Like most young men of his time, his first oratory was exercised at a club, and his first efforts as a politician were made in 1749, previous to his quitting the Dublin University, in some letters against Mr. Henry Brooke, the author of "Gustavus Vasa." His determination was the bar, and his entry at the Middle Temple bears date April 23, 1747. His youthful impressions of England and its capital are recorded in graceful language in his letters to those friends whom he never lost, but by death; one passage is as applicable to the present as to the past. "I don't find that genius, the 'rath primrose which forsaken dies,' is patronized by any of the nobility, so that writers of the first talents are left to the capricious patronage of the public." It was the taste of his time to desire, if not solicit patronage. In our opinion literature is degraded by _patronage_, while it is honored by the friendship of the good and great. Nothing is so loathsome in the history of letters as the debased dedications which men of mind some years ago laid at the feet of the so-styled "patron!" Literature in our days has only to assert its own dignity, to be true and faithful to the right, to avoid ribaldry, and preserve a noble and brave independence; and then its importance to the state, as the minister of good, must be acknowledged. It is only when forgetful of great purposes and great power, that literature is open to be forgotten or sneered at. Still the indifference an Englishman feels towards genius, even while enjoying its fruits, was likely enough to check and chill the enthusiasm of Burke, and drive him to much mystery as to his early literary engagements. One of his observations made during his first visit to Westminster Abbey, while hopes and ambitions quickened his throbbing pulse, and he might have been pardoned for wishing for a resting-place in the grand mausoleum of England, is remarkable, as showing how little he changed, and how completely the youth "Was father to the man." "Yet after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a country church-yard than in the tomb of the Capulets? I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust; the good old expression, 'family burying-grounds,' has something pleasant in it, at least to me." This was his last, as it seems to have been his first desire; and it has found an echo in many a richly dowered heart. "Lay me," said Allan Cunningham, "where the daisies can grow on my grave;" and it is well known that Moore-- "The poet of all circles,"-- and, as a poor Irishman once rendered it-- "The _darlint_ of his own," has frequently expressed a desire to be buried at Sloperton beside his children.