their late President; but the orator's feelings found vent in tears; and, after several efforts, he gave up the attempt: his was mute grief-he could not utter a word.

But his eloquence sometimes placed others in a similar difficulty. He became guardian to Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece and heiress, afterwards Lady Inchiquin and Marchioness of Thomond. At her marriage, when the articles were brought to be signed, Mr. Burke addressed her in an impressive manner on her intended change of condition, which so agitated her, that she could not hold the pen. Her friends attempted to calm her in order to procure the signature, but in vain; and the party separated for the time, unable to accomplish the purpose of their meeting.

Sir Joshua's legacy to Burke soon brought out Edmund's generous nature. He remembered two old reduced ladies in Ireland, and thus wrote to his son: 'Now, my dearest Richard, I have destined a twentieth of what has fallen to us to these two poor women-fifty to each. God knows how little we can spare it."

DID EDMUND BURKE WRITE SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS's

"LECTURES?"

This strange question originated in a Memoir of Burke, in Walker's Hibernian Magazine for 1810; where it is stated that "in 1769, the Royal Academy was opened; Sir Joshua Reynolds was appointed President, and Mr. Burke wrote the address which made the name of the amiable President so justly celebrated. Every one of those addresses, which have so much delighted the artists of Europe, was written by Mr. Burke from hints furnished him by Sir Joshua. For this service Mr. Burke was known to receive 40007., and it is probable he received much more. Sir Joshua's sight grew dim; and the necessity of a fair copy being made out for him, not being able to read Mr. Burke's crowded page, led to the discovery."-(Notes and Queries, No. 313.)

Another correspondent of the same journal, No. 316, adds similar testimony from M'Cormick's Memoirs of Burke, 2nd

edit. 1798, which he considers corroborative of the first statement, whereas it more probably gave rise to it. Here it is stated that Sir Joshua made the sketch of the subject, and furnished the hints, or text, for Mr. Burke. A copy was then sent to Sir Joshua, who returned it interlined with further suggestions. Then it is artfully said: "Sir Joshua himself was very willing to encourage the idea of his being under an obligation of that sort to Dr. Johnson, with a view, no doubt, of diverting conjecture from his real assistant:" however, he adds: "I do not mean to say he contributed a single sentiment to them, but he qualified my mind to think justly."

Mr. S. W. Singer then, in No. 320, comes to the rescue; and refers to a letter among the manuscripts of James Boswell-from Sir Joshua Reynolds to Edward Malone, in which he writes: "I have sent by my servant my Discourse, which I shall take as a great favour if you not only will examine critically, but will likewise add a little elegance."

Burke, in a letter to Malone, after the publication of Sir Joshua's Life and Works, says: "I have read over some parts of the Discourse with an unusual sort of pleasure, partly because, being a little faded from my memory, they have a sort of appearance of novelty; partly by reviving recollections mixed with melancholy and satisfaction. The Flemish journal I had never seen before. You trace in that everywhere the spirit of the Discourse, supported by new examples. He is always the same man, the same philosophical, the same artistlike critic, the same sagacious observer, with the same minuteness, without the smallest degree of trifling." Is this the language of one who had himself written the Discourse?

Northcote, the pupil of Reynolds, who lived some years in his house, had, however, answered the scandalous fiction long since in his Memoirs.*

"At the period when it was expected that he should have composed them (the Lectures), I have heard him walking at intervals in his room till one or two o'clock in the morning, and I have on the following day, at an early hour, seen the papers on the subject of his art, which had been written the preceding night. I have had the rude manuscript from himself, in his own handwriting, in order to make a fair copy from it for

Haydon also demolished the argument, both positively and inferentially; as well as by a letter communicated to him by a then (1844) living niece of Sir Joshua's.

Lastly, Mr. F. T. Colby, of Exeter College, Oxford, states that the original MSS., in Sir Joshua's own handwriting, are still preserved at Great Torrington, Devon, where Sir Joshua's nephew, and Mr. Colby's maternal grandfather, the Rev. John Palmer, resided.-(Notes and Queries, No. 320.)

66

THE DAGGER SCENE," IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

In the Session of 1792-3, when the acrimony and invective against Burke's opinions on the French Revolution began to wane, and his views began to gain ground, there occurred what may be termed a striking illustration of his effective manner. A Bill was introduced on December 28th, for the regulation of Aliens, in support of which he made a long and able speech, on the principle that the ministers of a monarchy could not and ought not to have their hands tied behind them, while the emissaries of republicanism, regicide, and atheism, poured into their country with the design to destroy it." (Prior.) It therefore became necessary to place aliens under strict supervision, and to confine to certain districts those emigrants who had taken refuge in England, and who had received temporary assistance from Government, who were already aware that some of the refugees in England were spies and agents of the Jacobins and other incendiary clubs of Paris. There it had been proposed that each citizen should carry about his person a concealed poniard, ready to plunge it into the heart of an aristocrat whenever a safe opportunity should occur. Mr. Burke, in confirmation of this statement, mentioned in his speech the circumstance of three thousand daggers having been ordered at Birmingham, of which seventy had been delivered. "This," said he, pointing him to read in public. I have seen the manuscript also, after it had been revised by Dr. Johnson, who has sometimes altered it to a wrong meaning, from his total ignorance of the subject and of art; but never, to my knowledge, saw the marks of Burke's pen in any of the manuscripts." -Northcote's Memoirs.

to the weapon he had brought with him, "is what you are to gain by an alliance with France; whenever their principles are introduced, their practice must follow: you must equally proscribe their tenets and their persons from our shores;" at the same moment he flung the naked weapon indignantly upon the floor of the House. The effect reminds one of the orator's own reference to the dangerous step from the sublime to the ridiculous: out of doors it was condemned as a melodramatic flourish, and a stage trick unworthy of a great orator and a great subject. It was, certainly, in bad taste; but Mr. Prior has adduced indubitable evidence to show that the act was unpremeditated. He then quotes from the Life of Lord Eldon, vol. i., the following: "The history of it," (the dagger,) says Sir Charles Lamb, "is, that it was sent to a manufacturer at Birmingham as a pattern, with an order to make a large quantity like it. At that time, the order seemed so suspicious, that, instead of executing it, he came to London and called on my father, (afterwards Sir James Bland Burgess, then Foreign Under-Secretary,) at the Secretary of State's Office, to inform him of it, and ask his advice; and he left the pattern with him. Just after, Mr. Burke called on his way to the House of Commons, and upon my father mentioning the thing to him, borrowed the dagger to show to the House. They walked down to the House together, and when Mr. Burke had made his speech, my father took the dagger again, and kept it as a curiosity." It was subsequently preserved among the interesting relics at Butler's Court.

The mere act of showing the dagger would scarcely have been objectionable; it was the theatrical dashing it upon the floor of the House which was so offensive that Burke's enemies fastened upon it as an act of frenzy. This complexion, however, even Gillray, who caricatured the scene in the true spirit of a humorist, did not give to Burke's flourish he is firm and collected, but the fun consists of the visible dismay of Dundas, Pitt, Sheridan, and Fox, whom the artist has represented-the two former on account of their hesitation, and the two latter on account of their appro

:

bation, in regard to French affairs—to form part of the gang whose detection the production of the dagger had accomplished. Many of those who objected to the "daggerscene," however, treated it as a passing joke.

A PHILOSOPHICAL SIMILE.

When, in February, 1793, Mr. Burke opposed in Parliament Mr. Fox's resolutions condemnatory of the War, he illustrated the current doctrines of the day in this new aspect: Gentlemen," he said, "who were so charmed with the lights of this new philosophy, might say that age had rendered his eyes too dim to perceive the glorious blaze. But old though he was, he saw well enough to distinguish that it was not the light of heaven, but the light of rotten wood and stinking fish-the gloomy sparkling of collected filth, corruption, and putrefaction:

"So have I seen in larder dark,

Of veal a sparkling loin,

Replete with many a brilliant spark,
As sage philosophers remark,

At once both stink and shine."

DEATH OF RICHARD BURKE.

Early in 1794, Mr. Burke lost his brother Richard, to whom he was most affectionately attached. They started in the world nearly together, though with very different capacities. Their fraternal love was unbroken by change of fortune; for many years they had but one purse, and one house, and they lived nearly in the same circle of friends. Richard wrote well, but was far less patient of laborious application than his brother. Lord Mansfield pronounced him a rising man at the bar; but politics had for him the stronger inducement, and his acceptance of a Treasury Secretaryship, in 1782 and 1783, injured his prospects as a lawyer: he, however, by the interest of his brother, became Recorder of Bristol, and one of the counsel on the trial of Warren Hastings. Richard