Seizing the Senses

Derek Jarrett

  • Edmund Burke. Vol. I: 1730-84 by F.P. Lock
    Oxford, 564 pp, £75.00, January 1999, ISBN 0 19 820676 3

‘Mr Burke will live,’ declared the Times two days after he had died, ‘as long as strength of imagination and beauty of language shall be respected by the world.’ By the time the Oxford edition of Burke’s Select Works came out in 1876 there was more for the world to respect. ‘Burke will always stand forth as a man whose political knowledge was complete,’ wrote the editor, E.J. Payne. ‘He was therefore, though a reformer, incapable of rash and inconsiderate action. The man who has arrived at a view of the whole plan of civil society, and taken in the mutual relations and dependencies of distant parts, is not in danger of being consumed by an irrational zeal for or against any established element in that society.’ A few years later, in his History of England in the 18th Century, W.E.H. Lecky found yet more to respect and admire:

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions