Select Works of Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. Edmund Burke

practice into Burke’s very soul: and the mere voluntary effort of expression acted upon his powers like touching the spring of a machine. Burke wrote as he talked, and as he spoke in the senate: we have here the man himself accurately reflected, with all his excellencies and all his imperfections. Burke’s was not only a mind large and spacious, but endowed with an extraordinary degree of sensibility, and these qualities were well adapted to produce a vast convulsion of feeling at the contemplation of incidents and prospects so strange and portentous as those which now presented themselves to view. Burke’s was a mind in which those objects sank most deeply, found the readiest reception, and were perceived in their widest extent. We cannot wonder at the keenness and profusion of the sentiments which they first generated and then forced out trumpet-tongued to the world.

      From what has been said it will be gathered that Burke’s book is by no means what is called a scientific book. Its roots touch the springs of the theology, of the jurisprudence, of the morals, of the history, and of the poetry of his age: and in this way it acquires an historical value resembling in some measure that of the famous “Republic” of Plato. Few books reflect more completely the picture of European thought as it existed a century ago. Nor is there any in which the literary expression of the age is better exemplified. Burke is careful to maintain a mode of expression which is untechnical. It is even occasionally indefinite. The essential antithesis in thought between science and poetry is curiously reflected in his habitual language. In employing words, he does not, like the man of science, keep in [lii] mind, in connection with them, any certain and invariable connotation. Like the poet, he rather takes pleasure in placing old words in new combinations, and in applying them with a changed or reinforced meaning.

      Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum

       Reddiderit junctura novum.

      To think with the wise, and to speak with the vulgar, to give in common and popular phrase the results of uncommon and studious thought, has always been counted among the rarest of rare accomplishments. A critic has observed that the main difference between our older and our modern literature, is that in the former we get uncommon ideas vulgarly expressed, and in the latter obvious and commonplace thoughts furnished forth with false ornament, and inspired with false refinement. Now as Burke often conveys his most admirable lessons under the guise of trite and vulgar topics, so does he clothe his most cogent arguments with the plainest language, and support them by the most familiar illustrations. But he continually surprises us by bursts of rhetorical appeal, by sudden allusions to some historical incident, by keen sarcasm, by a quotation which recalls a train of associations. Macaulay has characterised the contents of Burke’s mind as a treasure at once rich, massy, and various. Burke’s mature style reflects the rich contents of his mature mind, as displayed in daily conversation. Burke, who was, by the testimony of Johnson, the greatest master of conversation in his time, wrote as he talked, because he talked as the greatest master of writing need not be ashamed to write. He is a standing example of that fundamental axiom of style, too often forgotten by writers, that its excellence chiefly depends on the closeness with which it reflects the excellences of the vox viva. A “good passage” is simply one which, if delivered by the speaker to an attentive listener, would easily, certainly, and lastingly convey to the latter the meaning of the former. Men in general are neither scientific nor political: they are simply open to be impressed by clear statement, fair argument, and common sense. In the practice of the best masters what seem to be the ornaments of style are really its necessities. Figures and images do not belong to poetry, but to language—especially to the economy of language. It is possible to be lavish and [liii] fertile in the development and illustration of an argument, with great poverty of resources; but he who would be brief must be wealthy in words. Those who have tasted the enjoyment of fine conversation, know how nearly Burke reflects its essential manner. What is meant may be illustrated by saying that the great master of conversation avoids, tanquam scopulum, the odious vice which is commonly described as “talking like a book”; whereas the great master of the pen does in fact employ in turn all the methods and devices which a versatile mind and a practised tongue employ in conversation.

      English and French literature have generally aimed at this character. When we pass to the yard-long sentences, the tangled notions, and the flat expression of an ordinary German book, we recognise the normal opposite. How is this? In the latter case the book has probably been written by a man of silent habits in the retirement of his cabinet; and there is consequently no habitual subordination, in the practice of the writer, to the conditions of convenient and intelligent reception on the part of the reader. Why are chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and phrases measured by a certain average of length? Simply on the principle which regulates how much a man can or ought to be eating or drinking at one time. The habits of Reception (or as the Scotch philosophers call it, Attention) and Assimilation proceed by morceaux or portions. It can make no difference whether the material is conveyed through the voice of another, or in a way at once more complex and more compendious, through the eye of the recipient. Burke’s age, like Cicero’s, was eminently an age of Conversation. A glance at Boswell is enough to prove its high range as a fine art, and to show how much it had assumed a palaestral character. Literary fame was distributed by a few men, who habitually weighed merit in a common-sense balance: and the atmosphere of the study thus came to be neglected for that of the club. The influence of academical models had long ago begun to yield to that of keen living criticism: and in the age of Johnson the change was well-nigh complete. The conditions of the best literary age of Greece, including a cultivated and watchful auditory leading the opinion of the general public, were thus nearly reproduced.

      Writing is false and poor in proportion as those conditions are [liv] forgotten. Moreover, as composition is built upon spoken language, so the decline of the art of conversation has been accompanied by the decline of style. A century has produced vast changes in both. Every one who knows how perfect a harmony subsists between or among the two or more people who engage in true intellectual converse—how unconsciously and how delicately each responds to the touches of the other, knows also how exceedingly rare is the habit which produces it. The coarse deluge with which the pretentious sophist, whom in the person of Thrasymachus Socrates compares to a bathing-man, still overwhelms his hearers—the jar and wrangle proper to the Bar, and the prating of the foolish, conspire to thrust it from society. So is it of the harmony which ought to subsist between writers and their probable readers: and the social defect is reflected in the literary. Literature has become divorced from life, and the very term “literary” comes to connote something dull, dry, and undesirable. If we wish to see how life and letters can nevertheless go together, we have to refer to the De Oratore of Cicero, the Table Talk of Selden, and Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

      The model of a letter, the form into which the present work, like nearly all Burke’s best compositions, is cast, gives the writer some valuable advantages. It represents a convenient medium between the looseness of common talk and the set phrases of deliberate composition. It enables him to preserve an even key through the body of his observations, while he may, with perfect propriety, descend to familiar and pointed phraseology, or mount at will into the region of rhetoric. Such a variety at once preserves that impression of a close relation between the reader and the writer which is necessary to secure attention, and enables the writer to make the best use of his opportunities. Where he fancies the reader yielding to a plain forcible piece of common sense, he can press on. He can repeat the approved thesis in some more studied phrase, approaching the philosophical style, and finally enforce it by a bold appeal to the feelings. He can gradually season and mingle his rhetoric with the gall of irony, or he can abruptly drop into that stimulating vein at a moment’s notice. Probably the greatest impression of power in the mind of the reader is produced by the ability to preserve an even balance of moderate discourse, ever and anon varied by these [lv] occasional diversions. Perpetual familiarities, perpetual didactics, or perpetual declamation would equally disgust and fatigue. The great artist so mingles them that each shall mutually relieve and enhance the effect of the other.

      In the study of particular passages, it must be remarked that there is no mastering the secrets of style by the eye alone. The student must read aloud, repeat to himself, and transcribe. The fact is so much testimony to our canon that the standard of writing is the vox viva. It is necessary to make a strong effort of imagination, to force one’s-self into the author’s own place, and