mencement in 1755 to the end of 1758, with illustrative State papers; the history of the year is followed by the chronicle; characters ; extraordinary adventures, including an account of the sufferings of the persons confined in the Black Hole at Calcutta, in June, 1756; literary and miscellaneous essays; poetry, including pieces by Akenside, William Whitehead, and the King of Prussia; and lastly, reviews of books published in 1758, including Jortin's Erasmus and Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. This and several of the succeeding volumes were so popular that they ran through five or six editions. Burke wrote the historical chapters, and superintended the work generally, for which he only received 1007. a-year, as proved by receipts in existence, signed by Burke. It has been stated that he continued editor for thiry years; but there are receipts preserved to show that a Mr. Thomas English prepared the historical portion from 1767 to 1791; so that Burke's editorship did not extend beyond seven or eight years; but he is believed to have afterwards been a contributor. The History of the War was reprinted from the Registers, and went through more than one edition. We have scarcely an instance of such sound writing in any Annual Register of our day, if we except the Edinburgh Annual Register, to which Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Southey contributed.

The Register for 1759 records the splendid triumphs of the conquest of Guadaloupe, the bombardment of Havre, the defeat of the French fleet off Cape Lagos, the acquisitions of Ticonderossa and Crown Point, the achievements of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham, with the consequent surrender of Quebec, and the destruction of the fleet and armament under Conflans, on the coast of Brittany: "thus we wind up this wonderful year!"

How touching are these few sentences: "The death of Wolfe," says Burke, "was, indeed, grievous to his country, but to himself the most happy that could be imagined; and the most to be envied by all those who have a true relish for military glory. Unindebted to family connexions, unsup

ported by intrigue or faction, he had accomplished the whole business of life at a time when others are only beginning to appear; and at the age of thirty-five, without feeling the weakness of age or the vicissitude of fortune, having sacrificed his honest ambition, having completed his character, having fulfilled the expectations of his country, he fell at the head of his conquering troops, and expired in the arms of Victory."

In the same Register there is a review of Johnson's Rasselas, by Burke, concluding thus: "Though the author has not put his name to this work, there is no doubt that he is the same who has before done so much for the improvement of our taste and our morals, and employed a great part of his life in an astonishing work for fixing the language of this nation, whilst the nation which admires his works, and profits by them, has done nothing for the author." In this plain-speaking, Burke made the first public suggestion of Johnson's pension, which was soon afterwards granted.

BURKE'S "AFFLUENCE OF CONVERSATION."

On Christmas-day, 1758, a large company was assembled round Garrick's dinner-table in Southampton-street, Strand. Burke, Samuel Johnson, and Arthur Murphy were of the party. Burke and Johnson had met before at Garrick's table, and were now intimate; for the lexicographer submitted to contradiction in discussions with his companion twenty years younger than himself, which he would tolerate from no other person, whatever his talents or experience. A mutual admiration seems to have been the joint feeling between them; although sharp contentions and clashings of opinion occasionally disturbed their conversation. But Johnson eminently practised in himself and loved in others "good talk;" and no man ever praised another more than the Doctor praised Burke. When Johnson and Boswell were supping at their inn at Oxford, their conversation turned upon the fame of men being generally exaggerated in the

world, when Boswell mentioned Burke as an exception. Johnson emphatically replied: "Yes; Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual." At another time he said: "Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind: he does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full." And once, when Johnson was ill and unable to exert himself as much as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke having been mentioned, he said: "That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now, it would kill me." So much was Johnson accustomed to consider conversation as a contest, and such was his notion of Burke as an opponent.

Then Johnson spoke of Burke's "affluence of conversation"-" common conversation," which corresponded with the general fame he had in the world. "Take up whatever you please, he is ready to meet you." Then, Burke was a most extraordinary man, who never failed to impress whomsoever he met with; next did Johnson say: "No man of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway to avoid a shower, without being convinced that he was the first man in England." Or, If you met him for the first time in the street where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside for shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner that when you parted you would say-This is an extraordinary man. Now, you may be long enough with me, (added Johnson,) without finding anything extraordinary." Johnson's remark is confirmed by a story of Burke and a friend going to see Lichfield cathedral, when one of the Canons undertaking to show them the building, was struck with the splendour, depth, and variety of the conversation of one of the strangers. No matter what topic started,—whether architecture, antiquities, ecclesiastical history, the revenues, prosecutions, or the lives of the early ornaments or leading members of the church; he touched upon them all with the readiness and accuracy of a master. They had not long separated when the Canon told a friend that he had been conversing with a man of the

most extraordinary powers of mind and extent of information, which it had ever been his fortune to meet with; he went to the inn to inquire who the stranger was, and found it to be the celebrated Mr. Burke.

Johnson delighted to ask Murphy: "Are you not proud of your countryman ?" adding occasionally: "Cum talis sit utinam noster esset." "Grattan considered Burke the greatest man in conversation he had ever met with. The care with which he introduced a conversation, and the subtlety with which he carried it on, were illustrated by Goldsmith, when he said in reply to an eulogy on Johnson's power of conversation : "But is he like Burke, who winds into his subject like a serpent ?" How much too has Goldsmith conveyed in this witty line of "Retaliation :"

Our Burke shall be tongue, with the garnish of brains.

BURKE AT "THE CLUB."

In 1763, a knot of good and great men first met in the Turk's Head tavern, in Gerard-street, Soho, and formed a Club, headed by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Johnson, the most clubable man in London, caught at the notion eagerly, and suggested as a model a club which he had founded in Ivylane, some fourteen years before, but was now broken up. The members at Gerard-street were limited to nine: Mr. Hawkins, as one of the Ivy-lane club, was invited to join; and of course Edmund Burke, who had lately parted company with Single-speech Hamilton, and left Dublin and politics for a time. The notion of the club delighted Burke, and he brought with him his father-in-law, Dr. Nugent. The chair was taken every Monday night by a member in rotation, when all were expected to attend, and sup together; and conversation, from which politics only were excluded, was kept up till a late hour.

Of this club, Hawkins was a most unpopular member; even his old friend, Johnson, admitted him to be out of place here. He had objected to Goldsmith at the club, as a

mere literary drudge." Hawkins's "existence was a kind of pompous, parsimonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits in an absurd epitaph: "Here lies Sir John Hawkins, without his shoes and stawkins."(Forster's Life of Goldsmith.) Hawkins's "tendency to savage. ness," as Johnson called it, caused his early secession from the club; his own account is that he withdrew, because of late hours; but the fact was, says Boswell, that he one evening attacked Mr. Burke in so rude a manner, that all the company testified their displeasure; and at the next meeting Hawkins's reception was such that he never came again.

Lætitia Matilda Hawkins, herself, proposing to defend her father, corroborates this statement. "The Burkes," she says, describing the impressions of her childhood, "as the men of that family were called, were not then what they were afterwards considered; they were, as my father termed them, Irish Adventurers; and came into this country with no good auguries, nor any very decided principles of action. They had to talk their way in the world that was to furnish their means of living." "An Irish Adventurer," adds Mr. Forster, "who had to talk his way in the world, is much what Burke was considered by the great as well as the little vulgar for several years to come;" and he justly stigmatizes Hawkins's words as a "vulgar and insolent phrase."

Still, Burke's vehemence of will and sharp impetuosity of temper constantly exposed him to prejudice and dislike; and he may have painfully impressed others as well as Hawkins, at the club, with a sense of his predominance. This was the only theatre open to him. "Here only (says Forster,) could he as yet pour forth, to an audience worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he was thirsting to employ upon a wider stage; the variety of knowledge, the fund of astonishing imagery, the ease of philosophie illustration, the overpowering copiousness of words, in which he has never had a rival." Miss Hawkins was convinced that her father was disgusted with the overpowering deportment of Mr. Burke, and his monopoly of the conversation, which made all the