IN IRELAND--PARLIAMENT--BEACONSFIELD Burke was thirty years old before he approached even the threshold of the arena in which he was destined to be so great a figure.

He had made a mark in literature, and it was to literature rather than to public affairs that his ambition turned.

He had naturally become acquainted with the brother-authors who haunted the coffee-houses in Fleet Street; and Burke, along with his father-in-law, Dr.Nugent, was one of the first members of the immortal club where Johnson did conversational battle with all comers.

We shall, in a later chapter, have something to say on Burke's friendships with the followers of his first profession, and on the active sympathy with which he helped those who were struggling into authorship.

Meanwhile, the fragments that remain of his own attempts in this direction are no considerable contributions.