He suffered much, but never complained, and certainly must
be numbered among the great men of letters who have found true
consolation and support in every circumstance of life in an earnest and
fervent faith.
Your loving old
G.P.
12
MY DEAR ANTONY,
Edmund Burke was born in 1730, and therefore was twenty-one years
younger than Dr. Johnson, and he survived him thirteen years. He was
a great prose writer, and although some of his speeches in Parliament
that have come down to us possess every quality of solid argument and
lofty eloquence, there must have been something lacking in his delivery
and voice, for he so frequently failed to rivet the attention of the
House, and so often addressed a steadily dwindling audience, that the
wits christened him "the dinner bell."
All men of letters, however, acknowledge Burke as a true master of a
very great style.
We see in him the first signs of a breaking away from the universal
restraint of the older writers, and of the surging up of expressed
emotion.
His splendid tribute to Marie Antoinette and his panegyric of the lost
age of chivalry are familiar to all students of English prose.
"It is now (1791) sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen
of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more
delightful vision.
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