We have somewhat the same order and course of things in Burke, who may be not unfitly described as the Shakespeare of political philosophy. His treatise _On the Sublime and Beautiful_ was, though in a good sense, mainly the fruit of literary ambition. There he rather sought for something to say because he wanted to speak, than spoke because he had something he wanted to say. And so he is not properly himself in that work, but only a studious, correct, and tasteful writer. When thoroughly roused and kindled in the work of defending, intrenching, and illustrating the Constitution of his country as the sacred guardian of liberty and order, he became quite another man; then it was that all the powers of his great mind were taught and inspired to act in concert and unity. As Wordsworth says of him,--
"This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit, No stammerer of a minute, painfully Deliver'd. No! the Orator hath yok'd The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car: Thrice-welcome Presence! how can patience e'er Grow weary of attending on a track That kindles with such glory!"
The mere ambitions of authorship are not enough to make good authors; and what Burke needed was something to lift him far above them. And when he came to grapple with the high practical questions and living interests of mankind, here he was too full of his matter, and too earnest in his cause, to observe how finely he was working; and because he was captivated by his theme, not by the figure he made in handling it, therefore he earned a prerogative place among the sons of light.
The distinction I have been remarking between Shakespeare's rhetorical and dramatic use of language, or, as I before termed it, his imitative and idiomatic style, may be better understood on comparing some brief specimens of his earlier and later workmanship. As an instance of the former, take a part of York's speech to the King, in _King Richard the Second_, ii. 1:
"I am the last of noble Edward's sons, Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first: In war was never lion rag'd more fierce, In peace was never gentle lamb more mild, Than was that young and princely gentleman. His face thou hast, for even so look'd he, Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours; But when he frown'd, it was against the French, And not against his friends: his noble hand Did win what he did spend, and not spend that Which his triumphant father's hand had won: His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood, But bloody with the enemies of his kin."