Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/368

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Burke
362
Burke

dignation on the troubles of Ireland (Works, ii. 396). He retained his faculties during his illness. On the last day of his life he spoke of his hatred of the revolutionary spirit in France, and of his belief that the war was for the good of humanity: he listened to some essays of Addison, in which he ever took delight, and then, after he had talked awhile and sent messages to his friends, he died just after midnight on Sunday morning, 9 July 1797 (Gent. Mag. lxix. pt. i. 621). Fox, with characteristic generosity, proposed in the house that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey and at the public expense. Burke, however, had wished otherwise, and on 15 July, in accordance with his directions, he was buried in the parish church of Beaconsfield, his pall-bearers being the leaders of that old whig party which for thirty years he had animated, instructed, and at last converted to conservatism. On the 13th George Canning wrote to one of Lord Malmesbury's embassy, 'There is but one event, but that is an event for the world—Burke is dead' (Malmesbury, Diaries, iii. 398).

A collective edition of Burke's works was published, with his approval, in three volumes quarto, in 1792, comprising the works enumerated in the list given below down to the first letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe inclusive. At his death Dr. F. Laurence and Dr. W. King (afterwards bishop of Rochester) were entrusted with the care of his papers. They at once began to prepare a collective edition in sixteen volumes octavo; but the death of Laurence in 1808, when half the sixteen-volume edition was through the press, left Dr. King to carry on the work alone. The quarto edition of 1792 begins the posthumous works with vol. iv., and was completed in eight volumes in 1827. In the sixteen volumes of the octavo edition, published concurrently with the completion of the quarto edition, the orthography is made uniform—for as Burke used the services of others, both in writing and correcting for press, considerable differences exist in the early editions of his various works—references are verified, and the speech introducing the report presented 30 April 1794 is inserted. The first eight volumes, containing the works printed or in the press during the lifetime of the author down to the 'Third Letter on a Regicide Peace' inclusive, were published in 1803. A reissue of these volumes was made in 1808. The twelfth volume was issued in 1813, and the whole was completed in 1827. A new edition of the first eight volumes, with portrait and life, was issued in 1823. The contents of vols, i-xii., which tool; in the articles of the charge against Hastings, were printed, with a biographical and critical introduction, in two volumes large octavo, double columns, in 1834. These editions, and all described in this notice except when especially stated otherwise, were published in London. In 1806 an octavo edition was begun at Boston, U.S., vols. i-iv. being published that year; vols. v. and vi. were published at New York in 1813, and vol. vii. at Boston in 1827. The whole set was issued at Boston in 1826-7. An edition published at Boston in 1839, in nine volumes octavo, comprises the entire contents of the English sixteen-volume edition, and also contains the' Account of the European Settlements in America' not included in it. This edit ion, moreover, has the correspondence between Burke and Dr. Laurence, also published separately in 1827 (see Edin. Ber. No.92),and was therefore better than any preceding edition. In 1852 another edition was issued in London, under the title of ' 'Works and Correspondence,' in eight volumes octavo. This edition is in some respects to be preferred to the Boston one; for the type is thicker and the paper better. The Boston edition has in certain cases adopted the American fashion of spelling, and the addition of the Laurence letters is balanced in the English edition by a large mass of well-arranged general correspondence, originally published as a separate work by Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir R. Bourke. 'The European Settlements' is not included in the 1852 edition, and as the share Burke took in its composition cannot be ascertained the omission is not to be regretted. The references in the foregoing biographical notice are to the edition of 1852. A reprint of the' Works' has been issued in Bohn's 'British Classics,' 1853, 8vo, with a preliminary volume containing Prior's' Life' (5th ed.) and two supplementary volumes of speeches. The references to Prior in the above are to this, the revised edition of his 'Life of Burke.' Other collections of the speeches have been made, together with some of the political tracts—Dublin, 1777, 8vo; London, 4 vols., 1816, 8vo: with memoir by J. Burke, Dublin, 1854, 12mo. Besides the Laurence correspondence, a collection of Burke's letters, 1744-97, was edited by Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir R. Bourke in 4 vols., 1844, 8vo. This collection forms the first two volumes of the ' Works and Correspondence,' 1852. A volume of select works is included in the 'World Library of Standard Works,' 1876,8vo. The letters, speeches, and tracts on Irish affairs were edited by M. Arnold in 1881, and three volumes of ' Select Works'—

  1. 'Thoughts on the Present Discontents and Speeches on America.'
  2. 'Re-