We feel that Johnson must have been right in declaring that though Burke was always in search of pleasantries, he never made a good joke in his life.

As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos.

The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the victim than to anger against the cause.

Then, there are some gratuitous and unredeemed vulgarities; some images whose barbarity makes us shudder, of creeping ascarides and inexpugnable tapeworms.

But it is the mere foppery of literature to suffer ourselves to be long detained by specks like these.
The varieties of Burke's literary or rhetorical method are very striking.