He had announced his intention of retiring from public life as soon as the trial of Warren Hastings should be brought to a conclusion; and when at length it was so, he applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and his son Richard was elected for his vacant seat.
Pitt proposed to confer a peerage on the man, for whom he had, in spite of many opposite ways of thinking, a profound admiration, by the title of Lord Beaconsfield; but a storm was fast gathering, which darkened the remnant of Burke’s life, and hastened his end.
His only child, his idolised Richard, was attacked with sudden illness, to which he succumbed. This young man’s handsome face, familiar to us from the portraits by his father’s friend Reynolds, bore a sullen and somewhat defiant expression, which inclines us to believe the general verdict, that he was a man of ungovernable disposition. Two years before his death he had been sent to Ireland on business by the Catholic Committee, and while there, as also on his return to London, he had proved himself totally unfit for the trust reposed in him. The character given of Richard Burke by one who knew him well was as follows: ‘He is by far the most impudent and opinionative fellow I have ever met.’ Yet in his parents’ fond eyes he was faultless, and few things are more pathetic than the father’s allusion to his heavy loss. ‘The storm has gone over me,’ he says; ‘I lie like one of those old oaks that the late hurricane has scattered round me; I am torn up by the roots; I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I live in an inverted order: those who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of my ancestors.’
Both the King and Pitt (the Premier) were anxious to provide for the great statesman’s declining days, and a considerable grant was assigned him by the Crown. Acceptable as the relief from financial anxiety must have been to the man, now advancing in years and bowed down by sorrow, Burke was much disturbed that the question of the pension had not been brought before Parliament. The sequel proved that his scruples were well founded, for the Duke of Bedford and Lord Lauderdale made this stipend a plea for attacking the Government, to which they were in opposition. But Edmund Burke, says one of his latest biographers, ‘was not slow to reply, and, in his letter to a noble Lord, made one of the most splendid repartees in the English language.’
The ex-statesman in his retirement continued to write political tracts, some of which were not published till after his death. He found his best and truest consolation in the exercise of that charity and benevolence in which his soul had ever delighted. He had established at Beaconsfield a school for the orphans of those who had perished in the French Revolution, or the children of poor emigrants; sixty boys in number; and it is pleasant to learn how, in the society of the little ones he was befriending, his cheerfulness returned; how the great man, the distinguished orator, would join in their childish sports, roll with them on the green turf, and convulse them with laughter by his ‘wretched puns.’ The visits of some faithful friends at The Gregories gave him also unfeigned pleasure, and he loved to speak with, or of, his old associates. Alluding one day to Fox, he said, ‘Ah, that is a man made to be loved!’ When he felt his end approaching he sent affectionate messages to his absent friends, gave calm directions respecting his worldly affairs, and enlarged sorrowfully on the melancholy state of the country. Fox was much affected when he heard of the death of his former friend, and proposed that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey. But the will provided otherwise: ‘A small tablet or flagstone, in Beaconsfield Churchyard, with a short and simple inscription. I say this, because I know the partiality of some of my friends; but I have had too much of noise and compliment in my life.’
Burke left all he possessed to his ‘entirely loved, faithful, and affectionate wife, with whom I have lived so happily for many years.’ After mentioning several noblemen and gentlemen, whose friendship he highly valued, and who all followed him to the grave, he adds, ‘If the intimacy I have had with others has been broken off by political difference on great questions, I hope they will forgive whatever of general human frailty, or of my own particular infirmity, has entered into that consideration; I heartily entreat their forgiveness.’
We insert this short extract, because we think this last of Burke’s writings gives the best notion of his character, and because we consider that the feelings which dictated these words are sublime, and their expression beautiful. He does not forget to recommend his little emigrants to the continued generosity and patronage of William Pitt and other influential personages. Edmund Burke was very popular with women, ‘even,’ says the biographer from whom we have already quoted, ‘those who were angry at his sympathy with American rebels, his unkind words about the King (this was on the subject of economical reform), and his cruel persecution of poor Warren Hastings.’ Meantime he contrived to captivate such different characters as Hannah More, Elizabeth Carter, and Fanny Burney, who met him at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s on Richmond Hill, and could not find terms for her admiration of his noble air, commanding address, clear, penetrating, sonorous voice, powerful, eloquent, copious language; at home on every subject, she had never seen a more delightful man. His features are familiar to us from the portraits of Sir Joshua and Romney, who also painted him.
No. 2.
CHARLES JAMES FOX.