CHAP, viii.] THE CJLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBEBS.
enough to the situation in life of an Irish adventurer; and 1768.
the incident may illustrate his vulgar and insolent phrase. JEt.35.
Let it always he remembered, when Burke's vehemence of
will and sharp impetuosity of temper are remembered. These
were less his natural defects, than his painful sense of what
he wanted in the eyes of others. When, in later years, he
proudly reviewed those exertions which had been the soul
of the revived whig party, which had re-established their
strength, consolidated their power and influence, and been
rewarded with insignificant office and uniform exclusion from
the cabinet, he had to reflect that at every step in the progress
of his life he had been traversed and opposed, and forced to
make every inch of his way in the teeth of prejudice and
dislike. " The narrowness of his fortune," says Walpole,
" kept him down." * At every turnpike he met, he had been?
called to show his passport; otherwise no admission, no
toleration for him. Improved by this, his manners could
hardly be;—the more other spheres of consideration were
closed to him, the more would he be driven to dominate in
his own;—and I have little doubt that he somewhat painfully
at times, in the first few years of the club, impressed others
as well as Hawkins with a sense of his predominance. He
had to " talk his way in the world that was to furnish his
" means of living," and this was the only theatre open to him
yet. Here only could he as yet pour forth, to an audience
worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he was
thirsting to employ upon a wider stage; the variety of
knowledge and its practical application, the fund of astonish-
ing imagery, the ease of philosophic illustration, the over-
powering copiousness of words, in which he has never had a
rival. A civil guest, says Herbert, will no more talk all, than
eat all, the feast; and perhaps this might be forgotten now
* Memoirs of George III. ii. 273-4.