, my person had something agreeable in it in my youth. My complexion was a clear and lively brown; my eyes were animated; my hair had grown grey before twenty-five, and I consoled myself for a defect which I shared in common with many of the great men of antiquity (for Cæsar and Virgil were grey-headed in youth), and I had a venerable air, which I was by no means very proud of.” He was then miserable, Foscolo continues, if a lock of his hair was out of order; he was studious of ornamenting his person with the nicest clothes; and to give a graceful form to his feet, he pinched them in shoes that put his nerves and sinews to the rack. These traits are taken from his own familiar letters.

The life and writings of Petrarch have been repeatedly illustrated at great length. The ‘Petrarcha Redivivus’ of Tomasini; the voluminous ‘Mémoires sur Petrarque’ of the Abbé de Sade, who has taken up the subject as a matter of family history; and the works of Tiraboschi and Baldelli, are among the best authorities for our author’s history. To the English, and indeed to every reader, we must recommend the ‘Essays on Petrarch,’ by Ugo Foscolo; at the end of which there are some exquisite translations by Lady Dacre. The most complete edition of Petrarch’s works is the folio published at Bâsle in 1581. Among the numerous editions of his Italian poems, we may particularize that of Biagioli, 1822, as containing the notes of Alfieri; and that of Marsard, printed at Padua, as distinguished alike for its correctness and beauty of execution.

_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._

BURKE.

_From a Picture after Sir Joshua Reynolds
in the possession of T. H. Burke Esq^r._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

BURKE.

The six and thirty years which have elapsed since the death of Edmund Burke are not sufficient to secure a right and impartial sentence on his character. We are still within the heated temperature of the same political agitations in which he lived and struggled. We are not, perhaps our children will not be, qualified to judge him and his contemporaries, with that calmness with which men weigh the merits of things and persons who have exerted no perceptible influence over their own times. It is fortunate, therefore, that the limits of this brief memoir prescribe rather a succinct statement of unquestioned facts, than a disputable adjudication between opposite opinions.

Edmund Burke, son of Richard Burke, an attorney in extensive practice in Dublin, was born in that city, January 1, 1730. Of his early life little is known with certainty. He appears to have distinguished himself at Trinity College, Dublin, by his acquirements and talents, especially by a decided taste and ability for the discussion of subjects relating to English history and politics. His first literary effort of any importance was made before he quitted that university, in some letters directed against a factious writer called Lucas, at that time the popular idol. These are not preserved. In 1750 he came to London, and was entered a student of the Middle Temple. It is singular that the idle rumour, expressly contradicted by himself, of his having completed his education at St. Omer’s, should be still in some degree accredited by the author of the article ‘Burke,’ in the Biographie Universelle. Whether, in 1752 or 1753, he became a candidate for the chair of Logic at Glasgow, is a more doubtful question: the opinions of Dugald Stewart and Adam Smith, who took some pains to ascertain the truth, were in the negative. It is certain, however, that the extraordinary talents of Burke soon began to attract attention: he wrote in many political and literary miscellanies, and formed an acquaintance with some distinguished characters of the time. Among these should be mentioned Lord Charlemont, Gerard Hamilton, Soame Jenyns, and somewhat later, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Hume. His first avowed work, the ‘Vindication of Natural Society,’ was published in 1756, and excited very general admiration. The imitation of Bolingbroke’s style in this essay was so perfect, that some admirers of the deceased philosopher are said to have overlooked the evident signs of irony, and to have believed it to be a genuine posthumous work. This may appear strange; but it is surely more strange, that forty years afterwards this ‘Vindication’ should have been republished by the French party, with a view of serving democratic interests. Before the close of 1756, appeared the ‘Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,’ which added largely to Burke’s reputation, and procured him the valuable friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Shortly afterwards, the public attention being at that time much directed to the American colonies, was published ‘An Account of the European Settlements in America,’ of which Burke was probably not the sole, but the principal author. It was much read, as well on the Continent as in England; and indeed no inconsiderable portion of it has been incorporated into the celebrated work of the Abbé Raynal. About this time Burke married the daughter of Dr. Nugent, an intelligent physician, who had invited him to his house while suffering under an illness, the result of laborious application. This union was a source of uninterrupted comfort to him through life. “Every care vanishes,” he was in the habit of saying, “when I enter my own home.” A confined income, however, rendered literary exertion still more indispensable to him than before: and in 1759 ‘The Annual Register,’ that most useful work, for many years entirely composed by Burke, or under his immediate superintendence, was undertaken by him in conjunction with Dodsley. At length, in 1765, with the first Rockingham administration, he entered on a more extensive sphere of action: being appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, through the recommendation of his friend Mr. Fitzherbert.

Coming now into Parliament as member for Wendover in Buckinghamshire, Burke became an eminent supporter of the Whig party. The situation of affairs was critical. Mr. Grenville’s stamp act, a fatal departure from the policy on which the colonies had been previously governed, had excited much discontent in America. A strong party, supported by the evident favour of the court and the general feeling of the country, urged the necessity of perseverance in this coercive policy. Lord Chatham and his adherents no less strenuously denied the right of the Imperial Legislature to impose taxes on America without her own consent. The Rockingham Whigs adopted a middle course between these extremes. They repealed the stamp act, declaring at the same time that the right of taxation resided inalienably in Parliament. Their administration was short-lived. Lord Chatham succeeded them in power, at the head of that “dovetailed” cabinet which Burke has so admirably satirised in his ‘Speech on American Taxation.’ His influence was little more than nominal, and in spite of it, schemes for raising a revenue in America were soon revived. From these measures, the public attention was for a short time diverted by the domestic agitation caused by the proceedings against Wilkes, the disputed election in Middlesex, and the mysterious letters of Junius. The shadow of that name was at the time believed by many to rest on Burke: a supposition long since rejected, and supported by scarce any evidence; though his power as a writer, and his known facility in disguising his style, gave some degree of plausibility to the supposition. In his own name, and without any disguise, he came forward to attack the ministry of the Duke of Grafton, in a political treatise, entitled, ‘Thoughts on the Present Discontents.’ This has been termed the Whig Manual, and certainly contains the ablest exposition ever given of the principles held by that party for a long series of years. Shaken by this and other attacks, the Duke retired, and left the state under the guidance of a minister, whose merits have been overshadowed by the disastrous circumstances in which he was involved. From this time commenced that long and brilliant opposition, which, from a very low condition of numbers and influence, gradually worked its way through the most momentous parliamentary struggles; and by a continued display of powers the most accomplished, and union the most effective, gained an ultimate victory, first over popular prepossessions, and then over royal obstinacy. The court party were so inferior in eloquence and genius, that their arguments are little remembered, while the speeches of the Whigs are in every body’s hands. They felt the importance of the contest deeply, or they would not have been animated to their extraordinary exertions. But the wisest of them could not foresee the prodigious extent of those consequences, which, within the duration of their own lives, resulted from their endeavours. It was much for them to look forward to the independence of America. What would it have been to contemplate the spread of popular principles in Europe, and that mighty revolution which has changed the balance of society? No member of the opposition contributed so largely as Burke to their final triumph. During the latter years of the war, indeed, his fame as a debater was eclipsed by the rising genius of Charles Fox, to whom he willingly yielded the office of leader of the Whig party. But the talents of Fox had been trained and nourished by the wisdom of Burke; and in the speeches published at different periods by the latter, on American taxation [1774], and on conciliation with America [1775], and his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol [1777], (written on the occasion of a temporary secession of the Rockingham party from Parliament,) the friends of freedom found a magazine of invaluable weapons. In 1774 Burke was elected member of Parliament for Bristol; but six years afterwards he was unable to procure his reelection for that borough, the people being displeased with his recent votes in favour of Irish trade and of the Roman Catholics. His popularity was in a great measure restored by the famous Bill of Economical Reform, brought forward by him in 1782, when paymaster of the forces under the second Rockingham ministry, after the overthrow of Lord North. The death of the Marquis of Rockingham produced a schism among the Whigs; Lord Shelburne was appointed his successor, and the Rockingham division resigned their places. They soon returned to them, by means of that strange junction of force with Lord North, emphatically termed _The Coalition_, which raised a general cry of indignation throughout the country. Burke always vindicated this step, both at the time, and when the state of things which led to it had long passed away; but it is generally supposed that he did not counsel it, and was only induced to give in his adhesion by the urgent entreaties of his political friends.

The celebrated East-India Bill, of which Burke is said to have been partly the author, and upon which he pronounced one of his most magnificent orations, was fatal to the coalition. William Pitt, called at the age of twenty-four to occupy the first place in the counsels of his sovereign, fought an arduous but finally victorious fight against the Whig majority in the Commons. A dissolution followed; the new House supported the new Ministers; and a second long period of Whig opposition began, during which Fox was the acknowledged leader of the party, and was warmly supported in that capacity by Burke. The most important event of this second great division of Burke’s parliamentary life is undoubtedly the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Throughout the long debates on the accusations brought against the Governor of India, and afterwards throughout the trial itself, which began in 1788 and was not concluded until 1795, Burke was indefatigable. Never, perhaps, has greater oratorical genius been displayed than by that combination of great men who were appointed managers of the impeachment. Yet all their efforts failed to establish their case on a secure foundation. History still hesitates to decide with confidence on the guilt or innocence of Hastings. It is agreed, however, that the violence of Burke’s proceedings on this trial was often unworthy of the situation he held and the cause he advocated. When with harsh tones and a look more expressive of personal than political hatred he bade Mr. Hastings kneel before the court, it is said that Fox whispered to his friends, “In that moment I would rather have been Hastings than Burke.”

At the latter end of 1788 arose the regency question, on which Burke, with all his party, maintained the opinion that any apparently irreparable incapacity in the sovereign caused a demise of the crown, because, the prerogatives of royalty being given for public benefit, it would be highly dangerous to suspend them for an indefinite period. Burke, however, did some injury to his party by the intemperate and imprudent language he adopted on this occasion, speaking of the King’s situation in the tone of triumph rather than pity, and even using the expression “God has hurled him from his throne.” These constitutional questions, however important, were soon forgotten in a new absorbing interest, which began to occupy the minds of all men. The French Revolution had taken place. That astonishing event was at first hailed with general sympathy and admiration in this country. The supporters of Pitt either joined in the vehement delight of the Fox party, or took no pains to restrain it. Here and there some may have murmured dislike: but in general it was thought unworthy of Englishmen not to rejoice in the acquisition of liberty by a neighbouring people; and not a few looked to this great change as the harbinger of political regeneration to Europe and the world. In this general acclamation one voice was wanting. Burke, from the very first meeting of the States General, did not conceal his aversion to their proceedings and his apprehension of the results. Gradually, as the excesses of popular violence in Paris became more frequent, an Anti-Gallican party began to gather round him. On the 9th of February, 1790, during a debate on the army estimates, Burke took advantage of some expressions which Fox let fall in praise of the French Revolution to open an attack against it, denying that there was any similarity between our revolution of 1688 and the “strange thing” called by the same name in France. Fox in his reply spoke in memorable terms of his obligations to his friend, declaring that all he had ever learnt from other sources was little in comparison with what he had gained from him. Sheridan attacked the speech just made by Burke in no measured terms, describing it as perfectly irreconcilable with the principles hitherto professed by that gentleman. On this, Burke again rose, and in a few words declared that Sheridan and himself were thenceforth “separated in politics.” Before the end of this year came out the celebrated ‘Reflections,’ which at once showed how irreparable was the schism between the author and his former associates. It roused an immediate war of opinion, which gave birth to a war of force throughout Europe. Innumerable pamphlets soon followed upon its publication, some denouncing the work as a specious apology for despotism, others advocating the opinions contained in it with a vehemence which the authors had not dared to show, till they were encouraged by the support of so eloquent and so distinguished a partizan. The most remarkable attempts of the former description were the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Thomas Paine, which soon became the manual of the democratic party; and the ‘Vindiciæ Gallicæ,’ by Mr., afterwards Sir James Mackintosh, the most illustrious, if not the only successor of Burke himself in his peculiar line of philosophical politics. Fox was loud in condemning the book, and although no formal breach of friendship had hitherto taken place, such an event was obviously to be expected. On the 6th May, 1791, during a discussion on a plan for settling the constitution of Canada, this separation actually occurred, with a solemnity worthy of the men and the event. From that hour, during the six remaining years of his life, one idea swayed with exclusive dominion the mind of Burke. Utterly separated from Fox’s party, aloof from the ministry, retired, after a few sessions, from Parliament, he continued to wage unceasing war by speech and writing against the principles and practice of Jacobinism. Soon he was pointed out as a prophet, and the verification of his predictions in characters of blood was much more powerful, because much more palpable, than the vague anticipations of future advantage put forward by his opponents. In 1794, after his retirement from Parliament, he received the grant of a considerable pension for himself and his wife. The democratic party did not scruple to stigmatize his motives, and in answer to an accusation of this sort was written the ‘Letter to a Noble Lord,’ perhaps the most astonishing specimen of his peculiar capacities of style. In this year the death of his son overwhelmed him with affliction. Still he continued his exertions. His views of the war differed widely from those of the ministry; he ceased not to urge that it was a war not against France but Jacobinism, and that it would be a degradation to Britain to treat with any of the Regicides. On this subject are written the two ‘Letters on a Regicide Peace,’ published in 1796, and the others published since his death. On the 8th of July, 1797, this event took place, in the 68th year of his age, at his own house at Beaconsfield, whither, after seeking medical aid elsewhere in vain, he had returned to die.

The mind of this great man may, perhaps, be considered as a fair representative of the general characteristics of English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of business, but upon this, and secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, because it was painful to him to see any thing, beyond the limits of the national character; with that, and with the constitution which he considered its appropriate expression, all his sympathies were bound up. But he loved them with an intelligent and discriminating love, making it his pains to comprehend thoroughly what it was his delight to serve diligently. His political opinions, springing out of these dispositions, were early fixed in favour of the Whig system of governing by great party connexions. These opinions, however, were swayed in their application by strong impulses of personal feeling. A temper impatient of control, an imagination prone to magnify those classes of facts which impressed him with alarm or hope, a command of language almost unlimited, and a copiousness of imagery misleading nearly as much as it illustrated or enforced; these were qualities which laid him open to many serious accusations. But his admirers have started a philosophic doubt, whether less of passion and prejudice would have been compatible with the peculiar station he was destined to occupy. In an age of revolution, it might be plausibly maintained, his genius was the counteracting force: alone he stood against the impulses communicated to European society by the philosophers of France; their enthusiasm could only be met by enthusiasm; their influence on the imaginations and hearts of men was capable of overbearing either a blind prejudice or a dispassionate logic. But Burke was an orator in all his thoughts, and a sage in all his eloquence; he held the principles of Conservation with the zeal of a Leveller, and tempered lofty ideas of Improvement with the scrupulousness of official routine. As a debater in the House of Commons he was inferior to some otherwise inferior men. Pitt and Fox will be neglected while the speeches of Burke shall still be read. It has been said of Fox by a philosophical panegyrist that he was the most Demosthenean speaker since Demosthenes. Perhaps, of all great orators Burke might be called the least Demosthenean. Probably a hearer of the great Athenian would have felt as extemporaneous and intuitive the slowly-wrought perfections of rhetorical art, while the listeners to Burke may have often set down to elaborate preparation what was really the inspiration of the moment. His conversation, however, seems to have been uniformly delightful. It is a true maxim in one sense, although in another it would often need reversal, that great men are always greater than their works. Much as we possess of Edmund Burke, very much is lost to us of that which formed the admiration of his contemporaries. “The mind of that man,” said Dr. Johnson, “is a perennial stream: no one grudges Burke the first place.” He was acquainted with most subjects of literature, and possessed some knowledge of science. The philosophy of mind owes him one contribution of no inconsiderable value: but the indirect results of his metaphysical studies as seen in the tenor of his practical philosophy are much more extensive. For in all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete more than with abstractions: he studied men rather than man. In private life the character of Burke was unsullied even by reproach. A good father, a good husband, a good friend, he was sincerely attached to the Protestant religion of the English church, “not from indifference,” as he said himself of the nation at large, “but from zeal; not because he thought there was less religion in it, but because he knew there was more.” But his attachment was without bigotry; the principles of toleration ever found in him a powerful advocate; and he was ever zealous to remove imperfections, and correct abuses, in the establishment, as the best means of securing its permanent existence.

The works of Burke are collected in sixteen volumes octavo. His speeches are separately published in four volumes octavo. A small volume appeared in 1827, containing the correspondence, hitherto unpublished, between this great statesman and his friend Dr. Laurence. His life has been written soon after his death by Mr. Bisset; and more recently by Mr. Prior. Several other biographical accounts were published about the time of his death, both in the periodical publications and as independent works: we are not aware that any of these are entitled to particular notice.

_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._

HENRY IV.

_From the original Picture by Porbus
in the Collection of the Musée Royal, Paris._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

HENRY IV.

Henry IV., the most celebrated, the most beloved, and perhaps, in spite of his many faults, the best of the French monarchs, was born at Pau, the capital of Béarn, in 1553. His parents were Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, and, in right of his wife, titular King of Navarre, and Jeanne d’Albret, the heiress of that kingdom. On the paternal side he traced his descent to Robert of Clermont, fifth son of Louis IX., and thus, on the failure of the elder branches, became heir to the crown of France. Educated by a Protestant mother in the Protestant faith, he was for many years the rallying point and leader of the Huguenots. In boyhood the Prince of Béarn displayed sense and spirit above his years. Early inured to war, he was present and exhibited strong proofs of military talent at the battle of Jarnac, and that of Moncontour, both fought in 1569. In the same year he was declared chief of the Protestant League. The treaty of St. Germain, concluded in 1570, guaranteed to the Huguenots the civil rights for which they had been striving: and, in appearance, to cement the union of the two parties, a marriage was proposed between Henry, who, by the death of his mother, had just succeeded to the throne of Navarre, and Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX. This match brought Condé, Coligni, and all the leaders of their party, to Paris. The ceremony took place August 17, 1572. On the twenty-second, when the rejoicings were not yet ended, Coligni was fired at in the street, and wounded. Charles visited him, feigned deep sorrow, and promised to punish the assassin. On the night between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth, by express order of the Court, that atrocious scene of murder began, which history has devoted to execration, under the name of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. For three years afterwards Henry, who to save his life had conformed to the established religion, was kept as a kind of state prisoner. He escaped in 1576, and put himself at the head of the Huguenot party. In the war which ensued, with the sagacity and fiery courage of the high-born general, he showed the indifference to hardships of the meanest soldier. Content with the worst fare and meanest lodging, in future times the magnificent monarch of France could recollect when his wardrobe could not furnish him with a change of linen. He shared all fortunes with his followers, and was rewarded by their unbounded devotion.