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EDMUND BURKE.

by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale-fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island,

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is much more in favour of prudent management than that of force, considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with

us.

Speech on Conciliation with America,
March 22, 1775.

ON GOVERNMENT.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of indi

which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know, that, whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most peril-viduals should be subjected, but that even ous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people,-a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things,-when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection,-when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me,-my rigour relents, I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object,-it is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of knowledge, my opinion

in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions be brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government bec mes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In

bounds and barriers of Nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community,

that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of meta--all the Commons of England resenting, physics.

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate, but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you [the House of Lords].

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material

as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the crown under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir-apparent of the crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject,-offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here, those who have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors, and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits,-by great military services which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun. We have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their sovereign and the good opinion of their fellowsubjects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were the other day upon a level with them now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided.

My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God

THOMAS WARTON.

is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity,-a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression,-knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself "the servant of all."

My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence, that ordered by the Commons, I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanours.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose Parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has

violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. Speech in Opening: Fourth Day.

THOMAS WARTON,

a brother of Joseph Warton, supra, born 1728, Professor of Poetry, at Oxford, 17571767, instituted to the living of Kiddington, 1771, and presented to the donative of Hill Farrance. 1782, became Camden Professor of Ancient History and Poet Laureate, both in 1785, and retained these posts until his death, 1790. Among his publications are Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, Lond., 1754, 4to; Inscriptionum Romanorum Metricarum Delectus, accedunt

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Notulæ, 1758, 4to; Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst, M.D., Lond., 1761, 8vo; Anthologiæ Græcæ, Oxon., 1766, 8vo; Theocritii Syracusii quæ supersunt, etc., Oxon., 1770, 2 vols. 4to; Life of Sir Thomas Pope, Lond., 1772, 8vo; The History of English Poetry, Lond., 1774-78-81, 3 vols. 4to; and Portion I. of vol. iv., pp. 88; Poems, Lond., 1777, 8vo, and later; Specimen of a History of Oxfordshire, 1782, 4to: privately printed, 2d edit., Lond., 1783, 4to, 3d edit., Lond., 1815, 4to, 1. p. 4to. To the ordinary reader Warton is only now known by his History of English Poetry.

"He loved poetry well,-and he wrote its history well; that book being a mine."-PROFESSOP. WILSON: Blackw. Mag, xxx. 483.

"We have nothing historical as to our own poetry but the prolix volumes of Warton. They have obtained, in my opinion, full as much credit as they deserve without depreciating a book in which so much may be found, and which has been so great a favourite with the literary part of the public, it may be observed that its errors as to fact, especially in names and dates, are extraordinarily frequent, and that the criticism, in points of taste, is not of a very superior kind."-HALLAM: Lit. Hist. of Europe, Pref. to 1st edit., 1837-39.

POETRY OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.

The age of Queen Elizabeth is commonly called the golden age of English poetry. It certainly may not improperly be styled the most poetical age of these annals.

Among the great features which strike us in the poetry of this period, are the predominancy of fable, of fiction, and fancy, and a predilection for interesting adventures and pathetic events.

I will endeavour to assign and explain the cause of this characteristic distinction, which may chiefly be referred to the following principals, sometimes blended and sometimes operating singly: the revival and vernacular versions of the classics, the importation and translation of Italian novels, the visionary reveries or refinements of false philosophy, a degree of superstition sufficient for the purpose of poetry, the adoption of the machineries of romance, and the frequency and the improvements of allegoric exhibition in the popular spectacles.

When the corruptions and impostures of popery were abolished, the fashion of cultivating the Greek and Roman learning became universal: and the literary character was no longer appropriated to scholars by profession, but assumed by the nobility and gentry. The ecclesiastics had found it their interest to keep the languages of antiquity to themselves, and men were eager to know what had been so long injuriously concealed. Truth propagates truth, and the mantle of mystery was removed not only

from religion but from literature. The laity, who had now been taught to assert their natural privileges, became impatient of the old monopoly of knowledge, and demanded admittance to the usurpations of the clergy. The general curiosity for new discoveries, heightened either by just or imaginary idea of the treasures contained in the Greek and Roman writers, excited all persons of leisure and fortune to study the classics. The pedantry of the present age was the politeness of the last. An accurate comprehension of the phraseology and peculiarities of the ancient poets, historians, and orators, which yet seldom went further than a kind of technical erudition, was an indispensable and almost the principal object in the circle of a gentleman's education. Every young lady of fashion was carefully instituted in classical letters; and the daughter of a duchess was taught, not only to distil strong waters, but to construe Greek. Among the learned females of high distinction, Queen Elizabeth herself was the most conspicuous. Roger Ascham, her preceptor, speaks with rapture of her astonishing progress in the Greek nouns; and declares with no small degree of triumph, that, during a long residence at Windsor Castle, she was accustomed to read more Greek in a day than "some prebendary of that church did Latin in one week ;" and although a princess looking out words in a lexicon, and writing down hard phrases from Plutarch's Lives, may be thought at present a more incompatible and extraordinary character, than a canon of Windsor understanding no Greek and but little Latin, yet Elizabeth's passion for these acquisitions was then natural, and resulted from the genius and habitudes of her age.

The books of antiquity being thus familiarized to the great, everything was tinetured with ancient history and mythology. The heathen gods, although discountenanced by the Calvinists, on a suspicion of their tendency to cherish and revive a spirit of idolatry, came into general vogue. When the queen paraded through a country town, almost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility, at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privychamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionery; and the splendid icing of an immense historic plumcake was embossed with a delicious bassorelievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids; the pages of the fam

ily were converted into wood-nymphs who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gambolled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs.

I speak it without designing to insinuate any unfavourable suspicions, but it seems difficult to say why Elizabeth's virginity should have been made the theme of perpetual and excessive panegyric: nor does it immediately appear that there is less merit or glory in a married than a maiden queen. Yet, the next morning, after sleeping in a room hung with a tapestry of the voyage of Eneas, when her Majesty hunted in the park, she was met by Diana, who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon.. The truth is, she was so profusely flattered for this virtue because it was esteemed the characteristical ornament of the heroines, as fantastic honour was the chief pride of the champions, of the old barbarous romance. It was in conformity to the sentiments of chivalry, which still continued in vogue, that she was celebrated for chastity: the compliment, however, was paid in a classical allusion.

Queens must be ridiculous when they would appear as women. The softer attrac tions of sex vanish on the throne. Elizabeth sought all occasions of being extolled for her beauty, of which, indeed, in the prime of her youth, she possessed but a small share, whatever might have been her pretensions to absolute virginity. Notwith standing her exaggerated habits of dignity and ceremony, and a certain affectation of imperial severity, she did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty to be an idle and unpardonable levity, totally inconsistent with her high station and character. As she conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what consequence was the complexion of the mistress of the world? Not less vain of her person than her politics, this stately coquette, the guardian of the Protestant faith, the terror of the sea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the scourge of Spain, was infinitely mortified if an ambassador, at the first audience, did not tell her she was the finest woman in Europe. No negotiation succeeded unless she was addressed as a goddess. Encomiastic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the supposition of youth and beauty, were surely superfluous, unsuitable, and unworthy; and were of fered and received with an equal impropriety. Yet when she rode through the streets of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and alderman. advancing from a

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group of gods who had left Olympus to instance; and the pagan fictions are there grace the procession, gave her a golden complicated with the barbarisms of the arrow, the most effective weapon of his Catholic worship, and the doctrines of well-furnished quiver, which under the in- scholastic theology. Classical learning was fluence of such irresistible charms was sure not then so widely spread either by study to wound the most obdurate heart. 66 A or translation as to bring these learned gift," says honest Holinshed, "which her spectacles into fashion, to frame them with majesty, now verging to her fiftieth year, sufficient skill, and to present them with received very thankfully." In one of the propriety. fulsome interludes at court, where she was present, the singing-boys of her chapel presented the story of the three rival goddesses on Mount Ida, to which her Majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth; and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus which was due to the queen alone.

Another capital source of the poetry peculiar to this period consisted in the numerous translations of Italian tales into English. These narratives, not dealing altogether in romantic inventions, but in real life and manners, and in artful arrangements of fictitious yet probable events, afforded a new gratification to a people This inundation of classical pedantry soon which yet retained their ancient relish for infected our poetry. Our writers, already tale-telling, and became the fashionable trained in the school of fancy, were sud- amusement of all who professed to read denly dazzled with these novel imagina- for pleasure. This gave rise to innumertions, and the divinities and heroes of pagan able plays and poems which would not antiquity decorated every composition. The otherwise have existed; and turned the perpetual allusions to ancient fable were thoughts of our writers to new inventions often introduced without the least regard of the same kind. Before these books beto propriety. Shakspere's Mrs. Page, who came common, affecting situations, the comis not intended in any degree to be a learned bination of incident, and the pathos of catasor an affected lady, laughing at the cum- trophe, were almost unknown. Distress, bersome courtship of her corpulent lover especially that arising from the conflicts of Falstaff, says, "I had rather be a giantess the tender passion, had not yet been shown and lie under Mount Pelion." This famil-in its most interesting forms. It was hence iarity with the pagan story was not, however, so much owing to the prevailing study of the original authors, as to the numerous English versions of them which were consequently made. The translation of the classics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celerity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffusing them among the people. No sooner were they delivered from the pale of the scholastic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's Metamorphoses just translated by Golding, to instance no further, disclosed a new world of fiction even to the illiterate. As we had now all the learned fabrics in English, learned allusions, whether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer obscure and unintelligible to common readers and common spectators. And here we are led to observe that at this restoration of the classics, we were first struck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of design and justness of sentiment. A rude age, beginning to read these writers, imitated their extravagances, not their natural beauties. And these, like other novelties, were pursued to a blameable

excess.

I have given a sketch of the introduction of classical stories, in the splendid show exhibited at the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn. But that is a rare and a premature

our poets, particularly the dramatic, borrowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complication of facts necessary to constitute a story either of the tragic or comic species. In proportion as knowledge increased, genius had wanted subjects and materials. These species usurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical songs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic enterprise, and strong touches of rude delineation, yet they failed in that multiplication and disposition of circumstances, and in that description of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more discerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gothic romance were softened by this sort of reading; and the Italian pastoral, yet with some mixture of the kind of incidents described in Heliodorus's Ethiopic History, now newly translated, was engrafted on the feudal manners in Sydney's Arcadia.

But the Reformation had not yet destroyed every delusion, nor disenchanted all the strongholds of superstition. A few dim characters were yet legible in the mouldering creed of tradition. Every goblin of ignorance did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Renson suffered a few demons still to linger, which

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