t was proposed that Edmund go to London and take a course of
Law at the Middle Temple. The plan was accepted with ill-concealed
alacrity. Father and son parted with relief, but the good-by between
mother and son tore the hearts of both--they were parting forever, and
Something told them so.

It evidently was the intention of Burke the elder, who was a
clear-headed, practical person, competent in all petty plans, that if
the son settled down to law and got his "call," then he would be
summoned back to Dublin and put in a way to achieve distinction. But if
the young man still pursued his desultory reading and scribbling on
irrelevant themes, why then the remittances were to be withdrawn and
Edmund Burke, being twenty-one years of age, could sink or swim. Burke
pater would wash his hands in innocency, having fully complied with all
legal requirements, and God knows that is all any man can do--there!

* * * * *

In London town since time began, no embryo Coke ever rapped at the bar
for admittance--lawyers are "summoned" just as clergymen are "called,"
while other men find a job. In England this pretty little illusion of
receiving a "call" to practise law still obtains.

Burke never received the call, for the reason that he failed to fit
himself for it. He read everything but law-books. He might have assisted
a young man by the name of Blackstone in compiling his "Commentaries,"
as their lodgings were not far apart, but he did not. They met
occasionally, and when they did they always discussed Spenser or Milton,
and waxed warm over Shakespeare.

Burke gave Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation
as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very
natural reason that he had no use for the Law himself.

The remittances from Dublin were always small, but they grew smaller,
less frequent and finally ceased. It was sink or swim--and the young man
simply paddled to keep afloat upon the tide of the times.

He dawdled at Dodsley's, visited with the callers and browsed among the
books. There was only one thing the young man liked better to do than
read, and that was to talk. Once he had read a volume nearly through,
when Dodsley up and sold it to a customer--"a rather ungentlemanly trick
to play on an honest man," says Burke.

It was at Dodsley's that he first met his countryman Goldsmith, also
Garrick, Boswell and Johnson. It was then that Johnson received t