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VOL. I.

ENGLISH CLASSICS

BURKE

E. J. PAYNE

London

HENRY FROWDE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C.

DOMEMINA
NVS TIO
ILLUMEA

New York

112 FOURTH AVENUE

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HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
PROF. GEORGE F. SWAIN
OCT. 20, 1933

Oxford

HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION.

AN accomplished critic1 has observed, with much truth, that the only specimen of Burke is all that he wrote,' because every product of his pen contains additional proofs of his power. Those who wish to understand the nature and importance of his multifarious labours should make the acquaintance of his writings in the mass, and master them singly in detail. It has long been understood that he who gives his nights and days to this task will acquire a knowledge of the principles of general politics, of the limitations which modify those principles in our own national policy, of the questions with which that policy deals, and of the secret of applying the English tongue to their illustration, which cannot be acquired in any other way. In the prosecution of this task the student will learn the practical importance of the maxim laid down in the Preface to a previous volume of this series, that all study, to be useful, must be pursued in a spirit of deference. He will find it necessary to exert unusual degree of patience, and to acquire the habit of continually suspending his own judgment. He will find himself in contact with much that seems dry and uninviting. It may therefore be well to caution him at the outset, that Burke, like all writers of the first class, will not repay a prejudiced or a superficial perusal. He gains upon us, not altogether by the inherent interest of what he presents to us, but very much by the skill and force with which he presents it, and these qualities do not immediately strike the mental eye in all their fulness. The reader must meet his author half-way; he must contribute something more than a bare receptivity. It has been well said of Paradise Lost, that while few general readers are attracted by

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1 Hazlitt.

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