Burkes Speech on Conciliation with America | Page 8

. 1661-1731
Swift. . . . . 1667-1745 Pope . . . . . 1688-1744 Richardson . . 1689-1761

A GROUP OF WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH BURKE
Johnson . . . . 1709-1784 Goldsmith . . . 1728-1774 Fielding. . . .

1707-1754 Sterne. . . . . 1713-1768 Smollett. . . . 1721-1771 Gray. . . . . .
1716-1771 Boswell . . . . 1740-1795

BURKE IN LITERATURE
It has become almost trite to speak of the breadth of Burke's sympathies.
We should examine the statement, however, and understand its
significance and see its justice. While he must always be regarded first
as a statesman of one of the highest types, he had other interests than
those directly suggested by his office, and in one of these, at least, he
affords an interesting and profitable study.
To the student of literature Burke's name must always suggest that of
Johnson and Goldsmith. It was eight years after Burke's first
appearance as an author, that the famous Literary Club was formed. At
first it was the intention to limit the club to a membership of nine, and
for a time this was adhered to. The original members were Johnson,
Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and Hawkins. Garrick, Pox, and Boswell
came in later. Macaulay declares that the influence of the club was so
great that its verdict made and unmade reputations; but the thing most
interesting to us does not lie in the consideration of such literary
dictatorship. To Boswell we owe a biography of Johnson which has
immortalized its subject, and shed lustre upon all associated with him.
The literary history of the last third of the eighteenth century, with
Johnson as a central figure, is told nowhere else with such accuracy, or
with better effect.
Although a Tory, Johnson was a great one, and his lasting friendship
for Burke is an enduring evidence of his generosity and
great-mindedness. For twenty years, and longer, they were eminent
men in opposing parties, yet their mutual respect and admiration
continued to the last. To Burke, Johnson was a writer of "eminent
literary merit" and entitled to a pension "solely on that account." To
Johnson, Burke was the greatest man of his age, wrong politically, to
be sure, yet the only one "whose common conversation corresponded to
the general fame which he had in the world"--the only one "who was
ready, whatever subject was chosen, to meet you on your own ground."
Here and there in the Life are allusions to Burke, and admirable
estimates of his many-sided character.
Coming directly to an estimate of Burke from the purely literary point

of view, it must be borne in mind that the greater part of his writings
was prepared for an audience. Like Macaulay, his prevailing style
suggests the speaker, and his methods throughout are suited to
declamation and oratory. He lacks the ease and delicacy that we are
accustomed to look for in the best prose writers, and occasionally one
feels the justice of Johnson's stricture, that "he sometimes talked partly
from ostentation", or of Hazlitt's criticism that he seemed to be
"perpetually calling the speaker out to dance a minuet with him before
he begins."
There may be passages here and there that warrant such censure. Burke
is certainly ornate, and at times he is extremely self-conscious, but the
dominant quality of his style, and the one which forever contradicts the
idea of mere showiness, is passion. In his method of approaching a
subject, he may be, and perhaps is, rather tedious, but when once he has
come to the matter really in hand, he is no longer the rhetorician,
dealing in fine phrases, but the great seer, clothing his thoughts in
words suitable and becoming. The most magnificent passages in his
writings--the Conciliation is rich in them--owe their charm and
effectiveness to this emotional capacity. They were evidently written in
moments of absolute abandonment to feeling--in moments when he
was absorbed in the contemplation of some great truth, made luminous
by his own unrivalled powers.
Closely allied to this intensity of passion, is a splendid imaginative
quality. Few writers of English prose have such command of figurative
expression. It must be said, however, that Burke was not entirely free
from the faults which generally accompany an excessive use of figures.
Like other great masters of a decorative style, he frequently becomes
pompous and grandiloquent. His thought, too, is obscured, where we
would expect great clearness of statement, accompanied by a dignified
simplicity; and occasionally we feel that he forgets his subject in an
anxious effort to make an impression. Though there are passages in his
writings that justify such observations, they are few in number, when
compared with those which are really masterpieces of their kind.
Some great crisis, or threatening state of