of a reflection of himself;

"_Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse._"

He sees reflected there, in fainter light.
All that combines to make himself so bright.

But whatever mixture of other motives there may have been in the feeling,
it is certain that his admiration of the Speech was real and unbounded.
He is said to have exclaimed to Mr. Fox, during the delivery of some
passages of it, "There,--that is the true style;--something between
poetry and prose, and better than either." The severer taste of Mr. Fox
dissented, as might be expected, from this remark. He replied, that "he
thought such a mixture was for the advantage of neither--as producing
poetic prose, or, still worse, prosaic poetry." It was, indeed, the
opinion of Mr. Fox, that the impression made upon Burke by these somewhat
too theatrical tirades is observable in the change that subsequently took
place in his own style of writing; and that the florid and less chastened
taste which some persons discover in his later productions, may all be
traced to the example of this speech. However this may be, or whether
there is really much difference, as to taste, between the youthful and
sparkling vision of the Queen of France in 1792, and the interview
between the Angel and Lord Bathurst in 1775, it is surely a most unjust
disparagement of the eloquence of Burke, to apply to it, at any time of
his life, the epithet "flowery,"--a designation only applicable to that
ordinary ambition of style, whose chief display, by necessity, consists
of ornament without thought, and pomp without substance. A succession of
bright images, clothed in simple, transparent language,--even when, as in
Burke, they "crowd upon the aching sense" too dazzlingly,--should never
be confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes the