Burke's mind. There was a catholicity about his gaze. He knew how the whole world lived. . . . Wordsworth has been called the High Priest of Nature. Burke may be called the High Priest of Order-a lover of settled ways, of justice, peace, and security. His writings are a storehouse of wisdom, not the cheap shrewdness of the mere man of the world, but the noble animating wisdom of one who has the poet's heart as well as the statesman's brain." The work in which these qualities of Burke can be most profitably and enjoyably studied by the general reader is of course his Reflections on the French Revolution, that great plea for order and continuity in human government, and for justice and sympathy between nations and citizens. The following vision of Marie Antoinette illustrates the splendours of prose to which Burke rose with ease. It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. Many other members of what may be called the Johnson Circle-Samuel Richardson, Sheridan, Gibbon, and others—are dealt with in other and more appropriate chapters. It should be remembered Johnson linked himself to the history of English fiction not only by his admiration of Richardson, who, he said, "enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue," but by his later fatherly encouragement of Fanny Burney (afterwards Madame d'Arblay), the first really notable English woman novelist. Her Evelina, published in 1778, was an instant success. Dr. Johnson declared that passages in it were worthy of Richardson; and Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Sheridan swelled the applause. Fanny Burney never quite repeated this success, though her novel, Cecilia (1782), can be read to-day with delight. Professor Saintsbury thus characterises her four novels: "Evelina, delectable; Cecilia, admirable; Camilla, estimable; The Wanderer, impossible." Her Diary and Letters are wonderfully vivacious records of the Court of George III, and of the literary society which she enjoyed. They form a great contribution to our knowledge of her period, which extended to the first three years of the Victorian age. DR. JOHNSON: BIBLIOGRAPHY Boswell's Life of Johnson, G. Birkbeck Hills, monumental edition (6 vols.). There are, of course, numerous cheap editions. Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 2 vols., in the World's Classics. OLIVER GOLDSMITH: The Vicar of Wakefield, in Everyman's Library. Poems and Plays, 1 vol., in Everyman's Library. William Black's Goldsmith. EDMUND BURKE: Reflections on the French Revolution, in Everyman's Library. Viscount Morley's Burke. FANNY BURNEY: Evelina in Everyman's Library. |