Edmund Burke the Political Quixote: Romance, Chivalry, and the Political Imagination

Edmund Burke the Political Quixote: Romance, Chivalry, and the Political Imagination Frans De Bruyn In die rhapsody ofhis imagination, [Burke] has discovered a world ofwind-mills, and his sorrows are, that there are no Quixotes to attack them.—Thomas Paine "But the age ofchivalry is gone."—Ay, thank heaven and Cervantes!1 For Edmund Burke, die Gordon Riots of 1780 were one of diose defining moments that fix a politician's reputation and personality in die popular imagination. Instigated by Lord George Gordon, head of die anti-Cadiolic Protestant Association, die riots broke out on 2 June 1780 after a large gathering of Gordon's supporters marched upon die Houses of Parliament to present a petition urging the repeal of die Catholic Relief Act of 1778, a measure dear to Burke's heart. Burke's behaviour on this occasion was courageous, ifnot foolhardy. Despite indications diat his person and property were in danger, he refused to let tiie mob intimidate him. He reported afterwards in a letter to his long-time friend Richard Shackleton, "MyWife being safely lodged, I spent part ofdie next day [6June] in die street amidst diis wild assembly into whose 1 Thomas Paine, Rights ofMan: Beingan Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on theFrench Revolution (London, 1791), p. 22; Anon., Strictures on the Letter of the Right Hon. Mr. Burke, on the Revolution inFrance (London, 1791), p. 99. The audior gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which facilitated die research that contributed to this article. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 4,JuIy 2004 696 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURYFICTION hands I delivered myselfinforming diem who I was."2 Convinced diat his cause wasjust, he argued and remonstrated widi die rioters. In a telling instance, recorded by Lord Polwartii, an apparendy innocent man was swept up in the high tide of his indignation. F.P. Lock recounts the story in his biography ofBurke: Walking about in search ofadventure, "he spied a Hackney Coach, whose driver had one of these horrid Badges in his Hat [the blue cockade of the Protestant Association]." Assuming that the passengers must also be sympathizers, "in a Paroxysm ofrage and Eloquence" Burke chastised "a poor country parson who had come on a visit to Town," unaware ofwhat the ribbon meant, or even that his driver was wearing one. Great therefore was his surprise "to be attacked as a Contemner of Religion and Morality, a sower of sedition, a persecutor and God knows what, by a man he had never seen, & who to all appearance was out of his senses." Lord Polwarth's words give this anecdote a slyly ironic inflection—as ifto project the disorder and irrationality ofthe crowd onto its most prominent and vigorous opponent. Especially interesting, in the present context, is die way in which die anecdote constructs die madness itimputes to Burke as distinctly quixotic in its manifestation. In Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes' celebrated hero is repeatedly described as "a mostwise Personage, and most Honest" in all respects, save one: "he was only besotted, when he touched upon his Chivalry, and in die rest ofhis Talk he shewed a clear and current Apprehension: so tiiat every foot his Works bewrayed his Judgment, and hisJudgmenthisWorks."4 Quixote's is aparadoxical, intermittent insanity, and so, apparendy, is Burke's, which expresses itselfin Polwarth's account simultaneouslyas "rage" and "Eloquence." When caught up in his chivalric obsession, Quixote compels the appearances ofdiis world, however innocuous, to underwrite his view ofreality. His overheated imagination apprehends windmills as giants, 2 Edmund Burke, The Correspondence ofEdmund Burke, ed. Thomas W. Copeland, 10 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1958-78), 4:246. 3 F.F. Lock, Edmund Burke: Volume I, 1730-1784 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 468. Lock cites as his source "Lord Polwartii to Hugh Scott, 17JuIy 1780, Scottish Record Office, GD157/2914/13." For odier vivid accounts ofBurke among die rioters, seeJohn Paul de Castro, The Gordon Riots (London: Humphrey Milford, 1926), pp. 64-65, and Burke, Correspondence, 4:246n2. 4 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, TheHistory ofthe Valorous and WittyKnight-ErrantDon Quixote oftheMancha, trans. Thomas Shelton, 4 vols. (London, 1740), 4:7. This...