The Irish standard., 1886-06-12
THE GREAT EDMUND BURKE.
His Faults in Him Seem as the Spots in
Heaven More Fierv by
Nights Blackness." @
THE WONDERFUL IRISH ORATOR.

No Author is Likely to Exercise {
More Enduring Influence Upon
Succeeding Generations.
When Oliver Goldsmith was siza1
at Trinity, and Henry Flood was stu
dent at Oxford, young man named
Edmund Burke was pursuing know.
ledge in many directions within the
walls Of the Dublin University. Il is
conceivable that collegiate authority
would have looked with a more hopeful
eye upon youth prompter to pursue
the beaten track of academic culture
less eager to obey his swift and shift
ing impulses. less consistently lncon-
sistent in the course Of his study. IT
is almost certain that collegiate au-
thority would have shaken its head in
solemn and scornful denegation il ii
had been assyred by any voice Of auda-
cious prophecy that Burke, Of Arran
quay. would prove to be the greatest
man who ever trod the Trinity quad
rangles, and that in the ful!ness OF
time q grateful country would erect his
ehigy in enduring bronze in the face Of
the venerable walls which had shell
tered his youthful genius. That collie
giate authority should not be impec-
cable need not surprise us. We can
imagine what it would have thought Of
the ballad making boy from Bally-
mahon, the Lazarus of it's Dives gener-
osity of learning, whose statute, too,
SHOULD one day adorn Its precincts,
and we can estimate its opir~
ion Of one OF the two great
contemporaries by it's disdainfn]
Indifference of the other. Wise acad-
emic authority is scarcely to be blamed.
A college council is lot a synod Of pro-
phets. It can but judge according tc
its lights, and can hardly be censured,
if it may be pitied, for failing to dis
Germ the token Of true genius in the as
siduous, if Irresponsible student named
Burke, and the idle, verse making sizar
named Goldsmith.
The house is still shown ON tArran
quay where Burke was born. The date
Of that birth is and must, presumably,
remain uncertain. 1t va.ies according
TO different authorities as to the day
from the 1st TO the 18th of January, and
as to the year from 172S TO 1928. When
he was nearly twelve years old he Was
sent to school at Ballitore, some thirty
miles from Dublin. For his school
master, Abraham Shackleton, q Quaker
from Y orkshire, the boy conceived ali
admiration and attachment snch as the
pupil too seldom feels, OF is allowed to
feel, for the pedagogue. A full genera
tion later, when the simple, high
minded Quaker schoolmaster died, and
the boy who loved him had become O.:
famous statesman, Burke expresses the
most feeling gratitude to and adnlira-
ton for his old preceptor. The affec-
tion which Burke felt for Abraham
Shackleton he also felt for his son Rich
ard. Throughout Burkes youth Rich
ard Shackleton was his closest friend
and conhdant, and the intimacy proved
more enduring than the friendship of
the schoolroom and the confederacy Of
collegiate days always prove.
The actual human daily life of Burke
from its earliest hours in Arran-quay
TO those latest hours ;sy Beaconslield,
when the tranquil soul Of the dying
statesman was soothed by the thoughts
of Addison on Immortality, cannot be
called eyentful; the life itself is one OF
the greatest events in human history.
The boy, fired by q noble ambition, is
somewhat at feud with his father, a
worthy. tetchy man, whose sober brain
has never beWildered itself with the
thought that he had brought into the
world an intellectual giant, and who
only regards his son as g. purposeless,
eccentric young man. whose forward
ways are calculated to grizzle the pa
ternal hairs With needless anxiety. In
London the youth loves law platonic-
ally and literature passionately. He
praises the one, but he serves the other,
with uncertainty and tentatively at
first. He parodies Bolingbroke, to be-
gin with. Speculations upon reason
and taste lead him later to the produc-
tion Of the famous Essay on the Sub
lime and the Beautiful r which had the
effect, first, of placating an angry pa
rent, and, secondly, of winning the ad-
rniration Of DIR. Johnson, who even
found it necessary to argue in defence
Of the anonymous volume with the
young Irish gentleman who yentured to
deprecate it's merits: aud in whom
stout Samuel did not dream that he be-
held the author whom he was pleased
in his Leonine fashion to champion.
The young mans health breaks down.
A wise and kindly physician heals his
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