as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one
that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking refuge
in a _literal_ dinner from the oppression of his philosophy. This
was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his opponents. Yet there must have been
some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's
career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this great orator

--------'went on refining,
And thought of convincing, whilst _they_ thought of dining.'

I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of any _popular_
body that it should be patient of abstractions amongst the intensities of
party-strife, and the immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative
body would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbitations from public
business than the _agora_ of Athens, or the Roman senate. So far the
error was in Burke, not in the House of Commons. Yet, also, on the other
side, it must be remembered, that an intellect of Burke's combining power
and enormous compass, could not, from necessity of nature, abstain from
such speculations. For a man to reach a remote posterity, it is sometimes
necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch--it
must sweep a parabola--which, therefore, rises high above the heads of
those next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, like
bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on the spot fit for
hiving.

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of misconception. Of all public men,
that stand confessedly in the first rank as to splendor of intellect,
Burke was the _least_ popular at the time when our blind friend Schlosser
assumes him to have run off with the lion's share of popularity. Fox, on
the other hand, as the leader of opposition, was at that time a household