To return to where we were at Mrs. Hofland's Entrance. "Winter & foul weather"This phrase appears to be proverbial rather than a direct quotation. have kept me so entirelywithin that I have read so much & with so little pause between as to produce a sort of mental indigestion a loathing of books--very convenient just now when the change from black to colours gives me plenty of employment of another sort. One of these books was 12 Volumes of Burke's works--No need to say how exceedingly I admired this great man, but may I without presumption, without affecting to talk of that which is sometimes thought above a woman's comprehension, say that the admiration I felt was excited by very different qualities from those which I expected to find in this celebrated Orator. In a word I admired his wisdom more than his eloquence. His writings (those especially of his earlier days) seemed to me to breathe the very soul of Statesmanship--wise--open--honest & good true--but those splendid passages which are so cried up--that on Howard--that on the Queen of France & so forth--did not please me. They are neither prose--nor verse--They are like Ossian--like Hervey--like Philips Phillips --like Miss Anna Maria Porterlike Lady Morgan. Luckily they are very few & rare, & the effect of his admirable good sense cannot be diminished by these occasional sacrifices to the genius of his Country--(for if we wanted to express Irish Eloquence by one word must not that word be Bombast?)--I should not perhaps have been so much struck with this false taste had I not been first reading Junius whose severe purity of style forms such a complete contrast with this kind of grandiloquence.--But if I was disappointed one way in Mr. Burke, I was more surprised in another at missing the inconsistency of which one has heard so much. I do not think him inconsistent--he was a party man it is true, & of a party which being mostly in opposition seemed to take the part side of Freedom, as the opposition always must--But from the first to the last Mr. Burke was an Aristocrat--a violent aristocrat--I have not an idea that the pension had the least to do with his aversion to French Politics--I believe him to have been sincere--& though somewhat soured by the opposition to his old friends, somewhat fiercer than ordinary, like a man who takes up a position where he expects to be attacked, yet as little unchanged as any man in the House--as Mr. Fox himself. All this seems so different from the view that I commonly find taken of Mr. Burke's conduct both by friends & foes, that I must most probably be wrong Burke served for many years as a Whig Member of Parliament. He supported the causes of the American Revolution and Catholic emancipation and later opposed the French Revolution and led the conservative wing of the Whig Party, which led to a perception that his views had become increasingly conservative. Mitfordargues that his views were consistently those of an "aristocratic" or conservative Whig.--tell me if you think so--I can only say that it is my sincere opinion--Then I have been reading some very amusing old writings edited a few years back-- (a little softened & purified I believe) Oh what a delicious painter of mind & body is that worshipful Master Aubrey--What portraits in Enamel he produced, how fresh, how rich, how fine!-- are but Aubrey diluted--very often Aubrey spoilt. Do read them particularly the Life of Dr. Kettle--the first Lord Pembroke Ben Jonson & Hobbes--but read them all--Why is it that English people in this age can no more write portraits like Aubrey than the present race of Italians can paint portraits like Titian? And yet we are good Colourists--we can give fancy pictures well enough. but as witness Scott--Miss Austen--& Novellists by the dozen--but we cannot take a likeness--there is no Biographer of the present day who has given any thing like the graphic identity of Aubrey or Isaac Walton to his hero--Boswell, indeed, has enabled us to paint for ourselves the picture of Dr. Johnson--but Aubrey would have have given him in half a page, at one stroke of the pen we should have seen the Lexicographer--I think one reason why we have no Aubreys now is that we do not sufficiently cultivate the habit of truth severe scrupulous truth--we paint in praise or in caricature, in oil--or in pesco--led away by love or by fancy--or by naughty wicked wit.--I myself, without the excuse of wit, am sometimes conscious that though I always say that which I think & believe--yet that memory & imagination & fondness may sometimes give too sunshiny a character to my portraits--& that the ridiculous (my pet dandy always excepted) is not quite so ridiculous abroad & walking as set down upon paper. Having thus fairly given you warning not to believe a word that I say--though I intend in future to be as accurate as Master Aubrey himself--I cannot help recommending to you another book which I have read before & you perhaps likewise----the most amusing--best written--& shortest of all the books on that well beaten subject--Pray have you read my Lady Morgan's ? And what do you think of it? And how do you like the Dramatis Personae. Buonaparte & Lord Byron, Mr. Croker, Lady Morgan, & the mad schoolmaster? Altogether the medley is such as Master Peter's puppets exhibited after Don Quixote had knocked hacked them to pieces--about as valuable & nearly as well arranged. There are glimmerings of talent too about Lady Morgan, & if she would but abstain from Ireland (I would not trust her so near as Holyhead) keep clear from Ireland & Irish politics old & new--be content with English & abstain from French latin Latin & Italian good or bad--but especially from bad (Mem. (as Aubrey says) I don't mean to tie her to good English--that would too barbarous)--& above all if she would engage never to have any thing to say of Napoleon (I can't bear her dragging him in between Punch & his Wife)--if she would do all this & write only a Volume a year--why then one might really read her books from end to end--& say if people asked "How do you like it?" "Why the book is decent."--I wonder whether she would box my ears if you were to tell her what I say!