IN SEARCH OF BURKE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 630, 27 July 1951, Page 13

IN SEARCH OF BURKE

EDMUND BURKE-SIX ESSAYS, by Thomas W. Copeland; Jonathan Cape. English price, 18/-. "WE live,’ wrote Edmund Burke at the age of sixteen, "in a world where everyone is on the catch, and the only way to be safe is to be silentsilent in any affair of consequence; and I think it would not be a bad rule for every man to keep within what he thinks of others, of himself, and of his own affairs." The boy grew up to practise his own precept-wisely enough as_ events proved, for throughout a long political career he was continually under fire from enemies whose ammunition was libel and slander. The secrecy that enveloped him while living was perpetuated for one hundred and fifty years after his death by successive executors who withheld his papers from examination. These, however, have recently been made accessible. Professor Copeland’s avowed object in publishing this volume is to hail a new field of research and to stimulate interest in a career that is "very much more obscure to us than is generally thought." Three of the six essays are laborious inquiries into questions of dates, details and personal identities which can scarcely appeal to other than scholars engaged in a study of the period. I doubt whether the casual reader will be intrigued by the various proofs here assembled that Burke wrote most of the reviews appearing in the Annual Register between 1758 and 1773; or whether his patience will last while Professor

Copeland sorts out from among several possibilities the genuine Monsieur Dupont to whom Burke addressed his Reflections on the Revolution in France. The first two essays of the series, "Boswell’s Portrait of Burke," and "The Little Dogs and All," are, I think, by far the best. The former is a commentary on the factors that inhibited Boswell from drawing a fuller and more accurate picture of Burke. The latter is devoted to a discussion of the causes of Burke’s incorrigible reticence. Neither ef these studies ig overloaded with minute scraps of proof and laborious deductions; both have something of the fascination inseparable from a voyage of discovery. Yet even in the less intricate phases of his work, Professor Copeland gives the impression that he is far happier when holding historical inquests than when writing biographical essays.

R. M.

Burdon