The Cradle of Our Race
Edmund Burke warned that the French Revolution could have a devastating effect on British and European culture.
1790
King George III 1760-1820
Edmund Burke warned that the French Revolution could have a devastating effect on British and European culture.
1790
King George III 1760-1820
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) regarded the fates of England and France as closely intertwined, and consequently the catastrophic events of the French Revolution in 1789 made him afraid for England. If France falls into tyranny and moral decline, he warned, it will be that much harder for England to resist going the same way.
NOTHING is more certain, than that our manners, our civilisation, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilisation, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. [...]
It is not clear, whether in England we learned those grand and decorous principles, and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace them best.* You seem to me to be gentis incunabula nostrae [the cradle of our race].* France has always more or less influenced manners in England: and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France.*
In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, became King of England. For the next hundred years French language, music and culture dominated among the elite in Church and State. From the time of Henry III onwards (r. 1216-1272) that aristocratic Frenchness was gradually reconciled with everyday Englishness. See Macaulay on The Good Reign of Bad King John.
The phrase comes from Virgil’s Aeneid, iii. 105. It was originally applied to Crete as the supposed cradle of the Trojan people. A little more even-handedly, Leslie Howard included France among several formative influences on the British character in a broadcast at Christmas 1940, alongside Scandinavia and ancient Greece and Rome. See Britain’s Destiny.
Burke’s fears were well-founded. Three years later the Reign of Terror (September 5th, 1793 to July 28th, 1794) gripped Paris, and the Revolutionaries began exporting revolution and war across Europe. See posts tagged French Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802). The ‘spirit of the revolution’ unsettled states right across the Continent for years afterwards, causing William Pitt the Younger to blame France for Europe’s addiction to political extremism. See The Temperate Zone.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.