d lady survived her illustrious husband
twelve years, and seemed as his widow to have had some success in paying
his bills, for at her death all remaining demands were found to be
discharged. For receiving this pension Burke was assailed by the Duke of
Bedford, a most pleasing act of ducal fatuity, since it enabled the
pensioner, not bankrupt of his wit, to write a pamphlet, now of course a
cherished classic, and introduce into it a few paragraphs about the House
of Russell and the cognate subject of grants from the Crown. But enough
of Burke's debts and difficulties, which I only mention because all
through his life they were cast up against him. Had Burke been a
moralist of the calibre of Charles James Fox, he might have amassed a
fortune large enough to keep up half a dozen Beaconsfields, by simply
doing what all his predecessors in the office he held, including Fox's
own father, the truly infamous first Lord Holland, had done--namely, by
retaining for his own use the interest on all balances of the public
money from time to time in his hands as Paymaster of the Forces. But
Burke carried his passion for good government into actual practice, and,
cutting down the emoluments of his office to a salary (a high one, no
doubt), effected a saving to the country of some 25,000 pounds a year,
every farthing of which might have gone without remark into his own
pocket.

Burke had no vices, save of style and temper; nor was any of his
expenditure a profligate squandering of money. It all went in giving
employment or disseminating kindness. He sent the painter Barry to study
art in Italy. He saved the poet Crabbe from starvation and despair, and
thus secured to the country one who owns the unrivalled distinction of
having been the favourite poet of the three greatest intellectual factors
of the age (scientific men excepted)--Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and
Cardinal Newman. Yet so distorted are men's views that the odious and
anti-social excesses of Fox at the gambling-table are visited with a
blame usually wreathed in smiles, whilst the financial irregularities of
a noble and pure-minded man are thought fit matter for the fiercest
censure or the most lordly contempt.

Next to Burke's debts, some of his companions and intimates did him harm
and injured his consequence. His brother Richard, whose brogue we are
given to understand was simply appalling, was a good-for-nothing, with a
dilapidated reputation. Then there wa