always understood himself; he was their watcher through the hours of
night; he was their astrological interpreter. Who complains of a prophet
for being a little darker of speech than a post-office directory? or of
him that reads the stars for being sometimes perplexed?

But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always blundering. Post-office
directories would be of no use to _him;_ nor link-boys; nor blazing
tar-barrels. He wanders in a fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus.
He fancies that Burke, in his lifetime, was _popular_. Of course, it
is so natural to be popular by means of '_wearisome tediousness_,'
that Schlosser, above all people, should credit such a tale. Burke has
been dead just fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time from
this accident--that my own nearest relative stepped on a day of October,
1797, into that same suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, six
hours before, the great man had been carried out to die at Beaconsfield.
It is, therefore, you see, fifty years. Now, ever since then, his
_collective_ works have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of
juvenile essays (such as his 'European Settlements,' his 'Essay on the
Sublime,' on 'Lord Bolingbroke,' &c.) or (as more recently) by the
posthumous publication of his MSS; [9] and yet, ever since then, in spite
of growing age and growing bulk, are more in demand. At this time, half a
century after his last sigh, Burke _is_ popular; a thing, let me tell
you, Schlosser, which never happened before to a writer steeped to his
lips in _personal_ politics. What a tilth of intellectual lava must
that man have interfused amongst the refuse and scoria of such mouldering
party rubbish, to force up a new verdure and laughing harvests, annually
increasing for new generations! Popular he _is_ now, but popular he
was not in his own generation. And how could Schlosser have the face to
say that he was? Did he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one
period Burke obtained the _sobriquet_ of 'dinner-bell?' And why? Not