A good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox)
would say that this is a masterstroke, and marks a deep understanding of
Nature in the father of poetry. He would despise a Zoilus who would
conclude from this passage that Homer meant to represent this man of
affliction as hating or being indifferent and cold in his affections to
the poor relics of his house, or that he preferred a dead carcass to his
living children.
Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if
he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles
of a mixed Constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to
consistency everything he has said and done during the course of a
political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has
kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary
theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man
perhaps ever did in the same situation.
He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election,
rejected the authority of instructions from constituents,--or who, in
any place, has argued so fully against it.
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