profit might accrue from them for the sake of spending a week or two with you, did not some disgrace and some anger perhaps, from a certain quarter1, attend it.

Your father's watch will be sent by Dick, who will be with you in a few days. He desires to be remembered to you. Greek is a plant that thrives as ill in Dublin as in Munster, and the soil is as unpropitious to Latin.

me

I hope by this time you have pretty well got over your troubles; as for am in statu quo.

I

I spend most of my idle time with Sisson; he has a great regard for you, and I assure you I like him as well, if not better, than ever, notwithstanding some appearances, which a thinking man should never judge from. I have the pleasure too to inform you that he has of late no despicable share of business. He has now in hands, and finished almost, the Speaker and his family, the Lord and Lady Ikerrin etc. I think it is a pity that so good a painter has not better encouragement. Your last was very laconick; I hope this2 shall have as much honour as the famous queen (I forget whom) in making you lengthen your sentences. Believe me to be yours

E. BURKE.

Exceptional advantages were enjoyed by young men educated in Trinity College in the Georgian period. Then as now they mixed in Dublin society. That society was intellectual and brilliant, and not lacking in social distinction. Nobles and commoners patronized art. The greatest actors appeared on the Irish stage, and the greatest musicians and singers performed before Dublin audiences. Handel was not the only eminent genius who discovered in Dublin an appreciation which he had not found in London. Though much in the Dublin society of the time seems coarse, reckless, uncongenial, and even ferocious to our ideas, yet its atmosphere was keen, bracing and invigorating, and it must, notwithstanding his depreciatory remarks upon the prevailing neglect of literature, have greatly stimulated the receptive mind of young Edmund Burke. We shall see how he frequented the theatre-associated with Thomas Sheridan-met most of the brilliant actors of the day, and even made adventureshimself and his friends-in dramatic authorship. So, too, we find him delighting in a painter's companionship and evincing that love of art and eagerness to assist the artist, which anticipates that friendship with Barry and Barrett which helped them on to eminence, and that friendship with Sir Joshua Reynolds—a share in which the world enjoys through the pages of Boswell.

1 His father.

* "This" refers to the signature which in the original MS. in the possession of Dr ffennel, is spread out nearly across the page.

Sisson1, to whom he so often refers, was then a young artist. He gained reputation as a portrait painter, and his name is found in the catalogue of the Society of Artists in Ireland as exhibiting three portraits in oil at the first exhibition of paintings held in Ireland, on 12th February, 17652.

Burke did not forget Sisson in later times. Mrs Leadbeater writes 3:

Edmund brought a painter with him at one time, Richard Sisson, a man of talent, and prevailed on my dear Father to sit for his picture; he consented, though it was against his judgment, as not consonant to the practice of our Society. Probably for this reason an expression of uneasiness appears on the portrait, although it is otherwise a good likeness. The portrait of his old master, Abraham Shackleton, was also longed for by his illustrious pupil, but he durst not request it1.

The Speaker who had commissioned Sisson to paint him and his family was Henry Boyle who was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from 4th October, 1743, to 26th April, 1756, when he was created Earl of Shannon.

He was for a long time (Lecky writes) one of the most considerable men of the Kingdom. He had sat in Parliament for forty years, and was treated with great deference by Chesterfield, Devonshire, and Harrington, and was connected with some of the chief governing families in Ireland. He possessed much borough interest, and no small amount of parliamentary talent.

The story of his struggle for power with Stone the Primate which had important constitutional consequences in the history of the Irish Parliament-in creating for the first time a serious parliamentary opposition, and bringing forward the constitutional contest between the Crown and the British ministry, and the Irish Parliament, in reference to the appropriation of surplus Irish revenue, is told by Lecky and Froude3.

1 Cp. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, Mansell and Co., Dublin, 1912. "Richard Sisson (d. 1767) belonged to a Dublin family that had a linen manufactory at Lucan. He was a schoolfellow of Edmund Burke at Ballitore (?), and had been apprenticed to Francis Bindon, the portrait painter. In Paris he and Burke lived together for some time. He painted a miniature of Burke. He died in 1767 leaving a widow and son in poor circumstances. Burke provided for the son."

2 See the catalogue in Gilbert's History of Dublin, vol. III, p. 365. Leadbeater Papers, vol. 1, p. 49.

4 Sisson's portrait of Richard Shackleton is now in the possession of Dr W. W. Shackleton of Bushey, Hertfordshire.

5 See Lecky, History of Ireland, vol. 1, chap. 11. Also Froude, The English in Ireland, vol. I, chap. IV and vol. II, chap. 1. Litton Falkiner, Essays Relating to Ireland. Archbishop Stone.

21

E. Burke to R. Shackleton.

Dublin. 10br. 5th 1746.

The fate of mankind, and mine in particular, is so uncertain, that I can hardly depend upon anything. I flattered myself, nay, I was certain that I should have the pleasure of spending this Christmas with you, which hope was grounded on an assertion of my father's that I should not live in the College1; but he since changed his mind, and as the foundation begins to fail, we must suppose the superstructure will tumble of course; so that I am under some difficulties under that head. If I come at all, I may stay three weeks. Brennan will be so far from hindering it that he may stay as long as he pleases, but I cannot. I believe you will not have many books from limit them to what new ones come out that I approve. me, if you Believe me, dear Dick, we are just on the verge of darkness, and one push drives us in. We shall all live, if we live long, to see the prophesy of the Dunciad fulfilled, and the age of ignorance come round once more, Redeunt Saturnia regna,

Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

Is there no one to relieve the world from the curse of obscurity? No, not one! I would therefore advise more to your reading the writings of those who have gone before us than our contemporaries. I read for my College course Tully's Offices, a blameless piece. I got yesterday Waller, whom I never read before, nor did you, I believe; for it would be needless to tell you if you had, that he is one of the most charming poets of England. "Tis surprizing how so much softness and so much grandeur could dwell in one soul; his panegyricks are wonderfully fine. His chief excellence lies, I think, in making apparent defects of persons become their greatest praise, and that in a manner quite new. All his thoughts by the surprize they give us seem to have something epigrammatical in them, and in many places he is guilty in that respect; but that proceeds from their being expressed in the strongest and most concise manner, and so formed that his thoughts are not interwoven so as to form a continued discourse, but each is by itself, and strikes you full alone. Take for example those lines on the King's Navy. What shall I say now? As I put my hand to my pocket to look for the book I found I left it at home, (for I am now at the office) but I will make it up in my next. This has struck me so blank, that I can say no more than that I am dear Shackleton,

Yours affectionately,

ED. BURKE.

1 The earliest Register of Chambers in the Records of Trinity College does not begin till 1780. There is a tradition that Burke's rooms were in No. 28 in the Library Square. The building was demolished in 1900 to make room for the Graduates Memorial Building.

2 See Shackleton's letter to Dennis in August, 1747, quoted by Prior, p. 25, referring to Burke's Ode to John Damer Esq.: “It is needless to tell thee Dennis, for I wont say it to Burke, that I take Damer to be the best panegyric I ever read except Waller's who chiefly excels in that." See ante p. 54.