Selected letters of Edmund Burke.

IN 1881, when Matthew Arnold edited a collection of Burke's writings on Irish affairs, he included a score of Burke's letters. And with good reason, for the letter form gave Burke the opportunity to exhibit a major source of his brilliance, the application of personal honor to public affairs: When Burke wrote a letter on political matters, he never forgot that the recipient was an "audience" to be persuaded. He perfected his sense of the many audiences to whom he could direct a single letter-the recipient, Burke's friends and enemies, "Europe"--in the Reflections on the Revolution in France, the Letter to a Noble Lord, and other late writings. For this volume Harvey Mansfield has made an inspired selection from the scholarly ten-volume Correspondence of Burke. His arrangement of letters by subject (Party, Reform and Revolution, India, etc.) rather than chronology is quite useful, although his introduction to Burke's theory of political practice, while contributing to scholarship, is unlikely to help the common reader: It virtually ignores the letters, and I find it misleading on Burke's view of "prejudice," the British Constitution, and the place of theory. For the record, Burke's letters are well worth reading for their political content. For example, they establish more clearly than elsewhere Burke's belief in liberty as a natural right (p. 256) and his qualifications to the endorsement of "prejudice" (p. 402). But this is probably the third volume of Burke to read, after one of the more general anthologies and his greatest letter of all, the Reflections.