His delicate health disabled him from joining his brothers in their outdoor amusements; and when they were at play, Edmund was commonly seen reading. To this Richard Burke alluded, when, being found in a reverie shortly after an extraordinary display of powers in the House of Commons by his brother, and questioned by Malone as to the cause,-"I have been wondering," said he, "how Ned has contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family; but then again, I remember when we were at play he was always at work."

BURKE AT SCHOOL AT BALLITORE.-HIS GRATITUDE TO HIS MASTER.

The tolerance of Burke's disposition was, doubtless, fostered by his early years being passed among members of the most opposite religious persuasions. He knew what Protestantism was; at home he saw examples of Roman Catholicism; 'the last two years of his boyhood were spent among a household of rigid Dissenters; and his next schoolmaster was a member of the Society of Friends. This was Abraham Shackleton, who kept, a large boarding-school at Ballitore, a retired village in Kildare. Thither Edmund Burke was removed, with his two brothers, Garret and Richard, on May 26, 1741. "Quiet, modest, earnest, intelligent, ever ready to oblige, always careful not to wound the feelings of others, the engaging manners of the boy, Edmund Burke, were conspicuous from the first, and rendered him a general favourite." Among his schoolfellows were Dr. Brocklesby, the eminent London physician; the Rev. Michael Kearney, brother to one of the Bishops of Ossory; and Thomas Bushe, father of the Irish Judge. Shackleton soon found the habits of his pupil Burke indicative of more solidity than commonly belongs to his period of life; his steadiness of application, facility of comprehension, and strength of memory, insured the commendation and regard of his master; and the grateful pupil never forgot his obligations. "In the House of Commons," says Macknight, "he paid a noble tribute to the memory of

Abraham Shackleton, declaring that he was an honour to his sect, and that sect one of the purest. He ever considered it as one of the greatest blessings of his life that he had been placed at the good Quaker's academy, and readily acknow ledged it was to Abraham Shackleton that he owed the edu cation that made him worth anything. A member of the Society of Friends had always peculiar claims on his sympathy and regard."*

A correspondent of Notes and Queries, No. 227, states there to have been living at Ballitore, in 1854, Mr. George Shackleton, a descendant of Abraham Shackleton, who had a quantity of letters written to his old schoolmaster, and also to his son Richard. When the latter attended yearly meetings in London, he always went on to Beaconsfield. Burke was so much attached to Richard, that on one of these visits he caused Shackleton's portrait to be painted and presented to him; and it was then in the possession of the above family.

BURKE AND HIS FRIEND RICHARD SHACKLETON.

Burke remained three years at Ballitore. Here his chief favourite and friend was the master's only son, Richard Shackleton, who has left an interesting account of Burke's boyish peculiarities; and being three or four years older, Shackleton was fully competent to form an opinion. "Edmund (he writes,) was a lad of most promising genius; of an inquisitive and speculative cast of mind. He read much while a boy, and accumulated a stock of learning of great variety. His memory was extensive; his judgment early ripe. He would find in his own mind in reasoning and communing with himself such a fund of entertainment that he seemed not at all to regret his hours of solitude. Yet he was affable, free, and communicative, as ready to teach as to learn.

"When Mr. Burke was informed that Mr. West was a Quaker, he said that he always regarded it among the most fortunate circumstances of his life, that his first preceptor was a member of the Society of Friends."-Early Life and Studies of Benjamin West.

He made the reading of the classics his diversion rather than his business. He was particularly delighted with history and poetry, and while at school performed several exercises in the latter with a manly grace." A very favourite study, as he once confessed in the House of Commons, was the old romances, Palmerin of England, and Don Belianis of Greece, upon which he had wasted much valuable time.

Prior relates of him while at school, that seeing a poor man pulling down his own hut near the village, and hearing that it was done by order of the parish conservator of the roads upon the plea of its being too near the highway, young Burke exclaimed, that were he a man, and possessed of authority, the poor should not thus be oppressed; and there was no characteristic of his subsequent life more marked, than a hatred of oppression in any form, or from any quarter.

Upon the steward of Ballitore academy, a shrewd North of Ireland Presbyterian named Gill, young Shackleton wrote verses, and young Burke exercised his boyish logic in argument. Gill, in after life, delighted to hear of Burke's celebrity, and when he last visited Ballitore in 1786, after the opening of the impeachment of Hastings, the old steward, who regarded this measure as another illustration of the humane spirit displayed by the boy, was then verging on his eightieth year. Mr. Burke accosted him with his accustomed kindness, and introduced his son, which condescension deeply affected the old man, who could scarcely say how proud he was to see Burke; adding, "you have many friends in Ireland, sir." "I am happy, Mr. Gill, that you are one of them, -you look very well.-Am I much changed since you last saw me ?" The old man replied, it being evening, that he was almost too dark with age to observe; when Mr. Burke took a candle and held it up to his own face, to give the aged servant a better view of it; a scene which, the relater of the anecdote says, those who were present cannot easily forget.

Young Burke and his friend Shackleton wrote verses together, and translated classic poems; and their school friendship became matured into lasting regard: they kept up an

epistolary correspondence during the remainder of their lives; and the politician confessed to tears on the receipt of intelligence of his dear friend's death.

EDMUND SPENSER AND EDMUND BURKE.

Through the Nagles, Burke was in a distant degree connected with the poet Spenser-Spenser's eldest son, Sylvanus, of Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, having married Ellen, daughter of David Nagle, Esq., of Monanimy. The great grandfather of Burke possessed some property in the county, and subsequently settled near the village of Castletown Roche, five or six miles from the ruins of Kilcolman castle, the residence for a considerable time of Spenser, who wrote there the whole or the greater part of his Faerie Queene. Burke's health was very delicate in boyhood, when he frequently exchanged the close atmosphere of Arran Quay for the fresh air of Castletown Roche, where the natural beauties and historical associations of the neighbourhood charmed the intelligent and imaginative boy. There was, the old castle which the Lady Roche, in the absence of her lord, defended against Cromwell's soldiers. There was the stream Awbeg, the fair and bright Mullah of Spenser, with its weeping waves; and there, amidst the ruins of Kilcolman, the boy Burke loved to sit reading the Faerie Queene in the very scenes of its inspiration; "and," says Macknight, "many a splendid sentence and poetical allusion, which gave such a peculiar fascination to the driest subject when treated by Burke, may easily be traced to the bard of Kilcolman, whose mind was filled with all that is beautiful in humanity, who was, as his View of the State of Ireland amply testifies, not only a great poet, but also a true political philosopher." The coincidences of expression between Burke and Spenser are very numerous; and Burke's estimate of the poet is very striking :-" Whoever relishes and reads Spenser as he ought to be read, will have a strong hold of the English language."

BURKE AT COLLEGE.

Burke quitted Ballitore with a large and miscellaneous stock of learning for his years." Next day he entered his name in Trinity College, Dublin, as pensioner. His tutor told him he was a good scholar, and more fit for his study than three parts of his class, and in a month gave him "the first nine chapters of Burgersdicius, six last Eneids, Enchiridion, Tabula Cebetus," which this same tutor recommended as “a fine picture of human life." In ten days, Burke writes to Shackleton: "sitting at my own bureau with, oh hideous Burgersdicius;" Goldsmith equally complained of the repulsive Burgersdicius. Oliver, who was at Trinity with Burke, states that he did not distinguish himself in his academical exercises; and Dr. Leland, another of his contemporaries, supports Goldsmith's statement; still he was not negligent of essential collegiate studies. But he never seems to have applied himself systematically to one branch of study, or seriously to have laboured for gold medals or prize books; still, his extensive reading gave him wider views than could be acquired from the usual text-books of a college. Of modern authors he took most pleasure in Milton, whom he delighted to illustrate at his Debating Society. He greeted Ossian's Song of the Son of Fingal with more applause than he bestowed on Shakspeare; though his veneration of him was by no means enthusiastic. He loved Horace and Lucretius, and defended against Johnson the paradox that though Homer was a greater poet than Virgil, yet the Eneid was a greater poem than the Iliad.

Burke was a member of the arena for juvenile debaters of Trinity, called the Historical Society, which was the arena of his incipient oratory. He was likewise a distinguished member of a literary club instituted in Dublin in 1747, of which he was sometimes secretary, and sometimes president; and in the original minutes of this society, his early taste for Milton is thus recorded :-" Friday, June 5, 1747. Mr. Burke being ordered to read the speech of Moloch, received applause for