It would scarcely be exaggeration to say that the history of England during the middle third of the eighteenth century is largely the history of the career of Edmund Burke. From the moment when Burke entered upon political life to the close of his great career, his name was associated with every event of importance, his voice raised {96} on one side or the other of every question that concerned the welfare of the English people and the English Constitution. As much as this, however, might be said of more than one actor in the political history of the period covered by Burke's public life. But the influence which Burke exercised upon his time, the force he brought to bear upon his political generation, were a greater influence and a stronger force than that directed by any other statesman of the age. Whether for good or for evil, according to the standards by which his critics may judge him, Burke swayed the minds of masses of his countrymen to a degree that was unequalled among his contemporaries. With the two great events of the century--the revolt of the American colonies and the French Revolution--his name was the most intimately associated, his influence the most potent. With what in their degree must be called the minor events of the reign--with the trial of Wilkes, with the trial of Warren Hastings--he was no less intimately associated, and in each case his association has been the most important feature of the event. Where he was right as where he was wrong, and whether he was right or whether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always the most commanding figure in the epoch-making political controversies of his day. Grenville wrote of him finely, many years after his death, that he was in the political world what Shakespeare was in the moral world. [Sidenote: 1729-59--Burke's early life]