Part 14 (2/2)

EDINBURGH, Sept. 20, 1887.--Edmund Burke was the theme of a lecture delivered last night before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society by Mr. Augustine Birrell. ”n.o.body is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke,” said Mr. Birrell, and he backed up this contention with a wealth of wit and argument which delighted and convinced his audience.

The following is a summary of his lecture: ”To give a full account of Burke's public life is no part of my plan. I propose merely to sketch his early career, to explain why he never obtained a seat in the cabinet, and to essay an a.n.a.lysis of the essential elements of his greatness. Born in 1729 in Dublin, he grew up with a brother who speculated and a sister of a type who never did any man any serious harm; acquired at school a brogue which death alone could silence; at Trinity College, Dublin, became an omnivorous reader; came in 1750 to London to study law, armed with a cultivated curiosity and no desperate determination to make his fortune; immediately, like the sensible Irishman he was, fell in love with Peg Woffington; for six years rambled everywhere his purse permitted, read everything he could lay his hands on, and talked everlastingly; in 1756 published an 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' and married Miss Jane Mary Nugent; in 1758 dared at David Garrick's dinner table to contradict Dr. Johnson; in 1765 became a member of Parliament; and for the next sixteen years was the life and soul of the Whig party. When that party, in 1782, finally came into power, Burke's only reward, however, was a minor office, a fact which, in view of his great merits, has amazed posterity.

The explanation is that his contemporaries probably knew him, not as a commanding genius, but as an Irishman who was always in debt, whose relatives were rather disreputable, whose judgment was often wrong, and whose temper was violent. His significance for us grows from the fact that he applied the imagination of a poet of the first order to the business of life. He saw organized society steadily and saw it whole. Perceiving that only a thin crust of conventionality protects organized society from the volcanic heats of anarchy, he was afraid of reformers.

He could not agree to dispense with the protection afforded by the huge mountains of prejudice and the ancient rivers of custom. He was the High Priest of Order. He loved justice and hated iniquity. The world needs his wisdom to-day.”

Mr. Birrell's lecture was full of good phrases. For instance:

1. We have the spectacle of Burke in his old age, like another Laoc.o.o.n, writhing and wrestling with the French Revolution.

2. Lubricating religious differences with the sweet oil of the domestic affections.

3. Quaint old landladies wonder maternally why he never gets drunk, and generally mistake him for an author until he pays his bill.

4. I love him for letting me warm my hands at it (his wrath at Gerard Hamilton) after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years.

5. His letters to Arthur Young on the subject of carrots still tremble with emotion.

6. This is magnificent, but it is not farming.

V. Queries

1. What part of the task of reporting a speech is easy? Why?

2. Wherein lies its difficulty?

3. What are the three essentials of a good report?

4. What is the commonest fault in reporting speeches?

5. What arrangement of material is suggested?

6. How many main ideas should a speech contain?

7. Name and describe the six parts of a speech.

8. Are any of them ever omitted? When, how, and by whom?

9. Discuss the value of argument in a lecture.

10. Who was Demosthenes?

11. When did the battle of Lexington occur?

12. Discuss the etymology of ”Parliament.”

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