him, and begin to moisten the paper on which he writes, he reluctantly leaves a subject which he could not so soon have exhausted; and when he also should resign his life to the great Giver of it, he desires no other decoration of his humble gravestone than this honourable truth:

With none to flatter, none to recommend,
Dunning approved and marked him as a friend.

SIR W. JONES.

LORD CHIEF BARON BURGH.

WALTER HUSSEY, who afterwards took the name of Burgh, and was advanced to the station of lord chief baron of the exchequer, came, at this time, into parliament, under the auspices of James, Duke of Leinster. He immediately joined the great opposition then formed against the administration of Lord Townshend. His speeches, when he first entered the House of Commons, were very brilliant, very figurative, and far more remarkable for that elegant poetic taste which had highly distinguished him when a member of the university, than any logical illustration or depth of argument. But as he was blessed with great endowments, every session took away somewhat from the unnecessary splendour and redundancy of his harangues. To make use of a phrase of Cicero, in speaking of his own improvements in eloquence, his orations were gradually deprived of all fever. Clearness of intellect, a subtile, refined, and polished wit; a gay, fertile, uncommonly fine imagination; very classical taste,

superior harmony and elegance of diction, peculiarly characterized this justly celebrated man. Though without beauty, his countenance was manly, engaging, and expressive; his figure agreeable and interesting; his deportment graceful.

To those who never heard him, as the fashion of this world in eloquence, as in all things, soon passes away, it may be no easy matter to convey a just idea of his style of speaking; it differed totally from the models which have been presented to us by some of the great masters of rhetoric in latter days. His eloquence was by no means gaudy, tumid, nor approaching to that species of oratory which the Roman critics denominated Asiatic; but it was always decorated as the occasion required: it was often compressed and pointed, though that could not be said to have been its general feature. It was sustained with great ingenuity, and great rapidity of intellect, luminous and piercing satire; in refinement abundant, in simplicity sterile. The classical allusions of this orator, for he was most truly one, were so apposite, they followed each other in such bright and varied succession, and at times spread such an unexpected and triumphant blaze round his subject, that all persons who were in the least tinged with literature could never be tired of listening to him. The Irish are a people of quick sensibility, and perfectly alive to every display of ingenuity or illustrative wit. Never did the spirit of the nation soar higher than during the splendid days of the volunteer institution; and when Hussey Burgh, alluding to some coercive English laws, and that

institution, then in its proudest array, said, in the House of Commons, "that such laws were sown like dragon's teeth, and sprang up in armed men," the applause which followed, and the glow of enthusiasm which he kindled in every mind, far exceeded my powers of description.

Never did the graces more sedulously cherish and uniformly attend any orator more than this amiable and elegant man. They embellished all that he said; but the graces are fugitive or perishable. Of his admired speeches but few if any records are now to be found; and of his harmonious flowing eloquence, it may be said, as Tacitus did of an eminent speaker in his time :"Haterii canorum illud, et profluens, cum ipso extinctum est *."

He accepted the office of prime sergeant during the early part of Lord Buckinghamshire's administration; but the experience of one session convinced him that his sentiments and those of the English and Irish cabinets, on the great questions relative to the independence of Ireland, would never assimilate. He soon grew weary of his situation; when his return to the standard of opposition was marked by all ranks of people, and especially his own profession, as a day of splendid triumph. Numerous were the congratulations which he received on this sacrifice of

It is to be observed, however, that the debate reporters in his time were in general the most ignorant of human beings. Unless, therefore, his friends were at the trouble of preparing some of his speeches for the press, they must have been sadly disfigured. In a debate on the Mutiny Bill, Burke quoted an opinion of Sergeant Maynard's; the reporters stated, that he very appositely introduced a saying of an eminent Sergeant Major.

official emolument, to the duty which he owed to his country. That country he loved even to enthusiasm. He moved the question of a free trade for Ireland, as the only measure that could then rescue this kingdom from total decay. The resolution was concise, energetic, and successful. He supported Mr. Grattan in all the motions which finally laid prostrate the dominion of the British parliament over Ireland. When he did so, he was not unacquainted with the vindictive disposition of the English cabinet of that day, towards all who dared to maintain such propositions. One night, when he sat down after a most able argumentative speech in favour of the just rights of Ireland, he turned to Mr. Grattan, "I have now," said he, " nor do I repent it, sealed the door against my own preferment; and I have made the fortune of the man opposite to me," naming a particular person who sat on the treasury bench.

He loved fame, he enjoyed the blaze of his own reputation; and the most unclouded moments of his life were not those when his exertions at the bar, or in the House of Commons, failed to receive their accustomed and ample tribute of admiration; that, indeed, but rarely happened: he felt it at particular moments during his connexion with the Buckinghamshire administration; nor did the general applause which he received counterbalance his temporary chagrin. A similar temperament is, I think, recorded of Racine; but he had not Racine's jealousy. On the contrary, the best intellectual displays of his contemporaries seemed always to be the most agreeable to him; and I can well attest, that he hailed the

dawn of any young man's rising reputation with the tribute of kindred genius.

He died at a time of life when his faculties, always prompt and discriminating, approximated as it should seem to their fullest perfection. On the bench, where he sat more than one year, he had sometimes lost sight of that wise precept which Lord Bacon lays down for the conduct of a judge towards an advocate at his bar: "You should not affect the opinion of poignancy and expedition, by an impatient and catching hearing of the counsellors at the bar*." He seemed to be sensible of his deviation from this; to be convinced that security in our own opinions, like too great security in any thing, "is mortals' chiefest enemy;" and that in our daily converse with the world we meet with others who are far wiser than ourselves, even on those points where we fondly imagine our own wisdom to be the most authenticated. His honest desire not to feed contention, but bring it to as speedy a termination as could reasonably be wished, deserves great praise.

"He did not," says Mr. Flood, alluding to him in one of his speeches, "live to be ennobled, but he was ennobled by nature." I value the just prerogatives of ancient nobility; but to the tears and regrets of a nation bending over the urn of private excellence, as Ireland did over his, what has heraldry to add, or, at such moments, what can it bestow?

HARDY.

* Lord Bacon's speech to Judge Hutton, on being made a Judge of Common Pleas.