12 January: Boreham on Edmund Burke

A Study in Light and Shade
Beyond the shadow of a doubt, Edmund Burke, whose birthday we mark today, is one of the most magnetic, one of the most baffling and one of the most indefinable personalities in our history. On what does his reputation rest? Two questions immediately present themselves. Was Burke a great statesman? Was he a great orator? If he was a great statesman, to what party did he belong? And why, in an age that often lacked vigorous leadership, did he never become Prime Minister? Again, if he was a great orator, why was he repeatedly coughed down or left to address benches from which practically all the members had fled? Nobody would seriously claim that Burke was a front-ranked statesman. He possessed none of those outstanding gifts that enable dominating figures to mould parties to their will and lead them with autocratic authority. And, as to his rhetoric, it was a thing of fits and starts. He often soared, but, just as often, he grovelled. Occasionally dazzling in his brilliance, he was just as often unconscionably dull. He would talk pompously and interminably on insignificant themes and fail lamentably to seize the opportunity presented by really noble occasions.

Of all his weaknesses, his most unpardonable frailty was his inordinate fondness for dramatic display. He strained after effect. It is one of the inviolable traditions of the House of Commons to scowl on anything of the kind. The average member hates fireworks. Burke was too much of an actor for the staid and sombre environment in which he found himself. He played to the gallery and there was no gallery to applaud. But this, of course, is not the whole story. Burke had other moments, inspired moments, when, as Bancroft puts it, the glowing words showered from him like burning oracles. At such times, Green says, his oratory was remarkable for its passionate ardour, its poetic fancy, its amazing prodigality of resources and for the bewildering succession in which irony, pathos, invective, humour, tenderness, vivid description, and cogent reasoning followed one another.

The Fine Frenzy Born Of Inspiration
At his best, Burke was dynamic, overwhelming, irresistible. Whilst his dramatic gift sometimes betrayed him into excesses, there were occasions when he could use it with electrical effect. During an electioneering speech at Bristol he was handed a note saying that his opponent had suddenly died. Burke paused, contemplated the missive amidst intense silence, communicated its contents to the vast audience and then tossing the document on to the table exclaimed: "Such shadows we are and such shadows we pursue!" Dr. Johnson attributed Burke's power to a certain fineness of texture in the composition of his mind, a quality that needed some galvanic stimulus to awaken it. The astounding thing about the utterances that were delivered under such conditions is that the finest passages in those stately flights were composed on the spur of the moment. When he produced speeches to which he had devoted long and laborious study, he was usually stilted, unnatural and ineffective; but when, roused to sudden anger or enthusiasm, he sprang to his feet and poured forth the pent-up passion of his soul, he swept everything before him.

Many of his more sublime utterances have passed into classical literature. The language appears majestic; each phrase is a gleaming and exquisite pearl. Not once, nor twice, but again and again he astonished even his most ardent admirers by prodigies of intellectual audacity and achievement. His power of projection was not merely startling; it was positively uncanny. At the moment at which Capt. Arthur Phillip was stepping ashore at Sydney Cove in 1788 to inaugurate the spacious drama of Australian history, Burke was absorbed in the preparation of his impeachment of Warren Hastings. That speech stands, not only as his masterpiece, but as one of the marvels of universal literature.

Imaginative Splendour Becomes Articulate
Burke had never seen India; yet he spoke for hours as if he had spent the whole of his life among fakirs, nabobs, and rajahs. It seemed incredible that one who could speak with such picturesque realism had never actually witnessed the scenes that he so vividly and tellingly described. The bazaars, the jungles, the rice fields, and the palm groves of the East have seldom been painted more gorgeously or more convincingly than Burke painted them in the course of those brilliant flights of passionate and panoramic oratory with which he held spellbound, hour after hour, the princes, peers and parliamentarians assembled amidst the solemn grandeur of Westminster Hall. Such powers were almost superhuman.

Moreover, his most caustic critics had to admit that his character matched his powers, for Edmund Burke was the soul of goodness. When, for example, George Crabbe, totally unknown, was starving in London, conscious of the gift of poesy yet unable to secure the publication of a single stanza, he wrote in sheer desperation to Burke, then at the zenith of his career. Although Burke had never so much as heard Crabbe's name, he was impressed by the elegance and dignity of the letter, and in the most sympathetic and generous terms, immediately responded, giving his suppliant money, advice, and an introduction to wealthy and influential friends. And most amazing and most creditable of all, Burke took the poverty-stricken young poet into his own home and cared for him until he was well on his way to success. As generation succeeds generation, the world will increasingly admire the mental vigour that enabled this impulsive Irish youth, who had enjoyed few advantages, to perform such masterly feats of scholarship and eloquence. He has taken his place in history as a man who, consistently losing sight of his own interests in promoting those of his country, has left a stainless record of which the world will always be proud.

F W Boreham

Image: Edmund Burke