unlikely, that one ground for censuring Hume was, that he degraded his abilities by affecting paradoxes when so able to bring forward the profoundest wisdom without any affectation at all. In talking of reasoning, he said: The majors make a pompous figure in the battle, but the victory of truth depends upon the little minor of circum

stances.

In speaking of Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke did justice to his head and heart; and his guest saw him softened into tenderness when mentioning their past friendship and the many amiable qualities of that extraordinary personage. I confess,' said he, I did love Fox, as who, that knew him intimately, could not? but as a lover I was jealous, especially during the last years of our intercourse, that he was more attached to another than to me. Whether that other person was really the subject of conversation or

got a wrong twist in their heads, which, ten to one, gives them a wrong twist in their hearts.'

not I could not learn; if he was, it is probable that some things might have been advanced which the guest did not think proper to repeat.

Mr. Burke said he was so cruel as to dis

of approve mercy in Mr. Fox, when he forgave the meek lamb Horne Tooke.

He

ought never, he said, to have pardoned his abuse of Lord Holland, even if he looked over his abuse of himself. A son ought never to associate with the man that slandered his father.

He painted the atrocities of Roberspierre. with wonderful force and brightness. After serious energy, he betook himself to irony, and concluded with saying: Roberspierre, the meek lamb, groaned under the ferocious Louis XVI.'

The discourse turning upon Dr. Johnson, he said he was greater in conversation than even in writing, and that Boswell's Life was the best record of his powers. This work,

he said, was the first experiment of complete transmission of conversation; delivering the wisdom without hiding the weak

ness.

The guest told me, that some of his fellow guests were children, whom the host entertained as much to their mind as he did others to their mind. He rolled with them on the carpet, played at te-totum and pushpin. He,' says his guest, under infirmity, and the expectation of death, though far advanced in years, had all the vigour of manhood and playfulness of childhood." This is the substance of the memorandums which I made of what passed at Beaconsfield during the visit in question, except the intercourse between Paine and Mr. Burke, before the French revolution, and in its first stages, which the reader will have seen in its proper place. The opinion which I entertain of the guest leads me to believe that many valuable remarks must have been made on his side, which his modesty has forborne to mention, and that just praise must

have been bestowed by such a host to such a guest, which, from the same motive, was not communicated. Soon after that time Burke went to Bath, as his health was in a bad state; but in the course of the Spring he recovered.

Mr. McCormick, in mentioning an advertisement published by Mr. Owen, relatively to him and Mr. Burke,* conceives that the severity of the advertisement hastened the death of Burke. If it would have been any glory to have accelerated to the world the loss of Edmund Burke, the framer of the advertisement must rest his fame on some other grounds. The advertisement was in November 1796, and Mr. Burke was in good Ff

VOL. II.

The reader, no doubt, remembers a surreptitious copy of the Regicide Peace' being offered to the public by Mr. Owen, but stopped by an injunction of Chancery, preventing this invasion of literary property. Mr. Owen's own account was, that he had been desired to account for the profits of the Letter concerning the Duke of Bedford, though not compelled to refund; that therefore he published what did not belong to him. His own reasoning is sufficient to enable us to form a just judgment.

health four months after. The petty attempts of malignity, during his life, to disturb his peace were as unavailing as the petty attempts of malignity after his death are to blacken his character. On his return to Beaconsfield, he proceeded in the plan of which the Regicide Peace' was a part and, although Heaven was not pleased to permit him to finish his task, there is in this, the last of his works,* the same accuracy, minuteness, and extent of knowledge; the same sportiveness of humour; the same brilliancy of fancy, vigour, and variety of argument; the same grand comprehensiveness of view, that had for forty years distinguished the productions of Edmund Burke. Having, in the former letters on the same subject, established the necessity (at least in the existing circumstances) of perseverance in the war with France, and stated the sufficiency of our resources, he in this part gives a complete enumeration of our means of carrying on the contest, in

And hitherto the last of his posthumous publications.