That young lady, with the pleasure of youthful exultation in a literary honour, proclaimed that she had just received a letter from the famous Doctor Franklin.
Mr. Burke then, to Miss Shipley’s great delight, burst forth into an eulogy of the abilities and character of Dr. Franklin, which he mingled with a history the most striking, yet simple, of his life; and a veneration the most profound for his eminence in science, and his liberal sentiments and skill in politics.
This led him, imperceptibly, to a dissertation upon the beauty, but rarity, of great minds sustaining great powers to great old age; illustrating his remarks by historical proofs, and biographical anecdotes of antique worthies;—till he came to Cardinal Ximenes, who lived to his ninetieth year. And here he made a pause. He could go, he said, no further. Perfection rested there!
His pause, however, producing only a general silence, that indicated no wish of speech but from himself, he suddenly burst forth again into an oration so glowing, so flowing, so noble, so divinely eloquent, upon the life, conduct, and endowments of this Cardinal, that I felt as if I had never before known what it was to listen! I saw Mr. Burke, and Mr. Burke only! Nothing, no one else was visible any more than audible. I seemed suddenly organized into a new intellectual existence, that was wholly engrossed by one single use of the senses of seeing and hearing, to the total exclusion of every object but of the figure of Mr. Burke; and of every sound but of that of his voice. All else—my dear father alone excepted—appeared but amalgamations of the chairs on which they were seated; and seemed placed round the table merely as furniture.
I cannot pretend to write you such a speech—but such sentences as I can recollect with exactitude, I cannot let pass.
The Cardinal, he said, gave counsel and admonition to princes and sovereigns with the calm courage and dauntless authority with which he might have given them to his own children: yet, to such noble courage, he joined a humility still more magnanimous, in never desiring to disprove, or to disguise his own lowly origin; but confessing, at times, with openness and simplicity, his surprise at the height of the mountain to which, from so deep a valley, he had ascended. And, in the midst of all his greatness, he personally visited the village in which he was born, where he touchingly recognised what remained of his kith and kin.
Next, he descanted upon the erudition of this exemplary prelate; his scarce collection of bibles; his unequalled mass of rare manuscripts; his charitable institutions; his learned seminaries; and his stupendous University at Alcala. “Yet so untinged,” he continued, “was his scholastic lore with the bigotry of the times; and so untainted with its despotism, that, even in his most forcible acts for securing the press from licentiousness, he had the enlargement of mind to permit the merely ignorant, or merely needy instruments of its abuse, when detected in promulgating profane works, from being involved in their destruction; for though, on such occasions, he caused the culprits’ shops, or warehouses, to be strictly searched, he let previous notice of his orders be given to the owners, who then privily executed judgment themselves upon the peccant property; while they preserved what was sane, as well as their personal liberty: but—if the misdemeanour were committed a second time, he manfully left the offenders, unaided and unpitied, to its forfeiture.
“To a vigour,” Mr. Burke went on, “that seemed never to calculate upon danger, he joined a prudence that seemed never to run a risk. Though often the object of aspersion—as who, conspicuous in the political world, is not?—he always refused to prosecute; he would not even answer his calumniators. He held that all classes had a right to stand for something in public life! “We,” he said, “who are at the head, Act;—in God’s name let those who are at the other end, Talk! If we are Wrong, ’tis our duty to hearken, and to mend! If we are Right, we may be content enough with our superiority, to teach unprovoked malice its impotence, by leaving it to its own fester.”
“So elevated, indeed,” Mr. Burke continued, “was his disdain of detraction, that instead of suffering it to blight his tranquillity, he taught it to become the spur to his virtues!”
Mr. Burke again paused; paused as if overcome by the warmth of his own emotion of admiration; and presently he gravely protested, that the multifarious perfections of Cardinal Ximenes were beyond human delineation.