LITERARY PORTRAITS. Part Fourth. Critics and Miscellaneous Writers. EDMUND BURKE. ALL hail to Edmund Burke, the greatest | tary rivals. It was not simply that he and least appreciated man of the eight- was above them as one bough in a tree is eenth century, even as Milton had been above another, but above them as the sun the greatest and least appreciated man of is above the top of the tree. He was "not the century before! Each century, in of their order." He had philosophic infact, bears its peculiarly great man, and tellect, while they had only arithmetic. as certainly either neglects or abuses him. He had genius, while they had not even Nor do after ages always repair the de- fancy. He had heart, while they had ficiency. For instance, between the writ-only passions. He had widest and most ing of the first and the second sentences comprehensive views; their minds had of this paper, we have happened to take little real power of generalisation. He up a London periodical, which has newly come in, and have found Burke first put at the feet of Fox, and, secondly, accused of being actuated in all his political conduct by two objects-those of places and pensions for himself and his family; so that our estimate of him, although late, may turn out, on the whole, a word in season."' It is, at all events, refreshing for us to look back from the days of a Derby and a Biographer Russell, to those of the great and eloquent Burke, and to Contrast the works and speeches of the turn from the ravings of the "Latter-Day men! Has a sentence of Pitt's ever been Pamphlets," to the noble rage and mag-quoted as a maxim? Does one passage of nificent philippics of a "Regicide Peace." Fox appear in even our common books of First of all, in this paper, we feel our- elocutionary extracts? Are Sheridan's had religion; most of them were infidels of that lowest order, who imagine that Christianity is a monster, bred between priestcraft and political expediency. He loved literature with his inmost soul; they (Fox on this point must be excepted) knew little about it, and cared less. In a word, they were men of their time; he belonged to all ages, and his mind was as catholic as it was clear and vast. selves constrained to proclaim what, even flights remembered, except for their ambiyet, is not fully understood-Burke's un- tious and adventurous badness? Unless utterable superiority to all his parliamen- | one or two brilliant climaxes of Grattan and VOL. II.-A |