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The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke

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An excellent biography, highly readable, a bold and ultimately persuasive thesis - that Burke was not only a major political thinker but that he shaped much of the late 18th century. From a fascinating introduction showing how modern scholars had successfully destroyed and obscured Burke's true legacy to its brilliant organizing principle (a line from Yeats), this is a great book. This book should be required reading for every senator, congressman, and presidential candidate - if only to improve the level of discourse by reading Burke's great speeches. Yeats' lines on Burke: "American colonies, Ireland, France, and India/ Harried, and Burke's great melody against it." O'Brien shows how much one great man can do against tyranny, and how little. The book falls short on two counts: one, inadequate bios of Rockingham, Fox, Portland, Pitt the Younger, and his relation to Sam Johnson and Joshua Reynolds. Two, Burke the man does not walk these pages as Johnson does Boswell's book. True, O'Brien has organized the book around Yeats' lines, but the domestic Burke, the friend of Johnson and Reynolds could have been amplified. These are minor faults. This biography is excellent in so many ways that it compares very favorably with Boswell's Johnson and indeed excels it on many fronts.

"The Great Melody" by Conor Cruise O'Brien is not your traditional biography; there is little here concerning Burke's personal and family life. Instead, the work concentrates on Burke's political career and thought and, specifically, how they relate to his Irish heritage. The result is a fascinating look into the mind and personality of a man who suffered from a conflict of emotions over his Irish heritage that included his father's conversion to Protestantism while his mother and wife remained Catholic. Burke himself was torn in different directions his entire life; loyalty to Britain and also his Irish ancestors and friends suffering under the Penal Laws, loyalty to the British constitution, but also a deep feeling for the need of justice for the oppressed people at home and abroad.

O'Bien's book takes an in-depth look at Burke's career in parliament and as a member of the Whig party through an extensive analysis of his letters, speeches, political relationships, and writings, specifically, as they relate to his struggle on behalf of the American colonists, the struggle of the Irish Catholics, the people of India suffering at the hands of the rapacious East India Co., and the French Revolution.

The work can be a little dry at times and tends to quote in an overly lengthy manner, but the immense erudition and scholarship and the insightful picture of Burke that emerges more than compensate for this. I do wish, however, that O'Brien had spent more time on "Reflections On The Revolution in France," but he feels that since it is so readily available to the reader there is no need. Finally we see an Edmund Burke as he really was and not the "old reactionary" that is so often depicted. We come to understand that Burke always believed that "the people are the true legislator," that Burke did not want to see Americans in Parliament who were slave holders, that he was a life-long opponent of increased powers for the Crown and the corruption such power entailed, that he was one of the few who consistently fought against injustice toward the American colonials, that he found all authoritaianism abhorrent, and that he opposed commercial monopolies and the abuse of power in all its forms. But, because he opposed the overturning of society and its reengineering on the basis of "metaphysical abstractions," he was often portrayed as a reactionary by later pundits. Lewis Namier and his followers are particularly taken to task by O'Brien for this tendency. In the end we see a Burke who always supported basic human rights, but remained constantly aware that real life circumstances must make social and political change possible if such change is not to lead to chaos and violence. Burke's fear of radicalism based upon abstract theory was real and the destructiveness of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Nazi bio-racial religion more than sufficiently proves his point. A reading of O'Brien's fine book can only lead the intelligent reader to a renewed respect for a great man, a decent and liberal minded man, and a man of immense vision.

Everyone knows Edmund Burke's most famous quote: "for evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing". As a former lecturer in political science, I was mainly familiar with Burke as the founder of Anglo-conservatism (infinitely more nuanced and modern than his equivalent in Franco-conservatism, the Count Joseph de Maistre). I had also read an early work, namely "An Enquiry into the nature of the Beautiful and the Sublime", which I thought a brilliant little jewel. But there's much more about Burke than that.

O'Brien, the great man of Irish diplomacy, shows in this extraordinary book that Burke, whom recently history has shown as a fawning servant to the political leaders of his time (Rockingham and Pitt), was at the heart of the great fight between George III's royal absolutism and the emerging English democracy. Burke was on the right side of virtually all the fights he picked. He advocated equality before the law for the Irish subjects of the king, first tolerance and then freedom for the American colonies, the end of the colonialist abuses of the East India company, and a quarantine on the infectious ideas of the French Revolution. The later one is still a contentious affair. Zhou En Lai famously opined that it was still too early (in the 1970s) to judge the French Revolution. Burke would have had none of that. As early as 1790, in the "benign" initial phase of the revolution, he foresaw the Terror, the execution of the Royal Family, the Consulate and the Empire, and the French banner covering all of the Europe, in the name of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

O'Brien shows the extraordinary situation of an Irish Protestant (always accused of crypto-Catholicism) having great informal influence on the politics of Great Britain, while holding menial offices or representing various "rotten boroughs" in Parliament (this is no aspersion on Burke's memory- that's how politics was done at the time, and anything that gave Burke a pulpit couldn't have been all bad). The "Great Melody" of the title provides the underlying themes around which O'Brien organizes the public part of Burke's life. Far from tiresome, this is a useful device that provides unity and coherence to Burke's thoughts and actions. O'Brien's attacks on mid-century historiography are perfectly adequate, given that much of what was written as that period was designed to regress Burke into irrelevancy, as a sycophant and a lackey. He never was that. He was a good and a great man, and O'Brien does him justice in his book. Perhaps the only fault that I could find in it is a tendency to assume the reader's prior knowledge of the arcanes of Irish history. But these are quibbles. If you can stomach a history of ideas, full of events and studded with memorable characters, this is the book for you.

O'Brien does a masterful job of bringing to life a neglected and misunderstood politician and political theorist. Those whose knowledge of Burke is limited to "Reflections" are in for an awakening. By book's end the reader will feel much like I. Berlin (whose correspondence with CCOB is in the appendix) and recant previously held stereotypes of Burke as a reactionary. A thorough detailing of Burke's writings and speeches makes clear that he was far from the two dimensional figure derided in political theory seminars.

O'Brien makes old political controversies regarding Ireland, India, America and revolutionary France fresh and engaging. An initial puzzle of this book is O'Brien's passionate refutations of the Namierite view of Burke. Yet, Burke continues to be a bogeyman to the academic left for good reason. Burke hated tyranny in any form and virtually alone among his contemporaries recognized that recasting society in the name of an idea promised the worst form of tyranny. Devotees of the French Revolution detest Burke whose credentials as a champion of the oppressed in Ireland, India and America were beyond reproof.

O'Brien himself, however, was curiously un-Burkean during his political career as it related to the Cold War. Burke correctly recognized that the French Revolution was a proto-totalitarian movement. He saved his most withering scorn for his former allies who viewed the revolution as a net benefit for the French and the world. In contrast, O'Brien in his UN days urged that Ireland follow the "decent" countries such as Sweden and stay above the US-Soviet fray. One wishes that O'Brien, now in his eighties, would have come to grips with his past as a neutral in the struggle between freedom and the successors of the French Revolution.

When I read this book ten years ago, I had only a glancing sense of Irish history. I read it to gain some perspective on that history through the eyes of one of Ireland's insightful men of letters. The thesis that Burke was loyal...a constitutional monarchist...in the midst of his own deeply held opposition to British treatment of his own country, was a revelation to me. I did not know this...nor did I know that he extended his loyal opposition to British imperial behavior, to the USA and India.

I felt then...through O'Brien's eyes...that Burke was heroic and extraordinarily far sighted; not to mention politically prudent. I haven't yet changed my opinion, after reading earlier contemporary criticism of Burke's alleged blind conservative monarchism. I think that O'Brien is correct to assert that Burke's action and thought was not that simple and un-nuanced. O'Brien makes a convincing case for Burke's underlying purposes.

These purposes, based upon civilized respect for all parties involved, in such a heated historic dispute....in my very humble opinion....presage the non-violent movements toward independence that eventually bore fruit for India and Ireland.

Conor Cruise O'Brien, himself a civilized man of insight and erudition, paints the "big picture"...a perspective that I think could very well become the definitive version of this pre-history, and of Edmund Burke.

Mr. Cruise O'Brien has let it be know that for the duration of the preparation of this book he rose daily at 5.00am to carry out his task. Would that he had spent a few more pre-dawn hours editing before this volume saw the light of day! The book is an insightful exposition of the thoughts of Edmund Burke as gleaned from his public pronouncements. It is an entertaining guide for the general reader to the major international political events of Burke's era - the American and French revolutions and their effects on the evolution of the British Empire and British Parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately the reader must wade through the cross currents of the various subthemes which the author has dispersed loosely through the text. While the book primarily deals with Burke and his times, there are apparently random,swingeing attacks on a school of Twentieth Century historians who have sought to reappraise Burke in a manner with which the author disagrees. Also littered through the volume are repeated explanations of the books main title - a quotation from W.B.Yeats, and the author's interpretation of Yeats's words. Surely these two elements are best relagated to footnote,appendix or preface if, indeed , they merit inclusion at all. The eruption of these subthemes through the text is at first merely an irritation, but ultimately distracts from the thrust of the book. Mr. Cruise O'Brien's most notable achievement is to re-interpret Burke's motivations throughout his public life in the light of research and inference into his Irish origins. Indeed the preface's rather startling claim to make wide use of inference where documentation does not exist is, in this readers view, amply justified in the body of the text. Burke's concern for Ireland, his vehement opposition to authoritarianism, his belief in respecting the differences between different societies and nations within the British Empire are cast into vivid relief by the author's detailing of Burke's ancestry and upbringing in Ireland. The book's other main argument - essentially that Burke was the motive force behind the major enlightened international policies pursued by the British Parliament in the period 1765 to 1794, remains, in this readers estimation, unproven. This period saw major policies implemented in America, India and Ireland and two declarations of war against France. Undoubtedly Burke's logic was formidable, his oratory persuasive and in relation to the French Revolution his predictions were indeed clairvoyant. However Mr. Cruise O'Brien's thesis is that Burke single handedly moulded a body of up to ninety MPs into a force which forced a halt to the American War, brought an authoritarian King to the verge of abdication, forced fundamental reappraisal of governance of Ireland and India and that Burke finally smashed this force over differences in relation to the impact of the French Revolution. That these major events took place is a matter of record, that Burke's penetrating analysis laid a basis for these policies is in no doubt. However the book's contention that Burke influenced and manipulated the nominal leaders of this Parlimentary faction and virtually scripted and rehearsed their every move over a period of twenty momentous years is a leap which seems unsupported by the evidence. Closer to the truth, I feel, is a quote from William Pitt, acidly commenting on Burke " I return Burke's letter, which is like other rhapsodies from the same pen, in which there is much to admire and nothing to agree with". Burke's eloquence,his certitude and inflexibility once decided on a topic, made him a feared Parliamentary opponent but also something of a mixed blessing as an ally especially in the complex and compromising athmosphere of Eighteenth Century British Parliamentary politics. The book's major failure as a biography is its inability of bring Burke to life as a human being. The author breathes life into Burke's recorded words, shows the development of his ideas and shows the passion and diligence which Burke displayed when engaged on a cause. However save for occasional flashes and inferences - Burke's despondant reaction to the premature death of his son, the guilt complex inferred due to the apostacy of his father - the Burke described in the text is the Burke of the great speeches. Mr Cruise O'Brien mentions that Burke destroyed a great deal of his private papers, however contemporary accounts written by family,friends and opponents are occasionally quoted in the book, more use could have been made of these sources. There is an inadequate portrayal of Burke's political benefactors - Rockingham, Fox, Portland and Fitzwilliam, all emerge as a pastiche of two dimensional characters whose chief purpose would appear to have been to act as channels for Burke's intentions. The book's attack on the reinterpretation of Burke's role is both petulant and distracting. The main target of the author's attention is Sir Lewis Namier, Mr. Cruise O'Brien's disagreement with Namier's views is obvious Unfortunatley the author is not content to allow his views to stand in refutation of Namier and his school,Mr. Cruise O'Brien attempts to show Namier to have malicious intent, to deliberately minimize Burke at every turn, to have been selective in the presentation of facts and economical with historical truth. This reader counted fourteen separate attacks on Namier in the main body of the text, the preface is peptic in its anti-Namierite fury and the thematic index entry on "Namierism" is cross-referenced to an entry entitled "Malevolance"! Such a diatribe clutters and confuses the narrative and must rate as over-indulgence on the author's part. An editor who had purged the main text of this material and consigned it to an appendix would have done a service to both the reader and the author. Similiar irritation can be expressed with the authors repeated justification and explanation of the book's title. Each of Burke's main speeches are analyzed as to whether it fits into the pattern called 'The Great Melody' by Yeats. The quotation of two line except from Yeats is mentioned on eight separate occasions through the volume. The selection of the book's title, replete with Irish literary and historical resonance, is a clever conceit. Mentioned once, as a preface, it is to the author's credit and reader's delight, however, on ponderous repetition, the reader yearns for effective pruning. In summary Mr. Cruise O'Brien's work is a useful reintroduction to Burke, it contains valuable new inference into his motivations. It fails to bring out a 'flesh and blood' representation of the subject,and it over-emphasizes Burke's role in the implementation of the policies of which he was a champion. The text is enriched by the author's judicious quotation of Burke's magnificent speeches and pamphlets, however the work as a whole is badly served by the author's over-indulgent communion with Yeats and disparagement of his academic contemporarie

If you want a normal biography of Edmund Burke, this isn't the one to pick up. Read Kirk's. There is a lot about the man that this book does not purport to touch. But if what you want is just a great book about Burke, this is the best one out there, and it's wonderful. I thought I knew a lot about him, and have found that I'd only scratched the surface. A great lesson on the times as well as the man.

There is much in O'Brien's book that is interesting, original and insightful. But it suffers from two fatal flaws, one stylistic/structural, one substantive: (1) It is a mess. It is part personal biography, part intellectual biography, part annotated anthology, all mixed together in a confusing and unsatisfactory hodge-podge that may have been deliberate, given Burke's (and therefore O'Brien's) aversion to systems and abstraction. It is as if the author set out with a firm intention to portray Burke a certain way, collected up all the relevant facts, but just couldn't pull it all together in the end. It reads like a work-in-progress, several drafts short of completion and in dire need of a good editor; (2) It seriously overstates its case, and is therefore simply not reliable as an account of Burke's thought. O'Brien's Burke is a pluralist liberal, one of the "good guys" not to be classed among the "reactionaries", as Isaiah Berlin has done. But as Berlin points out--with far too much courtly politeness--in his exchange with O'Brien (reproduced in the appendix), the author has simply turned a blind eye to those aspects of his subject that make him appear illiberal. Most liberals at the time supported the French Revolution, at least in its early phase, and with good reason: it destroyed a confused mass of privilege, injustice and corruption that served the interests of a largely hereditary elite, which Burke vigorously defended. Most liberals since have supported it too. Few (if any) liberals today would hesitate to condemn someone who defended tradition, hereditary privilege and deference to authority as Burke did. To say that Burke was a liberal just doesn't wash. Granted he had SOME liberal tendencies, but he had many other tendencies that liberals have always found repugnant. It is a crude and one-sided portrait. O'Brien subscribes to the old-fashioned Cold War liberalism of Jacob Talmon, who interpreted the struggle between liberal democracy and "totalitarianism" in the 20th Century as a replay of the struggle between liberalism constitutionalism and the Terror. O'Brien's agenda in this book is to accept this dubious and anachronistic framework and to place Burke firmly on the "correct" side in it, with a demonic Rousseau on the other. THE GREAT MELODY was probably out-of-date before O'Brien wrote a word of it, just as much of Burke was when it appeared in the eighteenth century.

This is a piece of trash written by a leftist hack seeking to claim Burke for his own pathetic ideology. If one seeks to understand Burke, he would do well to read Russel Kirk's The Conservative Mind.