endeavor to illuminate with her prismatic
lantern the darkness of those nine mysterious years. A vivid fancy has
been pleased to picture Burke as one of the many lovers of the
marvellous Margaret Woffington, as a competitor for the chair of Moral
Philosophy at Glasgow, as a convert to the Catholic faith, and, perhaps
most remarkable of all these lively legends, as a traveller in America.
These are fictions. The certain facts are that somewhere about 1756 he
married a Miss Nugent, daughter of an Irish physician who had settled
in England. Miss Nugent was a Catholic, and thus, for the second time,
the Catholic religion was endeared to Burke by one of the closest of
human relationships. At about the same time as his marriage, Burke
made his first appearance as an author by the "Vindication of Natural
Society," a satire upon Bolingbroke which many accepted as a genuine
work of Bolingbroke's, and by the "Essay on the Sublime and the
Beautiful," which is perhaps most valuable because we owe to it in some
degree the later masterpiece of aesthetic criticism, the "Laocoon" of
Lessing. From this time until his connection with public life began
his career was linked with Fleet Street and its brotherhood of authors,
and his pen was steadily employed. With that love for variety of
subject which is characteristic of most of the authors of the
eighteenth century, he handled a number of widely differing themes. He
wrote "Hints for an Essay on the Drama," a work which has scarcely held
its place in the library of the dramatist by the side of the "Paradoxe
sur le Comedien" of Diderot, or the "Hamburgische {99} Dramaturgie" of
Lessing. He wrote an account of the European settlements in America,
still interesting as showing the early and intimate connection of his
thoughts with the greatest of English colonies. He wrote an
"Abridgment of English History," which carries unfortunately no farther
than the reign of John a narrative that is not unworthy of its author.
He founded the "Annual Register," and was in its pages for many years
to come the historian of contemporary Europe. Of all the many debts
that Englishmen owe to Burke, the conception and inception of the
"Annual Register" must not be reckoned as among the least important.

It was at this point in his career that Burke's connection with public
life began, not to end thenceforward until the end of his own life.
Single-speech Hamilton, so called because out of a multitude of