a i -m BOLINGBROKE A HISTORICAL STUDY AND YOLTAIEE IN ENGLAND BOLIISTGEEOKE A HISTORICAL STUDY AND VOLTAIRE m ENGLAND BY JOim CIIURTON COLLINS • • *, t % NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1886 t •• • -•• »•.»•*• • • • « < • • • t ^ t • • • • ^ « m • • • c < «c */ . • •• •• • •. • , •• • ... SC) 1 PREFACE. The Essays comprised in this volume were orig- inally contributed to the Quarterly Review and to the Cornhill Magazine^ and the Author has to thank Mr. Murray for permission to reprint the papers on Bolingbroke, and Messrs. Smith and Elder for per- mission to reprint the papers on Voltaire in Eng- land. Both series of Essays have been carefully revised ; to both series, but particularly to the sec- ond, considerable additions have been made. They have been collected in a volume uot because the Author attaches undue importance to them, but be- cause he ventures to think that they throw light on two singularly interesting episodes in the political and literary history of the eighteenth century, and because he is willing to believe that, as they are the result of more research than will perhaps appear upon the surface, they may be of some use to fut- ure biographers of Bolingbroke and Voltaire. IL CONTENTS, THE POLITICxVL LIFE OF LORD 130LINGBR0KE. Introduction 3, 4 The Biographers 4,5 Ciiaracteristics of Bolingbroke C-13 Ilis Influence on English Literature 14 On the Course of Public Thought both in England and Abroad. 14, 15 Ancestry and Early Education 15-21 His Youth : Licentiousness 22, 23 Continental Travels 23-25 Marriage 26 Entrance into Public Life 27 State of Parties on the Accession of Queen Anne 27-30 - Character of Robert Uarlcy 30-32 >St. John's Political Attitude 32 .State of Public Affairs, Prospect and Retrospect 33-35 Character of Godolphin : his Policy 35, 3G St. John rapidly rises into Distinction : his Appointment to the Secretaryship of War 37-39 ^^^he Whigs come into Power 39 Duplicity of JIarlcy, shared in by St. John 39, 40 Fall of Harley 41 Retirement of St. John 41,42 Overthrow of the Godolphin Administration : Causes of same : its Splendid Services 42-40 Administration of Ilarley and St. John 45-47 Difficulties of Ilarlcy's Position 47-49 Party Writers : Swift and his Services 50, 51 Marlborough 52 • \^s.sensions among the Tory Party 52, 53 viii CONTENTS. PAfiE Ilarley rising into Undeserved Popularity tlirougli Guiscard's Unsuccessful Attempt on his Life 53-5fi s^ecret Negotiations with France 50, 57 Resentment of the Whig Party : ('risis in Parliament 58, 59 St. John Victorious 59 .'Tactics of the Tories 59-01 ^Preliminaries of the Treaty of Utrecht : St. John's Negotiation with France 01, 02 His Promotion to the Peerage 02, 03 His Diplomatic Mission to Paris 03, 04 Treaty of Utrecht Concluded 05, 60 . Reflections on the Treaty, and on Bolingbroke's Conduct. . . . 60-08 Dissensions between Bolingbroke and Oxford 08-70 -Bolingbroke Determined to bring Matters to a Crisis 71-73 Oxford is Removed 73 Bolingbroke Prime-minister: his Intrigues with the Jacobites. 73, 74 ""The Earl of Shrewsbury Secedes 75 '-The Queen Dies, and the Tory Party Collapses 75, 76 BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. Importance of this Period 79, 80 Retrospect at the Close of Bolingbroke's Political Career. ... 81 Bolingbroke's Schemes 82, 83 His Advances not Encouraged by the Elector 84 Arrival of the King in England ; 84 The Whigs come into Power, their Proceedings against the late Government 84-80 Bolingbroke's Attempt at Self-justification Unsuccessful 80 Threatening Prospects 80, 87 Flight of Bolingbroke 87, 88 Imprudence of this Step 88-90 His Arrival in Paris : Interview with Berwick and Stair 00 Impeached by Walpole : Considerations thereon 90—92 Declared an Outlaw 93 The Pretender, his Character: Reasons which guided Boling- broke in Espousing liis Cause 93-97 CONTENTS. ix PAGE Colingbroke Organizes the Jacobite Movement in Paris : Dis- appointments and Trials 97, 98 Circumstances Favorable to the Cause 99, 100 Negotiations of Bolingbrokc 100-102 Inauspicious Events : Death of Louis XIV., Flight of Ormond 102-104 Declining Prospects of the Jacobite Cause: its Collapse. . . 104, 105 Bolingbroke's Services to the Pretender: is Dismissed. . . . 105-108 News Arrives iu London 108 Colingbroke Attempts to come to Terms with the English Government 108, 109 His Retirement and Private Studies 109-112 Connection with the Marquise de Villette and Subsequent Marriage 1 13, 1 14 Literary Pursuits 114-116 Friendship with Voltaire 1 lG-120 His Desire to Return to England repeatedly Thwarted : at last Acceded to 121 His Interview with Walpole and Carteret 121-124 His Offer of Intercession at the French Court Declined by Walpole 124, 125 Walpole Averse to Bolingbroke's Restoration : at last Forced to Consent to it by the King 126, 127 Bolingbroke's Double Life 127, 128 LITERARY LIFE OF LORD BOLINGBROKE. Bolingbrokc as an Opponent of the Ministry: his Position and Influence in the Political Contest 131, 132 State of Parties : the Leaders of the Opposition 132-137 Organization of the Opposition : Publication of the Crafts- . man ' 1 37, 1 38 Bolingbrokc one of its Chief Contributors 138 His Interview with the King 139, 140 Death of the King 141 Critical Aspect of Affairs 141 Walpole Restored to Power 142 Factions in Parliament, Venality of Ofiicc-holders 142-144 A2 X CONTENTS. Tactics of the Opposition 144-147 Nearly Successful 147 The Excise Bill 147-149 Review of Bolingbroke's Contiibutions to the Craftsman from 1727 until 1734 150 His "Remarks on the Ilistory of England " 151-153 His " Dissertation upon Parties " 153-155 Bolinghroke as a Writer on Philosophical and Mstjiphysieal Subjects : his Life at Dawley 1 55, 156 His Friends 157^ 158 Bolingbroke's Friendship with Poi>c 158 His Influence on Pope's Mind and Studies 159-163 Departure from England : Reasons for same 163-165 His Residence in France : Inquiries 165 His " Letters on the Study of History " 166, 167 His " Letter on tlic Spirit of Patriotism " 168 Character of tlie Prince of Wales 169-171 Bolingbroko Attempts to Ingratiate himself with the Prince 171, 172 The " Patriot King:" Considerations thereon 172-175 Wal pole's Influence Declines : his Resignatkui 175, 176 Bdingbroke Arrives too Late from France : his Last Cliance Lost 176 Retrospect of Bolingbroke's Literary Career 176, 177 His Unworthy Conduct towards Pope 177-180 Last Days of Bolingbroke 180 Afflictions of Age 181 Death of Lady Bolingbroke 181 Death of Bolingbroke 181 Publication of his Philosophical Works 181 Review of his Philosophical Works 181 Summary of his Philosophy 185-187 Epilogue 187 VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. SECTION I, Voltaire's Stay in England : an Unwritten Chapter in his Biography 191, 192 CONTENTS. xi Dato of las Arrival 1D3, 194 First Impressions 195, 196 The Friends he makes in England : Bubb Dodington, Sir Everard Falkener 197, 198 Interview with Pope 200-202 Reverses of Fortune : Family Afflictions 202, 203 At Eastbury : meets Young 205, 206 His Views on Men and Manners 206-208 Lady Hervey : Voltaire's English Verses 209 Ilis Double-dealing in Politics 210-212 His Effusiveness as a Critic 212 Studies of English Life 213-216 Visit to France 216 SECTION II. Scrap-book of Voltaire ; a Clew to his Familiarity with Eng- lish Life 216, 217 Ilis Study of Newton's Works, of Locke's, of Bacon's, and of Berkeley's 217-219 Sympathy with the Free-thought Movement as Inaugurated by Collins and Woolston 220 His Literary Productions in the English Language 221-224 Preparations for the Publication of the " Ileuriade" 22-1-226 Issue of the Work 226 Its Immense Success 227, 228 i'iratical Publishers 228, 229 Domestic Troubles 230 Alterations of the Manuscript 231 Comments of the Press 231, 232 Untoward Incident: Voltaire's Clever Escape 233 British National Self-complacency strikingly Illustrated, , , 233, 234 SECTION III. Voltaire's Different Literary Undertakings from April, 1728, until March, 1720 , . 234-236 His Growing Familiarity with English Literature. .- . , . . . ; : 230, 237 His Indebtedness to English Mcu of Letters 237-240 xii CONTEiNTS. Retrospect at tlic Close of liis Stay hi England 240, 2-11 His Respect for Uie English 242 Calumnious Statements Circulated as to the Cause of his Departure from England 243, 244 Last Interview with Pope 244 Voltaire's Return to France 245 POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. SUMMARY. Introduction, p. 3, 4 — The Biographers, p. 4-6 — Cliaracteristics of Bolingbrolie, p. 6-14 — His influence on English literature, p. 14 — On the course of public thought both in England and abroad, p. 15 — An- cestry and early education, p. 16-22 — Ilis youth : licentiousness, p. 22, 23 — Continental Travels, p. 23, 24 — Marriage, p. 26 — Entrance into public life, p. 2*7 — State of Parties on the accession of Queen Anne, p. 27-20 — Ilarluy, the Speaker of the House of Commons : his char- acter, p. 30-32 — St. John's political attitude, p. 32, 33 — State of public affairs, prospect and retrospect, p. 33-35 — Character of Godolphin : his policy, p. 35-3Y^ — St. John rapidly rises into distinction : his ap- pointment to the Secretaryship of War, p. 38, 39 — The Whigs come into power, p. 39 — Duplicity of Ilarley, shared in by St. John, p. 40 — Downfall of Harley, p. 41 — Retirement of St. John, p. 41,42 — Over- throw of the Godolphin Administration: causes of same, p. 43-46 — Its splendid services, p. 42,43 — Administration of Ilarley and St. John, p. 46, 47 — Difficulties of Harlcy's position, p. 4Y-49 — Party writers : Swift's services, p. 50, 51 — Marlborough, p. 51, 52 — Dissensions among the Tory party, p. 52, 53 — Ilarley rising into undeserved popularity through Guiscard's unsuccessful attempt on his life, p. 53-56 — Se- cret negotiations carried on with France, p. 56-58 — Resentment of the Whig party: climax in Parliament, p. 58, 59 — St. John victo- rious, p. 59 — Tactics of the Tories, p. 59-62 — Preliminaries of the Treaty of Utrecht: activity of St. John in preparing same: his pro- motion to the peerage, p. 62, 63 — His diplomatic mission to Paris, p. 63, 64 — Treaty of Utrecht concluded : Treaty discussed, p. 65-67 — Reflection on the treaty, and on Bolingbroke's conduct, p. 68 — Dis- sensions between Bolingbroke and Oxford, p. 68-71 — Bolingbroke determined to bring matters to a crisis, p. 71-73 — Oxford is removed, p. 73 — Bolingbroke Prime-minister : Jacobite intrigues, p. 74 — The Earl of Shrewsbury secedes, p. 75 — Tlic Queen dies, and tiie Tory party collapses, p. 75, 76. ESSAYS. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE * We have little respect for the public conduct of Boling- broke ; we have no liking for his personal character; we regard his political writings with suspicion, and his meta- physical writings with contempt ; but we cannot transcribe these title-pages without strong feelings of regret. It was, as he once bitterly observed, his lot during life to suffer more at the hands of his friends than at the hands of his enemies; and what was his lot in life, has been by a rare refinement of misfortune his lot ever since. The edition of his works by Mallet is, if we except the type and paper, one of the worst editions of an English author that ever issued from the press. It is frequently disfigured by mis- prints ; it swanns with errors in punctuation ; its text, as a very cursory collation with the original manuscripts will suffice to show, is not always to be depended on. It was hurried into the world with indecent haste, without one word of preface, without any attempt at arrangement, with * "The Works of the late Riglit Honorable Ileury St. John Lord Viscount BoHngbroke," publi-slicd by David Mallet. " Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke," by George Wingrovo Cooke. "The Life of Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke," by Thomas Macknight. 4 ESSAYS. scarcely a line of annotation. The rcsnlt is that nine- tentlis of the political papers must be as unintelligible to a reader who is not minutely acquainted with the parlia- mentary controversies which raged round Walpole, as the v "Letters of Junius" would be to a reader who was simi- larly ignorant of the career of Wilkes, or of the adminis- tration of Grafton. And what applies to these papers will apply, with scarcely less propriety, to the more important works on -wliicli Bolingbroke's literary fame must rest — to the "Letter to Wyndham," to the "Dissertation on Parties," to the " Remarks on the History of England." It would, in truth, bo difficult to name a writer of equal merit, who is more dependent on a judicious editor for those little services which so often turn the scale between popular recognition and oblivion. But a hundred and twenty years have rolled away without this useful func- tionary making his appearance, and the works of one of the greatest masters of our tongue are confined almost ex- v.- clusively to the perusal of readers who can dispense with illustrative assistance. In his biographers and apologists he has been equally unlucky. The " Memoirs of his Ministerial Life," which appeared in 1752, the "Life and History," which appeared in 1754, the "Biography," by Goldsmith, the "Mcmoires Secretes," the " Essai Ilistorique," by Grimoard, have fol- lowed one another in rapid succession into oblivion, and into an oblivion which, we arc bound to add, they justly merited. Nor can we speak very favorably of the more elaborate biographies at the head of this article. The work of Mr. Wingrovo Cooke, though skilfully executed, is, like his "History of Parties," too superficial and too inaccurate to be ever likely to attain a permanent place in literature. Indeed, the " Life " by Mr. Macknight has al- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 5 ready superseded it. Mr. Mackniglit's volume is fairly en- titled to the praise of diligence and impartiality. He lias carefully consulted all obvious sources of information ; lie has availed himself to the full of the work of his prede- cessor; he has studied with care the bulky correspondence in which Bolingbrokc loved to pour himself out, and he has produced in consequence a work of some pretension. > But his style is slipshod, and his grasp is feeble. Of pro- portion and perspective in the disposition of his material he has no idea. He is continually expanding where he ought to retrench ; he is continually retrenching where he ought to expand. He gives us, for example, a long and tedious dissertation on the Treaty of Utrecht, but he de- spatches in a few pages one of the most curiously interest- ing periods in his hero's career — the period between 1733 and 1736. He enters at length into all the questions -^ which embroiled the Opposition with Walpole; but of Bolingbroke's influence on literature and philosophy he says scarcely one word, of his character, nothing. His acquaintance, moreover, with the literary and political his- tory of the eighteenth century is not sufKciently extensive to prevent him from habitually blundering when the course of his narrative obliges him to touch on such topics, and such topics are, unfortunately, of the essence of his task. In a word, Mr. Macknight has produced a work which is j beyond question the best biography of Bolingbrokc, but he has not produced a work which students can consult with satisfaction, or to which the general reader will be likely to turn for amusement. He is neither a Coxc nor a Southey. Of M. Hemusat's Essay we shall content our- selves with saying that it is a sober and patient study, em- inently suggestive, luminous and animated. As a biogra- phy it is necessarily defective ; as a critique it is admirable. 6 ESSAYS. Bollngbrolcc belongs to a class of men whose peculiari- ties both of intellect and temper are sufficiently unmistak- able. The course of his public life, though often tortuous and perplexing, presents on the whole few ambiguities. /, The details of his private life may still be collected with singular fulness from innumerable sources. For nearly half a century he lived among shrewd and observant men of the world, and of these some of the shrewdest and most observant have recorded their impressions of him. His speeches have perished, but his writings and his corre- spondence remain ; and both his writings and his corre- spondence are eminently characteristic. Seldom has it been the lot even of the great leaders of mankind to unite in the same dazzling combination such a an array of eminent qualities as met in this unhappy states- man. His intellect was of the highest and rarest order — keen, clear, logical, comprehensive, rapidly assimilative, in- exhaustibly fertile. His memory was so prodigious that he complained, like Theraistocles, of its indiscrirainating tenacity ; but the treasures of Bolingbroke's memory were at the ready call of a swift and lively intelligence. " His penetration," says Chesterfield, " resembled intuition." His imagination was warm and vivid, his judgment clear, his energy almost superhuman. While a mere youth he was distinguished alike by audacity and tact, by rare skill in debate, by rare talents for the practical duties of states- manship. His powers of application were such as arc not often found conjoined with parts so quick and with a tcm- >- perament so naturally mercurial. " He would plod " — we are quoting Swift — " whole days and nights like the low- est clerk in an office ;" and even in his latter years the un- remitting intensity of his studies excited the wonder of younger students. His mind had early been enlarged by THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 7 foreign travel and by an unusually wide experience. In the world of books and in the world of men he was equal- ly interested, and he was equally at home. " He joined," writes Chesterfield, "all the politeness, the manners and the graces of a courtier to the solidity of a statesman and to the learning of a pedant," The most accomplished of his acquaintances have observed that there was scarcely any branch of human knowledge which had escaped his curious and discursive glance. His face and figure were such as sculptors love to dwell upon ; and such as more than one of his contemporaries have paused to describe. His person was tall and commanding; his features were of classical beauty, but eager, mobile, animated ; his fore- head was high and intellectual, his lips indicated eloquence, his eyes were full of fire. Grace and dignity blended them- selves in his deportment. The witchery of his manners has been acknowledged by the most malignant of his de- tractors, and his exquisite urbanity passed into a proverb. " To make St. John more polite," was the phrase employed by a poet of those times as a synonym for superfluous labor. "Lord Bolingbroke," says Aaron Hill, " was the finest gentleman I ever saw." From the multitude, in- deed, he stood coldly and haughtily aloof, but his sym- pathy with men of genius and learning was quick, catholic, and generous. He rescued Fenton from the drudgery of a private school, and his patronage was extended not only to those poets and wits who have given him a place beside Majcenas and Alphonso da Este, but to scholarship and to science. One of the most distinguished mathematicians of that century has recorded his gratitude to him, and even George Whitefield relates with pride how he once num- bered Bolingbroke among the most attentive and eulooistic of his listeners. Long before Ins abilities had fully ma- 8 ESSAYS. tared tlicmselvcs, the gates of St. Stephen's were closed against him ; bat not before an audience familiar with the eloquence of Halifax and Somcrs had pronounced him to be the first orator of his age. " I would rather," said Pitt, *' have a speech of Bolingbroke's than any of the lost treas- ures of antiquity." The charm of his conversation has been described by men whose judgment is without appeal, by Pope and Voltaire, by Swift, Orrery, and Chesterfield. His character was, however, so unhappily constituted that these superb powers were seldom or never in harmonious co-operation. The virtues which balance and control, sobriety, moderation, consistency, had no part in his com- position, llis impetuosity and intemperance amounted to disease. To the end of his long life he was the slave not merely of every passion, but of every impulse; and what the capricious tyranny of emotion dictated had for the moment the power of completely transforming him. He exhibited by turns the traits peculiar to the most exalted and to the most debased of our species. His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not as in ordinary men blend themselves in a gradation of tints, but remained isolated in sudden and glaring contrast. His transitions were from extreme to extreme. He was sometimes all vice, he was sometimes all elevation. When his fine intel- lect was unclouded, his shrewdness and sagacity were a match for De Torcy ; his dexterity and adroitness more than a match for Marlborough and Godolphin. When his intellect took the ply from his passions, there was little to distinguish him from the most hot-headed and hare-brained of his own tools. In his sublimer moments he out-Catoed Cato, in his less exalted moods he sank below Sandys and Dodington. When in retirement, he shut himself up with the "Tusculans" and the Enchiridion, he lived and talked THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 9 as became a disciple of the Porcli. When he reappeared among men, his debauclieries were the scandal of the two most profligate capitals in Europe. His actions were some- times those of a high-minded and chivalrous gentleman, capable of making great sacrifices, and distinguished by a spirit of romantic generosity. A change of mood ■would suffice to transform him into the most callous, the most selfish, the most cynical of misanthropes. lie was never, we believe, a deliberate hypocrite, but his emotions were so transient, his conduct so capricious, that he might have passed for TartufCe himself. The fascination of his man- ners and the brilliancy of his parts naturally surrounded him with many friends. Friendship was, he said, indis- pensable to his being ; it was the noblest of human in- stincts ; it was sacred ; it should be inviolable ; it was in its purity the prerogative only of great and good men. Ills letters to Prior, to Swift, to Alari, and to Pope, abound in the most extravagant professions of attachment. Ilis letters to Lord Hardwicke are sometimes almost fulsome. But what was the sequel ? He quarrelled with Alari for presuming to advise him. He dropped Swift when the letters of Swift ceased to entertain him. He dropped Hardwicke from mere caprice. His perfidy to Pope is, we believe, literally without example in social treachery. ** He bore the most excruciating of human maladies with a placid fortitude which would have done honor to Styiitcs; but the slightest error on the part of his cook would send him into such paroxysms of rage that his friends were glad to be out of his house. His whole soul was torment- ed by an insatiable thirst for literary and political distinc- tion ; it would, wc believe, be impossible to find in liis voluminous correspondence half a dozen letters in which he does not express contempt both for the Avorld and for 1* lX 10 ESSAYS. the world's regard. Ilis opinions were as wayward and as wliimsical as his actions. He delighted to write of him- ^ self as the votary of a mild and tolerant philosophy which had taught him the vanity of ambition, and could be nour- ished only in that retirement which, thanks to his enemies, he was enabled to enjoy. Before the ink was dry lie was y ransacking our language for scurrilous epithets against those who had excluded him from public life. Resigna- tion was, he said, the virtue on which he especially prided iiimself. His life was notoriously one long and fierce re- "^ bcllion. lie professed the greatest respect for prescription, and is one of the most revolutionary of writers ; for the Church, and would have betrayed it; for Christianity, and was in the van of its most ferocious assailants. He deliv- ered himself sometimes in rhodomontade redolent of the ethics of Seneca and of the Utopias of Plato and Xenophon, and sometimes in rhodomontade breathing the spirit of the Prince and of the Fable of the Bees. As the subject of Anne, he went as far as Filmer in his estimate of the royal prerogative ; as the subject of George, he went beyond Paley in depreciating it. As the minister of Anne, he was '^ the originator of the Stamp Act ; as the subject of George, he was the loudest and most vehement of those demao^oiTues who clamored for the absolute freedom of the press. In power he was the author of the Schism Act ; out of power he taunted Walpole with deserting the Dissenters. The age he lived in he pronounced to be the Nadir of moral and political corruption ; he proposed to purify it by a scheme which postulates the perfection of those whose vices are to be cured by it. The truth is that, with quick sensibilities he had no depth of feeling, with much insight no convictions. What would in well-regulated minds have developed into princi- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 11 pie, remained in him mere sentiment ; and Lis sentiments were like the -wbims of a libertine, ardent, fanciful, and transitory. His head was hot, but his heart was cold, "^ In the latter part of his career he set himself up as the castigator of political immorality, and as the loftiest and most disinterested of patriots. His own public life had been such that each part of it seems elaborately designed to set off and heighten the turpitude of some other part. The shameless charlatanism of his career at the head of the extreme Tories might have passed perhaps for honest zeal — intemperate, indeed, but pure — bad be not at the bead of tbe extreme Wliigs found it expedient to cover his former principles with ridicule. It was not till be be- came tbe hottest of factious incendiaries out of power tliat men realized tbe baseness of his despotic conservatism in power. It was not till he betrayed the interests of St. Germains tbat it was possible to estimate the extent of his treachery to the interests of Hanover. It was not till he , became the teacher of Voltaire and the Apostle of Scep- ticism that his unscrupulousness in forcing on the Bill against Occasional Conformity and in originating the Schism Bill fully revealed itself. Some of his biographers have indeed labored to explain away many of tbe inconsistencies of his public conduct. In other words, they have attempted to do for Bolingbrokc what in ancient times Isocrates attempted to do for Busiris, and what in our own day Mr. Beesly has attempted to do for Catiline, and Mr. Christie for Shaftesbury. But tbe attempt has failed. The facts speak for themselves. There can be no doubt about Bolingbroke's repeatedly declaring the Revolution to be the "'uarantee of our civil and relig- ious liberties, and that both before and after his fall he la- bored to set the Act of Settlement aside. There can be no 12 ESSAYS. doubt about his satisfving himself that if the Pretender ascended the throne without giving pledges for the secur- ity of our national faith there would be civil war, and that he moved heaven and earth to put the Pretender on the throne without insisting on any such pledges. It is cer- tain that he defended the Treaty of Utrecht mainly on the ground of I^igland's exhaustion being suck that without repose paralysis was imminent; and that not long after- wards he was lamenting that he could not at the head of a French army violate his own Treaty, and plunge that country, of which he had boasted himself the savior, into the double horrors of foreign invasion and internecine strife. It is certain that he professed the principles of the moderate Tories, of the extreme Tories, of the Jacobites, of the Hanoverians, of the Whigs in office and of the Whigs in opposition, and it is equally certain that, with the exception of the last party, they all taunted him with perfidy. It would, however, be a great mistake to confound Bolingbroke either with fribbles like the Second Villiers, whom lie resembled in the infirmities of his temper, or with sycophants like Sunderland, whom he resembled in want of principle. Ilis nature had, with all its flaws, been cast in no ignoble mould. The ambition which consumed ' him was the ambition which consumed Cajsar and Cicero, not the ambition which consumed Ilarley and Newcastle. For the mere baubles of power he cared nothing. Riches and their trappings he regarded with unaffected contempt, V He entered office a man by no means wealthy, and with expensive habits; he quitted it Avith hands as clean as Pitt's. The vanity which feeds on adulation never touched his haughty spirit. Ilis prey was not carrion. His vast and visionary ambition was bounded only by the highest THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 13 pinnacles of human glory. lie aspired to enroll himself among those great men who have shaped the fortunes and moulded the minds of mighty nations — with the demi-gods of Plutarch, with the sages of Diogenes. As a statesman he never rested till he stood without a rival on the summit of power. As a philosopher he sought a place beside Aris- totle and Bacon, and the infirmities of age overtook him while meditating a work which was to class him with Guic- ciardini and Clarendon. This was not to be. One faculty had indeed been granted him in a measure rarely conceded to the children of men — a faculty which is of all others most likely to mis- lead contemporaries, and least likely to deceive posterity — the faculty of eloquent exp ression. His style may be praised almost without reservation. It is distinguished by the union of those qualities which are in the estimation of critics sufficient to constitute perfection — by elevation, by rapidity, by picturesqueness, by perspicuity, by scrupulous chastity, by the charm of an ever-varying music. It com- bines, as no other English style has ever combined, the graces of colloquy with the graces of rhetoric. It is essen- tially eloquent, and it is an eloquence which is, to employ his own happy illustration, like a stream fed by an abun- dant spring — an eloquence which never flags, which is nev- er inappropriate, which never palls. His fertility of expres- sion is wonderful. Over all the resources of our noble and opulent language his mastery is at once exquisite and un- limited. Of effort and elaboration his style shows no traces. His ideas seem to clothe themselves spontaneously in their rich and varied garb, lie had studied, as few Englishmen of that day had studied, the masterpieces of French litera- ture, but no taint of Gallicism mars the transcendent puri- ty of his English. Ilis pages are a storehouse of fine and U ESSAYS. graceful images, of felicitous phrases, of new and striking combinations. As an essayist he is not inferior to his mas- ter, Seneca. As a political satirist he is second only to Junius. As a letter- writer he ranks with Pliny and Cicero, and we cannot but regret that so hvrgc a portion of his correspondence is still permitted to remain unpublished. Ou English prose his intUience was immediate and per- manent. It would not indeed be too much to say that it owes more to Boliugbroke than to any other single writer. Hooker and Taylor had already lent it color and pomp; j Dry den had given it verve, variety, flexibility ; Do Foe and Swift had brought it home to the vulgar; the Periodical - Writers had learned from the pulpit to endow it with ele- gance and harmony ; but it was reserved for Bolingbroke / to be the Cicero of our tongue. lie was, in truth, the found- er of a great dynasty of stylists. On him Burke modelled his various and exuberant eloquence. From him Junius learned some of his most characteristic graces. The two i Pitts made no secret of their obligations to him ; and among his disciples are to be numbered Goldsmith,* Gib- bon, Hume, and even Macaulay. His genius was, it is true, too irregularly cultivated, his aspirations too multiform, his reason too essentially under the control of passion, to secure him any high place among the teachers of mankind, and yet few men have impressed themselves more definitely on the intellectual activity of i * For the inSuence of Bolingbroke's style on that of Goldsmith we would point especially to " The Present State of Polite Learning in Europe," and to the Dedication of the " Traveller." What Macau- lay learned from him was, we think, the art of combining dignity with sprightliness, copiousness with scrupulous purity : many turns of ex- pression, and the rhetorical effect both of the short sentence and of *' clause iteration. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 16 their age. That great revolution in the study of history which found its first emphatic expression in Montesquieu is undoubtedly to be traced to him. There is scarcely a chapter in Gibbon's great work in which his influence is not discernible. By the philosophers of the Encyclopedic he was recognized as a leader. Voltaire's obligations to him are confessed by Condorcet. To Bolingbroke he owed his introduction to the works of Bacon, Newton, and Locke; much of his philosophy, many of his historical theories. Indeed, Voltaire appears to have regarded him with feelings approaching as nearly to reverence as it was perhaps possible for him to attain. Idolized by .Pope, Bolingbroke suggested and inspired some of the most val- uable of Pope's compositions — the Essay on Man, the Moral Essays, the Imitations of Horace. His influence on the academies of Italy is evident from the Elogio of Sal- vatore Canella. The spirit which he kindled during the administration of Walpole still burns in the epics and bal- lad of Glover, in the tragedies of Brooke, in the best of Akcnside's compositions, in the stateliest of Thomson's verses, in the noblest of Collins's odes, in Goldsmith's fine philosophic poem, in the most spirited of Churchill's Sat- ires. To the influence of his writings is to be attributed in no small decree that remarkable transformation which converted the Toryism of Rochester and Nottingham into the Toryism of Pitt and Mansfield. He annihilated the Jacobites. He turned the tide against Walpole, and he formulated the principles which afterwards developed into the creed of what is called in our own day Liberal Con- servatism. It would in truth be scarcely possible to over- estimate the extent of his influence on public opinion be- tween 1V25 and 1742, He sprang from an ancient and honorable race, which 16 ESSAYS. liad, as early as the thirteenth century, mingled the blood of a noble Norman family with the blood of a Saxon fam- ily not loss illustrious. William de St. John, a Norman knight, was quartermaster -general in the army of the Conqueror. The estates whieh rewarded the services of liis son passed with other property into the hands of a fe- male representative, who became the wife of Adam de Tort, one of the wealthiest of the Saxon aristocracy. Their son William assuming the maiden name of his mother, the name De Port was merged in the name of St. John. The family grew and prospered. John St. John was one of the Council of Nine appointed after the battle of Lewes. The widow of his descendajit Oliver became by her marriage with the Duke of Somerset the grandmother of Henry VII.; and a window in Battersea church, gorgeous with heraldic emblazonry, still commemorates this alliance with the Tudors. In the reign of Elizabeth the St. Johns be- came the Barons of Bletso ; in the reign of James I. one of them was created Earl of Bolingbroke. Nor were the representatives of the younger line less eminent. The services of Oliver St. John as Lord Deputy of Ireland were rewarded with the Barony of Tregoze in AViltshire. Dar- ing the civil wars the St. Johns came prominently for- ward. The elder line, represented by the Earl of Boling- broke, and by that great lawyer — over whose birth was the bar sinister, but who was destined to become a chief- justice of England and to adorn his high office — were in conspicuous oj)position to the Crown. The younger line, represented by John St. John, who lost three sons in the field, were as conspicuously distinguished by their loyalty. The days of trouble passed by, and the subsequent mar- riage of Sir Walter St. John, a member of the Royalist branch, with Joanna, a daughter of the chief-justice, proba- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 17 bly composed political differences. The young couple set- tled at Battersca, to the manor of which Sir Walter had succeeded by the death of his nephew. The virtues of the Lady Joanna Avere long remembered in the neighborhood. Her husband's munificence is more imperishably recorded in the school which he founded nearly two centuries ago, and wLich has ever since been one of the ornaments of Battersca. His crest and motto may still be seen over the gate ; his portrait still adorns the walls. He died at an advanced age in 1708. The issue of this marriage was a daughter Barbara and a son Henry, of whom we know lit- tle, and that little is not to his credit. The dissipated habits of the young man probably alarming his parents, they resorted to the expedient usual in such cases, and the lad became the husband of Mary, second daughter and joint -heiress of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick,* The remedy, however, only aggravated the disease. Henry be- came worse than ever. At last he brought his reckless and dissolute career to a climax by the murder of St. Will- iam Escourt in a brawl. He Avas arrested. His friends were in despair. After much anxious deliberation, his counsel advised him to plead guilty, and to throw himself on the mercy of the King. For some time it was doubt- ful whether the united influence of the St. Johns and the Riches could prevent him from expiating his crime at Ty- burn, or whether indeed the King could, even if he wished it, stretch his prerogative so far as to pardon a subject convicted of so grave an offence. At last the culprit was * The youth appears to have added to his other vices that of liy- pocrisy, a3 we find him described in the " Autobiography of Mary, Countess of Warwick," as a "young gentleman very good-natured and viceless." See " Autobiograpliy," edited by T. C. Croker for the Percy Society, p. 35. 18 ESSAYS. permitted to retire to Battcrsca, A bribe was accepted. The case was dropped, and he dragged on a listless and good-for-notbing life for nearly balf a century longer. Six years before this event bis wife bad borne bim a cbild, wbo •was destined to inberit all bis vices, but witb tbose vices to unite abilities wbicb, if properly directed, and less un- happily tempered, might have given bim a place in history beside Pericles and Chatham, and a place in letters beside Bacon and Burke. Henry St. John, afterwards Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, was born at Battersea in the Octo- ber of 1678, and was baptized on the tenth of that month. The bouse in which he first saw the light has, with the exception of one wing, which is still preserved, been long since levelled witb the ground. For bis early education he was indebted to his grand- parents, wbo shared the family residence with their son and daughter-in-law. Sir Walter was a member of the Established Church, and appears to have been a kind and tolerant man. But his wife had been bred among the Puritans, and to the ascetic piety of her sect she added, we suspect, something of her father's moroseness. She ruled the house at Battersea. She superintended the education of her grandchild. It was conducted on principles of in- judicious austerity, and Bolingbroke never recurred to this period of bis life without disgust. The good lady delight- ed in perusing the gigantic tomes in which the Puritan Fathers discussed the doctrine of the Eucharist and the Atonement. Patrick's " Mensa Mystica" had been written under her roof, and she had shared witb her husband the honor of the dedication ; but Patrick held only the second place in her affections — her favorite was Dr. Manton. This stupendous theologian — five of his folios still slumber in our libraries — prided himself on having written a hundred THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 19 and nineteen sermons on the liundred and nineteenth Psalm, and to the perusal of these hundred and nineteen sermons she compelled her grandson to betake himself.* There is reason for believing that the child was for some time under the tuition of Daniel Burgess, a learned and eccentric Nonconformist, who is now remembered chiefly as the butt of Swift, but who was in those days celebrated as one of the most popular of metropolitan preachers. His definition of a lawsuit and of thorough-paced doctrine arc still treasured by collectors of good sayings. In due time Henry was removed to Eton, where he re- mained for some years. About his career there tradition is silent. We know that Walpole was one of his contem- poraries ; and Coxe has added that the seeds of that long and bitter rivalry which ever afterwards existed between the two school-fellows were sown in the class-room and the play-ground. This, however, is highly improbable. Wal- pole acquitted himself creditably during his school career, and is not likely either by indolence or dulness to have permitted a lad two years his junior to assume the posi- tion of a rival. What became of him after leaving Eton it is now impossible to discover. Ills career is indeed at this point involved in more obscurity than his biographers seem to suspect. They assert, for example, that on leaving Eton he matriculated at Oxford, and became an undergrad- uate of Christ Church, and they have described with some circumstantiality his University career. But of this resi- dence at Oxford there is no proof at all. There is no entry of his matriculation on the books of the University, and these books are not, we believe, in any way deficient dur- * This id Bolingbrokc's own account, but a reference to Dr. Man- ton's folio sliows that the number was not a hundred and nineteen, but a hundred and ninety. 20 ESSAYS. inrr the period of his supposed connection with Oxford. There is no trace of his residence at Christ Church on the IJuttery Lists, and tlie Buttery Lists have from the mid- suinnicr of 1G95 been kept with scrupulous exactness. There is no trace of his residence to be found in the entry books of the Dean. We cannot find any alhision to his ever having been a resident member of tlie University in tlic correspondence of those accomplislied men wlio must have been his contemporaries. But one circumstance seems to us conclusive. lie was the patron of John Philips, and that pleasing poet has in two of his poems spoken of him in terms of exaggerated encomium. Philips was a student of Christ Church, and in his "Cyder" he takes occasion to celebrate the eminent men connected with that distin- guished seminary ; but though he mentions Uarcourt and Bromley, he makes no allusion to St. John. The error, we suspect, arose from this. On the occasion of Queen Anne's visit to Oxford in 1702 St. John was made an lionorary doctor and entered on the books of Christ Church. He was proud of the honor which the College of Atterbury and Uarcourt had done him, and not only delighted to speak of himself as a Christ Church man, but ever after- wards considered that a member of that foundation had a special claim to his patronage. But Christ Church is not entitled to number him among Jier sons. Wherever he pursued his studies, he probably pursued them with assiduity. He was all his life distinguished by attainments the groundwork of which is seldom or never laid in after-years. The specimen which he has left of his Latin composition, with the letters to Alari, prove that he had paid some attention to the niceties of verbal scholar- ship. Much of the recondite learning which he so osten- tatiously paraded in his philosophical works was it is evi- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 21 dent, the trophy of adroit plagiarism, but it is no less evident — as every page of his writings shows — that his chissical acquirements, if not exact, were unusually exten- sive, lie Avas conversant with the Roman prose writers, from Yarro to Aulus Gellius, and the frequency with which he draws on them for purposes of analogy, comment, and illustration, the felicity with which he adapts their senti- ments and opinions, the ready propriety with which their allusions and anecdotes respond to his call is a sufficient guarantee for the assimilative thoroughness with which he had perused then]. Indeed his acquaintance with Cicero and Seneca appears to have been such as few scholars have possessed. He liad studied them as Montaigne studied Plutarch, as Bacon studied Tacitus. To the poets he had not, Ave suspect, paid the same attention, though his quota- tions from Lucretius, Horace, and Virgil are often exqui- sitely happy. Whatever may have been his attainments in Greek, he had at least mastered the rudiments, could discuss the relative signification of words, and had read in some form or other the principal orators. Homer and Ile- siod among the poets, and most of the historians. It is the privilege of later years to mature and apply, rarely to initiate, such studies. We are therefore inclined to suspect that his biographers have plunged liim into de- bauchery a little prematurely, and that these years of his life, wherever they may have been passed, were judicious- ly and profitably employed. But the scene soon changed. In 1697 we find him in London, where he abandoned him- self to the dominion of the two passions which ever after- wards ruled him — inordinate ambition and inordinate love of pleasure. At thirty he was in the habit of observing that his heroes were Alcibiades and Petronius; at twenty his model, lie said, was his cousin John Wilmot, Earl of 22 ESSAYS. Iloclicstcr. That unhappy nobleman had, ten years before, terminated a career to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of human folly. Everything that can make the life of man splendid, prosperous, and happy, both Nature and Fortune had lavished on him. Nature had endowed him with abilities of a high order, with liter- ary instincts, with refined tastes, with brilliant wit, with a lyrical genius which, if properly cultivated, might have placed him beside Berangcr and Ilerrick, with a hand- some and engaging person, with manners singularly win- ning and graceful. Fortune had added rank and opulence, and had thus opened out to him all sources of social and intellectual enjoyment; had enabled him to gratify every ambition, to cultivate every taste, and to enter that sphere where the qualities that distinguished him could be seen to the greatest advantage. Unhappily, however, a de- praved and diseased mind counteracted these inestimable blessings. lie was anxious only to be pre-eminent in in- famy. A premature death had been the just penalty for his madness; but the tradition of his genius and of his brilliant parts had, in the eyes of young and giddy men, lent a romantic interest to his career. They learned his poems by heart. They retailed his witticisms. They list- ened with eagerness to stories about his bravery at Ber- gen, his wit-combats with Villiers, his amours, his convivial excesses, and they were anxious to follow in his footsteps. Indeed, the influence of Rochester on the youth of London in the latter quarter of the seventeenth century appears to have resembled, in some degree, the influence of Byron on the same class a hundred and twenty years later. But St. John was not content to be a mere zany, he aspired to ri- val his master as a wit, and to outstrip him as a libertine. He was now in his twentieth year, overflowing with ani- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 23 jnal spirits, drank with vanit}', and burning to indemnify himself for the restraints of Eton and Battersea. lie allied himself with a band of reprobates who were striving to recall, nnder the purer rule of ^Yilliam, the wild license of the Restoration, and he became, while a mere boy, the worst member of that bad clique. His excesses moved astonish- ment even in those who had witnessed the orgies of his cousin. He passed whole weeks in unbroken rounds of riotous debauchery. lie could drink down veteran drunk- ards. He ran naked through the Park.* He was a match for old Wycherley in ribald profanity and in all the arts of licentious intrigue. To the poetical genius of Roches- ter he had indeed no pretension, but he did his best to remedy the deficiencj'. He sought the acquaintance of Dryden, whom he visited on more than one occasion in Gcrrard Street. The poet had just completed his version of Virgil, and St. John wrote a copy of verses which may still be read among the commendatory poems prefixed to that woi'k. They are remarkable for nothing but the grossness of their imagery, and for the skill with which literary compliment is conveyed in the allusions of the bagnio. He now set out on his travels, probably leaving Eng- land in the autumn of 1697. He was away nearly two vears. Of his movements during that time nothing cer- tain is known, but it may be gathered from an allusion in one of his letters that he visited Milan. Whatever por- tion of this period he may Ijave spent in Italy, wc are in- clined to think with Mr. Macknight that much the greater part of it was spent at Paris. The Peace of Ryswick had * Tlic aiitliority for this is Ooldsniitli. Pollnitz was an cye-witncss of a similarly disgusting freak ia the same place. — McmoirSy vol. ii., p. 470. / •J4 ESSAYS. just been concluded, and the attractions of the French cap- ital wore once more open to English visitors. In 1698 the Earl of Jersey had succeeded Portland as Ambassador, lie was connected by family tics with St. John. lie was on intimate terms with Sir Walter, and was in a position to be of great service to a lad beginning the world. It is indeed by no means improbable that young St. John, if not attached to liis suite, at all events shared his protec- tion, and was introduced by him to the salons of the Fau- bourg St. Germain and to the antechambers of Marly. It would be difficult on any other supposition to account for the delicate purity with which he ever afterwards both wrote and spoke the French language, and for his posses- sion of an accent so perfect that even the fastidious ear of Voltaire was unable to detect a jarring chord. With this useful accomplishment he returned to England about the beginning of 1700. He at once devoted himself to his old pursuits, which appear to have been in a measure in- terrupted during his residence on the Continent. He com- posed a long Pindaric ode, in which he informs his read- ers that he had for some time been " wandering from the Muses' seat" and been visiting the "gloomy abodes of AVisdom and Philosophy," but that he had repented of his folly, and was returning to Poesy and Love. Ilis return to the latter took the form of an intrigue with an orange girl who hung about the lobby of the Court of Requests ; his return to the former, a poetical epistle addressed to his sordid paramour. These verses Lord Stanhope not only pronounces to be beautiful, but sees in them evidence of genius. They appear to us neither better nor worse than a dozen other poems of a similar character which Tuiglit be selected from the miscellanies of that day, and the mis- cellanies of that day moved the derision of Pope. Many THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 25 years later, indeed, lie produced three stanzas, wliich are by no means contcniptiblo.* The ostentatious dissoluteness of his life was about this time aggravated by his taking a step which must have made Sir Walter tremble for the family estates. A wom- an whose beauty was a tradition in London circles, even as late as the days of Goldsmith, but whose extravagance liad already completed the ruin of three lovers, was now nndcr his protection. It became necessary to resort to extreme measures. Menaces were vain : exhortations were vain. The abilities of the young libertine were unques- tionably great. His family was influential. lie was now twenty-two, and his relatives wisely resolved to appeal to the only passion which rivalled in any degree his devotion to pleasure — the passion of ambition. They offered him * As these verses liave escaped the notice of all Bolingbroke's bi- ographers, we will transcribe them. They were written for insertion in the masque of " Alfred," as part of " Rule Britannia," and are to be found in Davies's "Life of Garrick," vol. ii., p. 39. "Should war, should faction shake the isle, And sink to poverty and shame ; Heaven still shall o'er Britannia smile, Restore her wealth and raise her name. Rule Britannia, etc. " How blest the Prince reserved by fate la adverse days to mount thy throne! Renew thy once triumphant state, And on thy grandeur build his own. Rule Britannia, etc. " His race shall long in times to come (So Heaven ordains) thy sceptre wield ; Rever'd abroad, beloved at home, And be at once thy sword and shield. Rule Britannia, etc." 2 '20 ESSAYS. a scat in Parliament. They siigo-ostcd that he should take a wife, and they offered in the event of his niarriagc to settle on him the family estates in the counties of "Wilts, Surrey, and Middlesex. To these proposals he acceded. At the close of 1700 he became the husband of Frances "Winchcscombe, dauglitcr and one of the co-heiresses of Sir Henry Winchcscombe, a descendant of the famous Jack of Newbury. The lady had a handsome fortune, and suc- ceeded on the death of her father to a fine estate near Reading. She was, moreover, possessed of considerable personal attractions. John Philips has celebrated her charms, and in iViy we find Swift writing to Stella: "Lady Bolingbroke came down while we were at dinner, and l*arncll stared at her as if she were a goddess." The Dean delighted in her society, and humorously declared himself her lover. The married life of youthful libertines has been the same in all ages. St. John returned her affection, which was on more than one occasion in the course of his eventful life very touchingly evinced, at first with indifference, and subsequently with contempt. But Frances Winchcscombe was a true woman. The conclu- sion of fifteen years of domestic misery, aggravated by his studied neglect and shameless infidelities, found her still clinging to him — "a little fury if they mention my dear lord without respect, which sometimes happens." On hearing, however, of his connection with the Marquise de Villctte at Marcilly she became entirely estranged from him, altered her will, and left him nothing when she died in 1718. One or two angry paragraphs about the pecun- iary loss he had sustained, and a bitter reflection on the suppleness of religion, to which he appears in some way to have attributed her conduct, was all the notice he took of her death. Shortlv after the celebration of this inau- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 27 spicious marriage he succeeded bis father as member for Wootton Basset in Wiltsliire, and be took bis seat in the Parliament which assembled on February 6, IVOI. He entered public life at one of those conjunctures which veteran statesmen contemplate with dismay, but whicli have in all ages been hailed with delight by young and aspiring spirits. For fourteen years the country bad been convulsed with the struggles of two great factions. These factions owed their origin not to superficial and ac- cidental differences, which easily arising are easily recon- ciled, but to differences which admit of no compromises, and arc in their very nature substantial and inveterate. Each was the representative of principles which can never under any circumstances meet in harmony, which should and may balance each other, but which were at that time in violent and terrible collision. Each was animated by those passions which are of all passions the most malig- nant and abiding. In the perplexity of an awful crisis they had for a moment suspended their animosities. Their leaders had come to terms. There had been a sem- blance of unity. Scarcely, however, bad the Prince of Orange ascended the throne, than they had again broken out into tenfold vehemence and fury. For some time "William scarcely seems to have been aware of the nature of the struggle which was raging round him, and bad per- sisted in attempting to appease the belligerents; at last he saw, and he saw with the deepest regret, that all con- ciliatory measures were out of the question, and that he must attach himself to one of the two factions. He de- cided in favor of the party which had raised him to tlie throne, which would in all probability support his foreign [)olicy, and which bad since 1G91 been gradually gaining ground. In September, 1 097, the Peace of Ryswick was 28 ESSAYS. signed. It was indeed a mere armistice to enable AVilliam and Louis to discuss a complicated and momentous ques- tion. That mighty empire on which the sun never set?. was in all likelihood about to be left without an liclr. It was necessary to settle the succession, for on the ultimate destination of those vast dominions hung the fate of Eu- rope for many generations. William was anxious that they should not pass into the hands of the French claimant ; Louis was equally anxious that they should not pass into the hands of Austria, or into the hands of the Electoral Prince. The two kings determined therefore to divide them be- twcen the three competitors, and the First Partition Treaty was arranged. Meanwhile AViiliara turned his attention to affairs in England, for all depended on the cordial support of the English Ministry and of the English people. In England, however, everything was going wrong ; a Tory reaction Avas setting in. The first symptoms of that reac- tion were evident in the Parliament which assembled after the Peace of Ryswick ; the reaction itself set in in full force when Parliament assembled in December, 1698. On that occasion there was a schism in the "Whig ranks ; on that occasion the first definite blow was aimed at William's foreign policy. The army was reduced. The navy was reduced. The Dutch guards were dismissed. Then fol- lowed the attack on Montague; next came the inquiry into Orford's administration, and, lastly, the question of the Crown grants. Suddenly arrived the intelligence that the Electoral Prince was no more. Again Louis and William resorted to diplomacy, and the Second Partition Treaty was arranged. At length the King of Spain died. It was known that he had made a will ; it was known that in that will he had nominated a successor, and all Europe was anx- ious to know the terms of it. On the 3d of November, THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 29 > 1700, the Duke of Abrantes presented himself before the ambassadors and grandees who were thronging the ante- chambers of the Escurial, and announced that the whole Spanish monarchy had been bequeathed to the grandson of Louis. In the event of Louis refusing the succession for his grandson, it was to pass to Charles, Archduke of Aus- tria. William at once saw what would happen ; and when, a few weeks afterwards, his rival, in spite of all his solemn engagements, accepted the bequest, he could only watch with patience the course of events. There was, in truth, little to encourage him. The Tories were now completely in the ascendant. Their animosity against the King and against his Ministry had reached its climax. The power of the AVhigs was everywhere declining. The session of April, 1700, had been abruptly closed without a speech from the throne, and William had been forced, with tears of humiliation in his eyes, to dismiss from his councils the wisest and the most faithful of his servants. Li July the death of the Duke of Gloucester left the successor to the Crown without an heir. The state of the country was de- plorable; from 1690 to 1699 there had been scarcely one year of average prosperity. A succession of wretched har- vests had spread ruin among the farmers. Li some dis- tricts trade was almost at a stand-still.* Bread riots had broken out in many of the provincial towns. The failure of the Land Bank had exasperated the country gentlemen who were watching with malignant jealousy the rise of the moneyed classes. Nine clergymen out of ten were Jacobites, and had been completely alienated from the throne by the Toleration Act. The King was not merely unpopular, but detested. Uis cold and repulsive manners, his systematic * See Lecky's " History of England in tlic Eighteenth Century," and the authorities there quoted, vol. i., p. 17. 30 ESSAYS. attempts to embroil Englnnd with foreign powers, his Dutch favorites, his exorbitant grants to tliose favorites, the protection he extended to needy aliens, his struggles to maintain a standing army, his suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, his abandonment of the Darien Colonists, his frequent retirements to the Continent, his secluded court — all tended to aggravate the public discontent. William now saw that the party on which he had relied for sup- port was so broken and so powerless that there was noth- ing left for liim to do but to throw himself into the arms of the Tories. He accordingly dissolved the Parliament in December, IVOO, and summoned another for the followinff February. The Ministry was remodelled and the Tories came in. Godolphin was placed at the head of the Treas- ury ; Tankerville was Privy Seal, while Hedges succeeded Jersey as one of the Secretaries of State. February arrived. The Houses met, and St. John took his seat in one of the most intemperate and turbulent assemblies which had since the days of the Plantagcnets disgraced our parliamentary history. The leader of the Lower House was Robert Harlcy, a man who was destined in a few years to reach the hic-hcst eminence which a British subject can attain, and to leave a name embalmed forever in the verse of Pope and Prior, and in the prose of Arbuthnot and Swift, On his entrance into public life he had played the part of an intolerant and vindictive Whig, but he had since, while retaining many of his original principles unimpaired, allied himself with the Tories. He had none of those gifts with which Nature endows her favorites. His features were gross and forbid- ding, his figure mean, his voice inharmonious, his gestures singularly uncouth.* To the art of engaging the passions, * " Tlie mischievous darkness of his soul "—the Duchess of Marl- THE rOLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 31 or of captivating tlie reason of the great assembly over which he presided, he made no pretension. As a speaker he was tedious, licsitating, confused, and not unfrequently unintelligible. Indeed, to the end of his life he remained incapable of framing ten sentences of lucid and coherent English. His intellect was both small and sluggish, liis parts were scarcely above mediocrity. But he possessed qualities which seldom fail of being rated at many times their intrinsic value, lie was cunning, decorous, reticent. His temper was not naturally good, but it was under strict control, and seldom betrayed him into an indiscreet or dis- courteous expression. His studies had been neither various nor profound, but they had been judiciously directed. In knowledge of the law of Parliament he was not excelled cither by Seymour or Nottingham. His acquaintance with affairs was great, his memory tenacious, his judgment sound, his tact consummate. In all the arts of parlia- mentary diplomacy he was without a rival. Though in private life he sometimes made himself ridiculous by the frivolity of his amusements, he loved the society of men of genius and letters, and he was the first of English states- men who had the sagacity to employ the press as an en- gine of political power. To these qualities he added others not so respectable. He was deeply tainted with those vices which ambition engenders in timid and pusillanimous nat- ures. His meanness and treachery would have been con- spicuously infamous even in that bad ago in which his po- borough is speaking — "was written in liis countenance, and plainly legible in a very odd look disagreeable to everybody at first sight, which being joined with a constant awkward motion, or rather agita- tion of his head and body, betrayed a turbulent dishonesty within even in the midst of all these familiar airs, jocular bowing and smil- ing which he always affected." — Conduct of the Duchess, p. 261. 32 ESSAYS. litlcal morality had been learned.' Dilatory and irresolute, his aspirations were sordid and narrow, Ilis indifference to truth shocked even the least scrupulous of his colleagues. ITis promises were like the promises of Granville, as ready and profuse as they were feigned or forgotten. At this moment, however, he stood well with all parties, for his real character was as yet unsuspected even by those who knew him best, as men are slower to detect than to prac- tise dissimulation. St. John probably saw that the star of Ilarley and the Tories was in the ascendant, and that even if a reaction set in there would be no room for him in the ranks of the Whig oligarchy. To Ilarley and the Tories he accordingly at- tached himself, and to Ilarley and the Tories he adhered, so long as it served his purpose, through all vicissitudes of fortune. Some of his biographers have labored to show that in taking this step he was acting in strict accordance with the principles he had inherited, and probably in ac- cordance with his own independent convictions. Such a theory is partly false and partly ludicrous. His father and his grandfather, in the first place, were Whigs : most of his relatives were Whigs ; and he had in early life been trained up in doctrines from which the Tories shrank in ab- horrence. Nor had his subsequent career been more favor- able to the formation of such convictions. The religious tenets of the Tories — and those religious tenets were of the essence of their politics — he systematically outraged in his life, and systematically ridiculed in his conversation. Of politics themselves, as he afterwards frankly confessed, he knew nothing. But with politics, in any legitimate sense of the term, the House was not at that instant enoajred. There were, indeed, two questions of the last importance awaiting discussion— the question of maintaining the bal- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 33 ancc of pawcr in Europe, and tlic question of providing for tbe Protestant succession in England. TIic first had been rendered pressing by an act of unparalleled audacity on tbe part of Louis, an act wbich would, under ordinary circumstances, and should under any circumstances have been passionately resented. Having obtained the consent of the Spanish Government, Louis had suddenly despatched an army into the Spanish Netherlands and seized the Bar- rier Fortresses. No such calamity had befallen Protestant Europe within the memory of man. There was now every probability that Holland would fall under the dominion of France, and the subjugation of Holland would not only fatally disarrange the balance of power but involve conse- quences to England such as all who had her interests at heart trembled to contemplate. The Tories were, however, in no humor for anything but party vengeance. Their hour of triumph had come: their enemies were at their feet, and they resolved to trample on them. They proceeded to impeach the Ministers who were responsible for the Partition Treaties. Long and tedious controversies resulted. Every day there were unseemly collisions between the two Houses. The business of the Government stood still. Nothing had been arranged but the Act of Settlement, and the Act of Settlement had been arranged in such a way as to insult the King. Then the country was roused. The Kentish Petition was presented. The Legion memorial was drawn up. Fierce debates en- sued. On the 14th of June William prorogued the Par- liament. On the 7th of September the Grand Alliance was concluded. Ten days afterwards occurred an event which completely clianged the face of affairs. James H. died at St. Germains, and Louis XIV. proclaimed the titular Prince of Wales King James HL of England. In a few liours a 2* 84 ESSAYS. courier was at Loo witli tlic intelligence. William saw tliat Lis time had come, lie knew the English ; he hur- ried to London ; he remodelled the Ministry. The indig- nation of the English people at the insult they had received knew no bounds. The whole country was transported with fury. Both parties were unanimous for war. A bill was passed for attainting the Pretender, and so completely had the Whigs triumphed that the Abjuration Bill was also carried. On the 15th of May, 1702, war was proclaimed by concert in London, at Vienna, and at the Hague. But William was no more. In the debates on the Partition Treaty Impeachments, on the Act of Settlement, and on the Kentish Petition, young St. John appears to have distinguished himself. A liigh compliment had indeed been paid him. lie had been appointed by the House to assist Hedges in preparing and bringing in an important measure — the bill for the further Security of the Protestant Succession — and from this mo- ment he rose rapidly to eminence. On the accession of Anne the position of the two par- tics was a very peculiar one. The point on which all eyes were turned was the war, and the war had created a vio- lent reaction in favor of the Whigs. It had been the triumph of the Whig policy. It had been the real- ization of the Whig hopes. It had, to a great extent, been the work of the great Whig ruler. But the new Queen was a Tory, indeed a bigoted and intolerant Tory ; the great general on whom the conduct of the war depended was a Tory ; the Ministry on which he thought it expedient to rely was a Tory Ministry ; the Privy Council, to which lie looked for support, was a Privy Council in which the names of Somers, Halifax, and Orford were not to be found. On the prosecution of the war the two factions had met THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 35 for a moraent on common ground, and by one of the most singular revolutions in history the Tories had been enabled to supersede their rivals by adopting their policy. For a few months all went well. Scarcely, however, had Marl- borough's cannon begun to thunder on the Mouse, when dissensions began. In the Parliament which assembled in October three parties may be distinguished : the Whigs, who predominated in the Upper House, but who were in a minority in the Lower; the extreme Tories, who were represented by Rochester, Nottingham, Jersey, and Nor- manby in the Lords, and by Hedges and Seymour in the Commons; the moderate Tories, in whose ranks were to be found Harley, now for the third time elected Speaker, Harcourt, the solicitor -general, and St. John. But the two men on whom everything turned were Marlborough and Godolphin. Godolphin was now far in the decline of life. In official experience and in practical sagacity he had no superior among contemporary politicians; as a finan- cier he was eminently skilful. He had borne a prominent, but by no means honorable part in the events of the last fifteen years. Ho had been false to James, and he had been false to William, but his character stood deservedly Iiigh for virtues which were rarely in that age found con- joined with laxity of principle. Ho was incorruptible by money. In his management of the Treasury he had shown himself scrupulously honest; in his transactions with men of business he was never known to break his word, and lie had therefore succeeded in inspiring confidence where con- fidence is slow to express itself. Though in debate lie con- fined himself as a rule to the mere expression of his opin- ion, delivered in a few bluff sentences, and set off by no play on his sullen and impassive features, he had more weight with the House than the most accomplished ora- 86 ESSAYS. tors of those times. At Court, indeed, and among men of letters he found no favor; for his manners were the man- ners of a carter, and his tastes not exactly those of a Mae- cenas or a Leo. They were, in truth, such as little hccame cither his age or his position, llis awkward gallantries he had had the good sense to ahandon ; but his addiction to gambling, horse-racing, cock-fighting, and the card-table amounted to a passion. These frivolous pursuits detracted, however, nothing from the respect with which he was re- garded by his colleagues, as there was no levity in his con- versation, which was, as a rule, confined to monosyllables, or in his demeanor, which was remarkably grave and re- served. Between Marlborough and himself there existed the tie of a singularly close and affectionate friendship, and this tie had recently been drawn closer by a family alliance. The main object of Godolphin's policy was to support his friend, to find the necessary funds for sustaining the war, and to silence those who wished either to control its operations or to change its character. Moderate, and cau- tious even to timidity, he tried at first to govern by a Min- istry in which all parties were represented. Though a Tory himself, and dependent on the Tories for support, he was unwilling to place himself entirely in their hands, for he knew that he only could look for their co-operation up to a certain point, and that as soon as the war extended its area and assumed an aggressive character he would in all likelihood be obliged to fall back upon the Whigs. Such a step he could not, however, contemplate without apprehension, for the Queen regarded that party with pe- culiar aversion. His hope was that he might by skilful parliamentary diplomacy be enabled to form out of the moderate Tories a body of partisans who would support THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 31 his war policy, wliile he could rely with some confidence on securing the Queen through the influence of the Count- ess of Marlborough. The first point in which the two bodies came into vio- lent collision was the Bill against Occasional Conformity. This was introduced by St. John and two other Tory mem- bers. He distinguished himself not only by the conspicu- ous part he took in the stormy debates which attended its progress through the House, but in the Conference held subsequently in the Painted Chamber. In the financial inquisition for incriminating Halifax we find him one of the Commissioners, and in the Disqualification Bill he was for the first time pitted against his future enemy Robert Walpole, who had taken his scat among the Whigs as member for Castle Rising. Godolphin and Marlborough soon clearly saw the neces- sity of breaking with the High Tories. Though the con- duct of the war had not as yet been openly assailed in cither of the two Houses, symptoms of discontent had al- ready declared themselves. The resignation of Rochester in 1V03 had already relieved them of a troublesome col- league. Nottingham, however, still represented his views, and had on more than one occasion expressed his disap- proval of the conduct of the Government. Indeed he made no secret of his intention to put himself at the head of an opposition, and if possible to supplant Godolphin without resigning office. He began by insisting on the removal of Somerset and Devonshire from the Privy Coun- cil. This was a test question : and this was refused. Upon that he resigned, and his resignation was eagerly accepted by Godolphin, who hastened to place the seals in the hands of Ilarlcy. Next went Jersey and Seymour, Wright, the Lord-keeper, followed. Blaithwayte, the Secretary of War, ±&d82G 38 ESSAYS. then vacated office, and on the 23d of April, 1704, St. John was appointed to succeed him. As he had not completed his twenty-sixth year when he was raised to a post which involved a more than usual amount of responsibility, his biographers have concluded that he must have owed his advancement to the personal intercession of cither Ilarley or Marlborough. lie owed it, we suspect, to Marlborough. Marlborough was in Eng- land at the time, and it had been at his suggestion that the changes in the Ministry had been made. In a letter to Godolphin, not long afterwards, he speaks of St. John as a man would speak of one for whose conduct he had in a measure made himself responsible.* St. John did not dis- appoint the expectations of his friends. Though his pri- vate life continued to be marked by the excesses which characterized his earlier days, he discharged his public du- ties in a way which called forth the admiration even of his enemies. The position of a Secretary of War in the teeth of a powerful Opposition is a position of no ordinary difficulty. It is a position, indeed, to which the tact and experience of veteran statesmen have not always been found to be equal. Never were the labors of that onerous office more exigent and harassing than during the four years of St. John's tenure. A war beyond all precedent, complicated and momentous, was raging. That war had spread itself over the vast area of Europe. Our position in it was un- defined. The amount of our contingents, both of men * See Marlborougli's Letter to Godolphin, Coxe, vol. i., p. 152, and the Stuart Taper?, Macpherson, " Original Papers," vol. ii., p. 532, where it is said, " Lord Marlborough was always very fond of Harry St. John, and on the loss of his son, the Lord Blandford, said he had no comfort left but in Harry St. John, whom he loved and considered as his son." THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 39 and resources, was variously assessed and angrily disputed. Every step taken in it was submitted to the malignant scru- tiny of party jealousy. Every manoeuvre had to be ac- counted for to a captious and irritable Opposition. Who- ever is acquainted with Marlborough's correspondence at this period will be at no loss to understand the difficulties with which the young Secretary had to contend. Wc find him constantly before the House — arguing, explaining, pleading, refuting. Indeed, his energy, decision, and zeal were of infinite service both to Godolphin and Marlbor- ough in the troubled and anxious interval between the Au- gust of 1704 and the June of 1706. At the beginning of 1707 it became more and more cv- ident that if the war was to be continued, the Ministry must throw itself entirely on the Whigs; for the recent successes of Marlborough in Flanders, of Eugene in Italy, and of Peterborough in Spain, had, according to the To- ries, satisfied the ends of the war, and the Tories were re- solved to oppose its continuance. Godolphin had there- fore acceded to the wishes of the AVhigs in removing Hedges, and in placing the seals in the hands of Sunder- land, the son-in-law of Marlborough and an uncompromis- ing Whig. The chiefs of the Tory party were removed from the Privy Council, and from this moment the admin- istration of Godolphin and Marlborough assumed a new character. It was no longer a Tory but a Whig Ministry ; though for a time, at least, Ilarlcy still continued to hold the seals with Sunderland, and St. John retained the post of Secretary at W^^r. Uarlcy's conduct excited some sur- prise. The truth is he had seen all along that the Church and the Queen would ultimately triumph ; that the only tie which connected Anne with Godolphin and his col- leagues was her personal affection for the Duchess of Marl- 40 I ^ ESSAYS. borough ; and that her affection was, owing to the over- bearing and imperious character of the favorite, daily de- clining, lie saw the annoyance with which she regarded the recent changes in the Cabinet — her intense dislike of Sunderland — licr increasing coolness to Godolphin, lie saw that the predominance of the Whigs depended main- ly on the successful prosecution of the war, on its continu- ance, on its popularity. He saw that a financial crisis was at Iiand. lie saw that the High-church Party were gain- ing ground, and he perceived how completely the Queen's sympathies were with them. He proceeded, therefore, to open a secret communication with her by means of his cousin Abigail Hill, and while he pretended to be cordially co-operating with the Treasurer, he did all in his power to inflame the Queen against the foreign and domestic policy of the Cabinet. To throw Godolphin ofiE his guard, he re- doubled his protestations of fidelity ; and witli Marl- borough he practised the same elaborate duplicity in a series of letters, which have scarcely a parallel in the annals of political treacliery. At what precise period St. Jolin be- came a party to these ignoble intrigues it is by no means easy to decide. It is clear from the correspondence of Marlborough and from the "Conduct of the Duchess," ' that they both looked upon him as the ally of Ilarley, and that they regarded him with suspicion, though without be- ing able to satisfy themselves of his guilt. Wc are, on the whole, inclined to suspect that it was not till the autumn of 1'707 that he had any share in these scandalous tactics. For upward of a year Ilarlcy managed Avith consummate hypocrisy to conceal his machinations. At last all was discovered, and the Whigs, whose difficulties had been in- creased by the inactivity of the campaign in the Nether- lands, by the disastrous defeat at Almanza, and by the THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLING BROKE. 41 failure of the enterprise against Toulon, resolved to get rid of Harley. Anne fought hard for her favorite Minister. She refused to give any credence to the Greg scandal ; she refused to see anything which incriminated him in the affair of Vallierc and Bara.* She dilated at mortifying length on his eminent services, on his great experience, on his sound judgment. Godolphin and Marlborough then plainly told her that if Harley remained in office they would at once give in their resignation, and that she must choose between sacrificing Harley and throwing the affairs of Europe into hopeless perplexity. Then, and then only, she yielded. On the lltli of February Harley laid down the seals ; and St. John not only followed him out of of- fice, but, on the dissolution in April, resigned his scat. His premature departure from a scene in which lie had so conspicuously distinguished himself, not unnaturally ex- cited a good deal of surprise. It is not, we think, difficult to account for. Had he continued in Parliament he must have taken one of two courses. He must have apostatized and joined the Whigs, or he must have adhered to his party and taken his place in the ranks of the Opposition. Both courses were fraught with embarrassment. The tri- umph of the Whigs was certainly complete, but it had been won at the price of the Queen's favor, in the teeth of the Church, and in the teeth of the party opposed to the war. A reaction was obviously merely a matter of time, and that reaction would in all probability involve the downfall of the dominant faction. If, on the other hand, he joined the Opposition, he would be compelled to assail a policy which he had for some time zealously supported ; he would be compelled to ally himself with men whom he regarded as enemies airainst men whom he regarded as friends; and * Sec Burnet's " History of liis Own Times," pp. 821, 822. 42 ESSAYS. he would, moreover, be forced to the indelicate necessity of goini^ all lengths against his patrons Marlborough and Godolpliiu. From liis country-honse he could watch in se- curity the course of events, and take a definite step when a definite step was prudent. These were, we believe, his real motives in withdrawing at this conjuncture to Buck- lersbury. He abandoned liiinself with characteristic impetuosity to his new whim, lie had now, he said, done with politics. lie was weary of the world. lie would devote himself henceforth to Piiilosopliy and Literature. He would leave affairs of State to meaner men. These remarks — for with these remarks he now began to regale his friends — were received with roars of laughter, and Swift quotes an epi- gram which was proposed by one of them as an appropri- ate inscription for the summer-liouse of the vounir Recluse. It is, we regret to say, quite unfit for repetition here. That be applied himself, however, with assiduity to literary pur- suits may well be credited. He had arrived at that period in life when curiosity is keenest, when sensibility is quick- est, when the acquisitive faculties are in their greatest per- fection. Indeed, he always spoke of these two years as the most profitable he had ever spent. In the autumn of 1710 fell that great administration which is in some respects the most glorious in our annals — the administration of Godolphin and Marlborough — an administration which had distinguished itself by no ordi- nary moderation in the midst of no ordinary trial ; Avhich had in the intoxication of success been conspicuous for that calm wisdom which it is the lot of most governments to learn only in reverses; which, founded on faction, had endeavored with rare magnanimity to adopt a policy of concession and reconciliation wliich could look back on THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 43 the victories of Blenlieim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malpla- quet, and Saragossa — on the expulsion of the French from Flanders and from Germany — on the capture of Gibraltar and Minorca — as the trophies of its foreign policy; and which could, among many other liberal and salutary meas- ures, point to the union of England and Scotland as one of the glories of its policy at home. The immediate cause of a revolution which altered the course of European his- tory was, as every one knows, the impeachment of Sachev- erel — perhaps the only act of imprudence of which Godol- phin had ever been guilty. It has been asserted that he took this impolitic step from motives of personal resent- ment. He took it, we know, in direct opposition to the advice of Somers* and of the solicitor-general ; he took it, there is reason to believe, in opposition to the advice of Marlborough and Walpole ; but he took it, we suspect, with a deliberate object. The truth is that the party of which Sacheverel was the mouth-piece was beginning to assume a mischievous activity in political circles. Half the nation learned, as Godolphin well knew, their politics from the pulpit, and the pulpits were filled with Tories who were advancing from philippics against the Whig doctrines to philippics against the Whig government. Ue perceived with anxiety the growing power of the Opposition ; and lie perceived with alarm that a great crisis in public opin- ion was approaching. He resolved, therefore, to strike a decisive blow while the strength of the Government was as yet unimpaired, and there was some chance of its being able to grapple successfully with its formidable adversaries. The blow was struck, and the Whigs were ruined. It * Indeed Somers prophesied that if the prosecution was undertaken it would be the ruin of the Whigs. — Swift, History of the Four Last Years (Scott's Swift), v. p. 1 72. 44 ESSAYS. would, however, be an error to suppose — as many histori- ans do suppose — that the prosecution of Sacheverel was tlic real cause of the sudden collapse of the Whi<^ Ministry. The train had long been laid. The prosecution was merely the match which fired it. Had Godolphin taken the advice of his coadjutors, the catastrophe might have been post- poned — it could scarcely have been postponed for long ; it was unavoidable, it was inevitable. The Queen had never looked upon the Whigs with favor, and at such a time, when the two parties were so nicely balanced, no Ministry could subsist for long apart from that favor. She suspect- ed their political principles; she detested their religious toleration ; she looked upon many of them as little better than infidels: she considered that they had imperilled the Church ; that she had been personally aggrieved by them ; that they had insulted her husband ; that they had forced Ministers on her whom she hated, and had compelled her to dismiss Ministers whom she respected. They were, she said, constantly outraging her feelings. In July, 1708, for example, they had driven her almost frantic by threatening to propose in Parliament that the Electoral I'rince should be invited to settle in England. On the occasion of her husband's illness in 1707, and of his death in 1708, their conduct had been marked not merely by disrespect, but by gross indelicacy. Nor was the domestic tyranny to which she was subjected by the Duchess of Marlborough less galling. All these passions and prejudices had moreover been sedulously inflamed by Ilarley and Mrs. Masham. But everywhere the current was running in the same direction. A reaction was setting in against the Dissent- ers. The Naturalization Act had crowded London with a rabble of needy and turbulent aliens who had — such was the language of Tory demagogues — diverted charity from THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 45 its proper cliannel, and been invited over by tlie Whigs to assist in the subversion of the Church. Marlborough's re- cent application for the captain-generalship for life had seriously impaired his popularity. lie already possessed, it was said, more power than it became a subject to enjoy, and men were beginning to mutter about Cromwell, stand- ing armies, and military despotism. The unsatisfactory conclusion of the Conferences at the Hague in the spring of 1709, and the recent failure of the Conference at Ger- trudenberg, had irritated the middle classes, who were com- plaining heavily of the war — the unnecessary protraction of which they attributed to the ambition of Marlborough and to the party necessities of the Ministry. The re- sources of Godolphin had been taxed to the uttermost to avert a financial crisis which was now to all appearance at hand. For some time Godolphin clung to power with in- decent pertinacity ; but on the 8th of August he received a brief note from the Queen, in which she curtly intimat- ed that she had no further occasion for his services, desir- ing at the same time that instead of bringing the White Staff to her he would brealc it. The note was delivered by a lackey in the royal livery, not to the Lord-treasurer himself but to bis hall-porter. Godolphin, irritated at this mean and gratuitous insult, broke the staff, and flung, in a fit of petulance, the fragments into the fireplace. Such was the ignominious conclusion of a long and brilliant ministerial career, and such is the gratitude of princes. The Treasury was placed in Commission, but Ilarley be- came Chancellor of the Exchequer. He at once proceed- ed to form a Ministry, and he attempted with characteris- tic caution to trim between the two parties. He was by no means inclined to throw himself entirely on the Tories. He was anxious for a coalition, lie had interviews with 40 ESSAYS. Cowpcr, Halifax, and AValpole. Ue importuned them to retain their places. " There was," he said, " a Whig game intended at bottom ;" but when asked to explain himself, he became unintelligible. Cowpcr and Halifax gathered, however, that if they would consent to remain in the Gov- ernment, St. John and Harcourt should be admitted only to subordinate offices. They declined the proposal. " If any man was ever born under the necessity of being a knave, he was" — was the quiet comment which Cowper entered in his diary when recording a former interview with Harley.* It was indeed soon evident that a mixed Ministry was out of the question, that the days of coali- tion were over. A faction had triumphed, and a faction must rule. Rochester succeeded Somers as President of the Council, and St. John received the Seals as Secretary of State for the Northern Department : Boyle having the good sense to prevent disgrace by a voluntary resignation. So entered on its stormy and disastrous career the last Ministry of Queen Anne. "Wlien St. John received the Seals he was in his thirty- third year. It has been said, and it is by no means im- probable, that he owed this splendid elevation principally to his knowledge of the French language, an accomplish- ment which neither Harley nor any member of the Cabinet possessed in an adequate degree, but an accomplishment which the negotiations contemplated about this time with Versailles rendered indispensable in one at least of the two secretaries. At the end of September Parliament was dis- solved. The nation was now on fire with faction. The panic excited by Sacheverel had not yet subsided. The elections were almost universally in favor of the Tories, and were marked by such excesses of party feeling that life * " Diary of William, Earl Cowper," p. 33. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 47 was in jeopardy. By day tlie bells clanged joyously from tbe Tory strongholds, by night the bonfires roared in the squares. Mobs wild with excitement paraded the streets ; conventicles and meeting-houses were gutted. An appall- ing riot convulsed Westminster, and some of the provin- cial towns presented the appearance of places which had been exposed to the ravages of war. Meanwhile addresses from all quarters of England came pouring in. The doc- trines most dear to the Stuarts were everywhere proclaim- ed. The Court was thronged with Jacobites and High Tories, who publicly congratulated the Queen on what they termed her emancipation from captivity. "Your Majes- ty," said the Duke of Beaufort, *' is now Queen indeed." In November Parliament met, and St. John took his seat as member for Berkshire. In the vicissitudes of political history there arc certain conjunctures in which power is more easily acquired than maintained, and it was at one of these conjunctures that the new Ministry assumed the reins of government. Its position was in the highest degree perilous and embarrass- ing. " It rested," wrote Swift, " on a narrow bottom, and was like an isthmus between the Whigs on one side and the extreme Tories on the other." Ilarley saw from the very first the precariousness of the tenure by which he held. He saw that the Tories could not stand alone. He estimated at its real value the popular panic to which he had been immediately indebted for his elevation. In the Commons he beheld with alarm an Opposition conspicu- ous by their abilities and steady co-operation, and he be- held with perplexity a ministerial majority conspicuous mainly by their insolence, their numbers, and their tumult- uous fanaticism. In the Lords lie beheld against him the most formidable combination of enemies that ever souiiht 48 ESSAYS. the destruction of a rival faction. The finances were in deplorable confusion. Immense supplies were needed, and without the confidence of the moneyed class nothino: could be raised ; but the moneyed class had little confidence in the Ministry. AmonG: his collcaofues there was no one, with the exception of Dartmouth, on whom he could de- pcncf, St. John and Ilarcourt were for extreme measures, and had been in a manner forced on him. Rochester was already in open mutiny. Buckinghamshire, whom he re- garded with suspicion and dislike, was impracticable; I'aulct was a mere ci[)hcr. lie was compelled, therefore, to grapi)le single-handed with the difiiculties of his posi- tion ; to satisfy, on the one hand, the party which had befriended him, and to conciliate, so far as he could, the party which were opposing him. His ultimate object was a coalition, his immediate object was to prepare the way to it. Tie saw that the health of the Queen was failing, and the question of the succession imminent. He shrank, therefore, from compromising himself either at Hanover or at St. Germains. He wrote to the Elector, assurino- him of his good intentions. He put himself as soon as possi- ble into communication with the Pretender. At home he fenced, he trimmed, he equivocated. The necessity of a peace with France was obvious ; without it he was at the mercy of his opponents; but to conclude a peace on any- thing but on the most advantageous terms to Enirland would in all probability cost the Cabinet their heads. "With consummate tact he declared, therefore, his resolution of supporting the Allies, while he took measures to under- mine them in popular estimation. He provided for the vigorous prosecution of the war, while he enlarged on the expediency of peace. He did everything in his power to conciliate Marlborough, while he connived at attacks on THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 49 him. He upheld him in the field, while he annihilated his influence in the closet. He prepared also, in addition to these devices, to call in the assistance of a more formidable power. In the preceding August the Tories had, at the suggest- ion of St. John, started the Examiner. Several numbers had already appeared. They had not been distinguished by conspicuous ability, but during the course of the elec- tions a pamphlet, entitled a " Letter to the Examiner,^'' had attracted so much attention that it had elicited a reply from the pen of Earl Cowper. The paper in question was an attack on the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, on the protraction of the war, and on the ruinous selfishness of the Allies. It pointed out in angry and declamatory terms that England was the dupe of Austria and the tool of Holland, " a farm to the Bank and a jest to the whole world ;" that she had engaged in the war as a confederate, that she was now proceeding in it as a principal; that the objects of the Grand Alliance had long since been attained, and that ruin and bankruptcy were now staring her — the prey of a wicked faction — in the face. The pamphlet was, as every one knew, the work of St. John. It was a suffi- cient indication of the policy he meant to pursue as a Min- ister ; it was an indication, indeed, of the policy Harley intended to pursue. But Harley was by no means inclined to trust to his impetuous colleague either the development of his schemes or the interpretation of his policy. He proceeded, therefore, to put the press under his own con- trol. He had an interview with Do Foe, whose Review was at that time the most influential paper in the king- dom, and De Foe was instructed to dilate on the First Minister's well-known inclination towards the Whigs. He sought the assistance of Charles Djivenant, whose name is 3 50 ESSAYS. scarcely remembered now, but who was in 1710 one of the ablest writers on politics and finance that British journal- ism could boast, lie won over Trior, Rowe, and Parnell. He made overtures to Steele ; and though Steele preferred to remain in the Whig ranks, a more illustrious apostate was preparing to quit them. Swift had recently arrived in London. He had been received with coldness by Go- dolphin, lie had been treated with duplicity, he said, by Somers. He had been grossly insulted by Wharton. He had done great services for the Whigs. These services had been ignored, and his sensitive pride was wounded. He called on Ilarley, and Ilarlcy, by a few courteous words, succeeded in securing the aid of the greatest master of po- litical controversy which this country had ever seen. At the beainninsr of November Swift undertook the edi- torship of the Examiner, and for upward of three years ho fouirht the battles of the Ministry as no one had ever yet fought the battles of any Ministry in the world. With a versatility unparalleled in the liistory of party warfare, lie assailed his opponents in almost every form which satire can assume; in Essays which are still read as models of terse and luminous disquisition ; in philippics compared with which the masterpieces of Cicero will, in point of vituperative skill, bear no comparison ; in pamphlets which were half a century afterwards the delight of Burke and Fox : in ribald songs, in street ballads, in Grub Street epi- grams, in ludicrous parodies. He had applied his rare powers of observation to studying the peculiarities of ev- ery class in the great family of mankind, their humors, their prejudices, their passions; and to all these he knew how to appeal with exquisite propriety. He was a master of the rhetoric which casts a spell over senates and tri- bunals, and of the rhetoric which sends mobs yelling to THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLL\GBROKE. 61 the tar-barrel or the club- stick. With every weapon in the whole armory of scorn he was equally familiar. In bois- terous scurrility be was more than a match for Oldmixon. In delicate and subtle humor he was more than a match for Addison. In an age when the bad arts of anonymous polemics had been brought to perfection, his lampoons achieved a scandalous pre-eminence. Uis sarcasm and in- vective were terrific. His irony made even the Duchess of Marlborough quail ; his pasquinades drove Eugene in ignominy from our shores ; his broadsides made it perilous for the Opposition to show their faces in the streets. But however remarkable were his abilities as an unscrupulous assailant, his abilities as an unscrupulous advocate were not less consummate. Where his object was persuasion, he was indifferent to everything but effect. He hesitated at nothing. "When the testimony of facts was against him, he distorted them beyond recognition. AVhen testimony was wanting, he invented it. When the statements of his opponents admitted of no confutation, he assumed the air of an honest and stout-hearted Englishman who refused to be duped. His diction — plain, masculine, incisive — came home to every one ; and the monstrous effrontery of his assumptions was seldom suspected by readers whose reason was enthralled by the circumstantial conclusiveness with which he drew his deductions. In truth, of all writers who have ever entered the arena of party politics, Swift had, in a larger measure than any, the most invaluable of all qualifications — the art of making truth assume the ap- pearance of elaborate sophistry, and the art of making elaborate sophistry assume the appearance of self-evident truth. With these formidable powers he entered the camp of Harlcy. For a few weeks all went well. The cautious policy of V C2 ESSAYS. Ilai'loy was steadily pursued. The supplies were voted and raised. The war was vigorously prosecuted. The lan- guage of the Tory press was the language of moderate Whicrs. In December Marlborough arrived in England. lie had a long interview with St. John. St. John candid- ly explained to liim the intentions of the Ministry. They would support hira in the war so long as the Queen con- tinned him in command. They had no ill-feeling towards him. They should be sorry to lose him. lie must, how- ever, consent to two things — he must insist upon the re- moval of his wife from Court, and he must " draw a line between all that had passed and all that is to come :" in other words, he must quit the Whigs, who were his ene- mies, and he must join the Tories, who were his friends, lie then proceeded to give him a long lecture on the dif- ference between the two parties. To all this Marlborough listened with patient urbanity. He was, he said, worn out with age, fatigue, and misfortune; he had done wrong in joining the Whigs, he would return to his old friends. lie did nothing of the sort, and he never meant to do so. lie struggled hard to prevent the degradation of his wife, but all was in vain, and the high offices she had held were divided between the Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Masham. The failure of this negotiation with Marlborough Avas a severe blow to Harlev, who found himself more and more thrown into the power of the extreme Tories. Party-spirit was now running high in both Houses. The conduct of the war in Spain was the point at issue. The Whigs took their side by Gahvay, and the Tories by Peterborough. St. John, at the head of the Tories, harangued against Gahvay. The war, he said, had been grossly neglected in Spain to give effect to the triumphs of Marlborough in Flanders, and ho had, ho continued, no doubt that to the scandalous THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 53 — to the criminal — neglect of the war in Spain was to be attributed not only the disaster at Almanza, but the failure of the expedition to Toulon. At last a vote of censure was passed on Galway, and a vote of thanks to Peter- borough. The Tories were mad wuth joy, and the Whigs with chagrin. Meanwhile a schism was forming in the Tory ranks. The extreme members of that faction — and the extreme mem- bers formed the majority — began to clamor against Harley. They would have no half measures. They would have no dallying with the Whigs. Why was the Examiner speak- ing civilly about Marlborough ? IIow long were they go- ing to be a farm to the Bank? When were they going to have a peace? Why were not the W-'hig dogs impeached? At the head of these malcontents was Rochester. Every day their complaints became more intemperate and more insolent. The October Club was formed. Nightly meet- ings were held. The crisis was alarming, and Harley fell ill. " The nearer I look upon things," wrote Swift to Stel- la, "the worse I like them. The Ministry are able seamen, but the tempest is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them." It was rumored that the Duchess of Somerset was superseding Mrs. Masham in the Queen's affections, and that Somers had been twice admitted to a private audience. Suddenly an event occurred which com- pletely changed the face of affairs. In the course of his licentious pleasures St. John had made the acquaintance of a dissolute French adventurer. His name was Antoinc de Guiscard. Originally an abbe, he had become successively a political demagogue, a sol- dier, and a parasite. His life had been stained by almost every vice to which human depravity can stoop. His ab- bey resembled, it was said, the groves of Paphos. Even 84 ESSAYS. the vestals of his religion had not been safe from his sac- rilegious libertinism. One of his mistresses he had poi- soned. A steward whom he suspected of peculation he had put with his own hand to the rack. In Rouergue, where he had excited a rebellion and left his colleagues to be broken on the wheel, he had been hung in effigy by the magistrates. Entering subsequently into the service of the English, he had proposed several wild schemes for the in- vasion of his own country which had not been regarded with much favor, and since the battle of Ahnanza he had resided on a pension in London. There St. John, at that time Secretary of War, fell in with him. Their acquaint- ance soon ripened into intimacy. They gambled and drank together. They paid court to the same mistress and lived for some time in sordid community of pleasures. The woman gave birth to a child. A dispute about its pater- nity arose, and the two friends parted in anger. At the beginning of iVll Guiscard attempted to open a secret correspondence with France. His letters were intercepted. He was arrested on a warrant signed by St. John, and car- ried by the Queen's messengers to the Cockpit. The scene which ensued is well known. In the course of his exam- ination he rushed forward, and with a penknife which he had managed to secrete stabbed Harley in the breast. For about six weeks the First Minister was the most popular man in England. His house was besieged by crowds of anxious inquirers. He had fallen a victim, it was said, to his patriotism. Guiscard had no doubt selected him be- cause of his hostility to France and to Popery. Guiscard had meant — such was the audacious assertion of Swift — to make his way to Windsor and to assassinate the Queen, but, failing that, had aimed his blow at the most faithful of her servants. The truth reallv was that Guiscard's das- TDE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 65 tardly act had been prompted merely by personal resent- ment, as Ilarley bad struck off a hundred pounds from his pension, and had at the same time declined to put it on the permanent list. Indeed there is reason to believe that the wretch had originally intended to attack St. John, with whom he twice attempted, in the course of his examination, to have a private interview. But Ilarley had been slabbed — and Ilarley was the martyr. At the end of May he was Earl of Oxford. A few days afterwards he was presented with the White Staff. Nor was this all. Shortly before the fortunate accident to which he owed so much, he had with the assistance of St. John organized a committee to inquire into the expenditure of the last Ministry. This scrutiny, undertaken with the object of casting a slur on Godolphin and his colleagues, was conducted witli scandal- ous unfairness. The Report was issued, and the Report announced that upward of thirty-five millions sterling had been unaccounted for. The effect produced was the effect intended. The Whig leaders became more unpopular than ever, and the confidence which had once been placed in Godolphin was immediately transferred to Ilarley. His position was now to all appearance impregnable. His cred- it was high. The Queen, and the two favorites who ruled the Queen, were his friends. The death of Rochester had relieved him of his most troublesome colleague. Even the October Club had relented. From this moment, however, his power began gradually to decline. "It soon appeared," says Burnet, "that liis strength lay in managing parties, and in engaging weak people by rewards and promises to depend upon him, and that he neitlier thoroughly under- stood the business of the Treasury nor the conduct of for- eign affairs." The star of St. John now rose rapidly into the ascend- 66 ESSAYS. ant. The struggle between the two Ministers had indeed already begun. While Ilarley was confined to his chamber by the knife of Guiscard, the subordinate had passed into the rival. The truth is, recent events had convinced St. John of three things — the real strength of the Tory party if judiciously consolidated; the impossibility of a coalition with the Whigs ; the ruinous folly of trimming and equiv- ocating. But he saw also that the Ministry could not stand without a peace, and without securing the unpro- vided debts, and that these measures could be carried only by Oxford, who had tlie ear of the Queen, the confidence of the moderate Tories, and the supreme direction of af- fairs. To break with the Treasurer before he could step into his place would be destruction, lie would therefore co-operate with him so far as the common interests of their party went, but he would have no share in his deal- ings with the Whigs. He would put himself at the head of the extreme Tories, arm and inflame them against the Whigs, and force on through every obstacle the peace with France. He now plunged headlong into those dark and tortuous intrigues which finally drove liim in shame from his country, and have made his name ever since synony- mous with all" that is most odious in a reckless and un- principled public servant, and all that is most contemptible in a treacherous and self-seeking diplomatist. In the preceding January secret communications had been opened with France. In the middle of August it was suspected that a peace was in contemplation. In the mid- dle of October it became known that preliminary articles had been signed. In a moment the whole kingdom was in a blaze. \~ The Allies were beside themselves with anger and chagrin. Marlborough remonstrated with the Queen. Buys had already been sent over from Holland to protest. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 67 Botlimar followed with a memorial from the Elector. De Gallas, the Austrian Ambassador, behaved with such inso- lence that he was forbidden the Court. The fury of the Whigs knew no bounds, and they prepared for a desperate effort to defeat the Government.J Deputations were formed, protests signed, meetings summoned. The public mind, which had for many months been kept in a state of the most exquisite irritability by party pamphleteers, was now goaded almost to the verge of madness. Every press was hard at work. ^On the side of the Whigs were enlisted the boisterous scurrility of Steele, the mature polemical skill of Burnet and Maynwaring ; Oldmixon and Ridpath, with their rancorous myrmidons; and Dimton, with half Grub Street at his heels. On the side of the Tories ap- peared — with Swift towering in their van — Atterbury and Mrs. Manley, King and Oldesworth, Freind and Arbuthnot. On the l7th of November a terrible riot was expected, and the trained bands were called out. In the midst of this ferment Marlborough arrived from the Hague, and at once took counsel with the chiefs of the Opposition. It was resolved to open overtures with Not- tingham, who, having been passed over in all the recent nominations, made no secret of his enmity to Oxford. A barsrain was soon struck. Nottingham consented to move a resolution against the peace. The Whigs, in return, agreed to support the Bill against Occasional Conformity. They then proceeded to secure Somerset, whose wife was generally understood to divide with Lady Masham the af- fection of the Queen. The sympathies of Anne were al- together with the Tories. " I hope," she said to Burnet, "the Bishops will not be against the peace." " If," re- plied Burnet, with characteristic bluntncss, " the present treaty with France is concluded, we shall all be ruined; in 3* 68 ESSAYS. three years your Majesty will be murdered and the fires will be raised again in Sinithficld." The Houses were to assemble on the Vth of December. "On Friday next," wrote St. John to a friend at the Hague, " the peace will be attacked in Parliament. AVe must receive their fire, and rout them once for all." The anxious day arrived. The Queen informed the Houses in her Speech from the Throne that the time and place had been appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace, " notwithstanding," she add- ed, "the arts of those that delight in war." Having con- cluded her address she retired, laid aside the royal robes, and returned to the House incognita. Then Nottingham rose, with more than usual emotion on his harsh and gloomy features. He inveighed against the articles signed by Mes- naffcr, declared that hostilities ought to be carried on with the utmost vigor till the objects of the Grand Alliance had been fully attained, and concluded a long and intemperate harangue by moving that no peace could be safe or honor- able to Great Britain or Europe if Spain or the West In- dies were allotted to any branch of the House of Bourbon. He was supported by the whole strength of the Whig party, by Wharton and Sunderland, by Cowper and Bur- net. As the debate grew more acrimonious the remarks became more personal. At last a taunt of one of the Tory Speakers called up Marlborough. He had been accused, he said, of wishing to protract the war for his own inter- ests. Nothing could be falser. He desired — he had long desired peace, and lie called that God, before whom he would have, in the ordinary course of nature, so shortly to appear, to witness the truth of what he was saying. But he could not, compatibly with his duty to his sovereign, to his country, to Europe, acquiesce in any peace which was not honorable and not likely to be lasting. He alluded THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 69^' with great pathos and dionity to his advanced years, to the hardships he had undergone, and to the cruel aspersions which had been cast on his character and on liis motives. It was impossible even for the Tories to listen unmoved to such words coming from such a man. The House was deeply affected, and the flush of shame was on more than"' one face when the hero of Blenheim and Ramillies resumed his seat. In the division which ensued the Whigs obtained a complete victory. It was evident, too, that the feelings of the Queen were changing. Oxford and St. John, whose secret negotiations with France had now fatally committed them, were in terrible perplexity. The crisis was, indeed, appalling. Swift gave up all for lost. " I," he said to Ox- ford, half seriously, " shall have the advantage of you, for you will lose your head ; I shall only be hanged, and carry my body entire to the grave." For some days it was be- lieved that the Ministry would be turned out; that the Queen had settled that Somers was to have the White Staff; that the Parliament would be dissolved, and that the Whigs would carry the elections. The storm blew over. But it became every week more evident that the languid and indecisive policy of Oxford, to which the late defeat was almost universally attributed, was not the policy which the exigencies of the time re- quired. The Whigs must be crushed. Their coadjutors, the Allies, must be silenced. The peace with France must at all cost be consummated, A Tory despotism must be established. Such had long been the course prescribed by St. John. Recent events had proved his wisdom, and he now virtually directed affairs. lie rushed at once into every extreme, and into every extreme he hurried the Treasurer and the Cabinet. A series of measures which were without precedent in parliamentary history now fol- 60 ESSAYS. lowed in rapid succession. The Tory minority in the Up- per House was corrected by the simultaneous creation of twelve peers, and, added St. John in insolent triumph, " if those twelve had not been enough, we would have given them another dozen." Then came the astoundinir intelii- gence that Marlborough had been removed from all his employments. On the 18th of January Walpole was in the Tower. On the 19th Somerset had been dismissed. By the middle of February the Barrier Treaty had been condemned, and Townshend, who had negotiated it, voted an enemy to his country. Meanwhile all opposition was quelled with summary violence. The Tory press, with Swift at its head, was encouraged to proceed to every length of libellous vituperation against the victims of min- isterial vengeance ; but whenever a Whig journalist pre- sumed to retaliate, he was at once confronted with a war- rant from the Secretary. At the end of the session the Stamp Act was passed. In the Lower House the same system of tyranny and intimidation was practised. Sup- ported by a vast majority, and without a rival in eloquence and energy, St. John carried everything before him. " You know," he wrote some years afterwards to Wyndham, " the nature of that assembly; they grow like hounds fond of the man who shows them game, and by whose halloo they are wont to be encouraged," and he gave them that halloo as none but Jack Howe liad given it them before. In- deed, the audacity and insolence which characterized his conduct at this period were long a tradition in parliament- ary memory. The "Journals" of the Commons still tes- tify how in the course of one of the debates he threatened a recalcitrant Whig with the Tower. The Wrings had now, in Oxford's phrase, been managed. The Allies remained, and the Allies were busier than ever THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 61 against the peace. Swift's pamphlets had already done them considerable damage in popular estimation. St. John resolved to deal them such a blow as would effectually par- alyze their efforts. That blow was dealt by the Represent- ation, and that blow they never recovered. The Repre- sentation was drawn up by Hanmer under the direction of St. John. It was an elaborate exposure of the selfishness and ruinous folly of the Whigs and the Allies in continu- ing to prosecute the war when the objects for which the war had been undertaken had been long attained. It pointed out that the whole burden of the contest fell on England, the only Power which had nothing to gain by it; that the Emperor and the Dutch, who reaped all the ben- efit, had never contributed what they had stipulated to contribute ; and that while in 1702 the cost of the war had amounted to £3,706,494, in 1711 it had, in consequence of this shameful breach of contract on the part of the Allies, risen to £8,000,000. " We are persuaded " — so ran the concluding paragraph — " that your Majesty will think it pardonable in us to complain of the little regard which some of those whom your Majesty of late years trusted, have shown to the interests of their country in giving way at least to such unreasonable impositions upon it, if not in some measure contriving them." This was sensible, this was temperate, this was to the point ; and it was observed that after the Representation appeared many even of the advanced Whigs quitted the ranks of the War party. But whatever were the difficulties with which St. John had to contend in the House and in the Cabinet, the diffi- culties with which he had to contend in the closet were formidable indeed. lie had to unravel every thread in the whole of that vast and perplexed labyrinth of interests which were involved in the Treaty of Utrecht. lie had 62 ESSAYS. to grapple — and to grapple virtually alone — with the most accomplished diplomatists in Europe, with an exacting and imperious enemy, and with a factions and malignant Op- position, llis colleagues in France and Holland were dog- ged and dilatory, his colleagues at home were timid and lielpless. At every step he was traversed, and at every- step new and unexpected complications arose. The clan- destine negotiations which had by means of Gautier and Mesnager been opened with France, were every day sink- ing the Ministry deeper and deeper in ignominy and em- barrassment. They had already violated the most sacred ties which can bind one nation to another. They had al- ready, for the most ignoble of all objects, stooped to the most ignoble of all expedients. St. John now resolved to abandon the Allies to the vengeance of Louis. We can- not linger over those shameful transactions which preceded the Treaty of Utrecht. They may be read at length in Bolingbroke's "Political Correspondence" — an everlast- ing monument of his genius and of his infamy. In the midst of these labors Parliament was prorogued. St. John was anxious for a seat in the Upper House. The Earldom of Bolingbroke, which had for some time been in the possession of his family, had recently become ex- tinct, and he aspired to revive it. In the interests of his party he had already waived his claim to a peerage. His services had been greater than those of any other Minister in the Cabinet. He had borne the whole burden of the last session. He had all but conducted to a prosperous issue the negotiations with France. An earldom, however, the Queen would not hear of. She bad promised, she said, a viscounty, and a viscounty was all she would concede. In the middle of July, therefore, he accepted, with feelings of rage and mortification which he took no pains to con- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. G3 ccal, the title of Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St. John of Ledyard Tregoze. To employ his own phrase, he was dragged into the Upper House in a manner which made his promotion a punishment, not a reward. This conduct on the part of the Queen he always attributed to Oxford, whom he had long regarded with jealousy, and whom he now beffan to resrard with hatred. The truth seems to be that Anne had conceived an aversion to him on account of the profligacy of his private life,* a profligacy which bis oflScial duties had by no means suspended, and which bad indeed given great scandal to the more decorous of his colleagues. Meanwhile several minor details had to be settled in the treaty with France. Bolingbroke was irritable and moody. To soothe his wounded pride and to put him in a good- humor, it was resolved to send him on a. diplomatic mis- sion to Paris. The incidents of that visit were long re- membered by him. lie had no sooner left Calais than it became known, in spite of his precautions, that he had arrived on French soil. The intelligence spread like wild- fire. Crowds poured forth to meet him. Joyful accla- mations rent the air. He was the friend of a war-worn na- tion. He was their savior; he was the Herald of Peace. He could scarcely make his way through crowds so ecstat- ic with enthusiasm that they covered his very horses with kisses. In the capital his visit was one continued ovation. When he appeared in the streets ho was overwhelmed with tumultuous expressions of popular gratitude. When he presented himself at Court the noblesse vied with one an- * This is Swift's view. See his " Enquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's Last Ministry ;" and see particularly tlie " Wentworth Papers," p. 395, where details are given of Bolingbroke's reckless debauchery at this period. 64 ESSAYS. other in pressing on him their splendid hospitality. When he entered the theatre the whole audience rose up to re- ceive him. He had a satisfactory conference with Louis at Fontaincblcau. In a few days everything had been ar- ranged with ])c Torcy. The rest of his time he devoted to social enjoyment. It has been asserted that he liad, during the course of this visit, two interviews with the Pretender. Such a thing is, however, in spite of the as- surance of Azzurini, very improbable. Ilis intrigues, at this time at least, were, we suspect, of another kind. His gallantries betrayed him indeed into a serious official in- discretion. In truth De Torcy was not a man to observe such a weakness without turning it to account. He threw the susceptible diplomatist in the way of an accomplished but profligate adventuress, who robbed him of some im- portant documents, which were at once communicated to the Minister. The effects of Bolingbroke's folly soon be- came apparent. He arrived in England with a damaged reputation. It was whispered by some that he had estab- lished a private understanding with the French Court ; by others, that he had turned traitor and divulged the secrets of the English Cabinet; while others, again, asserted that he had come to terms with the Pretender. These reports, equally improbable and equally unfounded, were, however, eagerly caught at by Oxford, whose jealousy had been roused by his rival's reception in Paris. On this occasion he scarcely acted with his usual prudence. He removed the Foreign Correspondence out of Bolingbroke's hands, and placed it in the hands of Dartmouth. The conse- quences were easy to foresee. Affairs became more and more complicated. Dartmouth was as helpless as the Treas- urer. France became more exacting, Holland more insolent. A wretched squabble between the suite of Rechtheren, one THE rOLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 66 of the Dutch deputies, and the suite of Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary, had suspended the conferences at Utrecht. Prior wrote from Paris complaining that he had " neither powers, commission, title, instructions, appoint- ments, money, nor secretary." The Whigs were in league with the Allies, and the peace threatened to come to a stand-still. At last the rivals began to understand their folly. Bolingbroke swallowed his chagrin, hurried up from Bucklersbury and resumed liis duties at Whitehall. On the 31st of March, 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. The verdict which history has passed on the master- piece of Bolingbroke's statesmanship is well known. It is a verdict which no judicious biographer would, we think, attempt to question, which no sophistry can reverse, and which no future grubbing among State papers and family documents is ever likely to modify. That peace was ex- pedient and even necessary to the welfare of England ;* * Bolingbroke's letter to Lord Raby, dated March G, lYll, so ad- mirably summarizes the reasons for peace that we will transcribe the principal paragraphs : " We arc now in the tenth campaign of a war the great load of wliich has fallen on Britain as the great advantage of it is proposed to redound to the House of Austria and to the States-General. They are in interest more immediately, we more remotely concerned. How- ever, what by our forwardness to engage in every article of expense, what by our private assurances, and what by our public parliament- ary declarations that no peace should be made without the entire restitution of the Spanish monarchy, we are become principals in the contest ; the war is looked upon as our war, and it is treated accord- ingly by the confederates, even by the Imperialists, and by the Dutch. . . . From hence it is that our commerce has been neglected, while the French have engrossed the South Sea trade to themselves, and the Dutch encroach daily upon us both in the East Indies and on the coast of Africa. From hence it is that we have every year 6(J ESSAYS. that the Allies, who had everything to gain by the pro- traction of tlie war, were throwing the whole burden of it on England, who had nothing to gain ; that the actual union of Austria and Spain under the same sceptre would have been more prejudicial than the chance of such a union between France and Spain ; and that the difficulties in the way of attaining peace were almost insuperable, may, we think, be fairly conceded. But how did Bolingbrokc solve the problem ? Even thus : he knew that we were bound by the most solemn obligations not to enter into any sep- arate treaty with France. lie lied, equivocated,* and en- tered into a separate treaty. He knew that we were bound to defend the interests of our Allies. He leagued with the common enemy to defeat them. He knew that we were bound by every consideration of good faith and humanity to protect the Catalans, whose liberties we had promised to secure, and who in return for that promise had rendered us eminent services. In defiance of all his engagements added to our burden which was long ago greater than w'e could bear, while the Dutch have yearly lessened their proportions in every part of the war, even in Flanders. Whilst the Emperor has never employ- ed twenty of his ninety thousand men against France. . . . From hence it is that our fleet is diminished and rotten, that our funds are mort- gaged for thirty-two and ninety -nine years, that our specie is exhausted and that we have nothing in possession and hardly anything in ex- pectation. . . . From hence, in one word, it is that our government is in a consumption, and that our vitals are consuming, and wc nmst inevitably sink at once. Add to this that if we were able to bear the same proportion of charge some years longer, yet from the fatal con- sequences, should certii-inly miss of the great end of the war, the entire recovery of the Spanish monarchy from the House of Bour- bon." — Letters and Correspondence, vol. i., pp. 11*7-119. * His political correspondence reveals such a mass of duplicity and falsehood as will not be easily paralleled in the records of di- plomacy. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. 67 he abandoned them to the vengeance of Philip ; and in defiance of ordinary humanity lie despatched a squadron to assist Philip in butchering them, lie knew that the renunciations, which he palmed oS on the English people as valid, were worth no more than the paper on which they were inscribed. The honor of England was, as he was well aware, pledged to provide for tlie Dutch a substantial barrier against France. The barrier provided for them by the treaty was a mere mockery. By ceding Lille he ceded to Louis the key of Flanders. He compelled Holland to restore Aire, Bethune, and St. Venant. He allowed France to retain Quesnoy, and he was, as his correspondence with De Torcy proves, only deterred from sacrificing Tournay by his fear of public opinion. Austria fared even worse. For the loss of Spain, the Indies, and Sicily, she was con- demned to satisfy herself with the kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Milan, and the Spanish Netherlands ; her tenure of the Netherlands being indeed of such a kind as to ren- der it little more than nominal. With regard to the con- cessions exacted on behalf of England, we are not inclined to take so unfavorable a view as most historians do take. It is true that France had been reduced to the lowest ebb. It is true that the concessions which she made in 1713 were by no means the concessions she had offered to make either in 1706 or in 1709. But it is no less true that in spite of our successes in Germany, Italy, and Flanders, our chances of success in Spain, which was the main object of the struggle, were all but hopeless. The possession of Gib- raltar, Minorca, Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, Newfound- land, and the French portion of St. Christopher — the Assiento Treaty, the demolition of Dunkirk, and Louis's recognition of the Act of Settlement, were assuredly no contemptible trophies. C8 ESSAYS. Tlic triumph of Bolingbrolcc was, however, very short- lived ; and when, on tiic lOth of July, Parliament wa;. prorogued, it was evident that the current was running strongly against the Ministry. The Bill to make good tho Commercial Treaty had been defeated ; and the Commer- cial Treaty was the point on which Bolingbroke had espe- cially prided himself. The Cabinet had been charged, absurdly charged, with attempting to ruin the mercantile interests of England in favor of the mercantile interests of France, and had lost ground in consequence. The Malt Tax had thrown the Scotch members into the ranks of the Opposition. A scandalous attempt had been made to dis- solve the Union. Argyle was at open war with Oxford. Another schism had broken out among the Tories them- selves. The Cabinet was divided. There was no money in the Treasury. Oxford and Bolingbroke were scarcely on speaking terms, and everything was going wrong. All through the autumn this state of thinufs continued. It was plain that the health of the Queen was breaking. It was plain that if at this conjuncture the throne became vacant, one of two things must happen : either the Act of Settlement would be carried out by the Whigs, and the Tories be trampled under the feet of their victorious foes, or the Act of Settlement would be set aside by the Tories and a civil war convulse the country. The proper course for the Ministry to take was obvious. If they were strong enough to set aside the Act of Settlement — and, provided the Pretender would have made the necessary concessions, or even have affected to make them, there is no reason to suppose the Ministry would not have been strong enough — they should have cordially co-operated ; should have ral- lied their partisans ; should have remodelled the army ; should have gained the confidence of their party ; should THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 69 have made with firmness and prudence tbe requisite ar- rangements. If, on the other hand, the Pretender persist- ed in liis higotr}', and thus rendered it impossible to set aside the Act without ruin to Liberty and to the Church, they should at once have declared war against him ; should have cleared their policy of all ambiguity : should have vied with the AYhigs in ostentatious zeal for the Protestant Succession, and have cultivated in every way the good-will of the Elector. But the more pressing became the emer- gency, the more dilatory and irresolute became the Treas- urer. He was apparently anxious about nothing but the establishment of liis family. He could rarely be induced to open his lips about affairs; and when he did so it was impossible to understand what he meant. lie was fre- quently intoxicated. lie was always out of the way — sometimes on the plea of ill-health, sometimes on the plea of domestic concerns, and sometimes on no plea at all. Bolingbroke was furious. He attributed to him the recent ministerial defeat, and all the perplexities which had arisen since. He saw that everything was going to pieces. He saw that the Ministry were on the brink of ruin. He saw that an awful crisis was at hand ; but he could not induce his infatuated colleague to take one step, and without him lie could take no decided step himself. He could only ingratiate himself with Lady Masham and the Duchess of Somerset, and that he did. The new year found things worse than ever. The Queen was apparently on the point of death, and the question of the succession was now agitating every mind even to mad- ness. The Whigs were in paroxysms of delight, and the Tories in a panic of perplexity. In February, however, she recovered, and on the IGth opened Parliament with an address which bore unmistakable traces of Bolinirbroke's 10 ESSAYS. hand. Tbc Tories were at tins moment decidedly- in the majority both witliiii the Houses and without; indeed Bolin^fbroke assured D'Ibcrville that seven-eiffliths of tlie people in Great ]>ritain might be reckoned as belonging to that faction, and the Tories were, on the whole, averse to Hanover. But there was no harmony among them. Some were willing to accept the Pretender without exact- ing any securities from him. Others, again, insisted on such securities as the condition of their co-operation. In some of them an attachment to the principles of the Rev- olution struggled with an attachment to High-church doc- trines, and with an antipathy to Dissenting doctrines. Many of them belonged to that large, selfish, and fluctuat- ing class, who, with an eye merely to their own interests, are always ready to declare with the majority on any ques- tion. The Whigs, on the other hand, though numerically inferior, were weakened by no such divisions. Their policy was simple, their opinions never wavered, their feelings were unanimous. Their leaders were of all public men of tliat age the most resolute, the most united, and the most capable. It may assist our knowledge of the character of this conjuncture, and of the political profligacy of those at the head of affairs, to observe that Oxford, Buckingham, Leeds, Shrewsbury, and Bolingbroke were publicly proclaiming their devotion to the Elector, and at the same time secretly assuring the Pretender of their allegiance. Nor can Anne herself be altogether acquitted of similar duplicity. She never, it is true, gave her brother any encouragement in writing; but her aversion to the Elector was well known, and she led both Buckingham and Oxford to infer that, provided James would consent to change his religion, she THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. 11 sliould not scruple to follow " the bent of Ler own inclina- tions."* The Houses soon showed that they were in no mood for trifling, and Bolingbroke saw that the time had come for him to take, at any hazard, decisive measures. He deter- mined to hesitate no lono'cr, but to seize the reins of erov- ernment by assuming, in opposition to Oxford, the leader- ship of the extreme Tories, and by undermining him not merely at Kensington, but at Bar Ic Due and at Ilcrren- hausen. He could thus, he thought, make himself master of the position without at present definitely compromising himself either with James or the Elector. He could heal the schisms which were paralyzing a triumphant majority. He could supplant the Treasurer without alienating the Treasurer's adherents, and remodel the Ministry without weakening its constituent parts. He could thus, at the head of a great Tory Confederation — sucli was his splendid dream — dictate the terms on which the Elector should be received, or set aside the Act of Settlement, and escort the Pretender to the throne. Nor were these designs altogeth- cr without plausibility. He stood well with the Queen, whose prejudices had probably not been proof against his singularly fascinating manners, with Lady Masham and with the Duchess of Somerset. He could reckon certainly on the assistance of Ormond, Buckingham, Strafford, At- terbury, who had recently been raised to the see of Roch- ester, Harcourt, Bromley, Trevor, AVyndham, and the Earl of Mar. He had hopes of Anglesea and Abingdon ; he * It is, we think, quite clear that the sole obstacle in tlie way of Anne'd espousing the cause of her brotlicr lay in his refusing to change his religion. See particularly Slacpherson'.s " Original Pa- pers," vol. ii., pp. 504, 603 ; Berwick's "Memoirs," vol. ii., pp. 192; Lockhart's " Comment," p. 317. 12 ESSAYS. had hopes of Shrewsbury, and he proceeded at once to make overtures to others. He continued to assure the Elector of his fidelity^ and he kept up simultaneously a^ 'regular correspondence with the Jacobite agents D'Iberville. and Gaultier. - When, in the House, he found it necessary to proclaim liostilc measures against James, he at once privately wrote to suggest the means of evading them, or to insist that they were not to be received as indications of his own feelings. Meanwliile lie did everything in his power to ruin Oxford. In the motion for the further se- curity of the Protestant succession he affected to misun- derstand his meaning. When the Queen was insulted by the demand made by Schutz, he informed her that the de- mand had been suggested by the Treasurer. When Ox- ford had nominated Paget as envoy to Hanover, Boling- broke sent Clarendon. In May he drew up that Bill which is one of the most infamous that has ever polluted our Legislature — the Schism Bill, with the double object of conciliating the extreme Tories, and of reducing his rival to a dilemma — the dilemma of breaking with the Moderate Party and the Dissenters by supporting it, or of breaking with the extreme Tories by opposing it. Oxford saw through the stratagem. Angry recriminations followed. Violent scenes occurred every day in the House, and in the Cabinet. Bolingbroke taunted Oxford with incapacity and faithlessness, and Oxford retorted by declaring that lie had in his hands proofs of Bolingbroke's treachery to Ilcrrenhausen. Swift, who had on other occasions inter- posed as mediator between his two friends, saw with con- cern the progress of these fatal dissensions. He hurried up to London, and had several interviews with the rivals. He implored them, in their own interests, in the interests of their party and in the interests of the whole Tory cause. THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE. V3 to lay aside these internecine hostilities. lie pointed out that everything depended on their mutual co-operation ; that their partisans, every day becoming more scattered and perplexed, must be united ; that they could only be united in the union of their leaders; that too much pre- cious time had already been wasted ; that if the death of the Queen, which miglit be expected at any hour, surprised them, they would be buried under the ruins of their party. All, however, was in vain, and a final interview at Lord Masham's convinced him that reconciliation was out of the question. As a parting word, he advised Oxford to resign, and then with a heavy heart hurried off to bury himself at Letcombe. Oxford and Bolingbroke now lost all control over themselves. Their unseemly altercations grew every day more violent, and became not only the jest and scandal of coffee-house politicians and ribald wits, but outraged in a manner gross beyond precedent the decorum of the Presence Chamber. Meanwhile everything was hur- rying from anarchy into dissolution. " Our situation," wrote Swift to Peterborough, " is so bad that our enemies could not without abundance of invention and ability have placed us so ill, if we had left it entirely to their manage- ment." At last these lamentable scenes drew to a close. On the 27th of July Oxford was removed, but the Queen was in a dying state. Jjoling broke was now virtually ^at^tha head of. affaka.__ lie proceeded at once with characteristic energy to grapple Avith the difficulties of his position. His immediate object was, we^Ta1ielf6^3biriyt,~to^^muselTieWhigs and the Han- overians while Le^ rallied jthe Tories an^T'fhe^ Jacobites. With Jhis view he entertained at dinner, on the night suc- ceeding Oxford's dismissal, a party of the reading Whigs, solemnly assuring them of Lisjntcn tion to promo te the — 4 •74 ESSAYS. Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover. lie in- "©tructed liis friend Drummond also to send Albemarle with assurances of a similar effect to the Elector himself. On the^^arae day he had by appointment an interview with ^Gnnltrcr, informing him that his sentiments towards James > had undcrtrone no chanijc, but observini; at the same time that James should immediately take such steps as would recommend him to the favor " of all good people." It may ^ *' help to throw some light on his ultimate designs, to ob- serve that almost every member of his projected Ministry was to be chosen from the ranks of the most advanced Jac- • obites, Bromley was to retain the Seals as Secretary of State; Ilarcourt was to be Chancellor; Buckingham, Trcs- ." ident of the Council ; Ormond, Commander-in-chief ; Mar was to be Secretary of State for Scotland ; and the Privy ■^eal was to be transferred to Atterbury. For himself he, "merely proposed to hold the Seals of Secretary of State, jw'ith the sole management of the foreign correspondence. , He would willingly have possessed himself of the White Staff, but he feared Shrewsbury, and he had the mortifica- tion of perceiving that even his own colleagues doubted his fitness for such a post. "His character is too bad," /wrote Lewis to Swift, " to carry the great ensigns." He thought it prudent, therefore, to keep the Treasury in com- mission, with his creature Sir William Wyndham at the liead of it. ■ry I . In tlic ^midat-O^-these-preparatlous alarnrrng-in^eUigence . / arrived from Kensington. Tlie Queen had been stricken _ " — J? d'owndfy apoplexy^^y 'A Council was--summoned to the \)n\- [yir ^itc. — Bolihgbroke was in an agony of apprehension. He ''^5arcd-ifcrtrl;he" crash had coiTie. He knew that Marl- " __bom ugh was orniisj wa^to-England, and that in a few — hours the army would be awaiting his orders. He knew THE POLITICAL LIFE OF BOLIXGBROKE. that Stanliope had, in tha van of a powerful confederation ■vf'WTrigs, made arrangements for seizing the Tower, for obtSTiring possession of the outposts, and for proclainiing • Trie'ETector! He knew t hat Argyle andT Somerset JiadJ>een busy, that Somers had shake n off h is lethargy, and that the ■AYTrnxs were mustering their forces in terrible strength. Tie saw that the Tories — torn with internal dissensions, divided in their aims, scattered, helpless, and without lead- ers — must go down before the storm. But he clung des- '""perately To^ne Lope. If Shrewsbury would declare-inJa- xarofTtfem, all might yet be well. Shrewsbury had been 'his_ally in the great crisis of l7lO. Shrewsbury had re- cently stood by him in an important debate. He had not, it was true, committed himself to any definite expression of His opinions, but his bias towards the House of Stuart wasjwelL known.* That treacherous, fickle, and pusillani- mous statesman had, however, already made up his mind. ATtfli every TicsTre-to-scrreihe-Toriesphe -had- satisfied him- setf^o^fth^ impossibility of rallying them in time, and had dt5cided therefore to abandon them. With all his senti- mwils in unison with those of Bolingbroke and Ormond, ""■^ie saw that liolino'broke and Ormond were on the losing "^^^jiie,_and heJiad therefore concerted measures with Argyle and So merset. The Council met on Friday morning, July 30th. On Friday afternoon Tn)ecam e known that Shrews- I)ury had coaTesced with the Whigs, and had received the White Staff from the hands of his dying mistress. On Saturday afternoon almost every arrangement had been * That Bolingbroke had good reason for believing that Shrews- bury would support him is sliown by the fact that Shrewsbury was not long afterwards in league with the Jacobites — " frankly engaged and very sanguine." For this remarkable fact see the " Stuart Pa- pers," under date August 20, IT 15. 76 ESSAYS. completed for carrying out the Act of Settlement. On Sunday morning Anne was no more, and BolingbrolvC was a cipher. " The Queen died on Sunday. What -a_Jvorld fs this, and how do cs Fortune banter us 1" were the w ords Tn 'which tlKL J)ii fe3~statg5n iah comiivunicated the intejli- 'gcriccJ^i,3^iiL^ Fortune was, however, bent on something *i\iore serious than banter. But here for the present we pause. Up to this point the biography of Bolingbrokc has been the parliamentary history of England during fourteen stirring and eventful years. He was now about to figure on a widely different stage, in a widely different character. LORD BOLmGBROKE IN EXILE. SUMMARY, Importance of tliis period, p. "70-81 — Retrospect at tlie close of Bolingbrokc's political career — What next? p. 81 — Bolingbroke'a sclicmes, p. 82, 83 — Ilis advances not encouraged by the Elector : arrival of the King in England, p. 84 — The Whigs come into power: their 'celings against the late Government, p. 84-86 — Bolingbroke's attempt at self-justification unsuccessful, p. 85, 86 — Threatening pros- pects, p. 86, 87 — Bolingbroke, scared, takes to flight, p. 87, 88 — Im- prudence of this step, p. 89-91 — Ilis arrival in Paris: intrigues with both Parties, p. 90 — His arraignment in Parliament by Walpole : con- siderations thereon, p. 90-92 — Ilis indictment and condemnation as an outlaw, p. 93 — Character of the Pretender: reasons which guided Bolingbroke in espousing his cause, p. 93-98 — Bolingbroke organizes the Jacobite movement in Paris : disappointments and trials, p. 97-99 — Circumstances favorable to the cause, p. 99-101 — Bolingbroke as a negotiator, p. 100-102 — Inauspicious events : death of Louis XIV., flight of Ormond, p. 102-104 — Declining prospects of the Jacobite cause: its collapse, p. 104, 105 — Bolingbrokc's self-devotion thank- lessly rewarded: his dismissal by the Chevalier, p. lOG-lOS — Satis- faction at the Court of St. James, p. 108 — Bolingbroke kept in ex- pectancy, p. 109 — His retirement and private studies, p. 109-114 — Connection with the Marquise de Villette and subsequent marriage, p. 113, 114 — Literary pursuits, p. 114-117 — Friendship with Voltaire, p. 117-121 — His desire to return to England repeatedly thwarted: at last acceded to, p. 121 — Bolingbrokc's overtures to Walpole and Carteret, p. 121-124 — His offer of intercession at the French Court declined by Walpole, p. 125, 126 — Walpole averse to restore him to his civil rights: at last forced to do so by the King, p. 125-127 — Bolingbrokc's double life, p. 128. LORD BOLTNGBROKE IN EXILE. We now propose lo trace the fortunes of Bolingbroke from an event which speedily, indeed, reduced him to in- significance as a statesman, but which marked the com- mencement of what is, beyond question, the most interest- ing and instructive portion of his personal history. From 1G90 to 1704 his career differs little from that of other clever and dissolute youths with indulgent relatives and with good expectations. From 1*704 to 1714 it is, if we except the short interval of his retirement, that of a thriv- ing and busy politician, whose life is too essentially bound up with contemporary history to present those features of individual interest which are the charm of biography. But from 1714 to 1752 it assumes an entirely new character. During this period he passed, in rapid succession, through a series of vicissitudes which it would be difficult to par- allel even in fiction. During this period he played isnu- merable parts. lie became identified with almost every movement of the public mind in Europe, with political opinion, with polite letters, with the speculations of science, with the progress of free-thought, with historical and met- aphysical discussion. lie became the teacher of men whose genius has shed lustre on the literature of two na- tions, and with whose names his own is impcrishably asso- ciated, lie produced writings which are, it is true, too unsound, too immature, and too fragmentary to hold a high place in didactic philosophy, but which were of great 80 ESSAYS. service in stimulating inquiry, and which are, regarded as compositions, second to none in our language. From 1726 to 1742 the influence he exercised on English politics was such as it is scarcely possible to overestimate. He was the soul of the most powerful Coalition which ever gath- ered on the Opposition benches, lie kept the country in a constant ferment. He inaugurated a new era in the an- nals of Party. He made Jacobitism contemptible. He reconstructed the Tory creed. Of the Patriots he Avas at once the founder and dictator. To his energy and skill is, in a large measure, to be attributed that tremendous revo- lution which drove Walpole from office, and changed the face of political history. And yet this is the period of his life of which his biographers have least to say. With them he ceases to be important when he ceases to be con- spicuous. They do not perceive that the part he played was exactly the part which Thucydides tells us was played by Antiphon in the great drama of b.c. 411 — the part of one who, unseen himself, directs everything. Of his liter- ary achievements their account is, if possible, still more vague and meagre. Indeed, Mr. Cooke and Mr. Macknight appear to have no conception of the nature and extent of his influence on the intellectual activity of his age. They have not even discussed his relations with Pope and Vol- taire. They have not even furnished us with a critical analysis of his principal works ; and what they have omit- ted to do no one has done since. We shall therefore make no apology for entering with some minuteness into the particulars of this portion of his life. It divides itself nat- urally into three periods. Tlie first extends from his fall, in 1714, to his reappearance in England in 1723 ; the sec- ond extends from 1723 to his departure for the Continent in 1735 ; and the third is terminated by his death in 1752. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 81 On tlie death of Anne it became at once apparent that any attempt to set aside the Act of Settlement would be vain. Atterbury, indeed, importuned Bolingbrohe to ap- peal to the nation, and to declare open war with Hanover. He offered, himself, to lead the forlorn hope. He was willing, he said, to head a procession to Charing Cross, and to proclaim, in full canonicals, the accession of James HI. But his proposal found little favor. Bolingbroke saw that all was over, and that for the present, at least, things must take their natural course. It must, in truth, have been obvious to a man of far less discernment than lie that the position of the Hanoverians was impregnable. Their leaders were united, their arrangements had been judicious. They were in possession of all the means which command dominion — of the fleet, of the army, of the gar- risoned towns, of the Tower. The recent divisions in the Cabinet, the unpopularity of the Commercial Treaty, and the sudden death of the Queen, had confounded the To- ries. Their only chance was to outbid the Whigs in loyal zeal for Hanover, to purify themselves from all taint of Jacobitism, and to leave the few desperate fanatics who still held out for James to their fate. Such was clearly their policy, and such was the course that Bolingbroke now prepared to take. That it was his original intention to set aside the Act of Settlement it would, in spite of his repeated assurances to the contrary, bo absurd to doubt. It would be equally absurd to suppose that he had, so far as conscience or feeling was concerned, any bias in favor cither of Hanover or St. Germains. He was as destitute of sentiment as he was destitute of principle. From the moment be entered public life his interests had centred and ended in himself. To crush Marlborough and to sup- plant Oxford lie liad found it expedient to ally himself 4* 82 ESSAYS. with the extreme Tories. In allying himself with that faction it liad become necessary to identify himself with the Jacobites. But lie knew his danger. lie had tried liard to stand well with George as well as with James. Ho had regularly corresponded with both of them. lie had sworn allegiance to both of them. Tlic exiirencies of his struggle with Oxford had, however, necessitated a de- cided course, and at the beginning of 1V14 he was fatally compromised. He saw that the Whigs had then succeed- ed in making the succession a party question. He saw that if the Elector ascended the throne, he would ascend it as the head of the Whig faction ; and that if the Tories were to maintain the supremacy, they must maintain it under a Tory king. He saw that the Elector regarded him with suspicion and dislike. He saw that the return of the Whigs to power would in all likelihood consign him at once to impotence and ignominy. He was therefore bound by all considerations of self-interest to attach himself to James, and of his intrigues in favor of James we have am- ple proofs. Circumstances had, however, gone against him, and it was now necessary to retrace his steps. Though his prospects were far from promising, they were not hopeless. If he could not transform himself into a Whig, he could at least abandon the Jacobites and ficrure as a zealous Han- overian. It was just possible that the new king might adopt the policy of William, and consent to a coalition. The Tories were, after all, a formidable body, and there was little likelihood of repose in any government in whicli the land interest and the Church were not powerfully rep- resented. Of these representatives he was the acknowl- edged leader. The Elector was notoriously a man of peace, and averse to extreme measures. He had undoubt- edly flung himself upon the Whigs, but it had been from LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 83 motives of policy. Such, if we may judge from his cor- respondence, were Bolingbrokc's reflections as he watched from his window in Golden Square the flare of the bon- fires in which his efiigv was crackling. He lost no time in expressing in abject terms his devo- tion to his new master. " Quoique je crains d'etre im- portun" — so ran his letter — "je ne saurois me dispenser plus long-tems et dc suivre mon inclination et de la'acquit- ter de mon devoir." lie enlarged on the fidelity •with which he had served Anne, congratulated liimself on being the servant of so great a prince as her successor, and con- cluded by observing that in whatever station he might be employed he could at least promise integrity, diligence, and loyalty. During the next three weeks there was much to encourage liim. The Council of Regency had, it is true, submitted him to the indignity of being superseded by their secretary. But Clarendon's despatches from Hanover were favorable. Goertz, one of the Elector's confidential advisers, was openly enlisted in the Tory cause. There were already signs of disunion in the Ministry, and Halifax had even suggested that Bromley should be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Hanmer one of the Tellers. It was confidently rumored that the King, so far from having de- cided to crush the Tories, was even hesitating as to which of the two factions should be preferred to honor. This report emanated, we suspect, from Bothmar. That wily diplomatist had seen all along the expediency of amusing the Tories till the arrival of George should settle the king- dom. The general tranquillity of affairs had by no means thrown him off his guard. He was too well acquainted with the history of revolutions not to know that the first thing generated by them is ambition, and that the last things changed by them are principles. 84 ESSAYS. It was now late in August, and Bolingbroke was await- ing with some anxiety a reply to his letter. The answer arrived on the twenty-eighth, in the form of an express, addressed not to himself but to the Council of Regency. lie was summarily dismissed from his post of Secretary of State ; his office was to be put under lock and key ; his papers were to be seized and sealed up. This disagreeable intelligence he affected to receive with indifference. It shocked him, he says — for at least two minutes; "but," he added, " the grief of my soul is this — I see plainly that the Tory party is gone." * On the evening of the 18th of September, the King landed at Greenwich, and Bolingbroke hurried up from Bucklersbury to offer his congratulations. His worst fears were soon verified. The Tories had learned, indeed, some days before that they were to be excluded from all share in the Government, but they had not yet learned that they were to be excluded from all share in the royal favor. They were at once undeceived. Their leaders were treated with contempt. Ormond and Ilarcourt failed to extort even a glance of recognition ; Oxford was openly insulted ; Bolingbroke was not permitted to present himself. This was the signal which had been long expected. For some weeks the struggle between the two great factions had been suspended. A great victory had been won, but the ultimate issue of that victory depended upon the attitude of the new sovereign. The prostrate Tories trusted to his moderation, for protection ; the Whigs to his gratitude, for revenge. Till he declared himself, the combatants could only stand glaring at one another. Between the death of Anne and his reception at Greenwich, George's policy * Letter to Atterbury, Macpherson's "Original Papers," vol. ii., p. 651. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 85 had been studiously concealed ; his Ministers had been feeding both parties with hopes, and the majority of men had been deceived. Now, however, all was clear. Ilis pre- tended neutrality had been a mere trick to effect a peace- able entrance. He had come, not as a mediator but as a partisan ; not as the guardian of the common interests of his people, but as the leader of an insolent and vindictive faction. In less than a month the three kingdoms were again on fire with civil fury. The Whigs, eager to in- demnify themselves for long oppression, were bent on noth- ing less than the utter destruction of their rivals. The Tories, fighting against fearful odds, were driven in despair to take a course which, for forty-five years, reduced them to impotence in the Senate, and which brought many of them to the scaffold. On the 17th of March the Houses met, and Bolingbroke appeared as leader of the Opposition. The King's Speech, which was read by Cowper, was judicious and temperate. With the Addresses in answer the war began. The Op- position took their stand on a clause in which the House had expressed their hope that his Majesty would recover the reputation of the kingdom. This the Tories very prop- erly interpreted as a reflection on the conduct of their chiefs. A warm debate ensued, and Bolingbroke rose for the last time to address that assembly which had so often listened to him with mingled aversion and pleasure. His speech was an elaborate defence of his foreign and domes- tic policy. He paid a pathetic tribute to the memory of the late Queen, and he addressed a still more pathetic ap- peal to the wisdom, equity, and moderation of the reign- ing sovereign. He was willing to be punished if he had done amiss, but he thought it hard to be condemned un- heard. He then proceeded to deal in detail with the trans- 86 ESSAYS. actions in which he was so deeply concerned, and he con- chided a long and masterly harangue by moving that the word "maintain" should be substituted for the word "re- cover." He was supported by the Earl of Strafford and the Duke of Shrewsbury. But all his efforts were vain. The motion was rejected by an overwhelming majority. In the Lower House the late Government fared even worse_ There Waljiole openly charged them with being in league with James, and stated that it was his intention and the intention of his colleagues to bring them to justice. What Walpole announced was repeated with still more emphasis and acrimony by Stanhope. Endeavors had, he said, been made to prevent a discovery of the late mismanagement, by conv(Jying away several papers from the Secretaries' offices; but there still remained ample evidence against them, evidence which would not only prove their corrup- tion, but place it beyond doubt that far more serious charges could be established. Bolingbroke now saw that the storm was gathering fast. His private secretary had indeed succeeded in defeating the vigilance of the Government, by concealing such papers as might be prejudicial. Almost all those witnesses avIio could conclusively prove his treason were either out of reach or above temptation to treachery. Azzurini was in the Bastile, Gautier had retired to France, D'Iberville was protected by his diplomatic character, De Torcy was the soul of honor. But there was one man whom Boling- broke had for many years loved and trusted as a brother, who had been his companion in business and pleasure, who had shared all his secrets. That man was Prior. Prior had recently arrived from France. The emissaries of Stan- hope and Walpole had been busy with him, and Boling- broke heard with terror and astonishment that his old friend LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 87 had promised to reveal everything. This report, for which, as it afterwards turned out, there was not the sHghtest foundation, had the more weight because it appeared to confirm what had reached him from another quarter. lie had been informed that the Whigs had engaged to bring him to the scaffold, that they had entered into an alliance of which his blood was to be the cement, and that all at- tempts to defend himself would be vain, for sentence had virtually been passed. There is reason to believe that this alarming intelligence was, under the guise of friendship, conveyed to him by Marlborough, and that it was part of an ingenious manojuvre suggested by Walpole and Stan- hope to induce him to leave the country — a stop which would enable them to proceed against him by Act of At- tainder, and to accomplish without difficulty his destruc- tion. The stratagem succeeded. On Saturday, the 26th of March, it was reported in Lon- don that Bolingbrohc had fled. The report was at first received with contemptuous incredulity. lie had been seen by hundreds the night before in his usual high spirits at Drury Lane, where he had, from his box, complimented the actors and bespoken a play for the next evening. He had repeatedly assured his friends — and his friends were to be found in every coffee-house in the town — that he was under no apprehensions of what his enemies might do. Uc was only anxious for an opportunity to clear him- self, and that opportunity would, he said, be provided by the Parliamentary inquiry then pending. In a few days all was known. The greatest excitement prevailed in po- litical circles, and this excitement was shortly afterwards increased by the intelligence that a man who had assisted in effecting the escape of the fallen Minister was in custo- dy. The man's name was Morgan, and he held a commis- 88 ESSAYS. sion in the Marines. Tn the course of his examination before the Privy Council lie stated that he had met Bol- ingbroke, disguised as a French courier, and travelling as the servant of a king's messenger, named La Vigne, at Dover; tliat he had at one time been under oblisfation to him, and that when Bolingbrokc revealed himself and begged for a passage to Calais, he had not had the heart to refuse him. This statement had been already supple- mented by communications from Bolingbrokc himself. lie had written to Lord Lansdownc and he had written to his father. The letter to Lansdownc was publislied. It was dated from Dover. He had left England, lie said, not be- cause lie was conscious of any guilt, not because he shrank from any investigation, but because his foes had resolved to shed his blood. And he challenged the most inveter- ate of those foes to produce a single instance of criminal correspondence on his part, or a single proof of corrup- tion. Had there been the least hope of obtaining a fair trial he should have stood his ground ; but he had been prejudged. His comfort in misfortune would be the mem- ory of the great services he had done his country, and the reflection that his only crime consisted in being too patri- otic to sacrifice her interests to foreign allies. This letter ■was not considered even by his friends as a very satisfac- tory explanation of the step he had taken. Several harsh comments were made on it, and his conduct was generally regarded as reflecting little credit either on his judgment or his courage. Ilis fliglit was, in truth, the greatest blunder of his life — a blunder which it is scarcely credible that any one pos- sessing a particle of his sagacity and experience could ever have committed. A moment's calm reflection might have shown him that any attempt on the part of his enemies to LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 89 bring him to tlie block would be futile. "Whatever may have been the measure of his moral guilt in the negotia- tions with France, there had been nothing to support a capital charge. AVhatever had been most reprehensible in his conduct had been sanctioned by the Queen, had been sanctioned by two Parliaments. In the intrigues with James several of the leading AVhigs had been as deeply involved as himself, and of liis own intrigues it would, even if Prior had turned traitor, have been very difficult to ob- tain corroborative evidence. The temper of the nation was such as to make extreme measures eminently impoli- tic. There was not an observant statesman in England who did not perceive that affairs were on the razor's edge. The King had already made many enemies. The Govern- ment was becoming every day more unpopular, the Oppo- sition more powerful. The Tories were beginning to rally. The schisms which had at the end of the last reign divided them showed symptoms of healing. A reaction was to all appearance merely a matter of time. That reaction could scarcely fail to be hastened by the impeachment of a Min- ister so representative and so popular as himself. By awaiting his trial he would, therefore, have run compara- tively little risk. By his flight he ruined everything. Bolingbroke has, however, seldom the magnanimity to ac- knowledge himself in error; and to the end of his life he continued, both in his writings and in his conversation, to defend this suicidal step. The account which he after wards gave of it is a curious instance of his disingenuous- ness. He left England, as his letter to Lord Lansdowne proves, in panic terror, to save himself from the scaffold. He left ilngland, according to his subsequent statement, after mature deliberation, not to save himself from the scaffold, not because he was afraid of his enemies, but to 90 ESSAYS. avoid the Inimiliation of being beliolden to the Whimsi- cals for protection, and to embarrass Oxford. On his arrival at I'aris he immediately put himself into communication with Lord Stair, the English Ambassador. He solemnly promised to have uo dealings with the Jaco- bites, and these promises he reiterated in a letter to Stan- hope. Within a few hours he was closeted with Berwick, assuring him of his sympathy, assuring him that all was going well for James in England, but adding that, for the present at least, he must refrain from any public co-oper- ation with the Jacobites.* Having thus, by a piece of double duplicity, established relations with both parties, and provided for either alternative, he proceeded to Dau- phine to watch the course of events. Meanwhile his enemies in England had not beftn idle. Prior had been arrested. The papers relating to the ne- gotiations with France had been called for and produced. A secret committee had been appointed to collect and ar- range evidence. The most unscrupulous means had been resorted to to make that evidence complete. Private cor- respondence had been seized and scrutinized. The escri- toires of the late Queen had been ransacked, and such was the malignant industry of this inquisition that in six weeks the evidence accumulated by them amounted to no less than twelve stout volumes. An abstract of this evidence was drawn up by Walpole with great ability in the form of a Report. On the 2d of June he informed the House that the Committee were in a position to communicate the result of their inquiries, and the day fixed for the commu- nication was that day week. The news of these proceed- ings had for several weeks kept the two factions in a state bordering on frenzy. The Whigs were eager to enhance * " Memoirs of the Duke of Berwick," vol ii., p. 198. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 91 the glory of their recent triumph by the meaner satisfac- tion of being able to trample on a fallen foe. The treach- ery of Bolingbroke and Oxford would now, they said, be incontrovertibly established. They would be punished as they deserved. The Tories, on the other hand — though Bolingbroke's flight had been a great shock to them — pro- fessed to anticipate very different results. They had no fear at all, they answered, of any such investigation, pro- vided only it were properly conducted ; they would never believe that their leaders had been guilty either of treason or misdemeanor. The Whigs, therefore, took their stand by Walpole and Stanhope ; the Tories, with the exception of the Whimsicals, identified themselves with the cause of Bolingbroke and Oxford. The important day arrived. The House was densely crowded. Walpole announced, amid a breathless silence, that before producing his Report he had a motion to pro- pose. He must request the Speaker to issue warrants for the apprehension of several persons. Upon that the lobby was cleared, the doors were locked, and the keys laid upon the table. The persons named by him were at once arrested, and among them were Thomas Harley and Matthew Prior. With these alarming preliminaries he proceeded to deliver his Report. The ceremony occupied many hours ; when the House adjourned it was not concluded, and it was late in the afternoon of the following day before the last folio was read. The Whigs had triumphed. The Tories saw that defence was hopeless. The charge of Jacobitism had not, indeed, been satisfactorily established, and it was open to doubt whether anything had been brought forward which was technically sufficient to support a charge of high-treason. But of the moral guilt of the two Ministers there could be no doubt. Tiioy had sullied the national «2 ESSAYS. honor, tlicy had set at naught the most sacred ties which can bind nations togetlier, they had sacrificed to party con- siderations the common interests of their country, they had liad recourse to the most dishonorable subterfuges. The desertion of the Dutch, for example in the negotiations with France, and tlic suspension of arras in the spring of 1712, are two of the most scandalous incidents in the an- nals of diplomacy. A skilful advocate might undoubtedly have shown that these misdemeanors, grave though they were, had been accompanied with extenuating circum- stances, lie could have been at no loss to prove that the termination of hostilities with France was not only expedi- ent but necessary, and he might have reasoned that if the means employed had been reprehensible, if the terms ac- cepted had been inadequate, the blame lay with the vexa- tious opposition of the Whigs and the Allies. He would not, we think, have had much difficulty in refuting such evidence as the prosecution had then been able to obtain touching the intrigues with James. He could have pro- tested, and have protested with justice, against the sophis- try to which Walpole had resorted in his endeavors to heighten the minor charge of high crimes and misdemean- ors into the most serious charge which the law knows. On this point the Whigs undoubtedly went too far. The moral delinquency of Oxford and Bolingbroke can scarcely be exaggerated, but there had been nothing in their con- duct to warrant a charge of high-treason. The evidence on which the W^higs succeeded in establisluno; their case is well known. It was proved that in the negotiations with De Torcy, Bolingbroke had endeavored to procure for France the city of Tournay. The possession of Tournay was for the advantage of the French, with whom we were at that time in open hostility. The attempt was, therefore, LORD BOLIXGBROKE IN EXILE. 93 interpreted as an adherence to the Queen's enemies, and adherence to the enemies of the Crown had, by a Statute of Edward III., been pronounced high-treason. The an- swer to this was obvious. Tournay, as a matter of fact, had not been surrendered. Had the place been actually abandoned the sacrifice would have done no injury to Eng- land, for Tournay did not belong to her. The proposal, moreover, had been made not with a view to benefit the French, but with a view to benefit the English. The Queen herself had been a party to the proposal, and when there seemed probability of disapprobation the project had been abandoned. But the temper of the House was such that none of the partisans of the late Ministers had the courage to undertake their defence. Hanmcr, indeed, rose to move that further consideration of the Report should be deferred till the members had been served with copies. To this Walpole and Stanhope declined to accede. Wal- pole then rose and impeached Bolingbroke of high-trea- son. On the 6th of the following month Walpole pre- sented himself at the bar of the Upper House. On the 14th of September Bolingbroke was an attainted outlaw. We have little doubt that had he remained in England this terrible sentence would never have been passed. Many of the Whigs had, we now know, serious misgivings about its justice. Some had even refused to sanction it. The wise and moderate Somers had expressed his dissent in the most emphatic terms, and had even gone so far as to compare the vindictive proceedings of Walpole and Stan- hope to the proscriptions of Harius and Sulla. But the minds of the most scrupulous were soon to be set at rest. Before the measure had passed into law it had unhappily received its justification. We have now arrived at a period in Bolingbroke's life 94 ESSAYS. of whicli ho has liimsclf left us an elaborate ncconnt. In the Letter to Sir William Wyndham lie narrates tlic cir- cumstances under which he attached himself to the inter- ests of the Pretender, and he professes to lay bare without reserve the motives which induced him to take this unfort- unate step. That his narrative of the events of 1V15 is substantially correct we liave not the smallest doubt. His principal object in penning it was to cover James and his projects with ridicule, and to show the Tories that an alli- ance with the Jacobites meant nothing less than alliance with disgrace and ruin. This object was, as he well knew, best attained by stating simple truth. There was no ne- cessity for fiction ; there was no necessity for over-color- ing. Everything that the art of the satirist could do to render the character of James contemptible Nature had actually done. To exaggerate his incapacity was superflu- ous, for his conduct had been in itself the quintessence of folly. To make his Cabinet the laughing-stock of Europe, all that was needed was to preserve with exact fidelity its distinctive features, for those features presented in them- selves everything that the most malignant caricaturist could desire. The whole drama of 1715 was in truth such a ludicrous exhibition of recklessness and misman- agement as to be almost without parallel in history. There is, however, one portion of this narrative in which we are not inclined to place much confidence. Bolingbroke in- forms us that he allied himself with the Jacobites, not from motives of self-interest, but from the loftiest and pur- est motives which can animate a man of honor. Till his departure from England he was the acknowledged leader of the Tory party. To that party he was, he said, bound by every tie, both of sentiment and principle. Since his exile those ties had been drawn closer. The Tories had LORD BOLIXGBROKE IN EXILE. 95 been submitted to a grinding despotism. They liad been excluded from all share in the favor of the new king. In Parliament they had been reduced to political impotence. Principles for which they would gladly have shed their blood were trampled under the feet of savage and vindic- tive foes. Their very lives were at the mercy of syco- phants and informers. The very existence of Toryism was at stake. At last, partly owing to the conviction that the only remedy for their misfortunes lay in a change of dynasty, partly owing to continued persecution, and partly moved by resentment at the measures which had doomed their chiefs to the fate of traitors, they had thrown them- selves into the arms of the Pretender. In this extremity they appealed to their banished leader, and he responded to their call. lie anticipated failure, but he had, he said, no choice. As the servant of the Tories he was therefore forced to cast in his lot with the Jacobites, and as the serv- ant of the Tories he accepted the seals from James. Now nothintr is more certain than that Bolingbroke had made overtures to Berwick several weeks before any ap- peal had been made to him from England at Commercy. Nay, nothing is more certain than that from the October of 1712 he had, in his communications with DTberville and Gautier, repeatedly declared himself in favor of the Pretender. He had accepted the seals at least six weeks before the Bill of Attainder had been passed — a fact which he always denied, but which is now placed beyond doubt by the date of his first letter to James, preserved in the Stuart Papers. That many of the Tories who, previ- ous to the coronation of George, held no communication with the Jacobites, had, by the violence of the Whigs, been driven to open communications with them is unques- tionably true; but that Bolingbroke should liavc believed 96 ESSAYS. for one instant that the majority of the Tories would have consented to set a Papist on the tlirone is ludicrous. And that there was little likelihood of the Pretender changing, or even affecting to change his religion, he has liimself ad- mitted. The appeal made to him emanated, as he well knew, from a small knot of men as desperate as himself. And the simple truth is, that in taking this step he was guided, as he always was guided, by purely personal considerations. In England the game had been played out. The Tories were too feeble to become his tools, and the Whigs too wise to become his dupes. His only hope lay in mis- chievous activity and in the chances of fortune. lie clung to the cause of James, not as an honest zealot clings to a principle, but as desperate adventurers clutch at opportu- nity. His first interview with his new master was not encour- aging. "He talked," says Bolingbroke, "like a man who expected every moment to set out for England or Scot- land, but who did not very well know which." Of the state of his affairs the Chevalier gave, indeed, a very glow- ing account; though it appeared on investigation that he had arrived at his satisfactory conclusions by a somewhat unsatisfactory process. In other words, he had invented much, assumed more, and colored everything. For the fur- therance of his designs it was soon obvious that, in spite of all his blustering, he had done nothing. He assured Bolingbroke, however, that everything was in readiness, and he was, he said, convinced that in a few weeks he should be on the throne of his ancestors. Bolingbroke consented to accept the seals, which at the conclusion of the interview were pressed on him, but he left his new master with no very exalted ideas either of his character LORD BOLIXGBROKE IN EXILE. 91 or of his capacity. Indeed, be afterwards assured Wynd- ham that he had already begun to repent of the step he had taken, almost as soon as he had taken it. His pene- trating eye had probably discerned in the young prince the germs of those odious qualities which had, in the per- son of the Second James, made the name of Stuart a syn- onyme for folly, and in the j>€rson of the Second Charles a svnonyme for ingratitude. In a few hours he received his instructions, lie was to proceed to Paris, which was to be the basis of operations. He was to put himself at the head of the Jacobite party. He was to open communica- tions with the United Kingdona, and to lose no time in so- liciting the assistance of Louis. Bolingbroke arrived in Paris at the end of July. He was anxious to meet his coadjutors, and orders were at once issued for the Jacobite Ministry to meet. His inter- view with James liad been a shock, but when his eyes rested on the spectacle which now presented itself, his heart sank within him. He saw before him a sordid rabble of both sexes. They appeared to have no bond of union, but had gathered in knots, and in a few minutes he was enabled to discover that they represented the scum of four nations. Their hopes were high, their voices were loud ; their air and gestures indicated boundless self-importance. Those who could read and write had papers in their hands, and those who could neither read nor write were contenting themselves with looking raystcrious. On analyzing this assembly into its constituent parts, he perceived that it con- sisted of hot-headed Irish vagrants, largely recruited from the least reputable sections of Parisian society ; of a few Englishmen who had been glad to put the Channel between themselves and their infuriated creditors ; and of several women whose cliaracters wefc more obvious than respect- 5 98 ESSAYS. able. To tlicse had been added a small body of Scotch adventurers, desperate from poverty and mad with fanati- cism. As each of these politicians recognized no leader but James, each, in the absence of James, had proceeded on the principle of doing what was right in his own eyes. Each regarded his neighbor, not in the light of an ally, but in the light of a rival ; and as nobody had looked beyond himself, nobody had advanced one step towards the attain- ment of what could only be attained by mutual co-opera- tion. The temper of such assemblies has been the same in all ages. The only counsellors in whom they have any confidence arc those who flatter their hopes ; the only coun- sellors to whom they refuse to listen are those who would teach them how those hopes may be realized. Everything is seen bv them throuMi a false medium. Their imaoina- tion is the dupe of their vanity. Their reason is perverted by their passions. As their distinguishing features are ig- norance and credulity, they are, of all bodies of men, the most impracticable ; for the first renders them incapable of discerning their true interests, and the second keeps them in a state of perpetual agitation. Never were these pecul- iarities more strikingly illustrated than by the crowd which now surrounded Bolingbroke. The public discontent in England Avas multiplied a thousand-fold. Every riot was a rebellion. Every street brawl portended revolution. Scot- land and Ireland were on the point of rising. The Whig Cabinet had collapsed. The army had mutinied. Nothing was more certain than that in a few weeks James would be at Whitehall, and George in exile. Letters and despatches, which had in truth emanated from men of the same charac- ter as those with whom they corresponded, were produced to prove the truth of this rhodomontade. It was useless to reason with these fanatics. It was useless to point out to LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. ,99 tliem that the battle bad yet to be fouglit, and that, if vic- tory came, it would not come spontaneously, but as the prize of valor and prudence. Bolingbroke now clearly saw that to have any chance of success he must stand alone. Ue could rely on no assist- ance from his master, he could expect nothing but embar- rassment from his colleagues in Paris. He proceeded at once to grapple with the difficulties of his position, and lie grappled with them as few men liave ever grappled with dif- ficulties so arduous and complicated. At this moment the prospects of the Jacobites were not unpromising. Among the States of Europe there was scarcely one which regarded the accession of the House of Ilanover with favor. Louis XIV. took no pains to conceal the fact that nothing but national exhaustion, occasioned by recent disaster, pre- vented him from openly re-espousing the cause of James. The sympathies of Spain were entirely on the side of Jac- obitism. The policy of Portugal was to stand well with France. The Emperor, incensed at the provisions of the Peace of Utrecht, kept sullenly aloof from both parties, but it was generally understood that he viewed the eleva- tion of the Elector with feelings of suspicion and jealousy. Indeed, the only Powers which could be described as in any way attached to George were Holland and Prussia. Of these Holland was too deeply involved in financial embar- rassment to be of much service, and Prussia was not in a condition to do more than contribute a few troops for the preservation of Ilanover. In Scotland the discontent was deep-seated and general. In Ireland the prospect of James's accession was hailed with joy. In England, though affairs liad by no means advanced so far as the Jacobite agents represented, there was ample ground for hope. Berwick indeed asserts that of the body of the people five out of 100 ESSAYS. six were for James; not, lie adds, because of his incontesta- ble right, but from liatred to the House of Hanover, and to prevent the total ruin of the Church and of popular liberty.* These advantages were, however, of a negative character ; the task before Bolingbroke was to discover in what way they might be turned to the best account. The ground was cleared ; the material lay ready ; but the edifice had yet to be raised. His proper course was easy to discern. He must unite the scattered forces of his party by estab- lishing a regular conmiunication between them. He must make the Jacobites, who lay dispersed through France, through England, through Scotland, through Ireland, act in unison. When they rose they must rise not in detach- ments and at intervals, but simultaneously, under the com- mand of competent officers. He must obtain assistance from France, for without that assistance no manoeuvre could be effectual. He must endeavor by dint of skilful diplo- macy to secure the co-operation of Spain and Sweden. To these difficult duties he devoted himself with admi- rable skill and temper. Never, indeed, were his eminent abilities seen to greater advantage. In a few weeks he had not only induced Louis to provide the Jacobites with ammunition, but he had kindled in the breast of the aged King the same ardor which glowed within his own, and he had brought liim almost to the point of declaring war with England. lie had obtained pecuniary assistance from Spain. He had opened negotiations with Charles XII. Ho had put himself into communication with the leading Jacobites in the three kingdoms, and had exactly informed them both of what it was necessary for them to do, and of what it behooved them to guard against. He had twice * " Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 202. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 101 saved James from taking steps which must inevitably have ruined him. Affairs which were, before he left Dauphine, in the utmost possible perplexity, now began to assume an aspect so promising that some of the leading members of George's Government were meditating treachery, and the Chevalier could number among his adherents the great names of Marlborough and Shrewsbury, Measures had, moreover, been concerted for seizing Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth. It would not, we think, be going too far to say that, had Bolingbroke been suffered to continue as he commenced, had he been properly supported by the Jaco- bite leaders, had his warnings been regarded, had his in- structions been carried out, had his supremacy in the Coun- cil been seconded by Berwick's supremacy in the field, the whole course of European history might have been changed. The more closely we examine the Rebellion of 1715, the more apparent will this appear. It began as a desperate enterprise on the part of a few hot-headed ad- venturers. It promised, under the direction of Boling- broke, to become the first act of a tremendous drama. The scheme of operations as designed by him was without a flaw, lie had provided for all contingencies except those contingencies which no human foresight can meet. In the United Kingdom he had laid the foundation of a co- alition which would in all probability be irresistible; on the Continent he was sure of the neutrality of those Pow- ers which could oppose his designs^ and he had ample rea- sons for supposing that those Powers would, on the first appearance of success, declare in his favor. But the levity and faithlessness of James, and the insane folly of the Jac- obites, were unhappily in exact proportion to liis own wisdom and foresight. At the end of August he was as- tounded to hear that Ormond, on whom everything do- 102 ESSAYS. pcndcd in England, and who liad in a recent despatch promised to liold out, liad deserted his post and was in Paris. The flight of Ormond was shortly afterwards suc- ceeded b}" the death of Louis XIV. " lie was," said Bol- ingbrokc, " the best friend the Chevalier ever had, and when I engaged in this business my principal dependence was on his personal character, my hopes sunk when lie de- clined, and died when he expired," These events were, indeed, a severe blow. For the flight of Ormond augured ill for the prospects of the Jac- obites in England, and the death of Louis augured ill for their prospects in France. Still he did not despair. The next three weeks were spent in receiving and in answering despatches from England and Scotland, and in sounding the new French Government. The Regent was courteous and sympathetic, but Bolingbroke was not long in discern- ing that the interests of that wily prince were by no means compatible with running any risks for the Jaco- bites. The state of France was indeed such as to preclude all hopes of assistance. Louis had left his kingdom in a deplorable condition. Iler provinces were desolated by famine. Her finances were hopelessly involved; her cap- ital was torn by faction. The only thing which could enable her to recover lierself was peace, and the mainte- nance of peace was therefore the Regent's first considera- tion. There was also another question which entered large- ly into his calculations. The rickety and sickly child whose place he filled was scarcely likely to survive infancy. Philip of Spain, who was, in order of succession, next heir to the throne of France, had by the Treaty of Utrecht solemnly renounced all claims to it. Tlie Regent, therefore, was heir-presumptive. But Philip had recently announced that he bad no intention of abiding by his former decision. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 103 and that the renunciations he made at Utrecht were, as the lawyers had at the time justly asserted, invalid. Ilis claim was good, and it was his intention, should occasion offer, to assert it. This claim Orleans very naturally de- termined to resist, and was anxious to form such alliances as might enable him to make this resistance effectual. He shrank, therefore, from compromising himself with the Eng- lish Government by assisting the Jacobites, and from com- promising himself with the Jacobites by assisting the Eng- lish Government, for either party might serve his turn. Ilis policy was to leave the two parties to settle the question of supremacy between them, and to maintain a po- sition of strict neutrality until that question should be de- cided. It was a matter of little importance to him wheth- er George or James sat on the tlironc of England, but it was a matter of great importance to him that the king who filled that throne should, in the event of young Louis's death, consent to guarantee the succession of the House of Orleans. Such was, we believe, the real policy of the Regent at this conjuncture. He was certainly in commu- nication with Orniond and Bolingbroke; he was certainly in communication with Stair and Stanhope. And now everything began to go wrong. The Jacobites were apparently bent on nothing but self-destruction. The chief objects of their leaders appeared to be to outbid each other in folly, and to defeat the efforts of the two men who might have saved them. The only coadjutors in whom James had any confidence were those who were be- traying him to Stair. The only counsellors who had any weicht with Ormond were two harlots and a hare-brained priest. Bolingbroke and Berwick had scarcely a voice in the conduct of affairs. If they were consulted, they were consulted only to be laughed at ; if they issued instruo- 104 ESSAYS. tions, their instructions were cither conntermantled or set at naught. This was bad, but tliis was not all. To men situated as the Jacobites tlien were, nothing was more indispcnsublc than secrecy ; but their secrets were, as Boliugbroke bitter- ly observed, the property of everybody wlio kept his ears open. " For no sex," he adds, " was cxchidcd from our ministry. Fanny Oglethorpe kept her corner in it, and Olive Trant was the great wheel of our macliinc." In con- sequence of this indiscreet loquacity, it was soon known that a small armament, assembled at Havre, had been as- sembled for the purpose of assisting the Chevalier. Stair demanded, therefore, that it should be surrendered to the English Government. To this request, however, the Re- gent refused to accede, but a compromise was accepted, and the flotilla was disarmed and broken up. Having thus succeeded in ruining themselves by sea, the Jacobites lost no time in ruining themselves by land. In the middle of September, Bolingbroke addressed a despatch to Mar, who had undertaken the management of affairs in Scotland, pointing out to him that it would be worse than useless to raise the Highlands without support from France, and without providing for a simultaneous movement on the part of the Jacobites in England. But Mar had already assembled the clans before Bolingbroke's despatch arrived. It appears, indeed, that James had had the inconceivable folly to issue, on his own responsibility, and without consulting either Bolingbroke or Berwick, previous instruc- tions ordering Mar to take this insane step. All that en- sued was of a piece with all that preceded. Blunder fol- lowed on blunder, disaster on disaster, in rapid succession. Ormond sailed for Devonshire to find, instead of loyal multitudes rallying round his standard, a solitary coast, a LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 106 cliuiTisli fellow who refused him a night's lodging, most of the leading Jacobites in custody, and warrants out for the arrest of Jersey and Wyndhara. The Chevalier, not to be outdone in folly, dallied at St. Malo, debating about what was the best thing to do till it was too late to do anything but despair, and then hurried off to head a for- lorn hope in Scotland. In a few months all was over. A tragedy, the particu- lars of which it is difficult, even at this distance of time, to peruse without tears, had been enacted. A large multi- tude of brave and generous enthusiasts had, in obedience to a noble impulse, and after making heroic self-sacrifices, rushed to destruction. Everything that could be effected by a spirit which rose superior to privation and reverses, by fidelity strong even to martyrdom, and by a fortitude which death could subdue only by extinguishing, these gallant men had done. For a cause which was in their eyes the cause of Justice, they had sacrificed their fortunes ; for one who was to them merely the representative of a righteous claim, they had poured out their blood. What- ever may have been the motives which guided their lead- ers in France, the motives of these unhappy men had at least been pure and honorable. But terrible, indeed, had been their fate. Many who had not had the good-fortune to find a grave in the field, had been condemned to die the death of felons. Two chiefs, distinguished by rank and opulence, and still more lionorably distinguished by the virtues of heroism, had been led to the scaffold, their blood attainted, their property confiscated. The hopes of the Jacobites had been blighted ; their power had been de- stroyed ; their very names liad become a byword. One thing, and one thing only, was now wanting to make James and his counsellors completely contemptible. Tf 5* 106 ESSAYS. their party contained a man whose sagacity and good sense had, during the genenil frenzy, been above imputation, and whose services had entitled him to the respect and grati- tude of the Jacobites, that man was Bolingbrolce. Of all James's servants, lie had been the most able and the most zealous, lie had furnished the Jacobites with a plan of operations which nothing but their own temerity and wronghcadedness could have defeated. He had amply forewarned them of their errors ; and when they liad set his warnings at defiance, he had toiled with almost super- human energy to extricate them from the consequences of those errors. Wlien the prospects of Jacobitism were blackest, when everything was lost in England, and when everything was on the point of being lost in Scotland, he had not despaired, lie had renewed his applications to Spain and Sweden ; he had been at great pains to procure and ship off ammunition and soldiers. lie had submitted to every indignity to gain access to the Regent, and, in Berwick's emphatic phrase, *' he had moved heaven and earth " to obtain assistance from the French Court.* His official duties he had performed with punctilious exactness, and from the day on which he took np the Seals at Com- mcrcy to the day on which he was ordered to resign them, he liad done nothing inconsistent with the character of a wise and honest Minister. All this weighed, however, very little with men who saw that they might, with a little man- agement, make him the scape-goat of their own follies. With the Jacobite clique in the Cois de Boulogne he had never been popular. From the Jacobite rabble he had al- ways stood contemptuously aloof. Scandalous stories were * Berwick gives eloquent and indignant testimony to the services of Boliiigbroivc and to the folly and ingratitude of James, — Memoirs, vol. ii., pp. 253-257. LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. lOY therefore without difficulty vamped up against him and industriously circulated. He was charged, among other tilings, with having at a supper-party spoken disrespect- fully of James, which was possibly true ; with having lavished on his mistress money which had been intrusted to him for State purposes, which was certainly false ; with having neglected his duties, which carried with it its own refutation. Mar and Ormond, with scandalous indifference to truth, attributed to his incapacity and negligence the misfortunes in Scotland, and the fact that no assistance had been obtained from France. The Chevalier, glad to find an opportunity of imputing to his Minister the ca- lamities for which he had himself been mainly responsible, caught eagerly at these calumnies. At the end of January, therefore, Bolingbroke suddenly received his dismissal, the dismissal being accompanied with gross insult, and suc- ceeded by a storm of obloquy. So terminated his unfort- unate connection with the Jacobites. We have thought it desirable to enter at some lenirth CD 3 into this episode in his career, first because of the influence it subsequently exercised both on his conduct and on his opinions, and secondly because it has, we think, been very generally misunderstood. Few parts of his public life have been so malignantly assailed, and no part of his public life was, we are convinced, more creditable to him. He served James as he had never before served Anne, and as he never afterwards served any master. At no period was his polit- ical genius seen to greater advantage, at no period were his characteristic defects under better control. During these few months he exhibited, indeed, some of the highest qualities of an administrator and a diplomatist, and if be failed, he failed under circumstances which would have rendered Richelieu powerless, and have baffled the skill of 108 ESSAYS. Theramenes or Tallevnnd. The motives which originally induced him to join the Jacobites were, as we have already shown, anything but laudable, but an estimate of the mo- tives which induced him to join the Chevalier, and an esti- mate of his conduct as the Chevalier's Minister, ought by no means to be confounded. What he did he did well, though it should never have been done at all. The news of his disgrace was received with much satis- faction by the English Cabinet. The character of Bolincr- broke was too well known to admit of any doubt as to the course he would take. AH who knew him knew that his recent allies had transformed the most formidable of their coadjutors into the most formidable of their enemies; and he would, it was expected, run into all lengths that revenge and interest might hurry him. The Jacobites had, indeed, suffered too severely in the recent struggle to make it prob- able that they were in a position to renew hostilities, but their real strength was still unknown, their numbers were still uncertain, their movements were full of mystery. If Bolingbroke would consent to throw light on these points — and no man was more competent to do so — he would relieve the Ministry from much embarrassment. If he could be induced to open the minds of the Tories to the real character of James, he would do much to restore pub- lic tranquillity. It was resolved, therefore, to see what could be done with him, and instructions were forwarded to Stair to solicit an interview. The two statesmen met at the Embassy. Bolingbroke behaved exactly as Stair anticipated. He longed, he said, to get back to England. His sole anxiety was to be enabled to serve his country and his sovereign with zeal and affection. He would do everything that was required of him. He would show the Tories what manner of man the Pretender was, and how LORD BOLIXGBROKE IN EXILE. 109 grossly they bad been deceived in hira. lie could not, as a man of honor, either betray individuals or divulge private secrets, but he would throw all the light he could on the movements and on the designs of the Jacobites. " Time and my uniform conduct will," he added in conclusion, " convince the world of the uprightness of my intentions, and it is better to wait for this result, however long:, than to arrive hastily at one's goal by leaving the highway of honor and honesty." To all this Stair listened with sym- pathy and respect. His instructions had, however, gone no further than to hold out " suitable hopes and encour- agement," and suitable hopes and encouragement were all that Bolingbroke could obtain from him. Bolingbrolce left the p]mbassy, little thinking that seven years were to elapse before those hopes were even partially to be realized. Those seven years were perhaps the happiest years of his life. He was, it is true, pursued by the unrelenting malevolence of the Jacobites, and he was kept in a state of uneasy expectation by Stanhope and Sunderland, who would neither definitely refuse nor definitely promise a par- don. But, for the rest, his life was without a shadow, and he had in truth little occasion for the exercise of that stoi- cism which he now began with so much ostentation to profess. He was in the prime of manhood. His excesses had not as yet begun to tell upon his fine constitution. A fortunate speculation had secured him a competence. A fortunate connection was soon to win him from grosser in- dulgences to more refined enjoyments. He was the centre of a society which numbered among its members some of the most accomplished men and women of those times. In the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain he was a wel- come guest. In the Societe d'Entresol he had a distin- guished place. He was enabled to gratify to the full, first 110 ESSAYS. at Mnrcilly and subsequently at La Source, the two pas- sions which were, he said, the dominant passions of his life — the love of study and the love of rural pursuits. Ambi- tion had still its old fascination for him, but the nature of that ambition had undergone a complete change. Up to this time he had been the leader of a party ; he now aspired to be a leader of mankind. Up to this time the prize for ■which he had been contending had been popularity ; the arena on which he had fought, an arena crowded with ig- noble competitors. He now aspired to enter that greater arena where, in a spirit of more honorable rivalry, nobler candidates contend for nobler prizes. At the beginning of this period he produced, within a few months of each other, a work of which the best that can be said of it is that it would not disgrace a University prizeman, and a work which has by many of his critics been pronounced to be his masterpiece — the " Reflections on Exile," and the " Letter to Sir William Wyndham." The "Reflections on Exile" is in truth little more than a loose paraphrase of Seneca's " Consolatio ad Ilelviam," gar- nished with illustrative matter from Cicero and Plutarch, and enlivened with a few anecdotes derived principally from the Roman historians and from Diogenes Laertius. It reproduces in a diffuse and grandiloquent style those silly paradoxes by which the followers of Zeno affected to rob misfortune of its terrors. As exile has been the lot of some of the most exalted characters of antiquity, exile involves no dishonor, and dishonor is all that a good man has to fear. To a philosopher exile is impossible, for a philosopher is a citizen of the world, and how can a man be banished from his country when his country is the uni- verse? If exile is a misfortune, exile is a blessing, for without misfortune there can be no virtue, and without LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. ill virtue there can be no enjoyment. These sentiments, which would have been ridiculous in the mouth of Cato or Brutus, become doubly ridiculous when proceeding from a man like Bolingbroke, and their inconsistency is the more grotesque when we remember that at the time this Essay was written the profligacy of his private life, though on the eve of reformation, had reached its climax, and that he was, in his letters and conversation^ expressing the greatest impatience to return to England. In striking contrast to this absurd and puerile declama- tion stands the Letter to Wyndham, which must not be confounded — and we are surprised to see that so well-in- formed a writer as M. Charles de Remusat does confound it — with the shorter " Letter to Wyndham," dated Sep- tember 13, 1*716, and preserved among the "Townshend Papers." The immediate cause of the composition of this celebrated work was the appearance of a pamphlet, entitled "A Letter from Avignon," a publication in which the Jac- obites had at great length enumerated the crimes and blun- ders of which they accused Bolingbroke. Incensed at this libel, which he afterwards described as a medley of false fact, false argument, false English, and false eloquence, he determined not only to refute once and forever the calum- nies of his contemptible assailants, but to do everything in liis power to sow dissensions between the Tories and the Jacobites, and to furnish posterity with an elaborate vin- dication of his conduct and policy, from his accession to office in 1710 to his dismissal from the Pretender's service in 1716. Of the historical value of this work we have al- ready spoken. Of its literary value it would be impossible to speak too highly. As a composition it is almost fault- less. It exhibits in perfection that style of which Boling- broke is our greatest master — a style in which the graces 112 ESSAYS. of colloquy and the graces of rhetoric harmoniously blend — a style which approaches more nearly to that of the finest disquisitions of Cicero than any other style in the world. "Walpole never produced a more amusing sketch than the picture of the Pretender's Court at Paris and of the Privy Council in the Bois de Boulogne. Burke never produced anything nobler than the passage which commences with the words — "The ocean which surrounds us is an emblem of our government." The account of the state of affairs during the last years of Anne, at the accession of George I., and during the course of the Rebellion, are models of graceful and luminous narrative, and we shall have to go to Clarendon or Tacitus to find anything superior to the portraits of Oxford and of James, Its serious reflections, its strokes of humor, its sarcasm, its invective are equally admirable. It is singular that though this Letter was, as we have seen, written with the immediate object of crushing the Jacobites, it was never published, perhaps never even printed, until after Boling- broke's death. Of this curious circumstance no satisfac- tory explanation has been given. Mr. Macknight's theory is that Bolingbroke withheld its publication in consequence of the suspension of his pardon, and afterwards forgot it. This is not, we think, very probable. Our own opinion is that when busy with the work he altered his mind, and, attaching more importance to it as a vindication of his conduct in the eyes of posterity than as a contribution to ephemeral polemics, resolved to keep it by him until death had removed those who mio-ht challencfe his assertions and shake his credit. The Letter abounds in statements which rest on no authority but that of the writer — statements which may be false or which may be true, but which, true or false, would not have passed unquestioned by contem- LORD BOLIXGBROKE IX EXILE. 113 porarics. It bears, moreover, all tlie marks of careful re- vision. No work of Bolingbroke is more higlily finished. Bolingbroke was now in liis tliirty-ninth year. Since his residence in France his relations with the other sex had either been those of a libertine or a trifler. Sensual pleas- ures were beginning to pall upon him. Platonic gallant- ries were becoming wearisome. His wife was in England, and his wife he regarded with contempt. But in the spring of l7lV he met a woman who inspired him with a passion very different from anything which he had experi- enced before. Marie -Claire Dcschamps de Marcilly was the widow of the Marquis de Villctte, and the niece of Madame de Maintcnon. As a school-girl at Saint-Cyr, she liad attracted the attention of Louis XIV., by the skill with which she had supported the character of Zares, when, under the auspices of Madame de Maintenon, Racine's " Esther " was acted by the scholars of that famous semi- nary. She was now upward of forty, and her beauty had lost its bloom. But her grace, her vivacity, her accom- plishments, made her the delight of the polished circles in which she moved. Iler wit has been celebrated by Wal- pole, and her conversation was, even among the coteries of Versailles, noted for its brilliancy. In the majority of women such qualities arc perhaps more calculated to stril^ than to charm, to impress the mind than to touch the heart; but in the Marquise de Villette they were tempered with the feminine charms of amiability and good taste. Bolingbroke was soon at her feet. His mistress was not obdurate, and the two lovers appear to have divided their time between the Rue Saint-Dominique, Faubourg Saint- Germain, where the marquise had a town residence, and Man;illy in Champagne, where she possessed a fine chateau. The death of Lady Bolingbroke in November, 1718, re- 114 ESSAYS. moved the only impediment to their marriage, but the ceremony was deferred till 1720, wlien they were in all probability married at Aix-la-Cliapelle. A little before this event occurred, Bolingbroke was relieved by a great piece of good-luck from the disagreeable necessity of being dependent on his wife's fortune. lie had been induced to take some shares in Law's Mississippi stocks when the shares were low, and those shares he had sold out in time to realize large profits. He afterwards observed that if he could have condescended to flatter Law for half an liour a week, or to have troubled himself for two minutes a day about money markets, he might have gained an immense fortune; but such transactions were, in his opinion, little worthy either of a philosopher or of a gentleman. At the beginning of 1720 he removed with his wife to that romantic and picturesque spot which is still as- sociated with his name, La Source, near Orleans. Here he amused himself with laying out his grounds, with scrib- bling Latin inscriptions for his summer-houses, and with trying to persuade his friends and himself that the world and the world's affairs were beneath his notice. In his Letters to Swift he affects the character of an elegant trifler, indulges with absurd affectation in the cant of the Porch and the Garden, and writes in a style in which the best vein of Horace and the worst vein of Seneca are curiously intermingled. Such was Bolingbroke as he chose to describe himself to liis acquaintances in Eng- land, but sucli was not the Bolingbroke of La Source. His habits were, in truth, those of a severe student. He rose early, he read hard. His intimate companions were men of science and letters, and the time that was not spent in study was spent for the most part in literary and philo- sophical discussion. Since his retirement from Paris he LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 115 had been enofacced on works which conld have left liim lit- tie leisure for idling. We find him busy with antiquities, with patristic and classical literature, with researches into the credibility of ancient annals, and with a comparative criticism of the various systems of chronology. We learn, moreover, from his correspondence, that he had, in addi- tion to all this, struck out some new theory about history, and that he was meditating an account of Rome and Eng- land to be written in accordance with that theory. Since his residence at La Source his undertakings had been still more ambitious. By the end of 1722 he had probably produced — for it is extremely difficult to settle the ex- act date of his earlier works — the Letters to Pouilly, of which he subsequently published an interesting abstract; a " Treatise on the Limits of Human Knowledge," of which he speaks in a letter to Alari, and which is perhaps sub- stantially identical with the first of the Four Essays ad- dressed to Pope ; the " Letter occasioned by one of Arch- bishop Tillotson's Sermons;" and the "Reflections on Innate Moral Principles," In a word, he had, before he quitted La Source, formulated the most important of those historical and philosophical theories which were afterwards developed in works given to the world. He had forged the weapons which, variously tempered, were in a few years to be wielded with such tremendous effect by his disci- ples. This is a circumstance which, in estimating his in- fluence on contemporaries, and pre-eminently on Voltaire, it is very necessary to bear in mind. But it is a circum- stance which has, we believe, escaped the notice of all his biographers and critics. The consequence has been that they have fallen into error of a fourfold kind. They have represented Bolingbroke as following, where in reality he was leading. They have attributed to his disciples what 116 ESSAYS. undoubtcdlj belongs to him; they have confounded hia theories with the theories of the English Freethinkers, and they have supposed that the movement of whicli lie was the central figure in France was identical with the move- ment of which Toland and Tyndal were the central figures in England. Nothing is, it is true, more natural than to estimate the influence of an author upon his age by the influence of his published writings, and yet in Boling- broke's case nothino; would be more misguiding. The era inaugurated by him in the history of political opinion dates, indeed, from the appearance of his papers in the Craftsman; but the era he inaugurated in a far more im- portant revolution dates from a period long antecedent to the publication of a single treatise by him. T lis era was marked, not by what he printed, but by what he spoke ; not by what he dictated to an amanuensis, but what he dictated in familiar intercourse to his friends. Many years before his appearance as an author, his work as an initia- tor had been done. Many years before he appealed him- self to the public mind, he had appealed to those by whom the public mind is moved. While the circulation of his writings was confined to private cliques, the substance of his writings had been interpreted to Europe \ i prose as matchless as his own, and in verse more brilliant than that in which Lucretius clothed the doctrines of Epicurus ; for his first disciple was Voltaire, and his second disciple was Pope. Wo believe, then, that when young Frangois Arouet ar- rived, in the winter of 1721, as a visitor at La Source, Bol- ingbroke had made considerable progress in the First Philosophy, had formulated his creed, and was perhaps not unwilling to provide the new creed with neophytes. Vol- taire — to call him by the name he afterwards assumed — ■ LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 117 was in raptures with his host. Ho found him almost om- niscient : " J'ai trouve dans cet iihistre Anglais," he is writ- ing to his friend Tlieriot, " toute Terudition de son pays ct toute la politesse du notrc. Cet hommc, qui a passe toute sa vie dans les plaisirs et dans les affaires, a trouve pourtant le mo)-en de tout apprendre et dc tout retenir. II sait This- toire dcs anciens Egyptiens comme celle d'Angleterre ; il possede Yirgile comme Milton ; il aime lapoesie Anglaise, la Fran^aise et I'ltaliennc." The young poet was at that time busy with his epic poem, which Bolingbroke pro- nounced to be superior to anything wliicli had yet ap- peared in French poetry. Their conversation soon turned, however, -on more serious topics than the virtues of Henri Quatre ; and Voltaire, who entered La Source meditating the " Ilenriade," quitted it meditating " Le Pour ct le Con- tre." How long he remained under Bolino-brolvc's roof it is now impossible to say, but he evidently remained long enough to become impregnated with his ideas. The in- timacy thus commenced in France was afterwards renewed in England, where for upwards of two years the friends lived within a few miles of each other. The nature and extent of Bolingbroke's influence on Voltaire is one of the most interesting questions in the lit- erary history of the eighteenth century, and it is a ques- tion which has never, in our opinion, received half the at- tention it deserves. English biographers have, as a rule, ignored it ; French critics have contented themselves with making a few general observations, in which a very lauda- ble desire to do justice to Bolingbroke struggles with a very natural desire to do honor to Voltaire. Now Voltaire himself never made any secret of his obligations to Bol- ingbroke. When the two friends first met at La Source, Bolingbroke discussed, he listened. To the end of his life 118 ESSAYS. lie regarded him as his master. To the end of his life he continued to speak of him with mingled feelings of rever- ence and affection. When the two friends first met, Bol- ingbroke was just at that age when the individuality of men is most pronounced; Voltaire was just at that age when the mind is most susceptible and most tenacious of new impressions. The one was aspiring to open out fresh worlds of thought, to initiate a fresh era in the his- tory of inquiry ; the other had, up to that time, aspired to nothing higher than to polish verses and to point epi- grams. Bolingbroke assumed, therefore, naturally enough, the authority of a teacher; Voltaire accepted, naturally enough, the position of a disciple. When they met in England they met on a similar footing: the one eager to impart, the other eager to acquire ; the one covering reams of manuscript with his thoughts, the other storing his memory with recollections. In conversation Bolingbroke delighted in long monologues, the diction of which was, we are told, as perfect as that of his printed dissertations. " He possessed," says Chesterfield, " such a flowing happi- ness of expression that even his most familiar conversa- tions, if taken down in writing, would have borne the press without the least correction either as to method or style." In these monologues he dealt at length with the topics which form the substance of his philosophical works. In- deed, it was notorious among those who knew him well, that there was scarcely a theory, an opinion, or even an idea, in his posthumous writings which had not been re- peatedly anticipated by him in conversation. To these con- versations Voltaire sat for two years a delighted listener. It would not, of course, be true to say that what he learned in the drawing-room at Dawley was the sum of what he gathered during his residence among us. For he studied a""'"-'^"' "•"•■•■o LORD BOLIXGBROKE IN EXILE. 119 our literature and our history, our institutions and our cliar- acter, as none of his countrymen have ever done before or since. But there is, we tliink, a distinction to be drawn between what he derived from observation and study, and what he derived immediately from Iiis intercourse from Bolingbroke. What he saw and read, sent him from our shores a master in the niceties of our tongue, a scholar familiar with almost everything which English genius had produced in poetry, in criticism, in satire, in metaphysical speculation ; the champion of civil and intellectual liberty, the disciple and exponent of Locke and Newton. From Bolingbroke he learned the application of those studies. He emero-ed from the school of Locke and Newton a logi- cian and a philosopher. He emerged from the school of Bolingbroke the Prince of Iconoclasts and the Apostle of Scepticism. It was Bolingbroke who taught him to per- vert the " Essay on the Uuman Understanding " into a vin- dication of materialism, and the " Novum Organon " into a satire on metaphysics. Nor was this all. The writings and the conversation of his friend furnished him not only with the hint and framework of those doctrines which the world has for many generations recognized as most charac- teristic of Voltaire, but with an inexhaustible store of illus- trative matter; with references, with illustrations, with ar- guments. This will be at once evident if we compare what Voltaire has written on metaphysics, on early Christianity, on theological dogma, on the nature of the Deity, on the relation of man to the Deity, on inspiration, on religious sectarianism, on the authenticity of the Ilebrew Scriptures, on the authenticity of the Gospels, on the credibility of profane historians, on the origin of civil society, on the ori- gin of evil, on the study and true use of history, with what Bolingbroke has written on the same subjects. Should any 120 ESSAYS. one be inclined to question the correctness of what wo liave advanced, we would exhort him to compare the " Traito de Metaphysique," the " Dieu ct Ics Ilommes," and the " llo- melic sur I'Athoisme," with the Abstract of the " Letters to Pouilly," and the "Essays" addressed to Pope; tlie "Examen Important de milord Bolingbroke," and the re- marks on Jewish History in the " Essai sur les Moeurs," with the " Letter occasioned by one of Archbishop Tillot- son's Sermons," and the dissertation on Sacred Annals in the " Third Letter on the Study of History ;" the " Lettres de Memmius li Ciceron " with the " Minutes of Essays ;" the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth articles in the " Fragmens sur Tllistoire" with the theories and principles inculcated in the "Letters on the Study of History." It would not, perhaps, be going too far to say that the his- torical dissertations of Bolingbroke suggested and inspired both the "Essai sur les Moeurs" and the "Essai sur lo Pyrrhonismc de I'llistoirc," as they certainly furnished models for the opening chapters of the " Siecle de Louis XIV" To return, however, from our digression. Though Bol- ingbroke continued to assure his friends that his life at La Source left him nothing to desire, that his philosophy grew confirmed by habit, and that he was — we are quoting his own words — under no apprehension that a glut of .study and retirement would ever cast him back into the world, his whole soul was ulcerated by discontent and impatience. He implored Lord Polwarth, whom he met in the spring of 1722, to remind the English Ministry of their promise. He applied to the Duke of Orleans and to Du Bois to ex- ercise their influence with Walpole and Townshend. He expressed himself willing to submit to any conditions if he LORD BOLINGBROKE IN EXILE. 121 could only procure a pardon. It appears to have been at- tained cbiefly through the influence of Carteret and Towns- hend, who had been induced, primarily by Stair and more recently by Polwarth, to remind the King of what had, seven years before, been promised in the interview at the Embassy.* At last, in May, 1723, the grant which enabled liim to become once more a denizen of his native country passed the Great Seal. An Act of Parliament was still nec- essary for the restoration of his right of inheritance, and for the recovery of his seat in the Upper House. He was now, however, enabled to plead for himself. At the begin- ning of June he set out for England. As the ship was waiting for a favorable wind a curious incident occurred. A few weeks before, his old coadjutor Atterbury had been convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Jacobites, and had in consequence been ordered to quit the king- dom. The two men, formerly allied so nearly, and now so widely estranged, passed each other, without speaking, at Calais — the one the proselyte, the other the martyr, of a common cause. " I am exchanged," was the Bishop's very significant comment. On his arrival in London, Bolingbroke found that the King had departed for Hanover, and that the two secre- taries, Carteret and Townshend, were with him. Many months would in all probability elapse before the Houses reassembled. During the interval he hoped by dexterous diplomacy to form such alliances and to mature such schemes as would, in the following session, suffice to make the reversal of his attainder a matter of certainty. In the tactics of political intrigue he had few rivals, and he soon discovered that he was in a position eminently favorable for their application. The schisms which had from the ■"■ See " Marchinont Papers," vol. ii., p. 184. 6 122 ESSAYS. formation of George's first Ministry divided tlie Cabinet had now resolved themselves into one great strno-o-lc. The events of I7l7 had left Sunderland and Stanhope masters of the field. The events of 1721 had mined Sunderland and Stanhope, and had established the supremacy of Wal- pole and Townshend. That supremacy had been confirm- ed by the death of Stanhope in 1721, and by the death of Sunderland in 1722. There still remained, however, one formidable rival, a rival who had inherited all those princi- ples of foreign and domestic policy which Sunderland had labored to uphold, who with those principles possessed abilities such as neither Stanhope nor Sunderland had any pretension to, and who, though he had not completed his thirty-third year, had more influence in the councils of Eu- rope than cither of the two Ministers. That rival was Carteret. As long as Carteret remained, Walpolc and his brother-in-law saw that they would have no peace. But to get rid of Carteret was no easy matter. At this mo- ment, indeed, it seemed probable that the struggle would terminate in favor of their refractory colleague. He stood well with the King; he stood well with those by whom the King was governed, with Berndorf and Bothmar, with the Countess of Darlington and with the Countess of Platen. At the Court of France his influence was para- mount, for the English ambassador, Sir Luke Schaub, was his creature, and the late Regent's confidential adviser, Du Bois, "was his friend. While the issue of this contest still hung doubtful, Bolingbroke prudently abstained from as- suming the character of a partisan. Both of the rivals could, as he well knew, serve his turn ; the opposition of cither might be fatal to his interests. By estranging Car- teret he would estrange the Court ; by estranging Walpole and Townslicnd h6 would estrange the most influential LORD LOLINGBEOKE IN EXILE. 123 members of the Upper and the Lower House. In a few weeks, however, it became more and more evident that the power of Carteret was declining, and at the end of July Bolingbrokc attempted, by a skilful and well-timed ma- noeuvre, to establish such relations with Walpole as must have imposed on that Minister the necessity of becoming his advocate. He was, he said, in a position to make a proposal, which would not, he hoped, in the present condi- tion of affairs, be unacceptable. His friends, the leaders of the Tory party, Sir William Wyndham, Lord Bathurst, and Lord Gower, were prepared to form a coalition with the brother Ministers. Thev Iiad already been invited to coalesce with Carteret, but they had no faith either in Carteret's policy or in Carteret's pron)ises, and they were now willing to take their stand by Walpole as they had been a few months back ready to take their stand by his rival. Walpole at once discovered with what object these overtures had been made. He had little confidence in the Tories, he had still less confidence in their ambassador; and he not only peremptorily declined to enter into such a negotiation, but he boldly told Bolingbroke that he had been guilty of great indiscretion in entangling himself in Tory intrigues, when his political salvation depended on the favor of a Whig Parliament. This was not encourag- ing, but Bolingbroke had too much sagacity to display either resentment or chagrin ; he gracefully acknowledged the justice of what Walpole had said, expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the result of their interview, and withdrew to try his fortune with Townshcnd and Carteret. In September he started for Aix-la-Chapelle, nominally on the plea of ill-health, really, no doubt, to see if he could succeed in obtaining an interview with the King, and to consider in what way he could turn to account the despica- 12t - ESSAYS. blc intrigues which soon afterwards terminated in the fall of Carteret. During his visit at Ai.\-la-Chapelle he re- ceived, however, no encouragement to go on to Ilerren- hauscn, and in a few weeks he proceeded to Paris. He found the Court of Versailles the centre of that struggle which was aut, unfortunately, no portion of Voltaire's biography is involved in greater obscurity. " On ignore," writes Charles Remusat, " a peu pres quelle fut sa vie en Angle- terre. Ces deux annees sont une lacunc dans son histoirc. C'est un point de sa biographic qui meritcrait dcs rcchcr- chcs." Carlyle, who attempted in the third volume of his "Frederick the Great" to throw some light on it, aban- doned the task in impatient despair. Merc inanity and darkness visible — such are his expressions — reign, in all Voltaire's biographies, over tliis period of his life. " Seek not to know it," he exclaims; "no man has inquired into it, probably no competent man ever will."* It happened, however, that at the very time Carlyle was thus expressing himself, a very competent man was en- gaged on the task. The researches of Desnoiresterres suc- ceeded in dispersing a portion at least of the obscurity which hung over Voltaire's movements during these mys- terious years. He took immense pains to supply the de- ficiencies of preceding biographers. Judging rightly that all that could now be recovered could be recovered only in scattered fragments, he diligently collected such informa- tion as lay dispersed in Voltaire's own correspondence and writings, and in the correspondence and writings of those with whom his illustrious countryman had, when in Eng- land, been brought into contact. Much has, it is true, es- caped him ; much which he has collected he has not, per- haps, turned to the best account ; but it is due to him — the fullest and the most satisfactory of Voltaire's biogra- phers — to say that his chapter, " Voltaire et la Societe An- glaise," must form the basis of all future inquiries into this most interesting subject. To higher praise he is not, we * Carlyle's own account is full of errors, some of them evincing almost incredible carelessness. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 193 think, entitled. Some of Desnoiresterres's deficiencies are supplied by Mr, Parton, whose " Life of Voltaire " appeared in two goodly octavos in 1881, Mr, Parton has made one or two unimportant additions to what was already known, but he has, we are sorry to find, done little more. We gratefully acknowledge our obligations both to Desnoires- terres and to Mr, Parton, Bat these obligations are slight. The first point to be settled is the exact date of his ar- rival in England, and that date can, we think, be deter- mined with some certainty. On May the 2d (n, s.), 1726, an order arrived for his release from the Bastile, on the understanding that he would quit France and betake him- self, as he had offered to do, to England. On May the 6th he was, as his letter to Madame de Ferriole proves, at Cal- ais;* and at Calais he remained for some days, the guest of his friend Dunoquet, the treasurer of the troops. How long he remained at Calais wc cannot say, as no documents have as yet been discovered which throw light on his movements between the 6th of May and the beginning of June. From his letter to Madame de Ferriole it certainly appears that he had no immediate intention of embarking. He asks her to send him news and to give him instruc- tions, and tells her that he is waiting to receive them. In all probability he continued at Calais, not as the biogra- phers assert, for four days, but for nearly five weeks — that is to say, from the 6th of May to the 8th or 9th of June, lie tells us himself that he disembarked near Greenwich, and it is clear from the passage which follows that he land- ed on the day of Greenwich Fair. That fair was invaria- bly held on Whit-Monday, and Whit-Monday fell in 1726 on May the 30th (o. s.). Now a reference to the Daily Courant for May the 30th shows that a mail arrived from * And see the " Letter to A. M*** Melanges," vol. i., p. 17. 9 194 ESSAYS. France on Sunday the 29tli, wliicli would bo, of course, ac- cording to tlie new style, June 10th. Supposing, there- fore, that his visit at Calais was protracted to five weeks after his letter to Madame de Ferriole — and there is, as wc have shown, no reason for supposing tliat it was not — the time would exactly tally. That he should have remained on board till Monday morning need excite no surprise. But there is other evidence in favor of this date. In the remarkable passage in which he describes what he saw on landing, he tells us that the vessels in the river had spread their sails (deployc Icurs voiles) to do honor to the King and Queen,* and he particularly notices the splendid liv- eries worn by the King's menials. We turn to the Lon- don Gazette for Monday, May the 30th, and we find that on that day the King's birthday, the rejoicings for which liad been deferred from the preceding Saturday, was " cel- ebrated with the usual demonstrations of public joy ;" and in the British Gazetteer for Saturday, May the 21st, wc read that " great preparations are making for celebrating the King's birthday," and that *' the King's menial serv- ants are to be new clothed on that occasion." We be- lieve, then, that Voltaire first set foot in England on Whit- Monday, May the 30th, 1726. On the voyage he liad been the prey of melancholy thoughts, lie drew, in the bitterness of his soul, a par- allel between his own position and the position in which his favorite hero once stood. And his feelings found ex- pression in verse — " Je ne dois pas etre plus fortune Que le liei'os cclebre sur nia viellc. * In adding the name of the Queen he was of course mistaken, as she was in coufincmeut. % VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 195 II fut proscrit, persecute, damno Par les devots et leur douce sequelle. En Angletcrre il trouva du secours, J'en vais chercher."* But on landing lie soon recovered bis cheerfulness, and throwing himself, in a transport of joy, on the earth, he reverently saluted it.f Many of his countrymen have de- scribed their first impressions of the land of Shakespeare and Newton, but to none of them lias it ever presented it- self as it presented itself to the fascinated eye of Voltaire. Everything combined to fill the young exile with delight and admiration. Though his health was delicate, he was in exuberant spirits. It was a cloudless day in the loveli- est month of the English year. A soft wind from the west — we arc borrowing his own glowing description — tempered the rays of the hot spring sun, and disposed the heart to joy. The Thames, rolling full and rapid, was in all its glory ; and in all their glory, too, were the stately trees which have now disappeared, but which then fringed the river-banks on both sides for many miles. Nor was it nature only that was keeping carnival. It was the anni- versary of the Great Fair, and it was the anniversary of the King's birthday. The river between Greenwich and Lon- don was one nnbrokcn pageant. Farther Ihan the eye could sec stretched, with every sail crowded, two lines of merchant-ships drawn np to salute the royal barge, which, preceded by boats with bands of music, and followed by •wherries rowed by men in gorgeous liveries, floated slowly past. Everywhere he could discern the signs of prosper- * Quoted iu the " Historical Memoirs" of the author of " The Ilen- riade" (17*78), wlicre the writer speaks of having seen these verses in a letter in Voltaire's own handwriting, addressed to M. Dumas d'Aiguebere. f Duvernet, " Vie de Voltaire," p. 64, 196 ESSAYS. ity and freedom. Loyal acclamations rent the air, and Voltaire observed with interest tliat a nation of freemen was a nation of dutiful subjects. From the river lie turned to the park, and, curious to sec English society in all its phases, he spent the after- noon in observing what was going on. lie wandered up and down the park, questioning such holiday-makers as could understand him, about the races, and the arrange- ments for the races. lie admired the skill with which the young women managed their horses, and was greatly struck with the freshness and beauty of their complexions, the neatness of their dress, and the graceful vivacity of their movements. In the course of his rambles he acci- dentally met some English merchants to whom he had letters of introduction. By them he was treated with great courtesy and kindness. They lent him a horse, they provided him with refreshments, and they placed him where both the park and the river could be seen to most advantage. While he was enjoying the fine view from the hill, he perceived near him a Danish courier who had, like himself, just arrived in England. The man's face, says Voltaire, was radiant with joy ; he believed himself to be in a paradise where the women were always beau- tiful and animated, where the sky was always clear, and where no one thought of anything but pleasure. " And I," he adds, " was even more enchanted than the Dane."* The same evening he was in London, in all probability the guest of Bolingbroke. His acquaintance with that distinguished man liad begun at La Source in the winter of 1721. Their acquaintance had soon ripened into inti- macy, and though since then their personal intercourse had been interrupted, they had interchanged letters. At * " Letter to A. M*** Melanges,'" vol. i., p. 17 sqq. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 197 that time Bolingbroke was an exile ; he had recently ob- tained a pardon, and was now settled in England, where he divided his time between his town-house in Pall Mall and his country-house at Dawley. The friendship of Bol- ingbroke would have been a sufficient passport to the most brilliant literary circles in London, but as the connection of Bolingbrokc lay principally among the Tories, the young adventurer had taken the precaution to secure a protector among the Whigs. The name of Bubb Dod- mgton is now a synonyme for all that is vilest and most contemptible in the trade of politics, but at the time of which we are writing his few virtues were more prominent than his many vices. Uis literary accomplishments, his immense wealth, and his generous though not very dis- criminating patronage of men of letters, had deservedly given him a high place among the Maecenases of his age. At his palace in Dorsetshire he loved to assemble the wits and poets of the Opposition, the most distinguished of whom were Thomson and Young — the one still busy with his Seasons, the other slowly elaborating Ins brilliant Satires. For his introduction to Dodington he was in- debted to the English Ambassador at Paris, Horace Wal- polc the elder, who had, at the instigation of the Count de Morville, written a letter recommending him to the patronage of Dodington. How fully he availed himself of these and other influential friends is proved by the fact that when he quitted England in 1729 there was scarcely a single person of distinction, either in letters or politics, with whom he was not personally acquainted. But his most intimate associate was an opulent English merchant who resided at Wandsworth, and whose name was Everard Falkener. He had become acquainted with him in Paris, and had promised, should opportunity offer, to visit him 198 ESSAYS. in England.* Falkener's house be seems to have regarded as his home, and of Falkcncr himself he always speaks in terms of affection and gratitude. lie dedicated "Zaire" to him ; he regularly corresponded with him ; and to the end of his life he loved to recall the happy days spent under his good friend's hospitable roof at Wandsworth. Many years afterwards, when he wished to express his sense of the kindness he had received from King Stan- islaus, he described him " as a kind of Falkcncr." Of Falkcncr few particulars have survived. We know from Voltaire that he was subsequently appointed Ambassador to Constantinople, that he held some appointment in Flan- ders, and that he was knighted. We gather from other sources that he became secretary to the Duke of Cumber- land, and that he was one of the witnesses called on the trial of Simon Lord Lovat, in 1747. To this it may be added that he became, towards the end of George the Sec- ond's reign, one of the postmasters-general ; that in 1747 f he married a daughter of General Churchill ; and that he died at Bath, November 16, 175S.J That Voltaire should have delighted in his society is not surprising, for though we know little of Falkener's character, we know enough to iinderstand its charm. "I am here" — so runs a passage in one of his letters, quoted by Voltaire in his remarks upon Pascal — "just as you left me, neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer ; enjoying perfect health, having everything that renders life agreeable, without love, without avarice, without ambition, and without envy ; and, as long as all that lasts, I shall call myself a very happy man." § * Goldsmith's "Life of Voltaire," Miscellaneous Works, vol. iv., p. 20. -j- Gentleman'' s 3Tagazinc for February, 1747. \ Gentleman^ s Magazine for November, 1758. § "(Euvres Completes," Beuchot, vol. xxxviii., p. 46. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 199 To what extent Voltaire was acquainted with the Eng- lisli language on bis arrival at Greenwich it is impossible to say. We can find no traces of his having been engaged in studying it before his retirement subsequent to the can- ing be received from the Chevalier de Rohan, at the be- ginning of February, 1726. If this was the case, what he knew of our language was what he had been able to pick up in about three months. His progress must have been unusually rapid, for he had not only made himself under- stood at Greenwich Fair, but on the following day he had mingled familiarly with the company at the coffee-houses. It is of course possible that the conversation had, on these occasions, been carried on in his native language. Then, as now, large numbers of French refugees had found a home in London. They had their own places of worship ; they liad their own coffee-houses, the principal being the " Rainbow," in Marylebone, and there was quite a colony of them at Wandsworth. Then, as now, almost all edu- cated Englishmen were conversant with the language of Racine and Moliere. Regularly as each season came round a Parisian company appeared. At Court it was the usual mode of communication. By 1728 its attainment was held to be so essential a part of education that in the Oc- tober of that year a journal was started, the professed ob- ject of which was to facilitate the study of it.* Indeed, wherever he went he would encounter his countrymen, or Londoners who could converse with him in the language of his countrymen. In Bolingbroke's house he would probably hear little else, for Lady Bolingbroke scarcely ever ventured to express herself in English ; and of Falke- ncr's proficiency in French we have abundant proof. But * See the Flying Post or Weekly Medley, the first number of which appeared on October 8, 1728. 200 ESSAYS. among the cultivated Ei)glishmen of that day tlierc was one rcmarlcablc exception, and that was unfortunately in the case of a man with whom Voltaire was most anxious to exchange ideas. " Pope," wrote Voltaire many years afterwards, " could hardly read French, and spoke not one syllable of our language." * Voltaire's desire to meet Pope had no doubt been sharpened by the flattering re- marks which Pope had, two years before, made about the " llenriade," or, as it was then entitled, " La Ligue." A copy of the poem had been forwarded to him from France by Bolingbroke, and to oblige Bolingbroko he had man- aged to spell it out. The perusal had given him, he said, a very favorable idea of the author, whom he pronounced to be " a bigot, but no heretic ; one who knows authority and national sanctions without prejudice to truth and charity ; in a word, one worthy of that share of friendship and intimacy with which you honor him."f These com- plimentary remarks Bolingbroke had, it seems, conveyed to Voltaire, and a correspondence appears to have ensued between the two poets, though no traces of that corre- spondence are now to be found.J Of his first interview with Pope three accounts are now extant. The first is that given by Owen Ruffhead, the substance of which is repeated by Johnson in his life of Pope; the second is that given by Goldsmith, and the third is that given by Duvernet. It will be well, perhaps, to let each authority tell his own story. "Mr. Pope," writes Owen Ruffhead, " told one of his most intimate friends that the poet Voltaire had got some recommendation to him when he came to England, and that the first time he saw him was at * See Spcnce's "Anecdotes " (Singer, 8vo.), p. 204, note. f Letter to Bolingbroke, dated April 9, 1724. X See Pope's letter to Caryl, dated December 25, 1725. VOLTAIKE IX ENGLAND. 201 Twickenham, where he kept him to dinner. Mrs. Pope, a most ex- cellent woman, was then alive, and observing that this stranger, who appeared to be entirely emaciated, had no stomach, she expressed her concern for his want of appetite, on which Yoltaire gave her so indelicate and brutal an account of the occasion of his disorder, con- tracted in Italy, that the poor lady was obliged immediately to rise from the table. When Mr. Pope related that, his friend asked him how he could forbear ordering his servant John to thrust Voltaire head and shoulders out of his house ? He replied that there was more of ignorance in this conduct than a purposed affront ; that Vol- taire came into England, as other foreigners do, on a prepossession that not only all religion, but all common decency of morals, was lost among us." — Life of Pope, 4to, p. 156. Next comes Goldsmith : " M. Voltaire has often told his friends that he never observed in himself such a succession of opposite passions as he experienced upon his first interview with Mr. Pope. When he first entered the room and perceived our poor, melancholy poet, naturally deformed, and wasted as he was with sickness and study, he could not help re- garding him with the utmost compassion ; but when Pope began to speak and to reason upon moral obligations, and dress the most deli- cate sentiments in the most charming diction, Voltaire's pity began to be changed into admiration, and at last even into envy. It is not uncommon with him to assert that no man ever pleased him so much in serious conversation, nor any whose sentiments mended so much upon recollection." — Life of Voltaire, Miscellaneous Works, vol. iv., p. 24. It is difficult to reconcile these accounts with the narra- tive of Dnvernet, who, as he almost certainly had his in- formation from Thieriot, is an authority of great weight : " Dans leur premiere entrevue ils furent fort embarrasses. Pope s'expriniait tres peniblemcnt en Fran9ais, ct Voltaire n'etant point accoutume aux sifflements do la langue Anglaise ne pouvait se faire entendre. II se retira dans un village et ne rentra dans Londres que lorsqu'il cut acquis unc grande facilit6 ^ s'exprimcr en Anglais." 9^^ 202 ESSAYS. This seems to us by far the most probable account. It is certain that Voltaire devoted himself with great assidu- ity to the systematic study of English, shortly after his arrival among us. lie provided himself with a regular teacher, who probably assisted him not only in the compo- sition of his letters, which he now regularly wrote in Eng- lish, but in the composition of his two famous essays.* He obtained an introduction to Colley Gibber, and regu- larly attended the theatres, following the play in a printed copy.f His studies were, however, interrupted by his sud- denly leaving England for France — an expedition attended with considerable peril, and conducted with the utmost se- crecy. The particulars of this journey are involved in great obscurity. That he undertook it with the object of inducing the Chevalier de Rohan to give him an opportu- nity of avenging his wounded honor — that for some time, at least, he remained concealed in Paris, not venturing to have an interview with any friend or witli any relative — is clear from his letter to Thieriot, dated August 12, 1726. That he was at Wandsworth again, almost immediately af- terwards, is proved by a letter to Mademoiselle Bessieres, dated October the 15th, in which he speaks of himself as having been there for two months. lie arrived in England in a state of abject depression, and this depression was aggravated by ill-health and the cross accidents of fortune. lie had brouo-ht with him a bill of exchange of the value of 20,000 francs, and this bill — as lie was not in immediate need of money — he had neglected to present. On presenting it to the man on whom it had been drawn — one B'Acosta, a Jew — D'Acos- ta informed him that three days before he had become * " La Voltairomanie," pp. 46, 47. f Chctwood's "History of the Stage," p. 46. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 203 bankrupt; and the money was lost. Voltaire's misfort- une, however, happening to reach the ears of the King, the King good-naturedly sent him a sum which has been vari- ously estimated, but which probably amounted to a hun- dred guineas, and so relieved him from pressing embarrass- ment. But what affected him most was the news of the death of his sister. This threw him into an agony of grief. There is nothing in the whole range of Voltaire's voluminous correspondence so touching as the letter in which his feelings on this sad occasion found vent. It was addressed to Mademoiselle Bessieres, the lady who had sent the intelligence. It is dated " Wandsworth, October 15, 1V26." lie describes himself as acquainted only with the sorrows of life ; he is dead, he says, to everything but the affection he owes to his correspondent. He alludes bitterly to the " retraite ignoree " from which he writes ; and he says it would have been far better, both for his rel- atives and himself, had death removed him instead of his sister. "Les amertumes et les souffrances" — so run his gloomy reflections — " qui en ont marque presque tons les jours ont ete souvent mon onvrage. Je sens la peu que je vaux ; mes faiblesses me font pitie et raes fautes me font horreur." On the following day he wrote in a similar strain to Madame de Bernieres. He was in deep distress, too, at the cruelty and injustice with which he had been treated by his brother ; and to this distress he subsequent- ly gave passionate utterance in a letter to Thieriot.* But neither depression nor sorrow ever held long dominion over that buoyant and volatile spirit. On the very day on which he was thus mournfully expressing himself to Ma- dame do Bernieres, he was, in another letter, dilating with * See letter dated " Wandsworth, June 14, 1'727," "CEuvres Com- pletes" (ed. 1880), vol. xxxiii., p. 172. 204 ESSAYS. enthusiasm on the beauties of Pope's poetry. This we learn from a very interesting fragment preserved by War- burton in liis notes to the " Papistic to Arbuthnot." As the fragment appears to have escaped the notice of all Vol- taire's editors and biographers, and as it proves the very high opinion he entertained of Pope's genius, we will quote a portion of it : " I look upon his poem called tlic 'Essay on Criticism ' as superior to the ' Art of Poetry ' of Horace, and his ' Rape of the Lock ' is, in my opinion, above the ' Lutrin ' of Despreaux. I never saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle graces, so great variety, so much wit, and so refined knowledge of the world, as in this little perform- ance." It would be interesting to know if this manuscript letter, which Warburton described as being before him when he wrote, is now in existence. It was dated October 15, 1726.* Of his movements during the autumn of 1726 we know nothing. The probability is that he was engaged in close study, and saw little society. lie instructs his correspond- ents in France to direct their letters to the care of Lord Bolingbroke ; but he was evidently not in personal commu- nication with Bolingbroke, or with any member of the Twickenham circle. This is proved by the fact that he knew nothing of the serious accident by which Pope near- ly lost his life until two months after it had happened, as his letter to Pope, dated November the 16th, shows. An- other letter,f too — a letter undated, but evidently belong- ing to this period and written in English — addressed to John Brinsden, Bolingbroke's secretary, points to the same conclusion. Very little, however, of the following year was * Warburton's "Pope" (octavo edition), vol. iv., p. 40. f Preserved in Colet's " Relics of Literature," p. 70. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 205 spent in retirement, for we find traces of him in many places. His attenuated figure and eager, haggard face grew familiar to the frequenters of fashionable society. lie passed three months at the seat of Lord Peterborough, where he became intimate with Swift,* who was a fellow- visitor. At Bubb Dodington's mansion, at Eastbury, he met Young, who had not as yet taken orders, but was seek- ing fortune as a hanger-on at great houses. It was a curi- ous chance which brought together the future author of the " Night Thoughts " and the future author of " La Pu- celle;" it was a still more curious circumstance that they should have formed a friendship which remained unbroken, when the one had become the most rigid of Christian di- vines, and the other the most daring of anti-Christian prop- agandists. Many years afterwards Young dedicated to him in very flattering terms one of the most pleasing of his minor poems — the Sea Piece. At Eastbury occurred a well - known incident. A dis- cussion had arisen as to the merits of *' Paradise Lost." Young spoke in praise of his favorite poet ; Voltaire, who had as little sympathy with Milton as he had with -^schy- lus and Dante, objected to the episode of Sin and Death, contending that as they were abstractions, it was absurd to assign them offices proper only to concrete beings. These objections he enforced with his usual eloquence and sar- castic wit. The parallel between the hungry monster of Milton, " grinning horrible its ghastly smile," and the meagre form of the speaker — his thin face lighted up, as it always was in conversation, with that peculiar sardonic * See a very interesting extract from a MS. jonrnal Ivcpt by a Ma- jor Broome, who visited Voltaire in 1765, and who licard this and other particulars from Voltaire himself. It is printed in "Notes and Queries " (first geries), vol. x., p. 403. 206 ESSAYS. smile familiar to us from his portraits — was irresistible. And Young closed the argument with an epigram (we quote Herbert Croft's version) : " You are so witty, profligate, and thin, At once wc tliinlc thee Milton, Death, and Sin." It appears, however, from Young's poem, in which ho plainly alludes to this conversation, that he succeeded in impressing on his friendly opponent "that Milton's blind- ness lay not in his song" — " On Dorset downs when Milton's page, With Sin and Death provoked thy rage, Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with gentle rhymes? Who kindly couch'd the censure's eye. And gave thee clearly to descry Sound judgment giving law to fancy strong? Who half inelin'd tliee to confess. Nor could thy modesty do less. That Milton's blindness lay not in his song?" A letter written about this time to a friend in France, dated by the editors — but dated, we suspect, wrongly — 1726, is a sufficient proof that the young exile was no longer either discontented or unhappy. *' You who arc a perfect Briton" — thus the letter runs — "should cross the Channel and come to us. I assure you that a man of your temper would not dislike a country where one obeys to {sic) the laws only, and to one's whims. Reason is free here, and walks her own way. Hypochondriacs are es- pecially welcome. No manner of living appears strange. We have men who walk six miles a day for their health, feed upon roots, never taste flesh, wear a coat in winter thinner than your ladies do in the hottest days."* *" Pieces Inedites de Voltaire." Paris, 1820. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 20t In March he was present at the funeral of Sir Isaac New- ton. It was a spectacle which made a profound impres- sion on him, and he ever afterwards delighted to recall how he had once been the denizen of a country in which the first officers of the State contended for the honor of supporting the pall of a man whose sole distinction Iiad lain in intellectual eminence. IIow differently, he thought, would the author of the " Principia " have fared in Paris, lie subsequently made the acquaintance of the philoso- pher's niece, Mrs. Conduit, and of the physician and sur- geon who attended him in his last moments ; from them he learned many interesting particulars. It is perhaps worth mentioning that we owe to Voltaire the famous story of the falling apple,* and the preservation of the re- ply which Newton is said to have given to the person who asked him how be had discovered the laws of the universe. In the course of this year he met Gay, who showed him the "Beggar's Opera" before it appeared on the stage :f and it was probably in the course of this year that he paid his memorable visit to Congreve. Ilis admiration of the greatest of our comic poets is sufficiently indicated in the " Lettres Philosophiques," and that admiration he lost no time in personally expressing. But Congreve, whose tem- per was probably not improved by gout and blindness, and who was irritated, perhaps, by the ebullience of his young admirer, affected to regard literary distinction as a trifle. " I beg," he said, " that you will look upon me, not as an author, but as a gentleman." " If," replied Voltaire, dis- * " Lettres Philosopliiqucs XV.," and " Elements e Painted Chamber, one of his nearest relatives was so- liciting custom in a counting-house in the City. lie draws a sarcastic parallel between a " seigneur, powdered, in the tip of the mode, who knows exactly what o'clock the King rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of gran- deur and state at the same time that he is acting the slave in the antechamber of a Prime-minister," and a merchant who enriches his country, despatches orders from his count- ing-house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the felicity of the world.* * See the remarkable passage at the end of the tenth letter in the " Lotties Philosophiques." VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 215 But notliing impressed him so deeply as the homage paid, and paid by all classes, to intellectual eminence. Parts and genius were, he observed, a sure passport not, as in France, to the barren wreath of the Academy, but to affluence and popularity. By his pen Addison had risen to one of the highest offices of the State. A few graceful poems had made the fortunes of Stepney, Prior, Gay, Par- nell, Tickell, and Ambrose Philipps. By his Essays Steele had won a Commissionership of Stamps and a place in Parliament. A single comedy had made Congrevo inde- pendent for life. Newton was Master of the Mint, and Locke had been a Commissioner of Appeals. lie records with pride that the portrait of Walpole was to be seen only in his own closet, but that the portraits of Pope were to be seen in half the great houses in England. " Go," he says, "into Westminster Abbey, and you find that what raises the admiration of the spectator is not the mausole- ums of the English Kings, but the monuments which the gratitude of the nation has erected to perpetuate the mem- ory of those illustrious men who contributed to its glory." He thought bitterly how iu his own country he had seen Crebillon on the verge of perishing by hunger, and the son of Racine on the last stage of abject destitution. When, too, on his return to France, he saw the body of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur refused the last rites of religion, and buried with the burial of a dog, " because she was an actress," his thoughts wandered to the generous and large- hearted citizens who laid the coffin of Anno Oldfield beside the coffins of their kings and of their heroes. " rivale d' Athene, Londrcs ! licurcuse terre, Ainsi que les tyians, vous avcz su chasscr Les prejuges hontcux qui vous livraient la guerre. Cost la qu'ou salt tout dire et tout leeompeuscr. ir.v; \ 210 ESSAYS. Nul art n'ost m6pn36, tout succes a sa gloirc. Le vainqueur dc Tallard, le fils dc la victoirc, Le sublime Dryden, et le sage Addison, Et la charmantc Oldfield, et I'lmmortel Newton Out part au temple de memoire, Et Lecouvreur k Londre aurait eu des torabeaux Parmi les bcaux-esprits, les rois ct les heros. Quicouquc a des talents b, Londre est un grand liomme." La Mort de Mile. Lecoxivreiir. In January, 1V27, ho had tlie lionor to be introduced to the King, who received him very graciously.* At the end of June be obtained permission from the French Govern- ment to visit Paris, but it was on the understanding that he was not to remain there for more than three months, counting from tl\c day of his arrival. If that time was exceeded, it was exceeded at his peril. Of the particulars of this visit nothinir is known. It is even doubtful whether he undertook it. If it was undertaken it was, like the former visit, kept a profound secret, even from his most intimate fricnds.f SECTION II. NOVEMBER, n27-MARCn, 1728. Among the Ashburnham MSS.J there is a curious relic of Voltaire's residence in England. It is the Common- * British Journal, January 28, 1 726-2 Y, where a special paragraph is inserted to commemorate tliis interview. f Desnoiresterres asserts tiiat Voltaire did not avail himself of the permission given, but remained in England, and this is certainly borne out, not only by the absence of any proof of his absence from Eng- land, but by Voltaire's own letter to Thicriot, absurdly dated by the editors 1*753, properly to be dated end of 1728, or spring of 1729. \ Barrels, 653. For permission to inspect these most curious notes I am indebted to the courtesy and kindness of Lord Ashburnham. VOLTAIRE IX ENGLAND. 217 place-book in whicU be entered from time to time sucb tilings as struck bim, eitber in bis reading- or in wbat be beard in conversation. Tbe memoranda, wbicb are inter- spersed witb extracts from Italian and Latin poets, are in Englisb and Frencb, and they range from traditionary witticisms of Rocbcster, often grossly indecent, and from equally indecorous anecdotes and verses picked up no doubt in taverns and coffee-bouses, to notes evidently in- tended for tbe dedication to " Brutus," tbe '' Life of Charles XIL," and tbe " Letters Philosopbiques," and to fragments of original poems and translations. Tbey unfortunately throw no light on bis personal life, beyond communicating the not very important fact that be kept a footman. The variety and extent of Voltaire's Englisb studies are, considering bis comparatively short residence in this coun- try, and his numerous occupations during that residence, amazing. He surveyed us on all sides, and bis survey was not confined to the living world before bim ; it extended back to tbe world of tbe past, for, as bis writings prove, be was versed both in our antiquities and in our history. But tbe subjects which most interested bim were, as was natural, philosophy and polite letters. In plfilosopby two great movements were at this time passing over England ; the one was in a scientific, tbe other in a tbeolofjical or metaphysical direction ; tbe one emanated from Bacon and Newton, tbe other from that school of deists which, origi- nating with Herbert and Ilobbes, bad found its modern exponents in Tyndal, Toland, Collins, and Woolston. Ilis guides in these studies were Bolingbrokc and Dr. Samuel Clarke. Of all Newton's disciples, Clarke was tbe most generally accomplished. In theology, in metaphysics, in natural science, in mathematics, and in pure scholarship, be was almost equally distinguished, lie bad lived on 10 218 ESSAYS. terms of close intimacy with Newton, whose "Optics" he had translated into Latin. He wa^ as minutely versed in the writings of Bacon and Locke as in the writings of Descartes and Leibnitz; and of tlie learned controversies of his time there was scarcely one in which he had not taken a leading part. With this eminent man Voltaire first came into contact in the anturan of 1726. At that time their conversation turned principally on metaphysics. Voltaire was fascinated by the boldness of Clarke's views, and blindly followed him. In his own expressive phrase, " Clarke sautait dans I'abiine, et j'osai I'y suivre." But he soon recovered himself, and was on firm ground again. His acquaintance with Clarke probably led to his ac- quaintance with another distinguished disciple of Newton. This was Dr. Henry Pemberton. Pemberton was then busy preparing for the press the first popular exposition of Newton's system, a work which appeared in 1728 under the title of " A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy." It is clear that Voltaire had seen this work either in proof or in manuscript. For in a letter to Thieriot, dated some months before the treatise was published, he speaks of it in a manner 'which implies that he had inspected it. It was most likely under Pemberton's auspices that he com- menced the study of the "Principia" and " Optics" which he afterwards resumed more seriously at Cirey. That the work was of immense service to him in his Newtonian studies is certain. Indeed his own account of the Newto- nian philosophy in the " Lettres Philosophiques," and in the " Elements de la Philosophic de Newton," is in a large measure based on Pemberton's exegesis. From Newton, whose "Metaphysics" disgusted him, he proceeded to Locke. Locke's " Essay " he perused and rcpcrused with delight. It became his philosophical gos- VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 219 pel. In his writings and in bis conversation he scarcely ever alluded to it except in terms of almost extravagant euloo-y ; and to Locke he remained loval to the last. "For thirty years," he writes in a letter dated July, 1768, " I have been persecuted by a crowd of fanatics because I said that Locke is the Hercules of Metaphysics, who has fixed the boundaries of the human mind." * His acquaint- ance with Bacon was probably slight, and what he kiiew of his Latin works was, we suspect, what he had picked up in conversation from Boliugbroke and Clarke. No man who had read the "Novutn Organum" would speak of it as Voltaire speaks of it in his Twelfth Letter. But Ba- con's English writings, the " Essays," that is to say, and the History of Henry YH., he had certainly consulted. He appears also to have turned over the works of Hobbes and Cudworth. Berkeley he knew personally, and though he was, he said, willing to profess himself one of that great philosopher's admirers, he was not inclined to become one of his disciples. How carefully he had read " Alciphron " is proved by his letter to Andrew Pitt.f Nor did his in- defatigable curiosity rest here. He took a lively interest in natural science, and was acquainted with several mem- bers of the Royal Society, and particularly with the vener- able President, Sir Hans Sloane, to whom he presented a copy of the English Essays.J Of that society he was * See the very interesting letter to Horace Walpole printed in tlie appendix to the '.'Historical Memoirs of tlie Antlior of tlie Henriade." f This interesting letter, written in English, is printed in Leonard Howard's " Collection of Letters," p. 604. Howard's cliaracter was not above suspicion, but there seems no reason for questioning the genuineness of tliis letter, the original of which was, he says, in tlic hands of one of his friends. I See the copy with the autograph inscription in the British Museum. 220 ESSAYS. some years after elected i, the two brothers of Coligni, all their adhe- rents, all who were opposed by the Guises, turned Trotestauts at once. * He told Martin Slicrlock that he was never able to pronounce the English language perfectly, but that his ear was sensitively alive to tlie harmony of the language and the poetry. — Letters from an Engl'iHh Travellei- (Letter xxv.). 222 ESSAYS. They united their griefs, their vengeance, and their interests together, so tliat a revolution both in the State and in religion was at hand." The second essay, which is a dissertation on Epic Poet- ry, and a review of the principal epic poems of antiquity and of modern Europe, is a piece not unworthy of a place beside the best of Dryden's prefaces. The remarks on Virgil, Lucan, and Tasso are admirable, and the critique on " Paradise Lost," which is described as " the noblest work which human imagination hath ever attempted," gives us a higher, idea of Voltaire's critical powers than any of his French writings. For the account of Camoens he is said to have been indebted to Colonel Martin Bladen. " I remember," says Warton, in his notes on the " Dunciad" " that Collins the poet told me that [his uncle] Bladen had given to Voltaire all that account of Camoens inserted in his Essay on the Epic Poets, and that Voltaire seemed be- fore entirely ignorant of the name and character of Camo- ens."* Indeed the whole treatise well deserves attentive study. The purity, vigor, and elegance of the style will be at once evident from the following extract, which is, we may add, a fair average sample : " The greatest part of the critics have filched the rules of epic poetry from the books of Homer, according to the custom, or rather to the weakness, of men who mistake commonly the beginning of an art for the principles of the art itself, and are apt to believe that everything must be by its own nature what it was when contrived at first. But * Warton's " Tope," vol. v., p. 284. Though Warton has in this passage confused Martin Bladen, the translator of " Caesar's Commen- taries," with Edmund Bladen, who was Collins's uncle, there is no rea- son for doubting the substantial truth of what he reports. That Colo- nel Martin Bladen had some special acquaintance with Spanish and Portuguese seems certain, from the fact that in 17 17 he was offered the Envoyship Extraordinary to the Court of Spain, and that in his will he leaves legacies to Dr. de Arboleda and Josias Luberdo. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 223 as Homer wrote two poems of a quite different nature, and as the ' ^neid ' of Yirgil partakes of the ' Iliad ' and of tlie ' Odyssey,' the commentators were forced to establish different rules to reconcile Homer with himself, and other new rules again to make Virgil agree with Homer, just as the astronomers labored under the necessity of adding to or taking from their systems, and of bringing in concentric and eccentric circles, as they discovered new motions in the heavens. The ignorance of the ancients was excusable, and their search after the unfathomable system of nature was to be commended, because it is certain that nature hath its own principles, unvariable and unerr- ing, and as worthy of our search as remote from our conceptions. But it is not with the inventions of art as witlx the works of nature." If Voltaire was able after a few months' residence in London to produce such prose as this, it is not too much to say that he might with time and practice have taken his place among our national classics. With the exceptions of De Lolme and Blanco White, it may be doubted wheth- er any writer to whom English was an acquired language has achieved so perfect a mastery over it. It is, however, not improbable that he obtained more assistance in com- posing these essays than his vanity would allow him to own. The Abbe Desfontaines asserts, indeed, that the Es- say on Epic Poetry was composed in French, and that it was then translated into English under the superintendence of Voltaire's "maitre de langue."* But the testimony of that mean and malignant man carries little weight, and if it had not been partially, at least, confirmed by Spence we should have left it unnoticed. What Spence says is this: " Voltaire consulted Dr. Young about his essay in English, and begged him to correct any gross faults he might find in it. The doctor set very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to censure, and when lie went to ex- plain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid burst- * " La Voltairomanie," p. 46. ^ V 224 ESSAYS. ing out a-laiigliing in las face." The reason of tins ill- timed merriment it is not very easy to see : the anecdote is, perhaps, imperfectly reported. But in spite of Desfon- taines and Spence, there can be no doubt that the Essays arc what they pretend to be, the genuine work of Voltaire. We have only to turn to his English correspondence at this period to see that he was quite equal to their produc- tion. The little book was favorably received. In the fol- lowing year a second edition was called for, a third followed at no long interval, and in IVSI it reached a fourth; a Discourse on Tragedy, which is merely a translation of the French "Discours sur la Tragcdie" prefixed to Brutus, be- ing added. And it long held its own. Its popularity is sufficiently attested by the fact that in 17G0 it was reprint- ed at Dublin, with a short notice attributed, but attributed erroneously, to Swift, who had of course been long dead. Voltaire was not the man to waste his energy on the production of a mere tour de force. The volume had an immediate practical object. That object was to prepare the public for the appearance of the " Henriade," which was now receiving the finishing touches, and was almost ready for the printer. It was probably to facilitate its pub>lication that he removed about this time (end of 1727) from Wandsworth to London, where he resided, as the su- perscriptions of two of his letters show, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, at the sign of the White Peruke. Nor is Maiden Lane the only part of London associated with Voltaire during this period. It would seem that Billiter Square is entitled to the honor of having once numbered him among its occupants. This we gather from an un- dated letter addressed to John Brinsdcn, Bolingbroke's con- fidential secretary,* in which Brinsden is directed to ad- * Preserved in Colet's "Relics of Literature," p. 70. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 225 dress his reply to Mr. Cavalier, Bel itery (sic) Square, by the Royal Exchange, a request which Voltaire would scarcely have made had he not been residing there. In Billiter Square, which is described by a contemporary topographer as " a very handsome, open, and airy place, with good new brick buildings," he would be within a few paces of his agents, Messrs. Simon & Benezet. Of the many letters which were doubtless written by him at this time, some have been preserved. One is ad- dressed to Swift, to whom he had a few months before given a letter of introduction to the Count de Morville. He sends him a copy of the Essays, professes himself a great admirer of his writings, informs him that the " Ilen- riade" is almost ready, and asks him to exert his interest to procure subscribers in Ireland. In anotlier letter he so- licits the patronage of the Earl of Oxford, informing him of the distinguished part which one of his ancestors plays ia the "llenriadc," alhiding to his own personal acquaint- ance with Achilles de Harley, and importuning the earl to grant him the favor of an interview.* With Tliieriot, on %vhom he relied to push the poem in France, he regularly corresponded. Meanwhile popular curiosity was stimulated by successive advertisements in the newspapers, and in Janu- ary, 1728, an elaborate puS appeared in the columns of the leading literary periodical : " We hope every day," so runs the notice, " to see Mr. De Voltaire's ' Ilenriade.' He has greatly raised the expectations of the curious by a beautiful Essay he lately published upon the Civil Wars of France, which is the subject of his poem, and upon the Epic Poets, from Homer down to Milton. As this gentleman seems to be thoroughly acquauited with all the best poets, both an- * Unprinted letter among tlie manuscripts at Longleat, for a copy of which I am indebted to the kindness of the librarian. 10* 226 ESSAYS. cient and modern, and judges so well of their beauties and faults, wc have reason to hope that the ' Henriade ' will bo a finished performance, and as he writes with uncommon elegance and force in English, though lie has been bnt eigh- teen months in this country, we expect to find in his poem all that beauty and strength of which his native language is capable."* All through the summer and winter of 1727 he was hard at work on the manuscript or the proofs.f But this was not the only task he had in hand. He was busy with his "Essai sur la Poesie Epique," which is not, he is care- ful to explain, a translation of his English essay, but an independent work, a work of which the English essay was to be regarded as the preliminary sketch.^ It was after- wards prefixed to the *' Uenriade." A comparative study of the two will show with what skill he adapts himself, even as a critic, to the countrymen of Boilcau and Racine on the one hand, and to the countrymen of Milton and Addison on the other. At last the " Henriade " was ready. It was first an- nounced, in a succession of advertisements, that it would appear in February (1728); it was then announced in a second succession of advertisements that it would appear in March, and in March it was published. The subscribers had at first been alarmingly slow in coming forward; but when the day of publication arrived the names on the sub- scription list amounted to three hundred and forty-four; and among the subscribers were the King, the Queen, and the heads of almost all the noble families connected with the Court. In its first form the poem had been dedicated * " Tresent State of the Republic of Letters," vol. i., p. 88. f Letter to Thieriot, dated August, 1728. X See his English letter to Thieriot, dated 14th of June, 1727. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 227 to Louis XV. That dedication was now cancelled, and a dedication, written in flowing English, to Queen Caroline was substituted. Descartes, said the poet, liad inscribed his " Principles " to the Princess Palatine Elizabeth, not because she was a princess, but because of all his readers she understood him best; he too, without presuming to compare himself to Descartes, had ventured to lay his work at the feet of a queen who was not only a patroness of all arts and sciences, but the best judge of them also. " He reminded her that an English Queen, the great Eliza- beth, had been the protectress of Henry IV., and by whom," he asked, " can the memory of Henry be so well protected as by one who so much resembles Elizabeth in her personal virtues ?" The Queen was not insensible of the honor whicb had been paid her, and the fortunate poet received a substantial mark of the royal gratitude. It is not easy to determine the exact sum. Voltaire himself states it to have been two thousand crowns {ecus), which would, supposing he means English crowns, have been equivalent to five hundred pounds sterling. Baculard says it was "six mille livres."* Nor was this all. The King honored him with his intimacy, and invited him to his private supper parties.f Goldsmith adds, but adds errone- ously, that the Queen presented him with her portrait. A portrait of Queen Caroline Voltaire certainly possessed, but it was a medallion, and it came to him, not from the Queen herself, but through the hands of the Countess de la Lippe from the Queen of Prussia.^ The poem suc- ceeded beyond his most sanguine expectation. Every * Preface d'une 6ditioii des (Euvres de M. de Voltaire, Longcliamp ct WagnitJre, vol. ii., p. 492. f Ibid., same page. X Voltaire, " Correspondance Geu6rale," July '22d, 1728. 228 ESSAYS. . copy of tlic quarto impression was disposed of before the day of publication. In the octavo form, three editions were exhausted in less than three weeks, *' and this I attrib- ute," he says in a letter to a friend, " entirely to the hap- py choice of the subject, and not to the merit of the poem itself." Owing to the carelessness of Thieriot, he lost the subscription money due to him from France, but the sum realized in England was undoubtedly considerable. It has been variously estimated: Nicolardot, in his "Menage et Finances de Voltaire," calculates it to have been ten thou- sand francs ; and that is the lowest computation. Baculard asserts that from the quarto edition {edition imjmmce par souscriptions) alone the poet cleared ten thousand crowns. Perhaps we should not be far wrong if we estimated the sum, including the money received from George II., at two thousand pounds sterling. Whatever it was, it formed the nucleus of the most princely fortune ever yet amassed by a man of letters.* The publication of the "Ilcnriade" involved Voltaire in a very disagreeable controversy with two of his countrymen. He had out of pure kindness given permission to one Coderc, a publisher in Little New- port Street, near Leicester Fields, to print an edition of the poem for his own benefit; of this permission Coderc made an assignment to another publisher named Prevost. Ac- cordingly in March, 1728, almost immediately after the appearance of the authentic editions, appeared in the Daily Post an announcement of a new issue of the " Henriadc." It was printed — so it was stated — with the author's privi- lege, and to the advertisement a postscript was added to the effect that the poem now appeared for the first time * Carlyle (" Life of Frederick," vol. iii., p. 220) computes Voltaire's aumial income during his latter 3'ears to have been, according to the money value of the present day, about £20,000. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 229 iincastrated and in its integrity. All that Prevost had really done was to substitute six bad verses, taken from the poem in its earlier form, for six good verses in the later recension. Voltaire, justly annoyed at this audacious stratagem on the part of a piratical bookseller, at once re- plied by inserting a counter advertisement both in the Daily Post and in the Daily Journal: "This is to give notice that I never gave any privilege to Prevost, but I was betrayed into such kindness for one Coderc as to grant him leave of printing my book for his own benefit, pro- vided he should sell none before mine had been delivered. It is a thing unheard of that a bookseller dares to sell my own work in another manner than I have printed it and call my own edition castrated. The truth of the matter is that he has printed six bad and insignificant low lines, which were not mine, printed in a former edition of ' La Ligue,' and in the room of which there are six others a great deal bolder and stronger in the Ilenriade."* To this Prevost replied in the columns of the same paper, de- fending the course he had taken, and flatly contradicting what Voltaire asserted. The two notices continued to ap- pear in the advertisement sheet of the Daily Post till the end of March. There can be no doubt that this contro- versy was of great service in advertising the poem. In- deed we are half inclined to suspect that the whole thing was got up by Voltaire for that purpose. He certainly bore Prevost no ill-will aftcrwards.f The money realized from the sale of the " Ilenriade" was the more acceptable as it was sorely needed. For upwards of a year he had * Daily rod, March 21, 1728. f For the controversy, see advertisement sheets of the Daily Post from March 21st to March 30th, and of the Daily Journal of same date. 230 ESSAYS. been in straightened circumstances. To live in society was then an expensive luxury, and the expenses were great- ly swelled by the fees which the servants of the aristocracy were permitted to levy on their masters' guests. At no house in London did the abuse reach a higher pitch than at Lord Chesterfield's ; and Voltaire, who dined there once, was so annoyed at the imposition, that, on Chesterfield asking him to repeat his visit, he declined, sarcastically adding that his lordship's ordinary was too dear.* His wretched health had, moreover, necessitated medical at- tendance and thus had added greatly to his expenses. As early as February, 1727, we find him complaining of these difficulties to Thieriot : " Vous savez peut-etre que Ics banqueroutes sans ressource que j'ai essuyecs en Angle- terre " (an allusion of course to his mishap with Acosta), " le retranchcment de mes rentes, la perte de mes pensions, et les depenscs que m'ont coutees les maladies dont j'ai ete accable ici, m'ont reduit a un etat bien dur."f He Avas now enabled to relieve the necessities of his unfort- unate fellow-countrymen, many of whom were assisted by him when he was in London, particularly one St. Ilya- cinthe.J When the poem was passing through the press a curious incident occurred. A proof-sheet of the first page had by some accident found its way into the hands of one Dadichy, a Smyrniote Greek, who was at that time residing as an interpreter in London, and who appears to have been a scholar of some pretensions. The poem then opened, not with the simple ringing verses with which it now opens, * John Taylor's " Memoirs," vol. i., p. 330. f " Correspondance Generale," 1727. X Duvernet, p. 12. VOLTAIRE IX ENGLAND. 231 but with a scries of verses of which the first couplet may serve as a specimen : " Je chante les combats et ce roi gencreux, Qui for9a les Fran9ais h. devenir heureux." The man whose taste had been formed on purer models was justly offended by this obscure and forced epigram. lie made his way to Voltaire's residence, and abruptly announc- ing himself as the "countryman of Homer," proceeded to in- form him that Homer never opened his poems with strokes of wit and enigmas. Voltaire had the good sense to take the hint given him by his eccentric visitor, and the lines were altered into the lines with which all the world is familiar,* We have not, after a careful search, been able to find any notice or critique of the " Henriade " in journals then current in London. But before the year was out there ap- peared in an edition, published by a firm in Russell Street, Covent Garden, some remarks which are, no doubt, a fair indication of the impression made by the poem on the mind of contemporary England. The writer, who writes in French, begins by observing that as a rule he cares little for French poetry, it lacks energy, and it is monotonous, but in the "Henriade" he discerns qualities which he has not discerned elsewhere in the verse of Frenchmen ; it is various, brilliant, and forcible. But he is, he says, at a loss to understand how a poet whose conception of the deity is so wise and noble could have selected for his hero a character so contemptible as Henri Quatre, who was not merely a Papist but a Papist " par lache interest." f He * For this anecdote see " Henriade," Yaiiantes du Chant riemier. f " La Henriade dc M^ de Voltaire." Seconde edition revue, cor- rigee ct augmentee de rcmarques critiques sur cet ouvrage. A Lon- dres chez Woodman et Lyon, dans Russel Street, Covent Garden, 1728. 232 ESSAYS. is angry that Voltaire slioiild, throughout the poem, lean so decidedly to the side of Popery ; he is still more angry that he should have placed on the same footing Popery and Protestantism, for the essence of Popery is intoler- ance, and the essence of Protestantism is enlightened toler- ation. " You arrived in our island," he goes on to say, "with a book against our religion, and we received you with open arms, our king and our queen presented yon with money. I wonder," he continues, " how an English- man who introduced himself to Cardinal Fleury with an attack on Popery would be likely to fare." He concludes by hoping that Voltaire will continue to reside in England, and he exhorts him to prepare *' une nouvelle edition moins Papiste de la ' Ilcnriade.' " This critique purported to be the work of an English nobleman. It was in reality the work of a French refugee named Faget. Voltaire was greatly amused at liis being taken for a Catholic propa- gandist.* " You will see," he writes in a letter to a friend in France, "by some annotations tacked to my book, and fathered upon an English lord, that I am here a confessor of Catholic religion." To this criticism he made no reply during his residence in England, but on its reappearance under another title in an edition of the " Ilenriade" printed at the Hague he answered it. It was probably during his sojourn cither in Maiden * And it is not less timusing to U9 to find him thus writing to r^rePoree: " Surtout, mon reverend pere, je vous supplie iiistam- ment de voulolr m'instruire si j'ai parle de la religion conime je le dois ; car, s'il y a sur cet article quelques expressions qui vous de- plaisent ne doutez pas que je ne les corrige a la premiere edition que Ton pourra faire encore de mon poeme. T'ambitionne votre estime non seulement comme auteur muis comme Cliretieu." — Correspoti' dance Generale, Aniiee 1728. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 233 Lane or in Blllitcr Square that his adroitness and fluent mastery over our language saved him from what might otherwise have been an unpleasant adventure. He chanced one day to be strolling along the streets when his peculiar appearance attracted attention. A crowd collected, and some ribald fellow began with jeers and hoots to taunt him with being a Frenchman. Nothing is so easily excited as the passions of a rabble, and the passions of a rabble, when their victim is defenceless, rarely exhaust themselves in words. The miscreants were already preparing to pelt him with mud, and mud would no doubt have been fol- lowed with missiles of a more formidable kind. But Vol- taire was equal to the crisis. Boldly confronting his as- sailants, he mounted on a stone which happened to be at hand, and began an oration of which the first sentence only has been preserved. " Brave Englishmen !" he cried, " am I not sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?" How he proceeded we know not, but his harangue was, if we are to believe Wagniere, so effective that the crowd was not merely appeased, but eager to carry him on their shoulders in triumph to his lodgings.* This was not the only occasion on which he experienced the rudeness with which the vulgar were in those days ac- customed to treat his' countrymen. He happened to be taking the air on the river when one of the men in charge of the boat, perceiving that his passenger was a French- mati, began to boast of the superior privileges enjoyed by English subjects; he belonged, he said, not to a land of slaves but to a land of freemen. Warming with his theme, the fellow concluded his offensive remarks by exclaiming with an oath that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in France. The sequel of the * Longcliarap and Wagni^ro, vol. i., p. 23. 234 ESSAYS. story is amusing. Within a few Iiours the man had been seized by a press-gang, and next day Voltaire saw him at the window of a prison with his legs manacled and his hand stretched through the bars, craving alms. " What think you now of a French archbishop?" he cried. "Ah, sir!" replied the captive, "the abominable government have forced me away from my wife and children to serve in a king's ship, and have thrown me into prison and chained my feet for fear I should escape before the ship sails." A French gentleman who was with Voltaire at the time owned that he felt a malicious pleasure at seeing that the English, who were so fond of taunting their neighbors ■with servitude, were in truth quite as much slaves them- selves. " But I," adds Voltaire in one of those noble re- flections which so often flash across his pages, " felt a sen- timent more humane : I was grieved to think that there was so little liberty on the earth."* It appears from Atterbury's " Correspondence," that about the time the " Ilenriade " was published Voltaire had also published an ode written in English, but of that ode, after a most careful search, we have been able to find no trace.f SECTION III. APRIL, 1728— MARCU, 1729. As soon as the " Henriade " was oS his hands he ap- plied himself steadily to his History of Charles XII. In the composition of this delightful biography, which he ap- * See for the whole story his Letter to M***, " (Euvres Completes " (Beuchot), vol. xxxviii., p. 22. t See Atterbury's " Correspondence," vol. iv., p. 114. Nicholls (see his note) was equally unsuccessful. VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 235 pears to Lave began as early as 1727, he was greatly as- sisted by Von Fabrice. Few men then living knew more of the public and private life of the great Swede than Fa- brice, and what he knew he liberally communicated. Much useful information was derived from Bolingbroke and the Dowager Duchess of Marlborou2;h. But Charles XII. was not the only work with which he was occupied. He be- gan, prompted by Bolingbroke and inspired by Shake- speare and Lee, the tragedy of " Brutus," the first act of whicb he sketched in English prose. We give a short specimen of the original draught, which the reader may find it interesting to compare with the corresponding pas- sage in the French text as it now stands. It is the speech of Brutus in the second scene of the first act : "Brutus. Allege not ties: his (Tarquiu's) crimes have broken them all. The gods themselves, whom he has offended, have de- clared against him. Which of our rights has he not trod upon? True, we have sworn to be his subjects, but we have not sworn to be his slaves. You say you've seen our Senate, in humble suppliance, pay him their vows. Even he himself has sworn to be our father, and make the people happy in his guidance. Broken from his oaths, we are let loose from ours. Since he has transgressed our laws, his is the rebellion. Rome is free from guilt." This tragedy, which he completed on his return to Paris, he dedicated to Bolingbroke. Mr. Parton in his list of Voltaire's writings enters among them an edition of "Brutus," published in London in 1727. Of that edi- tion after a laborious search we can find no trace. It was certainly unknown to Desnoiresterres, to Beuchot, and to all the editors; and — what is, we think, final — there is no mention of it in the exhaustive bibliography of Voltaire, just published by M. Georges Bengesco. Mr. Parton has, we suspect, been misled by an ambiguous paragraph at the 286 ESSAYS. end of tlic preface to tlic fourth edition of tlie "Essay on Epic Poetry." At "Waiidswortli, or possibly in London, he sketched also another tragedy, a tragedy which was not, however, com- pleted till 1734. This was " La Mort de Cesar," suggested, as we need scarcely say, by the mastei'piecc of Shakespeare.* Meanwhile (end of 1728) he was engaged in the composi- tion of those charming letters which were afterwards pub- lished in English under the title of "Letters concerning the English Nation," and in French under the title of "Lettrcs Philosophiques." They were addressed to his friend Thie- riot, and under Thieriot's auspices (par les soins de Thie- riot) were translated into English. The publication of the English translation preceded the publication of the French original. The first French editions appeared in 1734, but two editions had appeared in English during the preceding year, one printed in London, and the other in Dublin. But the indefatigable energy of Voltaire did not exhaust itself in study and composition. It appears from Duvernet, that lie attempted to open a permanent French theatre in Lon- don, and with this object he induced a company of Parisian actors to come over ; but the project met with so little en- couragement that he was forced to abandon it, and the company went back almost immediately to Paris.f Li the midst of these multifarious pursuits he had found time to peruse almost everything of note both in our poet- ry and in our prose, lie began with Shakespeare, whose principal dramas he studied with minute attention, analyz- ing the structure, the characterization, the diction. His criticisms on Shakespeare are, it is true, seldom cited ex- cept to be laughed at, but the defects of these criticisms * Sce"(Euvrcs Completes" (edit. 1877), vol. ii., note. f Duvernet, p. 72. VOLTAIRE IX ENGLAND. 237 orifjinated neither from i^Tiorance nor from inattention. His real opinion of Shakespeare is not to be gathered from the " Dcs Theatres Anglais " ajid from the " Lettres a I'Academie," bat from the " Lettres Philosophiqucs " and from the admirable letter to Horace Walpole.* The influence of Shakespeare on Voltaire's own tragedies is very perceptible, and the extent of that influence will be at once apparent if we compare the plays produced before his visit to England with the plays produced on his return to France, if we compare " Q^dipe," " Artemise," and "Ma- rianne," with " Brutus," " Eryphile," and " Zaire." " Bru- tus" and "La Mort de Cesar" flowed not more certainly from Julius Caisar than "Zaire" from "Othello;" while reminiscences of "Hamlet" are unmistakable both in "Ery- phile" and in "Semiramis." The first three acts of "Ju- lius Cajsar " he subsequently translated into French, and he has in the "Lettres Philosophiqucs" given an admirable version of the famous soliloquy in "Hamlet." Milton he studied, as his " Essay on Epic Poetry " and his article on the Epopee f prove, with similar diligence. He had, in addition to " Paradise Lost," read " Paradise Regained " and " Samson Agonistes," neither of which he thought of much value. He was well acquainted with the poems, the dramas, and the essays of Dryden, and with the writings of Dryden's contemporaries. Garth's J "Dispensary" he carefully studied, and places above the " Lutrin." Even such inferior poets as Oldham, Roscommon, Dorset, Shef- field, Halifax, and Rochester had not escaped his curious eye. Rochester, indeed, he pronounced to be a poet of great genius ; he puts his satires on a level with those of * Dated Forney, July, 1708. " Correspondancc Generale," vol. xiv. f " Dictionnaire Philosophiquc," article " Epopee." :}: Ibid., article *• Burlesque." 238 ESSAYS. Boilcau, and in one of the " riiilosopliical Letters" (the twenty-first) lie tnrns a portion of the satire on Man into French heroics. AVith the poems of Denliam he was great- ly pleased ; and of Waller, whose " Elegy on the Death of Cromwell" he has translated into French verse, he speaks in terms of enthusiastic admiration, rankino: him above Voiture, and observing that " his serious compositions ex- hibit a strength and vigor which could not have been ex- pected from the softness and fluency of his other pieces." lie read Otway, whom singularly enough he underrated, and of whose " Orphan " he has, in his " Appel a Toutes les Nations," given a sarcastic analysis. lie was acquaint- ed with Lee's tragedies, and he enjoyed the comedies of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve, on which he has left many just and interesting observations. Indeed he did Vanbrugh the honor to steal from him many of the inci- dents, most of the characters, and the whole of the under- plot of the " Relapse." It is singular that the French edi- tors who are careful to point out that " Le Comte de Bour- souflfle Comedie Bouffe " is merely a recast of " L'Echange Comedie en trois actes," should have omitted to notice that both of them are simply Vanbrugh's play in a French dress. But nothing illustrates his mastery over our language and his power of entering into the spirit of our literature, even when that literature is most esoteric, so strikingly as his remarks on "Iludibras." "I never found," he says, " so much wit in any single book as that. It is ' Don Quixote' and the 'Satire Menippee' blended together." Of the opening lines he has, in the " Lettres Philosophiques," given a French version, reproducing with extraordinary fe- licity both the metre and the spirit. With not less pleas- ure he perused the poems of Prior. In the " Philosophical Dictionary " he devotes an article to him, and in another VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND. 239 article lie pauses to draw attention to the merits of " Ahna." "With the essays and poems of Addison, whom he pro- nounces to be the best critic as well as the best writer of his age, he was well acquainted.* His "Allegories" he has imitated ; f his " Campaign " he took as the model for " Fonteno}' ;" from his criticism on Milton he has bor- rowed ; and his "Cato" he placed at the head of English tragedies. Indeed, he has gone so far as to say that the principal character in that drama is the " greatest that was ever brought upon any stage." His observations upon the defects of the play are less open to question, and prove that if he had the bad taste to prefer Addison to Shake- speare, he was sufficiently acquainted with the history of our drama to be able to point out in what way the appear- ance of "Cato" marked an era in its development. To the genius of Swift he paid enthusiastic homage. He owed, he said, to Swift's writings the love he bore to the Enflish lan"ua. ; Secretary of War. 38 ; owing to Marlborough's influence, jVa ; is a party to Harley's in- ti-igucs while holding office under Godolphin, 40 ; resigns his seat in Cabinet, 41 ; devotes himself to literary pursuits, 42 ; is ai)point- cd Secretary of State for Northern Department, 4(; ; his prospects as such, 47; his policy and double-dealing, 48; publishes a i)am- phlet inscribed "A Letter to the Examiner,'" 4'J ; rises into emi- nence and aims at Premiership, 56 ; intrigues with France with a view of concluding peace, ?7>. ; virtually directs affairs and creates twelve new peers, 60; preliminaries of Treaty of Utrecht, 6] ; aban- dons Allies to vengeance of Louis XIV., 62 ; is created Viscount of Bolingbroke, ib. ; his growing aversion to Oxford, 63; his being sent on a mission to France, ib. ; his triumphant reception there, ih. ; is betrayed by an adventuress, 64 ; by his damaged reputation, ib. ; superseded by the Earl of Dartmouth, ib. ; resumes his duties as Secretary of State and signs peace of Utrecht, 65 ; keeping his treachery to the Allies, 66 ; public feeling growing against him, 68 ; determines to seize the reins of Government, 71 : his prospects to that effect, 72 ; draws up the Schism bill, ib. ; his growing antag- onism to Oxford, /6. ; feasts the chiefs of tlie AVliig party, 73 ; gives friendly assurance to Gaultier, 74 ; difficulties of his position, ib. ; collapse of his schemes, 75 ; his position at death of Queen Anne, 81; his policy in consecpiencc of this event, 81, 82; offers his ser- vices to the Elector, 81-83 ; dismissed from his post as Secretary of State, 84; is refused admittance to the King, ib.; moves an amended address in defence of his late policy, 85 ; is being charged by Walpole, 86 ; flees the country and retires to France, 87 ; letter to his father and to Lord Lansdowne, 88; inconsistency of his ex- planations, 89; puts himself into communication with "the English embassy at Paris, 90 ; opens secret negotiations with the Pretend- er, ? 6. ; retires to Dauphine, ?6. ; outlawed, 93 ; allies himself with the Jacobites and becomes their leader, 95; his interview with the Pretender, 96 ; proceeds to Paris, 97 ; endeavors to form a Jacobite ministiy, ib. ; but finds his efforts unavailing, 99 ; sets about organ- izing Jacobite movement both in England and abroad, 100, 101; meets with reverses and disappointments, 103-107 ; calumniated by the Jacobite clique, 106; accused by the Earl of Mar, and by Or- mond, 107 ; is rudely dismissed from his post by the Chevalier, ib. ; is being sounded by Lord Stair, 108 ; expresses ins desire to be par- doned and to return to England, 108; mingles in the social life of French aristocracy, 109 ; engages in*-literary pursuits, 110 ; writes the " Reflections on Exile " and the " Letter to Sir William Wynd- ham," ib. ; accused of crimes towards the Jacobite party in the "Letter from Avignon," 111 ; meets with the Marquise de Villette, INDEX. 251 llo; marries her at Aix-la-Chapelle, 114; speculates iu the Mis- sissippi scheme, ib. ; removes with his wife to La Source, ib. ; stud- ies at La Source, 114, 115; "Letters to Pouilly," a "Treatise on the Limits of Human Knowledge," the " Reflections on Innate Moral Principles," etc., 115; reputation of Archbishop Tillotson, ?6. ; con- ver.*ational powers, 116; intercourse with Voltaire, ih. ; influence on Voltaire, 117; solicits the intervention of Uu Bois and of the Duke of Orleans, 120; interview with Lord Pohvarth, 121; return to England, ib. ; meets Atterbury going into exile, ih. ; arrives in London, ib. ; endeavors to secure the reversal of his Bill of Attain- der, 121-125 ; starts for Aix-la-Chapelle, but meets with no success, 123; proceeds to Paris and finds himself in dilemma, 124; offers his mediation at the French court to Walpole, 125; returns to La Source, 126; is restored to his civil rights, 127; his double life, ib. ; influence on contemporary politics, 131, 132 ; his exasperation against Walpole and causes of same, 136; is organizing the Oppo- sition against the Walpole Government, ih. ; starts the journal, the Craftsman, 138 ; publishes in same, under the title the " Occasion- al Writer," three papers against Walpole, ib.; at the same time is intriguing at the Court, 139; solicits an interview with the King, 140; but is unsuccessful. i6. ; factious opposition to the Walpole Government, 142-144 ; determines to appeal to the people, 144 ; in- flaming the populace against Walpole, 145 ; directing all the move- ments of the Opposition, 150; contributes the "Vision of Came- lick" to the Craflsman,ih. ; publishes in same "The Case of Dunkirk considered," 161; "Remarks on the Ilistory of England," ih. ; is creating a deep impression on the public mind, 152; writes on "The Policy of the Athenians," 153; publishes his "Dissertation upon Parties," ib.; writes with a view of obliterating party preju- dice, 155; is engaged in beautifying his country residence at Daw- ley, 156 ; letter to Swift, ib. ; his hospitality to English friends and to Voltaire, 157; his friendship with Pope, 158 ; influence on Pope, 162, 163; leaves England, 163; reason therefor, 164, 165; resides first in Paris, 165; afterwards in Touraine, ib. ; begins the "Let- ters on the Study of Ilistory," 166 ; writes the " Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism," 167; returns to England, 169; stands high in the favor of the Prince of Wales, ib. ; assiduously courts him, 171 ; his motive for doing so, ib. ; writes the "Patriot King," and thereby greatly influences the younger school of politicians, 172-175 ; writes the " Dissertation on the State of Parties at the accession of George L," 175 ; also the " Reflections on the Present State of the Nation," ib. ; leaves England again for France, ib. ; returns to find himself baffled, 176 ; his treachery to Pope, 177, 178 ; his misanthropy, 180 ; ills waning influence, «6. ; deatli of his wife, 181; his isolation and growing illness, ib. ; his death, i/;. ; review of his philosophical works, 182-187; siunniary of his character, 187. Bothmar, Count, protests against the peace being signed, 57 ; circu- lates a report with a view of throwing the Tories off the track, 83 ; favorite of George I., 122. 252 INDEX. Bourbon, Duke of, assumes tlic reins of Government in France, 124. ]?.,- consents to move resolution against peace, 57 ; does so in Parliament, 58. Oldflekl, Anne, 215. Oldmixon, John, writes against peace being signed, 57. Orford, Earl of, inquiry into tlie administration of, 28. Orleans, Duke of, Kegent of France, undecided attitude in Jacobite movement, 103 ; is solicited by Bolingbroke for pardon by English Government, 120; death, 124." Ormond, Duke of, ignored by King, 84 ; deserts his post as lieutenant Jacobite movement, 102 ; sails for Devonshire, 104. Orsini, Princess, supervising construction chateau Chantaloup, 105. Otway, Thomas, 238. Oxford, Earl of, antecedents, physique, characteristics, 30, 31 ; is ap- pointed Lord Treasurer (V) in Godolphin's Ministry, 37 ; his intrigues while holding office, 40; is removed from office, 41 ; influences Queen Anne against the AVhigs, 44 ; is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, 45 ; hires the Press, 49 ; is confronted by the feeling of the extreme Tories, 53 ; falls iU,ib.; is wounded by Antoine de Guiscard's dastardly assault, 54; reaps the benefit of it through enhanced popularity and royal favor, 55 ; organizes a committee to inquire into expenditure of Godolphin Ministry, ib.; withdraws seals of State from I3olingbroke and confers them on Earl of Dartmouth, 64; becomes more and more irresolute, 69 ; is removed from of- fice, 73; is openly insulted by King, 84. Parton, biographer of Voltaire, 193; erroneously attributes to Vol- taire an English edition of Brutus, 235. Patrick, Dr., author of "Mensa Mystica," 18, Pelham, Henry, quoted, 141. Pcmliorton, Dr. Henry, Voltaire's acquaintance with, 218 ; assists Vol- taire in studying Newton, ib. Peterborough, Earl, supported by Tories, 52 ; host of Voltaire, 205 ; Voltaire's treachery to, 243, 244. Philip, King of Spain, claims right of succession to the throne of France, 102. Philips, John, poet and student of Christ Church, 20. Pitt, William, opinion of, on Bolingbroke's eloquence, 8 ; literary in- debtedness to Bolingbroke, 14. INDEX. 257 Pitt, Andrew, the Quaker, Voltaire's acquaintance with, 213. Platen, Countess of, favorite at Court, 122. Polwarth, Lord, soHcited by Bolingbrolve with view of obtaining par- don, 121. Pope. Alexander, correspondence with BoHngbroke, 9 ; perfidious treatment at the hand of Bolingbroke, ib. ; iiis literary indebtedness to Bolingbroke, 15; his attachment to Bolingbroke, 158, and stim- ulus he received from him, 159 ; difficulty to fi.x tlie amount of indebtedness he owed to 15olingbroke, 100-162; his unbounded admiration of Bolingbroke, 162, 163; ungratefully dealt with by Bolingbroke, 177; reasons therefor, 178, 179; his acquaintance sought after by Voltaire, 200, 201 ; decoys and exposes iiiin, 210; Voltaire's opinion of, 241 ; last interview with Voltaire, 244. Poree, Pere, Voltaire's letter to, 232. Port, Adam de, ancestor of Bolingbroke, 16. Prior, Matthew, correspondence with Bolingbroke, 9 ; writes from Paris complaining, 65 ; believed by Bolingbroke to have turned State's evidence against him, 86 ; is arrested, 90; Voltaire's opin- ion of, 238. Pulteney, Daniel, his antecedents and character, 133. Pultcney, William, his antecedents, character, and talents, 134, 135; his hostility to Walpole, how caused, 135; bluntly deprecates fur- ther co-operation of Bolingbroke, 164; writes to Swift anent Bol- ingbroke's sudden departure from England, 165 ; is in coalition with Newcastle and Ilardwicke, 176. Baby, Lord, letter from Bolingbroke to, &o, foot-note. Ilechthcren, his suite engages in a contest with the suite of Mesna- ger, France, 64. Ke'musat, De, author of a study on Bolingbroke, 5 ; confounds the "Letter to Sir William Wyndham " with the "Letter to Wynd- liam," 111 ; reason he assigns for Bolingbroke's sudden departure from England, 164; uncertainty concerning Voltaire's stay in Eng- land, 192. Piidpatli, George, writes against the peace being signed, 57. Kochcster, Earl of, resigns his seat in the Ministiy, 37; succeeds Somers as President of the Council, 46 ; heads the Opposition to Harley, 53 ; his death, 55. Roscommon, Earl of, Voltaire reads his poems, 237. Buffhead, Owen, relates incident relative to Pope, 200; also 244,/oo<- note. Saciievf.rel, Dr., impeachment of, by Godolphin, 43; reasons of same, ih. Scliaub, Sir Luke, English Ambassador at Paris, creature of Boling- broke, 122; is at loggerheads with the partisans of Walpole, 124. Seymour, Earl of, resigns his seat in Ministry, 37. Shakespeare, William, Voltaire's indebtedness to, 235, 236; his real opinion of, 230, 237. 258 INDEX. Sherlock, Rev. Martin, quoted, 221, 242. Slirewsbiiiv, Duke of, secedes from tlie Tory party, 75 ; supports the motion in defence of tlic Bolingbrokc Ministry, 86 ; joins the .I:icol)itc movement, 10 1. Sonicrs, Eail of, disapproves of Sacheverel's iinpc icliment, 43 ; dis- approves of IJolingbroke's being declared an outlaw, 93. Somerset, Duchess of, becomes a favorite at Court, 52. Somerset, Duke of, is dismissed from office, 60. Spenee, llev. Josepli, quoted, 200; foot-note^ 211, 223. St. John, Henry, vide Bolingbroke. St. John, Henry, the elder, marries Mary, second daughter Earl of Warwick, 17; commits murder and seriously jeopardizes his life, ib. ; dies at Battersea, 176. St. John, John, member of the Council of Nine, 16. St. John, Oliver, is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland and created a baronet of Trcgoze, 16. St. John, Walter, marries Joanna, daughter of the Chief-justice, 16; founds the school at Battersea, 17. Stair, Lord, interview with Bolingbroke, 90; demands surrender of Jacobite flotilla, 104; receives instructions to sound Bolingbroke, 108 ; does not commit liimself to any pledge about Bolingbroke's pardon, 109. Stanhope, Earl of, accuses Bolingbroke of having distrained State papers, 86 ; declines to accede to Hanmer's motion, 93 ; keeps Bolingbroke in expectancy re his pardon, 109. Steele, Richard, attempts made by Harley to subvert him prove un- successful, 50 ; writes against the peace being signed, 57. SufTolk, Lady, retires from Court, 164. Sunderland, Eail of, is appointed Lord Treasurer by Godolphin, 89 ; disliked by Queen Anne, 40 ; keeps Bolingbrokc in expectancy re his pardon, 109. Sundon, Lad}', 210. Swift, Jonathan, his description of Bolingbroke's character, 6; cor- respondence with Bolingbroke, 9; and causes of rupture, ih. ; his induencc on English literature, 14; impression on, created by Lady Bolingbroke, 26 ; puts his pen at the service of the Harley Ministry and edits the Examiner^ 50; his eminent fitness for the post, 50, 51 ; writes for the peace being signed, 57 ; prognosticates a felon's fate to the Earl of Oxford and to himself, 59 ; endeavors to inter- pose between Bolingbroke and Oxford, 72 ; writes to Peterborough about state of public affairs, 73 ; is fast sinking into imbecility, 176; his previous acquaintance with Voltaire, 205; his being written to by Voltaire, 225 ; and is much admired by him, 239. Tankkuville, Lord, is appointed Lord Privy Seal, 30. Taylor, Jeremy, 14. Taylor, John, 230. Thieriot, correspondence with Voltaire, 203, 211, 218, 225, 230, 236; INDEX. 259 is encouraged by Voltaire to undertake the translation of Swift's " Gulliver's Travels," 239 ; correspondence with Voltaire, 245. Thomson, James, his literarv indebtedness to Dolingbroke, 15; is highly thought of by Voltaire, 239. Tillotson, Archbishop, written against by Bolingbroke, 115; de- nounced by Bolingbroke, 183. Torcy, De, not the superior of Bolingbroke, 8. Townshend, Lord, is voted enemy to his country, 60 ; is instrumental in obtaiidng a pardon for Bolingbroke, 120; retires from the Cab- inet, 145. Valliere and Bara, affair of, 41. Vanbrugh, Sir John, Voltaire's plagiarism from, 238. Villiere, Marquis de, intrigues for a dukedom, \'l ft, foot-note. Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, points of resemblance with Bolingbroke, 12. Villettc, Marquise de, her antecedents, attractions, acquaintance with Bolingbroke, 113; marriage at Aix-la-Cliapelle, 114; goes to Lon- don to plead her case in a lawsuit, and is successful, 126, 127 ; her death, 181. Voltaire, Fran9ois Arouet de, his indebtedness to Bolingbroke attest- ed by Condorcet, 15 ; first acquaintance with Bolingbroke at La Source, 116; feelings of respect and veneration entertained by, towards Bolingbroke, 118; peculiarity of influence of Bolingbroke on Voltaire, 119-121; his release from the Bastile, 193; stay at Calais, ib. ; disembarks at Greenwich, ?6. / impressions during his voyage, 194 ; first impressions on setting foot on English soil, 194- 196 ; arrival in London, 196; and is a guest at Bolingbroke's house, ib. ; is I'ccommended to Bubb Dodington, 197 ; previously was caned by the Chevalier de Rohan, 199 ; devotes himself to learning the English language, ib. ; makes the acf|uaintanee of Pope, 2.Q0; awk- ward incident happening at this interview, 201_; leaves England for France and returns again, 202; his disappointment in money affairs and family afflictions, 202, 203 ; his correspondence with French friends, 203, 204; his opinion of Pope, 204; his opinion of Milton, 205 ; his views on English habits and customs, 206 ; is present at the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton, and comments thereon, 207; is invited to draw up the Memoirs of the Duchess of Marl- borough, 208 ; his opinion of the beauty of English women, 209 ; dedicates a poem to Lady \\cY\c\\ib.; acts as a jiolitical emissary to the Court of St. James, 210; is decoyed and exposed by Pope, ib. ; endeavors to ingratiate himself with the Court and with Wal- polc, 211 ; and is looked down upon by Bolingbroke and friends, ib.; his fulsome flattery and indecent conversation, 212; is collect- ing materials for his new works, 213; comments on the religious life of England, /6. / notes the dilferences between English and French social life and the advantages of the former, 214-216 ; his scrap-book, 217; has the works of Sir Isaac Newton explained to him by Dr. Clarke, 217; makes tiic ac(iuaintance of Dr. Pember- 200 INDEX. ton, 218; becomes familiar with the works of Locke, of Bacon, of Ilobbes, and oC Cudwortli, 218, 219; studies Berkeley, 219; iden- tifies liimself with the movement originated by Collins and Wool- slon, 220; and assists Woolsluii linancially, i^. ; publishes two es- says in the English language, 220-222 ; goes to reside in Mai