All the more so because, despite the constant appeal to facts and the gospel of circumstances,' Burke's attitude is by no means purely empirical. Though he argues from experience, and is never weary of claiming that his generalisations are the arguments of kingdoms and nations,' it is not to be supposed that he approaches experience with that complete repudiation of all presuppositions which has sometimes been extolled as the glory of the Baconian inductive method. On the contrary, no one can go far into his pages without becoming aware that his thought is profoundly influenced by convictions which he takes for granted. Some of them are psychological, and some are metaphysical. That man is 'a religious animal'; that he is likewise a 'political animal'; that all ordinary men are creatures in whom feeling, habit, even prejudice are apt to be stronger than reason; that they act on motives relative to their interests far more than on theories; that they are much quicker to feel grievances than to find remedies-these are amongst the principles of his psychology. He does not prove them. He does not feel himself called upon to prove them. He had made up his mind on most, or all, of them long before he entered politics. But he constantly appeals to them. It is not enough for him therefore that a political generalisation should be drawn from history: he seldom rests till he has added that it is confirmed, or, it may be, shaken,

by all that we know of human nature. To phrase the matter in the language of the schools, he constantly tests political inductions by a psychology that is none the less firm because it is forthcoming only in fragments scattered throughout his pages.

Similarly, and in greater measure, with the presuppositions that are metaphysical. For it would be nothing less than a fatal misconception to write down Burke as a purely inductive thinker. Even he who runs as he reads must soon discover that, in the background of all his political thought, there lie large assumptions which profoundly influence the conclusions which he draws. That God willed the state, that He willed likewise the nation of man, and that the whole course of a nation's life is the known march of the ordinary providence of God' these, and much else that depends on them, are fundamental articles of his political creed. These high doctrines, needless to say, are never proved. They are held as a faith. But, then, they are held with a tenacity so great, and urged with a reiteration so insistent, that they not only colour, but saturate all he has to say about the nature and the sanctions of the social order. Few points indeed are of greater interest to the readers of Burke than the relation between these sweeping theological principles and that inductive

1 Regicide Peace, Letter II.: 'The rules of prudence which are formed upon the known march,' etc.

appeal to history and fact which is, in the eyes of many of his students, his distinctive characteristic.

This will be clearer in the sequel. For the present it is enough to suggest that though students of philosophy may naturally enough prefer to study political philosophers by habit and repute, it may be doubted if they ever study that subject at greater advantage than when they have the opportunity of tracing the process whereby a great mind, versed in affairs and steeped in practicality, is so instinct with the philosophic spirit as to be forced far across the frontier of practical politics into the larger world of political theory. Such, at any rate, is the opportunity which, in unique degree, is to be found in the life and writings of this great theorising assailant of theorists. The writings are, naturally, the main concern; but it may prepare the way to glance at some not irrelevant aspects of the life.

CHAPTER II

FROM KIN TO KIND

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It is well known to readers of biography that Burke was a self-made man. When enemies jeered at him as an Irish adventurer,' this was but the malevolent version of Prior's tribute to him as the first person who, under so many disadvantages, attained to consequence in Parliament and in the country by his own unaided talents.' As he said himself, when driven to apologia pro vita sua by that ungenerous attack on his well-won pension to which reference has already been made, he had to show his passport and prove his quality at every step of his laborious career: I had no arts but manly arts. On them have I stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.' 1

In a struggle like this, any man might be forgiven some forgetfulness—the forgetfulness not of want of heart, but the more excusable forgetfulness of want of thought and want of time. Yet the only thing Burke seemed to forget, as his best

1 Letter to a Noble Lord.

1

biographer 1 justly remarks, was his own interests. Certainly there are few more satisfying chapters in biography than the record of his fidelity to the privatel ties and obligations of life. And not to kindred only. It is characteristic that the last lines he wrote were words of consolation to the daughter of Shackleton, the friend of his boyhood. Nor did absorption in public affairs prevent him from turning aside to rescue the genius of Crabbe from the last extremes of poverty, to render unwearying thankless service to the erratic painter Barry, to befriend the friend less Armenian adventurer Emin, whom one day he found wandering in the Park. When he kept house in Beaconsfield in later years, suffering peasants and French exiles were equally the objects of his care or hospitality. And it need hardly be said that, of all the friendships of men of letters, none can surpass his with Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, and the rest who have made the Turk's Head as memorable as the Mermaid. Ah!' exclaims Thackeray, in words easy to re-echo, 'I would have liked a night at the Turk's Head, even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was growling against the rebels; to have sat with him and Goldy; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world; and to

1 Lord Morley: There is much good material in the Lives by Prior and MacKnight, but readers in search of living portraiture must turn to Burke in "English Men of Letters," and to Burke: A Historical Study.'

B