We are practically reduced to conjecture.

In a letter of counsel to his son in after years, he gave him a weighty piece of advice, which, is pretty plainly the key to the reality and fruitfulness of his own knowledge.

"_Reading_," he said, "_and much reading, is good.

But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is far better; so don't suppress the_ vivida vis." We have no more of Burke's doings than obscure and tantalising glimpses, tantalising, because he was then at the age when character usually either fritters itself away, or grows strong on the inward sustenance of solid and resolute aspirations.
Writing from Battersea to his old comrade, Shackleton, in 1757, he begins with an apology for a long silence which seems to have continued from months to years.

"I have broken all rules; I have neglected all decorums; everything except that I have never forgot a friend, whose good head and heart have made me esteem and love him.
What appearance there may have been of neglect, arises from my manner of life; chequered with various designs; sometimes in London, sometimes in remote parts of the country; sometimes in France, and shortly, please God, to be in America." One of the hundred inscrutable rumours that hovered about Burke's name was, that he at one time actually did visit America.