Excerpt from Edmund Burke: A Historical Study Biography, in the hands of a man of the requisite capacity and sensibility, is perhaps the very highest form of prose work. One may, I think, almost count upon one's fingers the really good biographies in English literature; but then, alas! It is not every man whose life would suffice to inspire work of this high and rare kind. The biographer, stripping his subject, as much as he can, of what is irrelevant and acci dental in the surrounding conditions, delights the reader with a fresh and impressive picture of a human character. The writer of a historical study, on the other hand, taking much lower ground, aims not at a reproduction of the central figure of his meditations, but at a criticism of his hero's relations, and contributions to the main transactions of his time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.