Dreadful, with complicated terrors falls, Discharging vengeance on the hated walls1, And just withdrawing from our mortal sight, Great as the subject, equal and the same? Lull'd into peace, and loftiest waves asleep? Not e'en a breath moves o'er the boundless flood, The sun withdrawn, and the clear night overspread, While moon, pale Empress, shines with borrowed light, And other worlds, descrying earth afar, Cry "See how little looks yon twinkling star!" It is not mine the glorious view to sing, These mighty wonders of the Almighty King; But let my soul in still amazement lost, From thought to thought, and maze to maze be tost, The advent'rous task a muse like yours requires, That warms your pen, and fills your breast with fires. Thus far the muse has, in a feeble lay, Shew'd how I spend the various hours of day: The story placed in order by the Sun, Shows where my labours ended,-where begun. What rhymes again! E. B. received E. Burke to R. Shackleton. Dublin, June 11th, 1744. 12 o'clock. Without knowing any of your astronomical devilments. Returning yesterday from the College I met my father's clerk going to the post office, and thither with him I went, and with the utmost pleasure your agreeable favours: so that without your calculations I can 1 This is a reference to the North Wall and embankment at Ringsend where the beginning of the South Wall which runs out to the Poolbeg Lighthouse had been just completed. In 1748 the South Wall had been carried out one mile and a half into the sea, and in 1764 the foundations of the Poolbeg Lighthouse were laid. inform you that they blest my hands in due time; but unluckily (as such usually attends me) I opened your last one first, in which I perceived-but now let us omit it until its proper place, where we will treat more fully of it. I am pleased to hear that your Aunt and sister arrived safe at your Mansions. I had not the satisfaction of seeing 'em before they went, though I cant attribute it to myself, as I was at Fletchers to enquire for 'em, but the birds were flown. I therefore left the Cowshed with Slator1. But here since I mention him, it wont I hope be amiss to give you an account of those I met the day I went there, and by way of an appendix, the state of their affairs. But now I was just going to invoke some sacred Muse, who should, in a pompous style adopted to the greatness of the subject, describe the manner in which the state of your affairs lay: but wisely considered that you should think all I say spoke metaphorically, and so not believe a word of it: therefore I am resolved to confine myself to the strict truth of the narration. As I came from Fletcher's, in Thomas Street, by the Market House, who should I meet? You would not guess it if you were thinking this hour? Guess, if you can without looking any further-Josey! What Josey? Why Josey Delaney! Him I met in that juncture with no better clothing than his old paσrups waistcoat which he wore so long in Ballitore, exactly in the same cu that he was there, in all things about him, except a basket full of some wooden things or other which he carried under his arm. Veterem agnovit amicum: we knew each other at first sight. After mutual salutations, questions about Ballitore &c, I asked him whether Dublin air agreed with him. These were his words "Very indifferently," replies Josey. "Why so Josey?" Here he answered nothing for a good while; at last out it came "Sure I'm marryid"! "To whom pray?" "To a girl of this town." "Where do you live?" "In Dolphin's Barn Lane." Thus we parted. He looks very thin and melancholy, so it seems his affairs are but in a bad situation; the waistcoat he wore was at least five or six inches too wide. But now I come to what troubles me sincerely, and to him I think the most unfortunate of the two, though not in the poorest condition— I mean Slator. Poor Johnny! where is that liveliness, sprightliness or even madness that was so agreeable in all your sportive actions, which rendered so diverting your every thought, your every word? "Oh the Devil"! No. No, Not such a word to be got now from him, but a most dejected melancholy and sadness. I met him in the street where indeed I think he could scarcely walk; so pale, of a yellowish paleness, I scarcely ever thought he could be. I went with him to the shop; he spoke very little, and that exceedingly low and faint. I asked him was he sick? He answered No, but he did not speak his mind. I believe if his condition does not be speedily mended, he will not live half a year, for he is a mere hackleton (sic) and has a very sickly look; and this may be, I think, attributed to his devil of an Aunt, of whom I will give you, when I see you next, a full description of. 1 John Slator, a schoolfellow of Burke's at Ballitore, having joined the school in 1739. He graduated B.A. 1745, M.A. 1749, in Trinity College, Dublin. I observed upon this that those who are most lively and mad that way, are usually quite sunk and dispirited in adversity as is the most dispirited lad I ever saw. But not to detain you longer with a long digression equally disagreeable to us both, for you can't but be grieved for poor Johnny as I am I'm sure if the first part concerning Josey was something comic, you have the tragic in the latter-and to return to your fair Hills, vales, rocks with shifting Io's ring Io Ricarde! Io Pean, sing. So the two boobies1 have left Ballitore, as they did Edenderry, as it's probable will soon quit Portarlington, and then where the devil will they go? Queer travels are theirs. The boobies finding France too hot for 'em, they retired to Holland, from thence to London, thence to Dublin, thence to Edenderry, thence to Ballitore, thence to Portarlington2,-and where next? In the next letter an allusion to Shackleton's dating his letters with the signs of the Zodiac provokes Burke into one of those "wild and sudden flights of fancy hustling forth from his creative imagination in language fluent, forcible, and varied" that had for Fanny Burney as she listened long afterwards to his Impeachment of Warren Hastings, "a charm for her ear and her attention wholly new, and perfectly irresistible" flashes which so often glow with dazzling effect amid the reasoned rhetoric of his maturer years. E. Burke to R. Shackleton. (Not dated, but June 14th, 1744, is endorsed on the original.) No malicious person, no sprite deceived you under the borrowed name of your friend; the letter you say you got under my name was originally intended for my brother, so that will serve for an apology for it. I have just made an epigram on that, for I think an excellent one may spring from it. But because I think the point which essentially constitutes the beauty of writings of this kind was not justly placed, I showed the malice of my teeth to it. I am sorry I could not hit it for your amusement, but it can't be helped; it is a pity it was not the hand of a better.... 1 The “boobies" alluded to in this letter were the sons of Huguenot refugees, of whom a large colony had been established in Portarlington, some twelve miles from Ballitore, in the end of the seventeenth century. "Several French men and boys," writes Mrs Leadbeater, "came here in the time of my grandfather, to learn English, and they left the name of the 'French room' to a large apartment in which they slept" (Leadbeater Papers, vol. 1, p. 42). The following Huguenot surnames appear in the Ballitore School lists as contemporaries of Edmund Burke: Audebert, Joubert, Dulamon, Dubedat, Laporte, Lescure, Fonblanque, Zouche, Libert, Chaigneau, Chaunders, Aimée. 2 The school at Portarlington was probably that kept by the Rev. John Willis where the Duke of Wellington and his elder brother, the Marquis Wellesley were sent until they went to Eton. 1 4 ...I perceive by the date of your letters that you are a great proficient in the noble science of astronomy1. I could hardly understand it for a while, and indeed I think you're highly to be commended for your application to it. If I were to speak about it you are so well versed in all its parts that you would perceive a thousand errors in one sentence, and as you are so well acquainted with all the beauties of the heavens, I call 'em beauties, for beauty consists in variety and uniformity and is that not abundantly shown in the motion and form of the heavenly bodies? What grander idea can the mind of man form to itself than a prodigious, glorious, and fiery globe hanging in the midst of an infinite and boundless space, surrounded with bodies of whom our earth is scarcely anything in comparison, moving their rounds about its body, and held tight to their respective orbits by the attractive force inherent to it; while they are expended in the same space by the force of the Creator's Almighty arm! And then let us cast our eyes up to the spangled canopy of heaven, where innumerable luminaries at such an immense distance from us cover the face of the skies-all suns as great as that which illumines us-surrounded with earths perhaps no way inferior to the ball which we inhabit, and no part of the amazing whole unfilled; systems running into systems, and worlds bordering on worlds! Sun, Earth, Moon, Stars, be ye made, and they were made! The word of the Creator sufficient to create universe from nothing! Pursue the noble task; A nobler theme was never sung! Oh may some heavenly muse place you upon The lofty top of towering Helicon; Remove the mist that clouds your mortal eyes; Shew you these orbs that man has never seen, Of largest tubes assisted by the ken; While the great view, in harmony divine, You sing, assisted by the tuneful Nine. This shall be my form of prayer till I hear from you again, and receive these strains with which the divine Mantuan declares he was so enamoured. (Virg. Georgick, bk 11, 475, viz. Poetry and Astronomy: "Me vero, etc.") Herbert has desired me to beg of you to write to him, and to keep up your old correspondence, and he says he would write if he had any time, for he 1 One of his "astronomical devilments," as Burke had called them in his letter of 11th June, 1744. Burke headed his letter of 12th March, 1744-5, with the sign of Aries, q.v. 2 See the Essay On the Sublime and Beautiful: “Perfectly and beautiful bodies..... vary their direction every moment and they change under the eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point." Part III, sec. xv. "Another principal property of beautiful objects is that the line of their parts is continually varying in direction; but it varies by a very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convulsion of the optick nerve." Part IV, sec. XXIII. 3 Newcomen Herbert appears in the Ballitore School list as joining in 1735. See ante pp. 25-36. goes to school every day, and attends at other times a shop full of business. However if you will favour him with a hebdominal line, he will contrive a way to answer it rather than be deprived of your agreeable correspondence. Your sincerely affectionate friend, What if you should send some 8 foot raillery too? E. BURKE. The burlesque of the next letter was provoked by some letter of Shackleton's which is not preserved, addressed to Burke as “Esquire.” Burke once or twice alludes to his nickname of Cowshed which he possibly received from his schoolfellows. Honest Dick, E. Burke to R. Shackleton. Dublin, June 21, 1744. Thursday, 'twixt 2 and 3 from my own bureau. You are hereby ordered to date your letter from the place you sit. That letter of yours came by post to my hands, and if I could spare time on such business I dont know but I might answer it particularly; but as I have affairs of much consequence to trouble me, as you know (being wholly taken up with attending one thing or other which it is not material to tell you) since my election, it were needless to inform you of more than that I am well, as are all here; and that I desire you to be diligent in your business, take care not to let people lavish my substance, mind the hay, and inform me how the harvest goes on-if it be good they will be well able to pay the rents this year-and whether your wife spins better, for the last I received was extraordinary ill. Take care once more; be diligent and you shall see the effects of my munificence (an old coat or so); and on the contrary, if you turn out idle or dishonest, be sure to feel the marks of my highest displeasure, so as to be reduced once more to the wretched condition my extensive charity has taken you out of. I wrote more than indeed I intended, but because I find you careful and honest, I grant you this favour extraordinary, and hope that you will not grow conceited on it: nor assume airs that dont become men of your condition, for this and all the numberless favours and kindnesses heaped upon you by your imperious and haughty master, Answer this with humble submission. EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. P.S. Tell Tom Lawless that if I dont hear a better account of him than heretofore, he must no longer hope to have the honour of being my servant. The foregoing I wrote as I am an Esquire. But this I address to you as I am your sincere friend, plain N. B. and therefore beg one favour of you, that is to burn the letter I sent you about J. B.1, and to inform me whether you shewed it to any one. I once more desire you to commit the paper to the flames, for reasons I will tell you when I have the pleasure of 1 Juliana Burke. |