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In all our classics, there occur passages unworthy of their genius, either from their weakness or their wickedness. Now, what are editors to do with these? Some will say that they are not responsible for them, and should therefore print them as they are, perhaps under an accompanying protest. This, we think, however, springs from a false and mechanical notion of what an editor is. His office is not that of a mere printer or amanuensis. We suppose him accepting the task voluntarily, and discharging it as a guardian alike of his author's fame and of his own character. We have admitted above, that there is a certain charm connected with even the faults of good writers, but this is true only when these are intermixed with beauties. There are, on the other hand, pieces entirely and disgracefully bad as literary ositions; and why should such big blots be stereotyped, especially if they are such as cast no peculiar light upon the author's idiosyncrasy, nor mark definitely any stage either in the process or the decline of his mind? An honest editor (if the plan of his publication at all permit) will silently drop such productions from the list.

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But his path becomes far more clear in reference to those writings in which vice or infidelity is openly and offensively exhibited. Here his moral sense and religious feelings unite with his literary taste in demanding the use of the knife.— What man, that regards his own character, would edit some of those beastly miscellanies in verse by which Swift has disgraced his talents, and pushed himself almost beyond the pale of humanity, or the Merry Muses of poor Burns, or the blind and raving blasphemies of "Queen Mab?" Such things, it may be said, are valuable as illustrating peculiar traits in eminent characters, or certain stages in their moral history, and should, therefore, be preserved. Well, be it so; only let us be exempted from the sordid and disgusting task of storing them up in those moral museums where alone such detestable abortions are in place, or can hope to remain for ever. The true editor will not shrink from coarseness, but he will from corruption. He will distinguish between faults which are characteristic of an age, and wilful insults to good feeling, or cold, settled attempts to sap the principles of morality, as well as between the language of doubt and darkness, and that of

aggressive and insolent blasphemy. There is at present a rage of genius-worship which would go the length of preserving the very foam of its frenzy, and the very slime of its sin; and there are those who insist that productions which the men themselves regretted and sought to suppress in their life-time, and on which, now, it may be, they look back with shame and horror, shall be bound up in the bundle of their better and im perishable works. These people are constantly prating of the earnestness of Shelley, for example, and asking-Should even the mistaken effusions of such a man be withheld from the world? We say, Yes, if they are rather the ravings of Philip drunk, than the sincere outpourings of Philip sober; if, moreover, they are calcated not only to evince, but to circulate mental inebriety, annot satisfied with expressing his faith, they grossly misrepresent, foully belie, and fiercely insult the faith of the Christian world. We are far, indeed, from advocating state prosecutions for blasphemy; we think them machines of unjust power, at once cruel and clumsy; nor will we be suspected of undue straitlacedness or of bigotry at all; but we would have public opinion brought to bear, with all its weight, upon the subject. We would seek to crush such unworthy memorials of genius under the silence of universal contempt or pity. We do not wish them mutilated nor extinguished; we wish them preserved; but preserved as other monstrosities are preserved, in secluded corners, on lofty shelves, for the contemplation of those in whom curiosity overpowers disgust, and who can wring a lesson and a moral even from things abominable and unutterable. We are irresistibly reminded of the lines of Milton in his "Battle of the Angels

"I might relate of thousands, and their names
Eternise here on earth; but those elect
Angels, contented with their fame in heaven,
Seek not the praise of men: The other sort
In might though wondrous and in acts of war,
Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom
Cancell'd from heaven, and sacred memory,
Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell.
For strength from truth divided, and from just
Illaudable, nought merits but dispraise
And ignominy yet to glory aspires

Vain glorious, and through infamy seeks fame:
Therefore eternal silence be their doom."

NO. IV.-EDMUND BURKE.

ALL hail to Edmund Burke, the greatest and least appreciated man of the eighteenth century, even as Milton had been the greatest and least appreciated man of the century before! Each century, in fact, bears its peculiarly great man, and as certainly either neglects or abuses him. Nor do after ages always repair the deficiency. For instance, between the writing of the first and the second sentences of this paper, we have happened to take up a London periodical, which has newly come in, and have found Burke first put at the feet of Fox, and, secondly, accused of being actuated in all his political conduct by two objects those of places and pensions for himself and his family; so that our estimate of him, although late, may turn out, on the whole, a "word in season." It is, at all events, refreshing for us to look back from the days of a Derby and a Biographer Russell, to those of the great and eloquent Burke, and to turn from the ravings of the "LatterDay Pamphlets," to the noble rage and magnificent philippics of a "Regicide Peace."

First of all, in this paper, we feel ourselves constrained to proclaim what, even yet, is not fully understood-Burke's unutterable superiority to all his parliamentary rivals. It was not simply that he was above them as one bough in a tree is above another, but above them as the sun is above the top of the tree. He was "not of their order." He had philosophic intellect, while they had only arithmetic. He had genius, while they had not even fancy. He had heart, while they had only passions. He had widest and most comprehensive views ; their minds had little real power of generalisation. He had religion; most of them were infidels of that lowest order, who imagine that Christianity is a monster, bred between priestcraft and political expediency. He loved literature with his inmost soul; they (Fox on this point must be excepted) knew little about it, and cared less. Ia word, they were men of their time; he beloved to all ages, and his mind was as catholic as it was &

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Contrast the works and speeches of the men! Has a sentence of Pitt's ever been quoted as a maxim? Does one passage of Fox appear in even our common books of elocutionary extracts? Are Sheridan's flights remembered except for their ambitious and adventurous badness? Unless one or two showy climaxes of Grattan and Curran, what else of them is extant? How different with Burke. His works are to this hour burning with genius, and swarming with wisdom. You cannot open a page, without finding either a profound truth expressed in the shortest and sharpest form, looking up at you like an eye; or a brilliant image flashing across with the speed and splendor of a meteor; or a description, now grotesque, and now gorgeous; or a literary allusion, cooling and sweetening the fervor of the political discussion; or a quotation from the poets, so pointed and pat, that it assumes the rank of an original beauty. Burke's writing is almost unrivalled for its combination and dexterous interchange of excellences. It is by turns statistics, metaphysics, painting, poetry, eloquence, wit, and wisdom. It is so cool and so warm, so mechanical and so impulsive, so measured and so impetuous, so clear and so profound, so simple and so rich. Its sentences are now the shortest, and now the longest; now bare as Butler, and now figured as Jeremy Taylor; now conversational, and now ornate, intense, and elaborate in the highest degree. He closes many of his paragraphs in a rushing thunder and fiery flood of eloquence, and opens the next as calmly as if he had ceased to be the same being. Indeed, he is the least monotonous and manneristic of modern writers, and in this, as in so many other respects, excels such authors as Macaulay and Chalmers, who are sometimes absurdly compared to him. He has, in fact, as we hinted above, three, if not four or five, distinct styles, and possesses equal mastery over all. He exhibits specimens of the law-paper style, in his articles of charge against Warren Hastings; of the calm, sober, uncolored argument, in his "Thoughts on the present Discontents;" of the ingenious, high-finished, but temperate philosophical essay, in his "Sublime and Beautiful;" of the flushed and fiery diatribe, here stoing into fierce scorn and invective, and their soaring to poetical elce, in his "Letter to a Noble Lord," and in his "D Peace;" and of a

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style combining all these qualities, and which he uses in his Speech on the Nabod of Arcot's debts, and in his "Reflections on the French Revolution." Thus you may read a hundred pages of him at once, without finding any power but pure intellect at work, and at other times every sentence is starred with an image, even as every moment of some men's sleep is spiritualised by a dream; and, in many of them, figures cluster and crowd upon each other. It is remarkable that his imagination becomes apparently more powerful as he draws near the end of his journey. The reason of this probably was: he became more thoroughly in earnest towards the close. Till the trial of Warren Hastings, or even on to the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was a volcano speaking and snorting out fire at intervals-an Etna at ease; but from these dates he began to pour out incessant torrents of molten lava upon the wondering nations. Figures are a luxury to cool thinkers; they are a necessity to prophets. The Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have no choice. Their thought MUST come forth with the fiery edge of metaphor around it.

Let us look, in the course of the remarks that follow, to the following points-to Burke's powers, to his possible achievements, to his actual works, to his oratory, to his conversation, to his private character, to his critics, and to the question, what has been the result of his influence as a writer and a thinker?

1. We would seek to analyse shortly his powers. These were distinguished at once by their variety, comprehensiveness, depth, harmony, and brilliance. He was endowed in the very "prodigality of heaven" with genius of a creative order, with boundless fertility of fancy, with piercing acuteness and comprehension of intellect, with a tendency leading him irresistibly down into the depths of every subject, and with an eloquence at once massive, profuse, fiery, and flexible. To these powers he united, what are not often found in their company, slow plodding perseverance, indomitable industry, and a cautious, balancing disposition. We may apply to him the words. of Scripture, "He could mount up with wings as an eagle, he could run and not be weary, he could walk and not be faint." Air, earth and the things under the earth, were equally familiar to him and you are amazed to see how easily

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