Burke's language is,
therefore, always interesting and always appropriate to his thought; it
is also on occasion very beautiful. He had a wonderful command of clear
and ringing utterance and could appeal when he liked very powerfully to
the sensibilities of his readers. Rhetoricians are seldom free from
occasional extravagance, and Burke fell under the common danger of his
kind. He had his moments of falsity, could heap coarse and outrageous
abuse on Warren Hastings, illustrate the horrors of the Revolution by
casting a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons, and nourish
hatred beyond the bounds of justice or measure. But these things do not
affect his position, nor take from the solid greatness of his work.
Boswell we have seen; after Burke and Boswell, Goldsmith was the most
brilliant member of the Johnson circle. If part of Burke's genius is
referable to his nationality, Goldsmith's is wholly so. The beginning
and the end of him was Irish; every quality he possessed as a man and as
a writer belongs to his race. He had the Irish carelessness, the Irish
generosity, the Irish quick temper, the Irish humour. This latter gift,
displayed constantly in a company which had little knowledge of the
peculiar quality of Irish wit and no faculty of sympathy or imagination,
is at the bottom of the constant depreciation of him on the part of
Boswell and others of his set.
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