to my native country.’ Ib. p.6.  Only one of his works, his Political Discourses, was ‘successful on the first publication.’ Ib. p.5.  By the time he was turned fifty, however, his books were selling very well, and he had become ‘not only independent but opulent.’  Ib. p. 8.  A few weeks before he died he wrote:  ’I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre.’ Ib. p.10.

[77] Psalms, cxix. 99.

[78] We learn, post, Oct. 29, that Robertson was cautious in his talk, though we see here that he had much more courage than the professors of Aberdeen or Glasgow.

[79] This was one of the points upon which Dr. Johnson was strangely heterodox.  For, surely, Mr. Burke, with his other remarkable qualities, is also distinguished for his wit, and for wit of all kinds too:  not merely that power of language which Pope chooses to denominate wit:—­

     (True wit is Nature to advantage drest;
      What oft was thought, but ne’er so well exprest.)

[Pope’s Essay on Criticism, ii. 297.] but surprising allusions, brilliant sallies of vivacity, and pleasant conceits.  His speeches in parliament are strewed with them.  Take, for instance, the variety which he has given in his wide range, yet exact detail, when exhibiting his Reform Bill.  And his conversation abounds in wit.  Let me put down a specimen.  I told him, I had seen, at a Blue stocking assembly, a number of ladies sitting round a worthy and tall friend of ours, listening to his literature.  ’Ay, (said he) like maids round a May-pole.’  I told him, I had found out a perfect definition of human nature, as distinguished from the animal.  An ancient philosopher said, Man was ‘a two-legged animal without feathers,’ upon which his rival Sage had a Cock plucked bare, and set him down in the school before all the disciples, as a ‘Philosophick Man.’  Dr. Franklin said, Man was ’a tool-making animal,’ which is very well; for no animal but man makes a thing, by means of which he can make another thing.  But this applies to very few of the species.  My definition of Man is, ‘a Cooking animal.’  The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook.  The trick of the monkey using the cat’s paw to roast a chestnut, is only a piece of shrewd malice in that turpissima bestia, which humbles us so sadly by its similarity to us.  Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.  Your definition is good, said Mr. Burke, and I now see the full force of the common proverb, ‘There is reason in roasting of eggs.’  When Mr. Wilkes, in his days of tumultuous opposition, was borne upon the shoulders of the mob, Mr. Burke (as Mr. Wilkes told me himself, with classical admiration,) applied to him what Horace says of Pindar,