habit of expressing his thoughts, must be attended to in all corrections. It is not the insertion of a piece of stuff, though of a better kind, which is at all times an improvement.

Your main objections are, however, of a much deeper nature, and go to the political opinions and moral sentiments of the piece; in which I find, though with no sort of surprise, having often talked with you on the subject,—that we differ only in everything. You say, "the mischief you are going to do yourself is to my apprehension palpable; I snuff it in the wind, and my taste sickens at it." This anticipated stench, that turns your stomach at such a distance, must be nauseous indeed. You seem to think I shall incur great (and not wholly undeserved) infamy, by this publication. This makes it a matter of some delicacy to me, to suppress what I have written; for I must admit in my own feelings, and in that of those who have seen the piece, that my sentiments and opinions deserve the infamy with which they are threatened. If they do not, I know nothing more than that I oppose the prejudices and inclinations of many people. This I was well aware of from the beginning; and it was in order to oppose those inclinations and prejudices that I proposed to publish my letter. I really am perfectly astonished how you could dream, with my paper in your hand, that I found no other cause than the beauty of the queen of France (now, I suppose, pretty much faded) for disapproving the conduct which has been held towards her, and for expressing my own particular feelings. I am not to order the natural sympathies of my own heart, and of every honest breast, to wait until all the jokes of all the anecdotes of the coffeehouses of Paris, and of the dissenting meeting-houses of London, are scoured of all the slander of those who calumniate persons, that afterwards they may murder them with impunity. I know nothing of your story of Messalina. Am I obliged to prove juridically the virtues of all those I shall see suffering every kind of wrong, and contumely, and risk of life, before I endeavour to interest others in their sufferings, --and before I endeavour to excite horror against midnight assassins at back-stairs, and their more wicked abettors in pulpits? What!-Are not high rank, great splendour of descent, great personal elegance and outward accomplishments, ingredients of moment in forming the interest we take

in the misfortunes of men? The minds of those who do not feel thus are not even systematically right. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?” -Why, because she was Hecuba, the queen of Troy, the wife of Priam,-and suffered, in the close of life, a thousand. calamities! I felt too for Hecuba, when I read the fine tragedy of Euripides upon her story; and I never inquired. into the anecdotes of the court or city of Troy, before I gave way to the sentiments which the author wished to inspire;nor do I remember that he ever said one word of her virtue. It is for those who applaud or palliate assassination, regicide, and base insult to women of illustrious place, to prove the crimes (in1 sufferings) which they allege, to justify their own. But if they have proved fornication on any such woman,taking the manners of the world, and the manners of France, -I shall never put it in a parallel with assassination!-No: I have no such inverted scale of faults, in my heart or my head.

You find it perfectly ridiculous, and unfit for me in particular, to take these things as my ingredients of commiseration. Pray why is it absurd in me to think, that the chivalrous spirit which dictated a veneration for women of condition and of beauty, without any consideration whatever of enjoying them, was the great source of those manners which have been the pride and ornament of Europe for so many ages ? And am I not to lament that I have lived to see those manners extinguished in so shocking a manner, by means of speculations of finance, and the false science of a sordid and degenerate philosophy? I tell you again,-that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the queen of France, in the year 1774, and the contrast between that brilliancy, splendour, and beauty, with the prostrate homage of a nation to her, and the abominable scene of 1789, which I was describing, did draw tears from me and wetted my paper. These tears came again into my eyes, almost as often as I looked at the description; they may again. You do not believe this fact, nor that these are my real feelings; but that the whole is affected, or, as you express it, downright foppery. My friend, I tell you it is truth; and that it is true, and will be truth, when you and I are no more; and will exist

1 The MS. of this letter is not the original, and probably there has been some error in copying these words.

as long as men with their natural feelings shall exist. I shall say no more on this foppery of mine. Oh! by the way, you ask me how long I have been an admirer of German ladies? Always the same. Present me the idea of such

massacres about any German lady here, and such attempts to assassinate her, and such a triumphant procession from Windsor to the Old Jewry, and I assure you, I shall be quite as full of natural concern and just indignation.

As to the other points, they deserve serious consideration, and they shall have it. I certainly cannot profit quite so much by your assistance as if we agreed. In that case, every correction would be forwarding the design. We should work with one common view. But it is impossible that any man can correct a work according to its true spirit, who is opposed to its object, or can help the expression of what he thinks should not be expressed at all.

I should agree with you about the vileness of the controversy with such miscreants as the "Revolution Society" and the "National Assembly;" and I know very well that they, as well as their allies, the Indian delinquents, will darken the air with their arrows. But I do not yet think they have the advowson of reputation. I shall try that point. My dear sir, you think of nothing but controversies; "I challenge into the field of battle, and retire defeated, &c." If their having the last word be a defeat, they most assuredly will defeat me. But I intend no controversy with Dr. Price, or Lord Shelburne, or any other of their set. I mean to set in full view the danger from their wicked principles and their black hearts. I intend to state the true principles of our constitution in church and state, upon grounds opposite to theirs. If any one be the better for the example made of them, and for this exposition, well and good. I mean to do my best to expose them to the hatred, ridicule, and contempt of the whole world; as I always shall expose such calumniators, hypocrites, sowers of sedition, and approvers of murder and all its triumphs. When I have done that, they may have the field to themselves; and I care very little how they triumph over me, since I hope they will not be able to draw me at their heels, and carry my head in triumph on their poles.

I have been interrupted, and have said enough. Adieu!

believe me always sensible of your friendship; though it is impossible that a greater difference can exist on earth than, unfortunately for me, there is on those subjects, between your sentiments and mine.

TO CAPTAIN WOODFORD.1

EDM. BURKE.

SIR, Duke Street, St. James's, February 11th, 1791. I must beg your favourable interpretation of my long silence. I have really been engaged in business which has occupied my whole mind, and made me somewhat negligent in the attentions which are most justly due from me. Amongst these I must reckon what I owe to you, for your communication of the sentiments of the Abbé Maury, and for the very polite and obliging manner in which you have made that communication.

I have to thank you for the excellent speeches of the Abbé, which, until your goodness furnished me with them, I had never read. I had never before seen anything of his, which could furnish a proper idea of his manner of treating a subject. I had seen him only in detached pieces; and sometimes, I apprehend, under the disadvantage of a representation of his enemies. Even in that form, I thought I perceived the traces of a superior mind. The pieces which you have been so kind to put in my hands have more than justified the ideas I had formed of him from reputation. I find there a bold, manly, commanding, haughty tone of eloquence, free and rapid, and full of resources; but admiring as I do his eloquence, I admire much more his unwearied perseverance, his invincible constancy, his firm intrepidity, his undaunted courage, and his noble defiance of vulgar opinion and popular clamour. These are real foundations of glory. Whenever he shall get rid of the dangers of his inviolability, and shall wish to relax in the ease and free intercourse of this land of slavery (in which he has nothing to dread from a committee of researches, or the excellent laws of lese-nation), he shall, with a very sincere and open heart, receive from me the accolade chevaleresque, which he conde

1 Captain Woodford, probably, had lately just returned from Paris.

scends to desire; for he has acquitted himself en preuz chevalier, and as a valiant champion in the cause of honour, virtue, and noble sentiments,-in the cause of his king and his country, in the cause of law, religion, and liberty. Be pleased only to express my sorrow, that the mediocrity of my situation, and the very bad French which I speak, will neither of them suffer me to entertain him with the distinction I should wish to show him. I will do the best I can. I have had the Count de Mirabeau in my house; will he submit afterwards to enter under the same roof? I will have it purified and expiated, and I shall look into the best formulas from the time of Homer downwards, for that purpose. I will do everything but imitate the Spaniard, who burned his house because the Connetable de Bourbon had been lodged in it. That ceremony is too expensive for my finances. Anything else I shall readily submit to for its purification; for I am extremely superstitious, and think his coming into it was of evil augury; worse, a great deal, than the crows, which the Abbé will find continually flying about me. It is his having been in so many prisons in France that has proved so ominous to them all. Let the Hall of the National Assembly look to itself, and take means of averting the same ill auspices that threaten it. They are a fine nation that send their monarchs to prison, and take their successors from the jails! The birth of such monsters has made me as superstitious as Livy. A friend of mine, just come from Paris, tells me he was present when the Count de Mirabeau-I beg his pardon,-Mr. Ricquetti,' thought proper to entertain the assembly with his opinion of me. I only answer him by referring him to the WORLD's opinion of him. I have the happiness not to be disapproved by my sovereign. I can bear the frowns of Ricquetti the First, who is theirs. I am safe under the British laws. I do n't intend to put myself in the way of his inquisition, or of his lanterne; which I consider as much more dangerous to honest men, though not to him than the Bastile was formerly. If I were to go to France, I should think the government of Louis the Sixteenth much more favourable to liberty than that of their present king, Ricquetti the First. In one thing, indeed, I find him,

Ricquetti was the family name of Mirabeau, and which during the Revolution he used in preference.