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marked its style; thus seeking to render the volume available both for historical and literary purposes. I hope I will not be found to have missed the object in view.

Feeling that it would enhance the attractions of the volume, I have introduced some select passages from Burke's pamphlets. The immortal picture of the Queen of France, coloured with a noble chivalry, will be found in the following pages; as also Burke's eloquent recognition of the virtues and the learning of the French Catholic Clergy, a class of men who have been doubly wronged. The merciless rabble of 1792 took life. Modern liberalism, scarcely more humane, finds it fashionable to stab their memory.

I have also introduced extracts from Burke's famous "Letter to a Noble Lord," in which (with the years of a Priam on him, but not with a Priam's weakness), he flings no imbeile telum at the Duke of Bedford and others, who vented their abuse on (to use his own pa thetic language) a desolate old man.

In the introductory memoir, I have endeavoured to place before the reader a sketch of the life of our great orator. In this portion of my task I have had the assistance of the works of Bissett, Prior, Croly, and others. Guided by these authorities, and from historical works, (for Burke's life was history), I have traced the eventful career of EDMUND BURKE. I have gladly joined in praise when just, and though I have not shrunk from acceding to the views of those who dissented from Burke, where I have thought such dissent correct, I have endeavoured to vindicate the motives which through life actuated our distinguished countryman.

With these remarks, I leave the volume to the indulgence of the reader.

DUBLIN, 5, ECCLES STREET,

DECEMBER, 1853.

JAMES BURKE.

MEMOIR

OF THE

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

EDMUND BURKE, one of the foremost, (perhaps the foremost) amongst the distinguished orators, statesmen and writers of a century remark. able for intellectual greatness, was born on Arran Quay, in the City of Dublin, on the 1st January, 1730. His father was an attorney in the enjoyment of considerable practice. His mother was a member of the family of the Nagles of Castletown-Roche, in the county of Cork. Edmund was the second son, and it has therefore been often said that he inherited little from his father. Prior, however, states in his Life of Burke, that the orator received at different times from his family nearly £20,000. There is indeed no other mode of accounting for the purchase of Beaconsfield, which cost Burke £23,000. In early years Burke was delicate, and being unable to take active exercise, read much, while reclining on a sofa. It was the recollection of this circumstance which caused his brother Richard to remark one night in the House of Commons, at the close of one of Edmund's great orations: "I have been wondering how Ned contrived to monopolise all the talent of the family; but I remember that when we were at play he was always at work." Burke received the earliest rudiments of education from his mother, who is said to have possessed no ordinary intellectual endowments. A village schoolmaster named O'Halloran, who lived to an advanced age, used often to boast that he had been

the first who put a Latin grammar into the hands of Edmund Burke. This was at Castletown-Roche, where Burke spent several years of his boyhood.

At the age of twelve Burke was placed at Ballytore School, in the county of Kildare, an academy kept by a Quaker named Abraham Shakleton, a native of Yorkshire, between whom and Burke there continued through life a constant correspondence and an undiminished friendship.

Burke distinguished himself at school by a close attention to the study of the ancient and modern standard writers, and carried with him to Trinity College, which he "entered" in 1744, a stock of learning unusually large for a boy of fourteen years of age. His university career was not, however, brilliant, for the bent of his mind tended more to that discursive reading which familiarizes the mind with a large number of authors than to the minute details from which college distinctions so often spring. Still his was not an unhonoured 66 course," for we find that he obtained a scholarship in 1746. In this year he wrote a translation in verse of the second Georgic of Virgil, and some other poetical pieces. While in college Burke frequently spoke at the debating society which was connected with the university, and which gained fame as the Historical Society in which so much of the genius of Ireland was for a long period fostered. As the tendency of Burke's mind led him much into historical research and political reasoning, he, as might have been expected, won distinction in this arena, the first in which the youthful ambition of those, who, during the last century, looked forward to a public career, usually sought for laurels.

In 1750 Burke proceeded to London to enter his name at the Temple as a student for the Bar; but he did not become a member of the profession.

Though his elder brother had died, yet as there were other children, Edmund's allowance was not at this time very large, and he, partly for this reason, and partly from taste, became a frequent contributor to the periodical publications of the time. He worked with

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