pelled to urge. As a politician, he wished to prove that the peace of Utrecht was honourable; as a philosopher, that the Christian religion was untrue. To one or the other of these points his observations are almost always tending. It is no wonder, therefore, if, from the worthlessness of the materials, we are disposed to undervalue the beauty of the workmanship. But, surely, his style, considered apart from his matter, seems the perfection of eloquence. It displays all the power and richness of the English language; and, in all its changes, never either soars into bombast, or sinks into vulgarity. We may observe with admiration, that, even when defending the cause of tyranny, he knows how to borrow his weapons from the armoury of freedom. The greatest praise of Bolingbroke's style is, however, to be found in the fact, that it was the study and the model of the two greatest minds of the succeeding generation-Mr. Burke and Mr. Pitt. The former, as is well known, had so closely embued himself with it, that his first publication was a most ingenious, and, to many persons, deceptive imitation of its manner. To Mr. Pitt it was recommended by the example and advice of his illustrious father, who, in one of his letters, observes of Oldcastle's Remarks, that they "should be studied, and almost got by heart, for the inimitable beauty of the style."* Mr. Pitt, accordingly, early read and often recurred to these political writings; and he has several times stated in conversation to the present Lord Stanhope, that there was scarcely any loss in literature which he so deeply deplored, as that no adequate record of Bolingbroke's speeches should remain. What glory to Bolingbroke, if we are to judge of the master by his pupils!1

To Lord Camelford, May 4, 1754. Letters published by Lord Grenville.

[As Lord Chesterfield's “Characters,” celebrated as they are, are contained in editions of his works not generally accessible, I am tempted to append to the fine piece of historical portraiture in this chapter, his "character" of Lord Bolingbroke.

"It is impossible to find lights and shades strong enough to paint the character of Lord Bolingbroke, who was a most mortifying instance of the violence of human passions, and of the weakness of the most improved and exalted human reason. His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colours, and both rendered more striking from their proximity. Impetuosity, excess, and almost extravagancy, characterized not only his passions, but even his senses. His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and storm of pleasures, in which he licentiously triumphed, disdaining all decorum. His fine imagination was often heated and exhausted with his body in celebrating and almost deifying the prostitute of the night; and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagance of frantic bacchanals. These passions impaired both his constitution and his character; but the latter destroyed both his fortune and his reputation.

"He engaged young, and distinguished himself in business. His penetration was almost intuition, and he adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence; not a studied or laboured eloquence, but by such a flowing happiness of diction, which (from care, perhaps, at first) was become so habitual to him, that even his most familiar conversation, if taken down in writing, would have borne the press, without the least correction, either as to the method or style.

"He had noble and generous sentiments, rather than fixed reflected principles of good nature and friendship; but they were more violent than lasting, and suddenly and often varied to their opposite extremes, with regard even to the same persons. He received the common attentions of civility as obligations, which he returned with interest; and

My observations upon Bolingbroke's character have drawn me from my slight sketch of his political career. It remains for me to say, that, having entered the House of Commons in 1700, he almost immediately became one of the most shining and admired speakers of that fastidious assembly. He took the side of the moderate Tories, and more particularly attached himself to Harley. With him he joined the administration of Marlborough and Godolphin, in 1704, and, notwithstanding his youth, was appointed Secretary at War. Marlborough, especially, appears to have taken the warmest interest in the promotion of a rising statesman, whose abilities he discerned, and on whose friendship he relied. "I am very glad," he writes to Godolphin, "that you are so well pleased with Mr. St. John's diligence, and I am very confident he will never deceive you.' On his part, St. John professed-perhaps he felt at the time-the warmest attachment to his illustrious patron, and addressed him in such terms as the following: "The vast addition of renown which your Grace has acquired, and the wonderful preservation of your life, are subjects upon which I can never express the thousandth part of what I feel. France and faction are the only enemies England has reason to fear, and your Grace will conquer both." How little was

* Letter to Lord Godolphin, July 13, 1704.

Secretary St. John to the Duke of Marlborough, May 17, 1706. In a previous letter of August 18, 1705, we find him professing to the Duke "the strongest ties of gratitude," and anxiously deprecating "an ill peace, which is certain ruin to us!"

resented with passion the little inadvertencies of human nature, which he repaid with interest too. Even a difference of opinion upon a philosophical subject would provoke, and prove him no practical philosopher at least.

"Notwithstanding the dissipation of his youth, and the tumultuous agitation of his middle age, he had an infinite fund of various and almost universal knowledge, which, from the clearest and quickest conception, and the happiest memory that ever man was blessed with, he always carried about him. It was his pocket-money, and he never had occasion to draw upon a book for any sum. He excelled more particularly in history, as his historical works plainly prove. The relative political and commercial interests of every country in Europe, particularly of his own, were better known to him than perhaps to any man in it; but how steadily he pursued the latter in his public conduct, his enemies of all parties and denominations tell with pleasure.

“During his long exile in France, he applied himself to study with his characteristical ardour; and there he formed, and chiefly executed, the plan of his great philosophical work. The common bounds of human knowledge were too narrow for his warm and aspiring imagination: he must go extra flammantia mænia mundi, and explore the unknown and unknowable regions of metaphysics, which open an unbounded field for the excursions of an ardent imagination, where endless conjectures supply the defect of unattainable knowledge, and too often usurp both its name and its influence.

"He had a very handsome person, with a most engaging address in his air and manner; he had all the dignity and good breeding which a man of quality should or can have, and which so few, in this country at least, really have. He professed himself a Deist, believing in a general Providence, but doubting of, though by no means rejecting, (as is commonly supposed,) the immortality of the soul and a future state. He died of a cruel and shocking distemper, a cancer in his face, which he endured with firmness. A week before he died I took my leave of him with grief, and he returned me his last farewell with tenderness, and said: 'God who placed me here will do what he pleases with me hereafter; and he knows best what to do. May He bless you!'

"Upon the whole of this extraordinary character, where good and ill were perpetu ally jostling each other, what can we say, but, alas! poor human nature!" Lord Chesterfield's Letters-Collective Edition by Lord Mahon, vol. ii. p. 448.]

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it then foreseen, that the statesman who thus wrote would become the most deadly opponent of the hero-the champion of "France and faction," and thus, by his own avowal, the enemy of England!

St. John, in fact, still continued his close connection with Harley. He plunged deep with that crafty leader into the intrigues of Mrs. Masham; with him he also was detected, and compelled to resign, in February, 1708. But on this event he immediately joined the Tories, threw into their scale, till then suspended, the whole weight of his ability, and by them was, at no distant period, triumphantly borne back into office. In September, 1710, he was made Secretary of State, with the supreme direction of foreign affairs. For this post he was peculiarly qualified, by not only understanding, but writing, the French language most correctly-an accomplishment which even at present is by no means common, and which at that period was very rare. His task in both conducting and defending the negotiation for peace was extremely arduous. "When I undertook," he says himself, "in opposition to all the confederates, in opposition to a powerful turbulent faction at home, in opposition even to those habits of thinking which mankind had contracted by the same wrong principle of government, pursued for twenty years, to make a peace, the utmost vigour and resolution became necessary. It is on St. John that the shame of the inglorious treaty of Utrecht should mainly rest. He directed all its steps from London; and some fresh difficulties having unexpectedly arisen, he undertook to remove them by a journey to Paris, and a conference with Torcy. At nearly the same time, July 1712, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Bolingbroke, and on this new political theatre displayed the same talent and won the same ascendency as in the House of Commons.

These two statesmen, Oxford and Bolingbroke, were the leading members of the Tory administration. At the head of the opposition, at this period, were Lords Somers, Cowper, and Halifax, in the House of Peers; General Stanhope and Mr. Robert Walpole in the Commons. One far greater than all, the illustrious Marlborough, was no longer in England. Mortified at the unworthy personal attacks to which he was exposed, and more especially at the base charge of peculation levelled against him under the name of Sir Solomon Medina, he had withdrawn to the Continent in November, 1712, and was rejoined by his Duchess in the following spring. After some wandering, they fixed their residence at Antwerp, where they could carry on a close correspondence with their political friends, and from whence (as was shown by the event) a very short notice might, on any sudden emergency, summon them to England.

To Lord Strafford, April 8, 1712. Corresp., vol. i. p. 456.

CHAPTER II.

AFTER the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht, the eyes of all England were turned with anxious and undivided attention to the chances of the Royal succession. That this could be no very distant prospect became evident from the frequent illnesses and declining strength of the Queen. A few months more, it seemed probable, would sever the last remaining link which united the posterity of Charles the First with the throne of England. Warned by her Majesty's precarious health to look forward, her ministers were much divided in their wishes; all, indeed, professing alike their attachment to the Hanover succession, but the greater number of them secret partisans of the Pretender.

The Lord Treasurer, on this as on every other occasion, appears doubtful in his objects and crooked in his means. So early as 1710, he had sent, through Abbé Gaultier, an overture to Marshal Berwick, the Pretender's natural brother, to treat of the restoration of the Stuarts; Anne retaining the crown for her life, and securities being given for the religion and liberties of England. Peace was, however, he declared, an indispensable preliminary; and he seemed no less anxious that the whole negotiation should be carefully concealed from the Court of St. Germains, of whose usual indiscretion he was probably aware. Berwick, as may well be supposed, raised no objection to these or any other terms; and Oxford promised that next year he would transmit a detailed and specific plan for their common object. No such plan, however, arrived; and, when pressed by the French agents, the Treasurer only descanted on the importance of first securing the army, or returned such answers as "Let us go gently," and "Leave it all to me." As the general election approached, Oxford became somewhat more explicit, but still gave nothing in writing beyond one insignificant sentence,* and no more in conversation than seemed requisite to secure the powerful support of the Jacobites for his administration. The advice he offered was also sometimes of a very questionable nature, as that James should leave Lorraine, and go, for example, to Venice, where he might indeed, as Oxford urged, have more easy intercourse with the travelling

• "Je parlerai à M. l'Abbé (Gaultier), avant son départ, au sujet de M. le Chevalier." April, 1713. The secret letters of Gaultier and Iberville to Torcy are not amongst the Stuart Papers, but in the French diplomatic archives. Sir James Mackintosh had access to them in 1814; and some extracts from his collections, by an accomplished literary friend of his and acquaintance of mine, in the Edinburgh Review, No. 125, have been very useful to me.

English; but where, on the other hand, he would have been very far removed from England, and unable to profit by any sudden conjuncture in his favour. On the whole, Marshal Berwick and the Pretender himself soon became convinced that Oxford's view was chiefly his own present maintenance in power, and that he had no serious intention of assisting them.*

In fact, notwithstanding this negotiation, there are several strong reasons for believing that Oxford was, at heart, no enemy to the Hanover succession. He had mainly helped to establish that succession in 1701, and his vanity had, therefore, an interest in its success. It was the safer and the legal side, no small recommendation to a very timid man. His Presbyterian connections, his frequent overtures for a reconciliation with the Whigs, his perpetual disagreements with his more decided Jacobite colleagues, his avowed contempt of the old Stuart policy, might all be pleaded as arguments on the same side. I say nothing of his loud and eager professions of zeal at the Court of Hanover; but, on the whole, I do not doubt that he would readily have promoted the accession of that family, if he could have been assured of their favour afterwards, or if he could have brought them in with small trouble and no hazard to himself. But indolence and caution were always the main springs of his character; and, perhaps, those of his contemporaries knew him best who believed that he had no fixed designs at all.†

Bolingbroke, on the contrary, had plunged into the Jacobite intrigues headlong and decisively. Of the usual incitements to Jacobitism-high doctrines of divine right and indefeasible allegiancehe was, indeed, utterly destitute; but he was no less destitute of that zeal for civil rights and the Protestant religion which bound the hearts of his countrymen to the Hanover succession. Without any prejudice on either side, he looked solely and steadily at his personal interests. He perceived that his Tory connections and his ties with France made him an object of suspicion at Hanover, and left him little to expect from that family upon the throne. The same reason, however, would render him a favourite with "King James the Third," especially should that empty title become more substantial through his aid. He, therefore, determined to forward the views of the Jacobites. We find him, at the end of 1712, in secret communication with them; and during the two following years, he is repeatedly mentioned by the French agents, Gaultier and Iberville, in their private letters, as holding with them most confidential intercourse, and giving them most friendly counsels.

Of the remaining members of the cabinet, the Jacobites could also

"Il est moralement certain que toutes les avances qu'il nous avait faites n'avaient eu pour motif que son propre intérêt, afin de joindre les Jacobites aux Torys, et par là se rendre le plus fort dans le Parlement, et y faire approuver la paix." Mém. de Berwick, tom. ii. p. 132, ed. 1778.

See Bolingbroke's Letter to Wyndham, and Cunningham's Hist. vol. ii. p. 303. The latter, however, is, I must admit, very poor authority for any fact or opinion.

Macpherson's Papers, vol. ii. p. 367.