every day and we may be sure he read as intelligently as eagerly. It is more
than probable that like a few other great minds he did not need a rigid system
to guide him. If he chose his subjects of study at pleasure, there is every
reason to believe he mastered them.

Of intimate friends at the University we hear nothing. Goldsmith came one year
later, but there is no evidence that they knew each other. It is probable that
Burke, always reserved, had little in common with his young associates. His own
musings, with occasional attempts at writing poetry, long walks through the
country, and frequent letters to and from Richard Shackleton, employed him when
not at his books.

Two years after taking his degree, Burke went to London and established himself
at the Middle Temple for the usual routine course in law. Another long period
passes of which there is next to nothing known. His father, an irascible, hot-
tempered man, had wished him to begin the practice of law, but Burke seems to
have continued in a rather irregular way pretty much as when an undergraduate at
Dublin. His inclinations were not toward the law, but literature. His father,
angered at such a turn of affairs, promptly reduced his allowance and left him
to follow his natural bent in perfect freedom. In 1756, six years after his
arrival in London, and almost immediately following the rupture with his father,
he married a Miss Nugent. At about the same time he published his first two
books, [Footnote: A Vindication of Natural Society and Philosophical Inquiry
into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful] and began in earnest
the life of an author.

He attracted the attention of literary men. Dr. Johnson had just completed his
famous dictionary, and was the centre of a group of writers who accepted him at
his own valuation. Burke did not want for company, and wrote
copiously.[Footnote: Hints for an Essay on the Drama. Abridgement of the History