No More Learning

, not from the Secretary to the Minister",' there is
often a fair amount of malicious wit. Of Bolingbroke's private
letters, however, the most pleasing are to be found in the series
addressed to his half-sister Henrietta, which are generally written
in a natural vein, without a superfluity of the epigrammatic infusion
in which the letters of this age abound. Even these, however, on
?
occasion, exhibit Bolingbroke's fatal propensity, when telling the
truth, to conceal part of it.
St John's earliest withdrawal from public life to the consolations
of philosophy and literature belongs to the early part of 1708,
when he followed Harley out of office. His retirement was carried
out with so much pompousness, and so little interfered with his
habits of self-indulgence, that it exposed him to much ridicule on
the part of his friends, including brutal sarcasm from Swift ; and it
is not known to have been productive of any compositions in prose
or in verse. After his return to public life in 1710, not many
weeks before he received the seals as secretary of state (September
1710), he had, not for the last time in his career, inspired the
foundation by the tories of a journal to support them in a vigorous
campaign against the whig government. Among the early con-
tributors were Swift, Prior and Robert Freind.
This was The Examiner (to be distinguished from other
periodicals of that name), of which between thirty and forty
numbers appear to have been published up to the spring of 1712.
According to the general account? , Bolingbroke's first and most
important contribution to this journal appeared in no. x, and
contained an attack on Marlborough's conduct of the war, with
a fierce attack on the duchess. This description, however, does
not apply to the number in question ; but elsewhere* is reprinted
what is called 'St John's Letter to The Examiner,' which in-
veighs against the whigs, their clubs, their journals, and their
literary champions such as 'the Hector of Sarum' (Burnet), and
speaks of the subjection of the queen 'to an arbitrary junto, and
1 Vol. 11, p. 41. The replies of Prior (Henrico colendissimo Matthaeus) are at least
equally vivacious.
2 See the correspondence, chiefly from manuscript originals, appended to Sichel, W. ,
Bolingbroke and his Times. The Sequel, 1902. (Henrietta St John married Robert
Knight, member for Sudbury, afterwards Lord Luxborough. She is also known as the
friend and correspondent of Shenstone. ) There is no need for referring here to
Grimoard's collection, which consists of letters in French, partly originals, partly
translations.
3 See Macknight, T. , The Life of Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, pp. 158—9.
* In Somers' Tracts, vol. XIII, p. 71; also in The History of His Own Time, by
Matthew Prior (ed. Drift, A. ), 1740, pp. 306 ff. This letter was answered by A Letter
to Isaac Bickerstaffe, Esq. , by earl Cooper,' 1710.
6


## p. 218 (#242) ############################################

218
Historical and Political Writers
to the caprice of an insolent woman. ' No. XVII of this Examiner,
'
it may be added, contains a letter which attacks the duke under
the thin disguise of 'Crassus,' but makes no special attack upon
the duchess.
But the five years of office which ensued, the labours, including
a journey to France, which resulted in the conclusion of the peace
of Utrecht, and the intrigues by which Bolingbroke in vain en-
deavoured to turn the approaching crisis of the succession to the
advantage of the tories left him little time for composition ; by
the close of March 1715, he found himself an exile, and, in the
following July, in the service of the pretender. It was not till
this fatal phase of his career was at an end that he made his first
elaborate contribution to political literature. A few months,
however, before he wrote the celebrated Letter to Sir William
Wyndham—the disciple whom he had left at home behind him-
he had composed his Reflections on Exile, published before the
close of 1716, when his hopes of pardon and return had again
receded. This effort, founded on Seneca's Consolatio ad Helviam,
is stuffed with additional quotations from classical and one or
two modern sources, and reads almost like a parody of the
classicising essay of the period. Although its style has been
held to be Ciceronian rather than Senecan', the writer inveighs
against ‘Tully' for unphilosophically lamenting his exile, though,
with a characteristic sneer, it is allowed that his separation from
Terentia, whom he repudiated not long afterwards, was perhaps an
affliction to him at the time. '
A Letter to Sir William Wyndham seems to have been
directly provoked by a Jacobite pamphlet entitled A Letter from
Avignon? , which, in its turn, was a product of the rupture between
Bolingbroke and the pretender early in 1716, and was written in
the following year. Its main purpose was to demonstrate, for
the benefit of the tories and from the writer's own experience, the
suicidal folly of an alliance between them and the Jacobites.
But, though the logic of this demonstration is incontrovertible, the
historical process by which the experience on which it rests was
gained is audaciously misrepresented, and the circumstances in
which Bolingbroke offered his services to the pretender are
falsified, as are his relations to the tory party and its policy after
bis fall. It was, not improbably, his knowledge, not only of the
truth, but of what others knew of the truth, which prevented him
1 Sichel, W. , 1. 8. , p. 82.
2 See Collins, J. Churton, Bolingbroke etc. p. 132.


## p. 219 (#243) ############################################

6
A Letter to Sir William Wyndham 219
from publishing this famous Letter in his lifetime. For few, if any,
.
among his writings equal it in force and effectiveness. Its tone is
one of a candour half cynical, half truly English in its straight-
forwardness. He goes back to the days, in 1710, when the tories
returned to power, and when he was himself fain to let Harl
have his way, and not to take advantage of his own ascendancy
in the Commons—who 'grow, like hounds, fond of the man who
shows them game. The whole account of his rival, though
inspired by bitter personal hatred, has the ring of truth. Then
follows the skilful analysis of the baffled tory party after queen
Anne's death, and the defiant defence of his own conduct-could he
resolve 'to be obliged to the whimsicals, or to suffer with Oxford ? '
So he threw in his lot with the Jacobites, and became a member
of a court and government which he describes with inimitable
contemptuousness, Fanny Oglethorpe whom you must have seen in
England, kept her corner in it, and Olive Trant was the great
wheel of our machine. His account of the failure of the contribu-
tions made by the pretender's government, and by the pretender
himself, to the failure of the 1715 is convincing ; less so is that of
his own consistency face to face with an inconsistent tory party;
while his explanation of the pretender's attitude towards the
religious question is transparently ungenerous, however effectively
it may clinch his demonstration of the cleavage between tories
and Jacobites. But the attention of the reader is held throughout
the tract, which excels in both direct invective and insidious
sarcasm, and, apart from a few apparent gallicisms near the outset,
may be regarded as a masterpiece of lighter English controversial
prose.
A decade had nearly passed before Bolingbroke’s pen was once
more at work as a weapon of political warfare. In 1725, he had
returned two-thirds restored'-safe, that is, in person and estate,
but with his attainder still hanging over him and debarring him
from participation as a peer in the counsels of the nation. He
had found the whig ministry under Walpole and Townshend in
the plenitude of power, and the tory party reduced to what
seemed hopeless impotence. It was not long before, in alliance
with Pulteney, the leader of the discontented whigs, Bolingbroke
engaged in a long-sustained and, ultimately, to some extent,
successful endeavour to put an end to this condition of things.
The assault may be said to have opened, on 5 December 1726, with
the appearance of the first number of The Craftsman; although,
as a matter of fact, already, on 15 July of that year, Bolingbroke,


## p. 220 (#244) ############################################

220
Historical and Political Writers
2
under the pseudonym ‘Will Johnson,' had contributed to a sheet
called The Country Gentleman a homely apologue in derision of
Walpole. The minister here appears as coachman to the worthy
Caleb D'Anvers at his little country place near the town (in The
Craftsman, of which D'Anvers was the figurehead, he is usually
designated as of Gray's inn); he proves untrustworthy, and ends by
breaking his neck when his horses have been scared by an angry
rustic populace
The Craftsman had a much longer, as well as a merrier, life
than was reached by most of the political periodicals proper of
the early Hanoverian period—The Englishman, The Examiner
and the rest (it is unnecessary to go back upon earlier sheets of a
more mixed kind); for, in one way or another, it lasted for nine or
ten years, and, according to Goldsmith? , sold much more rapidly
than of old had The Spectator itself. It was edited by Nicholas
Amhurst, a light-hearted Oxonian, who, a few years earlier, had
been invited to leave his university for his university's good, and
was published by him in conjunction with an enterprising London
printer, Richard Francklin. The signatures of the contributors
were intentionally chosen and interchanged so as to mystify the
ill- and defy the well-informed (including Walpole, who employed
more than one doughty pen on the preparation of retorts). Among
these contributors were, in addition to Amhurst (who started the
paper under the name Caleb D'Anvers), Bolingbroke, Pulteney
and Pulteney's cousin David; also, the chief of the opposition wits
(in truth, there were not many wits on the other side), Arbuthnot
and Swift, and, probably, Gay and Pope. Amhurst was, in 1741,
succeeded in the editorship by Thomas Cooke (commonly called
*Hesiod Cooke' from his translation of Hesiod, 1728); and among
the later writers in the journal were Lyttelton and Akenside.
Eustace Budgell, formerly a follower of Addison and a writer in
The Spectator, as well as a whig official, had, after (according to
his own account) losing a fortune in the South Sea, turned against
Walpole and became a contributor to The Craftsman.
Of Bolingbroke's contributions, with which we are here chiefly
concerned, the bulk is held to belong to the years 1727—31. The
1 Printed in vol. 1 of the 1731 edition of The Craftsman. See, also, Sichel, W. , . s. ,
pp. 246 ff. , where will be found the most recent account of The Craftsman and its con-
tributory forces.
2 See Life in Works, vol. 1, pp. lix-x. The circulation of The Craftsman is said,
at one time, to have exceeded 10,000 copies a week (it was only for a time a bi-weekly
publication); but it is not easy to verify such statements. So early as 1737, it was
reprinted in an edition which reached 14 volumes.
>


## p. 221 (#245) ############################################

The Craftsman
221
first of these, as it seems, appeared in no. 16 of The Craftsman
(27 January 1727), with the title The First Vision of Camelicki.
Under the thin disguise of an eastern allegory, this piece is a
virulent attack on the arbitrary rule of Walpole, who is denounced,
with extreme malignity, as a vizier of 'blunt, ruffianly malignity. . .
his face bronzed over with a glare of confidence. ' He tramples on
the backs of the parliament men on his way to the throne; nor is it
till his collapse that the radiant volume of the constitution re-
appears, while heaven and earth resound with the cry of liberty,
and 'the Heart of the King is glad within him. ' Among other
acknowledged papers by Bolingbroke in the earlier numbers of
The Craftsman are two out of three bearing the signature 'John
Trot' (afterwards qualified as 'yeoman'), of which the earlier con-
troverts, not very frankly, the arguments of The London Journal,
then supposed to be under the direction of Benjamin Hoadly
(bishop of Salisbury, and, afterwards, of Winchester%), on the subject
of the unwillingness of Walpole's government to declare war
against Spain. A later paper, which forms one of a supplementary
a
set printed by Francklin“, as The Craftsman Extraordinary,
discusses the alleged failure of the ministry to obtain anything
from that power in the preliminaries of the congress of Cambray,
and ends with an adjuration to the bishop to feed 'the Flock
committed to his Charge,' in obedience to the Apostolical Con-
stitutions, lib. II. C. 6, cited for his benefit in both Latin and
English.
But the most elaborate of Bolingbroke's invective, though
coupled, in this instance, with some historical comments not
devoid of interest, is to be found in Remarks upon the History of
England, which appeared between 5 September 17305 and 22 May
1731%, with the signature 'Humphry Oldcastle. ' The argument
of these letters is carried on in the conversational framework
familiar to both Clarendon and Burnet, the main part in the
discussion being taken by 'an old gentleman,' whose views, of
course, are Bolingbroke's and who, equally of course, is moved by
the true old English spirit,' the direct reverse of 'the blind and
furious spirit of party. Assuming the existence of a great danger
'
6
6
1 Reprinted in Works, vol. 11.
? In no. 129, 4 January 1729.
3 The family of the Publicolas are very numerous. . . . I do not presume to say,
for instance, that such a piece was written by Ben, or such a one by Robin. '
- Various pamphlets published about this time by Francklin, in which Bolingbroke
may have had a band, cannot be noticed here.
5 No. 218.
6 No. 255. Both are in vol. VII of the 14 volume edition.
8


## p. 222 (#246) ############################################

222
Historical and Political Writers
to liberty, and insisting on the need of keeping up that ‘spirit of
liberty' by losing which the Romans lost their freedom itself, the
demonstration in the fourth letter reaches English ground. But,
though the printer of The Craftsman-one can hardly see why
is said to have been arrested on account of the remarks on the
later Plantagenets, it was only when dealing with the Lancastrian
kings that the writer discovers his purpose by openly attacking
those who advocate the dependence of parliament upon government.
He has now found his footing. In Letter VIII, where he solemnly
recalls the revival of the spirit of liberty as exemplified in the
parliamentary call of Edward II to the throne, he also insinuates
a comparison between queen Caroline and queen Elizabeth
Woodville! His account of Henry VII (Letter 1x) may not un-
charitably be surmised to have been intended to reflect on George I;
and Wolsey, who could not sustain his power save by force and
corruption (Letter x), is, quite manifestly, put forward as the
prototype of Walpole. Thus, Humphry Oldcastle's public is
gradually brought nearer to its own times, and, after being treated
to an outburst of wrath against the wicked minister, is instructed
how, under Elizabeth, the check on absolutism was the will of
the people itself; how her encouragement of commerce and her
prudent policy in the earlier part of her reign, together with her
abstinence, throughout its course, from the conclusion of un-
necessary treaties or unsafe alliances, brought the nation safe
through a great crisis of its history (Letters XII—XVI). In all
this there is some point-and a great deal of sting.
Then, however, there set in the lamentable change. Govern-
ment itself may be turned into faction, James I, who has been
wrongly blamed for not entangling himself more than he did, 'and
as is done now,' in European (German) affairs, yet, being 'afraid
where no fear was,' allowed the British flag, which had waved
proudly in the days of queen Elizabeth (queen Anne), to be
insulted with impunity. In the reign of Charles I, who came as a
party man to the throne, the faction of the court tainted the nation.
The claim of James I (like the pretender's) to hereditary right was
untenable ; the corruption by means of which he tried to govern
was unEnglish ; and his patronage of popery did nobody good but
the puritans (Letters XVII—XXII). Under James I, and, still
more, under his son and the universally hated minister Buckingham,
>
1 Except that the reign of Richard II had long before proved itself a dangerous
subject for modern treatment.


## p. 223 (#247) ############################################

Bolingbroke v. Walpole
223
the policy of the crown was confronted by the spirit of liberty and
broken by an unremitting struggle of almost twoscore years. If
we look around us now, we see the whole posse of ministerial
scribblers assembled in augmented numbers-perhaps with aug.
mented pensions—and the insects, albeit they have been dispersed
by every flap of The Craftsman's pen, gathered again, after their
kind, and renewing their din. But the objects of their attack-the
gentleman who conscientiously left his friends and party (Pulteney),
and another gentleman, who has been accused of ingratitude and
of treachery (Bolingbroke)-need not fear the charges heaped upon
their heads; and, with a spirited apologia for the political conduct
of this 'other gentleman,' this unique breviarium of English
history comes to a close (Letters XXIII—XXIV).
In the autumn of 1732, Bolingbroke’s Remarks upon the
History of England were followed by three papers of similar
purport, discussing the policy of the Athenians with a view to
the lessons to be drawn thence by a student of English history and
politics. In the previous year (1731), in A Final Answer to the
Remarks on The Craftsman's Vindication? –a pamphlet which
may be regarded as the climax of the weekly efforts of the scribes
in Walpole’s pay, though neither it nor Bolingbroke's retort put
an end to the inky war of which they formed part-he renewed
his self-defence, on the lines followed in the last of his letters in
the Remarks. So far as his own conduct is concerned, everything
really turns on his far from ingenuous assertion, advanced already
in the Letter to Sir William Wyndham, that neither before nor
after his service with the pretender was he a Jacobite. But, as
an exercise in the art of invective, delivered as from a high
pinnacle of virtue, this diatribe against the ‘noble pair of brothers'
(Robert and Horace Walpole), professing to come from one whose
'ambition, whatever may have been said or thought about it, hath
been long since dead,' must be allowed to have few superiors.
Before adverting to what Goldsmith describes as Bolingbroke's
'parting blow' against the object of his concentrated political and
personal hatred, it may be convenient to notice the important
additions made by Bolingbroke to the political writing by him
actually contributed to The Craftsman, in the form of certain
papers put forth, from January 1727 onwards, under the title
The Occasional Writer. Of these, which seem to be four in
I See vol. vini of 14 vol. odn. , nos. 324—6 (16—30 September). Reprinted in
A Collection of Political Tracts, printed anonymously in 1748.
* Reprinted in Works, vol. VI.


## p. 224 (#248) ############################################

224
Historical and Political Writers
number, the first, written in a style of mock humility, is inscribed
'to the PERSON, to whom alone it can belong,' and in whose service,
inasmuch as great statesmen set no value upon high literary ability,
its composition is professed to have been undertaken. In reality,
it is an indictment of Walpole's conduct of foreign affairs, and,
more especially, of his alleged subservience to France? Against
his wont, Walpole gratified his adversary by inspiring an angrily
contemptuous reply, spurning “the Occasional Writer's' 'proffered
services’; and this ministerial answer, already noted in a brief
postscript to his second paper, is, in the third, disputed 'with strict
impartiality. In a postscript to a fourth paper, which may or
'
may not be by Bolingbroke, and which is addressed to ‘his Imperial
Majesty' (to whom the writer tenders counsel in a very superior
way), the author of the first paper pretends to disclaim the author-
ship of the third.
The last and most important of the series belonging to this
group of Bolingbroke's writings is the celebrated Dissertation
upon Parties, which appeared in The Craftsman in the autumn
of 1733? In April of this year, Walpole's virtual abandonment
of the Excise bill had severely shaken his authority and encouraged
the opposition to fresh efforts. A general election was at hand
in 1734; but the prospect of accomplishing the overthrow of the
minister was impeded by divisions among his adversaries. In
particular, Pulteney and the malcontent whigs disliked the pro-
posed repeal of the Septennial act-a measure on which Boling-
broke was intent and which, fully aware of his authorship of it,
Walpole induced the expiring parliament to throw out, in March
17343. Thus, it was in order to bring the long struggle against
Walpole to a successful issue, and, with this end, to conciliate the
dissatisfied element in the opposition, that A Dissertation was
1 The second letter, though with a different turn of irony, carries on the same
theme, inveighing against the fatuous pursuit of the ideal of a balance of power.
A reference must suffice to Bolingbroke's remarkably luminous pamphlet The Case of
Dunkirk consider'd (1730), which is commended, and from which ample quotations are
made, in The Craftsman, no. 207 (20 June 1730). Cf. , as to this, Collins, J. Churton,
U. 8. , p. 179.
2 The series extends from no. 382 (with breaks) to no. 443, from 27 October 1733
onwards. See vols. XII and xil of the 14 vol. edition, where many of the letters are
signed. O. ' and the reprint in Works, vol. III.
8 This is the debate, with Walpole's attack upon Bolingbroke, and its supposed
consequence, his retirement to France, imaginatively reproduced in the Opposition
Scene in the last century' in Smythe, George A. F. P. Sydney (Lord Strangford), Historic
Fancies (1844). Bolingbroke comments on the debate in a pathetic speech, in which
he apostrophises Liberty as the heritage of the people of the future.


## p. 225 (#249) ############################################

A Dissertation upon Parties
225
composed. Although, beyond a doubt, one of the most notable
of its author's polemical efforts, it failed in its immediate purpose;
and, instead of Walpole being overthrown, it was Bolingbroke who,
early in 1735—the state of his private affairs helping to disconcert
him once more returned to France.
The nineteen letters to Caleb D'Anvers entitled A Dissertation
upon Parties are preceded by a dedication to Walpole, which
denounces the foremost councillor of the reigning sovereign (and
of his predecessor) as having gained that position ‘by wriggling,
intriguing, whispering, and bargaining himself into this dangerous
post, to which he was not called by the general suffrage, nor per-
haps '—here we find just the grain of truth without which no
malicious insinuation is complete—' by the deliberate choice of
his master himself. ' Yet, with all the vehemence of the attack,
and the wit that enlivens it, its audacity is cheap; for Bolingbroke
knew that he was not running any serious personal risk. The interest
of the letters into which the Dissertation is broken up, therefore, is
substantially that of a brilliant dialectical and rhetorical display.
The general argument in favour of the maintenance, by all the
parties that agreed to it, of the constitution, as finally settled by
the revolution of 1688', is skilfully brought home, so to speak,
to the consciences of tories and whigs alike; "the chimæra of a
prerogative has been removed, and there is no danger of the
House of Commons assuming a preponderance of power? , unless
the constituent nation cooperates in its own undoing *. But
liberty, as Machiavelli says, needs a constant renewal of safe-
guards; and there are new agencies of corruption at work, in
the manipulation of the civil list and of the public funds; and
it is the duty of all parties to work together against this abuse,
directed as it is by the guiltiest of ministers.
Quite apart from the admirable skill with which these letters
handle their text, from their lively personal digressions against
Walpoles and from the historical insight of which, in particular
passages, they give proof, the Dissertation has the great merit
of inner veracity.
Whatever we may think of the motive of its
composition, or of the effect which it produced or which it failed
to produce, Bolingbroke had come to know, by means of an
>
1 Letter III.
2 Letter IX.
3 Letter XVI.
4 Letter XVIII.
5 Under aliases such as the bell-wether,' and 'Pallas the favourite of Agrippina. '
6 Such as that commenting on the effects of the opposition to the Exclusion bill
(Letter IV) and, more especially, the character of Charles II, probably based upon
Temple (Letter vi).
E. L. IX. CH. VIII.
15


## p. 226 (#250) ############################################

226
Historical and Political Writers
experience the reverse of deceptive, how much was rotten in the
party system, in which his own political life had its being. This
system he was afterwards, though without any real success, to
seek to remedy; but his present diagnosis was not devoid of an
essential element of truth, and a sense of this pervades the fervour
and the flow of his hortatory eloquence.
In the ten or eleven years in which, from his fine and costly
estate at Dawley-Dawley Farm’he, characteristically, preferred
to call it-Bolingbroke was influencing the political life of England,
his thoughts were also occupied with ambitious literary projects.
One of these was a history of his own times, which was to have
extended from the peace of the Pyrenees to that of Utrecht, but
of which only fragments survive. In the autumn of 1735, by which
time he had established himself at Chanteloup, in Touraine,
having now for some time alternated between philosophical and
historical themes, he not unnaturally bethought himself of apply.
ing philosophical treatment to historical labours. The result was
a series of Letters on the Study and Use of History, addressed
by him, in the winter of this year, to Lord Cornbury, Clarendon's
great-grandson, afterwards Lord Hyde, a young nobleman of literary
tastes and Jacobite leanings, who played a prominent part in
Bolingbroke's later literary life. It cannot be doubted that these
Letters, which are stated to have been of all their author's writings
“the most read", exercised an important influence upon the pro-
gress
of historical studies and historical literature both in England
and in France, where they inspired Voltaire. Bolingbroke, it has
been said? , was the first to divert English historical enquiry from
the dead to the living; perhaps it might be asserted, more broadly,
that he was the first English writer to recognise and illustrate
the cardinal principle of the continuity of history. But, here
again, the muse of history ends as the apologist of a particular
chapter of political action. After the first of these eight Letters
has discussed the motives from which different classes of men engage
in the study of history-amusement, desire of display, the love of
accumulation for accumulation's sake-the second lays down the
time-honoured maxim that history, rightly understood, is philo-
sophy teaching by examples. Although Boling broke fails to
perceive the radical futility of this theory as applied to a science
which has its own work to perform, he is too shrewd not to guard
1 Macknight, T. , u. s. , p. 625.
By Schlosser, cited by Brosch, M. , Lord Bolingbroke und die Whigs und Tories
seiner Zeit, p. 296.
2
3


## p. 227 (#251) ############################################

6
Letters on the Study and Use of History 227
himself, as he does in his third Letter, against an exaggerated use
of his principle. Thus, when he reviews extant historical literature,
it is in a sceptical spirit that he treats not only ancient history
at large, but Jewish history and Scriptural chronology in par-
ticular! "The lying spirit,' he says in his fourth Letter, ‘has gone
forth from ecclesiastical to other historians. ' But the historical
student is not, on that account, to despair; it is folly to endeavour
'to establish universal Pyrrhonism in matters of history, because
there are few histories without lies, and none without some mis-
takes. ' A critical sifting will leave us still in possession of materials
for historical study; the only difficulty, since life is short for
the old, and busy for the young, is not to lose time by groping
in the dark among them. Abridgments and mere compilations
should be eschewed—the ancients are to be read, but modern
history, beginning with the era in which a great change was
wrought by the concurrence of extraordinary events, is to be
studied. From this shallow generalisation, the writer proceeds to
a severe judgment as to what English writers have done towards
illustrating the division of modern history with which they are
more particularly concerned.
'Our nation,' he says, 'has furnished as ample and as important matter,
good and bad, for history, as any nation under the sun; and yet we must yield
the palm in writing history most certainly to the Italians and to the French,
and I fear even to the Germans. The only two pieces of history we have, in
any respect to be compared with the ancient, are the reign of Henry VII, by
my Lord Bacon, and the history of our civil wars by your noble ancestor, my
Lord Chancellor Clarendon. But we have no general history to be compared
with some of other countries; neither have we, which I lament much more,
particular histories, except the two I have mentioned, nor writers of memorials,
nor collectors of monuments and anecdotes, to vie in number or in merit with
those that eign nations can boast. '. . .
Bolingbroke knew very little about the memorials which were
either at the disposal of students of the national history or await-
ing resuscitation; but the truth of his remarks as to the slow
progress of English historical literature to a conception of its
highest and comprehensive purposes is made sufficiently clear by
any consecutive survey of it, such as has been attempted in these
volumes. By way of exemplifying his meaning, Bolingbroke, in
his sixth Letter, gives a brief view of the ecclesiastical and of the
civil government in Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth
6
1 This was the portion of the Letters which Lord Hyde in vain sought to prevent
Mallet, Bolingbroke's literary executor, from publishing after his death. See
Macknight, u. s. , pp. 694-7.
15-2


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228
Historical and Political Writers
century, and in his two remaining Letters carries on this survey,
with far greater fulness, from the treaty of the Pyrenees to his
own day. This portion of the series may be reckoned among the
most effective and enjoyable of Boling broke's writings. He alludes,
in one of these Letters? , to his intention of writing a history of
the latter part of the reign of William III and of the reign of
Anne-of which he says more in a separate Letter, apparently
addressed to Lord Bathurst? The two concluding Letters of the
series are admirably clear and concise; nor could anything be
better, in its way, than the account of the growth of the power
of France from Richelieu onwards, and the preservation of her
preponderance notwithstanding the Triple Alliance. The last
Letter is instinct with strong personal feeling, though it maintains
a polished calm and, unlike much of Bolingbroke's political writing,
seeks to convince by argument rather than by eloquence and wit.
He is fair to William III's unsuccessful endeavours to settle the
Spanish succession by peace, and allows that the war was really
unavoidable. The pivot of his argument is that England did not
enter into the war to dispossess Philip, but that the English govern-
ment adopted this point of view in 1706 and persisted in it even
after the death of the emperor Joseph I. For economic reasons, it
had then become the duty of the British government to make peace,
,
and those who opposed it—the emperor and the arrogant whigs-
were responsible for England's not obtaining better terms at Utrecht.
The pessimistic conclusion of the Letter is more in the author's
usual vein, lamenting the condition of the state, composed of a king
without monarchical splendour, a senate of nobles without aristo-
cratic independency, and a senate of commons without democratic
freedom,' and a general decay of society to match.
About the time when Bolingbroke sketched a plan of European
history forLord Bathurst, a tory peer who was the friend of Congreve,
Pope and Sterne, he also composed, for the edification of the same
recipient, A Letter on the True Use of Retirement and Study (1736).
This effort has been very diversely judged; but it can hardly be
denied to be a very readable essay on what may be called the
· Letter vin, p. 91 (edn. of 1870).
; A Plan for a General History of Europe, reprinted in Works, vol. iv, which is of the
nature of a quite brief introduction to such a survey, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but, of course, extending to the treaties of Utrecht and Baden and their
effects—subjects on which 'I think I could speak with some knowledge. ' The History
was to have been a sequence of a sort of political maps, which Bolingbroke confesses he
might not have possessed the ability of constructing ; though, characteristically, he
has no doubt as to the impartiality with which he would have performed the task.


## p. 229 (#253) ############################################

9
A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism 229
philosophy of life, part of which it sees very justly. Though the
author nowhere probes human nature very deeply, his diagnosis
is keen and his statement of its results forcible without cynicism.
Of greater importance among Bolingbroke's writings is A Letter
on the Spirit of Patriotism, written by him in 1736, and subse-
quently addressed to Lord Lyttelton, a rising hope of the opposition.
Its theme is one which was to occupy Bolingbroke's mind during
the remainder of his political life, and may be regarded as the
final position which he had come to occupy, in consequence
of the divisions between those with whom he had cooperated, and
the failure of the adversaries of Walpole, among whom he was
chief, to effect the minister's overthrow. To merge factions in a
great national or patriotic party, and, while steadfastly opposing the
corrupt existing government, to reform the English system of
government itself, was the object to which he now directed the
endeavours of public men, and of the rising generation of them in
particular. But, while the breadth of this plan gives a certain
dignity to the pamphlet in which it is advanced, the praise which
has been lavished on its execution has been overdone. If an
example of Bolingbroke's best manner is to be found in the last
two of the Letters on the Study and Use of History, then A Letter
on the Spirit of Patriotism must surely be regarded as exhibiting
only his second-best, a compound of violent invective with more or
less turgid declamation. The essay begins with a tirade against
Walpole and the whigs, who had at last found out that they had
prepared the sway not of a party but of a person, while the tories
continued sour, waiting for a messiah that would never come.
Then follows a tirade about the true spirit in which opposition
should be conducted—the spirit of a patriotism in which there is
a satisfaction comparable to that attending on the discoveries
of a Newton or a Descartes. That spirit has, in England, been
exchanged for a servility more abject than that to be found in
France; yet, to check the growing evils in our public life was
a task really so easy that it could have been accomplished but for
the eagerness of the hunters, intent, lest they should miss their
own reward, upon dividing the skin almost before they had taken
the beast, and thus postponing the evil day. It is the next
generation on whom it remains to set our hopes a generation
which must learn to despise the old differences between Big Endians
and Little Endians, the dangers of the church and those of the
protestant succession. Neither Demosthenes nor Cicero was an
orator only; a definite plan of action has become the sacred duty


## p. 230 (#254) ############################################

230
Historical and Political Writers
of a patriotic opposition. All this is clever and acute; but who
could describe it as the distilled wisdom of a life nobly devoted to
the patriotic action which it approves ?
In 1738, by which time Bolingbroke had recognised the futility
of hoping for a personal return to power—whatever means he
might employ for the attainment of this object-he composed
what (with the exception of two smaller pieces) was the last, as
it was one of the most notable, of his contributions to political
literature-The Idea of a Patriot King. It was not published
till 17491, when the public situation had greatly changed, when
Pelham was at the head of the government, and Lyttelton, to
whom, as private secretary of Frederick prince of Wales, this
treatise and the Spirit of Patriotism had been addressed, was
not in opposition, but in office. But it seemed entirely opportune
to the public which read and admired it, and it continued to be
a sort of symbolic book to the party which set its hopes on Frederick
prince of Wales, and, after his death in 1751, with perhaps more
show of reason, on his son, afterwards king George III. That
monarch himself has been justly describedas having 'derived
the articles of his political creed' from Bolingbroke's treatise,
which supplied the materials for the political programme of the
King's Friends. Thus, it was not wonderful that The Patriot
King should continue to be read with an interest never aroused
by its predecessor. Nor does the splendour of its eloquence show
any falling off from that exemplar. The patriot king, who begins
to govern so soon as he begins to reign, and his ministers,
selected by him at once as men sure to serve on the same
principles as those on which he is prepared to govern—what
blessings may not be reckoned upon to flow from these miraculous
assumptions !
Of course, the argument has its ironical side or aspect, and,
viewed as a satire upon the non-patriot king, and his non-patriotic
followers, the essay retained its force so long as it was worth find-
ing fault with George II and the epigoni of Walpole. But the
historical comment upon the positive value of Bolingbroke's sove-
reign cure was furnished, not so much by the career of Frederick
prince of Wales (of which there is no more to be said '), as by the
history of the earlier years of the reign of George III and of the
1 As to the private impression of 1744, surreptitiously increased by Pope from five
or six to fifteen hundred copies, afterwards destroyed by Bolingbroke's orders, see
Macknight, ú. 8. , pp. 666—7.
· By Churton Collins, u. 8. , p. 206.


## p. 231 (#255) ############################################

Bolingbroke's Last Political Pamphlets 231
part played by his 'Friends' in English constitutional life. The
idea of The Patriot King was a fabric of sand, and became a
heritage of the winds1.
The letter or paper Of the State of Parties at the Accession
of George I, which, apparently put together to satisfy Lyttelton,
was published with the two 'patriotic' treatises in 1749, may be
unreservedly dismissed as a piece of special pleading neither
effective nor adequate. Bolingbroke here takes it upon himself
to deny that, during the last four years of queen Anne's reign,
there existed any plan for bringing the pretender to the throne.
Clearly, he expected the fact of his own correspondence with
James, at a time when he was secretary of state under his sister,
to be ignored by the reader as it was by the writer. Thus, the
charge against George I of having let loose the fury of revenge
upon the tories, and goaded men into the rebellion of 1715, instead
of accomplishing his succession quietly, as he might have done, falls
to the ground, or recoils upon its author.
Finally, in 1749, Bolingbroke put forth Some Reflections on
the Present State of the Nation, principally with regard to her
Trade and her Debts, and on the Causes and Consequences of
them. Although this pamphlet remains a fragment, it would
seem as if the main points of the argument were put in the
completed portion. After a most unsuccessful and costly war,
and after we have participated, 'like principal actors,' in con-
tinental wars and negotiations covering a period of threescore
years, it becomes time that public attention should be turned
homeward, and especially to the question of national taxes and
debts
Since the revolution of 1688, and, more particularly,
during the Spanish Succession war, in which the whole weight
of expenditure fell on England and Holland, the chief way of
meeting it has been that of funding debt (whence the beginning
of an era of stockjobbing), in order to make the fortunes of great
numbers depend on the preservation of the new government. The
increase of the public debt has been enormous, and has risen
since the Hanoverian acquisition of Bremen and Verden became the
first link in a chain which has dragged England into new and
expensive broils. When, of late, war with Spain became un-
avoidable, the part we took in it could only end to the advantage
of France. We have no Sullys among us; but the public debt
1 Sichel has directed attention to the reference to Bolingbroke's speculations in
the Historic Fancies, already cited, of Lord Strangford, at one time a remarkable figure
in the Young England' movement.


## p. 232 (#256) ############################################

232
Historical and Political Writers
must be diminished, and the interest on it reduced ; and, though
it is necessary to foster the rivalry between Austria and France,
and to support the former against the latter, this should be done
in accordance with the present interest of England only.
The tone of this pamphlet, though some of the old fire still
burns beneath the surface, is, on the whole, calmer and more
temperate than is usual with the writer.
It does not form part of our present task to estimate the influence
of Bolingbroke upon his contemporaries or upon posterity, except
in so far as it was due to his literary qualities. We have not to
examine here what there was of intrinsic force in his statesman-
ship, whether in office or in opposition, or even what there was
of inner veracity in his arguments as a political and historical
writer-for he knew the value of truth, though he did not love it
as much as he hated Walpole. If he is now read, he is read (except
by professed historical students) for his style ; and, supposing
Burke to have had some reason for terming him a ' presumptuous
and superficial writer? ,' his style must bear part of the blame.
It is Bolingbroke's style as a writer-not as an orator-of which
alone posterity is capable of forming an estimate. As a matter
of course, the oratorical element in his writings, almost from first to
last, is considerable ; but though, during his brief public career
under queen Anne, he was, beyond a doubt, the most effective
speaker in the House of Commons, not a single one of his great
speeches has come down to us.
Bolingbroke's style as a writer has the supreme merit—the
merit without which all others are, or ought to be, vain-of perfect
lucidity. His readers are never left in the slightest doubt as
to what he means, or at least as to what he desires them to
understand him to mean. And this result he obtains without
effort, without any assumption of severe superiority, or any display
of overwhelming exuberance. Indeed, his style might almost be
called the normal style of English prose, after which even the
1 See Sichel, W. , u. s. , pp. 441 ff. It seems unnecessary to examine here the state-
ment that Burke's style was founded on Bolingbroke's; but it may, perhaps, be observed
that the clever imitation of Bolingbroke's manner to be found in Burke's first printed
work, A Vindication of Natural Society (which took in the critics) does not furnish any
proof of the assertion. Barke, in his imitation, forgot neither the wide basis from
which the argument started, nor the rapid, though varied, treatment of the theme, nor,
again, the final touch of personal pathos, and even the ornaments of occasional
quotation and illustrative anecdote. The imitation, of course, was intentional,
while the higher qualities of Burke's style are not to be sought for in such a
composition. But, apart from this, it would not be difficult to point out touches in
A Vindication which have more in them of Burke than of Bolingbroke.
>


## p. 233 (#257) ############################################

Bolingbroke's Style
233
style of Burke seems to be, in some respects, transnormal. In
what measure the lucidity of Bolingbroke as a writer is due to his
early and close familiarity with French, it is difficult to decide;
at the same time, his style, with hardly an exception worth noting,
is perfectly free from gallicisms.
But Bolingbroke's prose is not only clear; it has the strong
flow of a river fed from many contributory sources and yet a
flow diversified by currents and eddies of all sorts: movements
of anger, scorn and dignified withdrawal into self, of irony and
sarcasm, of witty turn or opportune anecdote. We recognise in
him the well, if not widely, read man of letters rather than the
scholar whose mind has been imbued by his studies; it is the
phrases which have commended themselves to his literary instinct,
and these are what he reproduces or adapts? What he yet
lacks has been diversely defined. Yet, if his political writings be
compared with those of Burke, or even with those, whatever may
be their blemishes, of Milton, the balance must rise in their dis-
favour. For, notwithstanding the extraordinary elasticity of mind
which seconded Bolingbroke's perseverance of purpose, posterity,
like his contemporaries, refuses to be persuaded by his political
writings, while Burke convinced fervent admirers of the French
revolution (such as Gentz) that they were in the wrong, and
Milton holds in awe even those who continue to revere the eikon
which he sought to break.
Down to the earlier half of the eighteenth century, The
Compleat History of England (1706) of which the first two
volumes contained a series of histories of successive periods and
reigns from Milton's History of Britain down to Arthur Wilson's
History of King James I, supplemented by a third volume
containing the reigns of Charles I and II, James II, William and
Mary (and William), 'all new writ by a learned and impartial
hand'-had been the only attempt to present a collective view
of the national history. That it was accepted as more or less
of an authority is shown by the fact that a new edition was
published in 1719, and that, so late as 1740, Roger North, of whose
1. Montaigne, whom I often quote, as I do Seneca, rather for the smartness of
expression than the weight of matter. ' Bolingbroke, On the Use of Retirement and
Study, edn. 1870, p. 142.
? The General History of England by James Tyrrell, grandson of archbishop
Ussher and an intimate friend of Locke, which was intended to go down to the reign
of William III, was carried no further than the death of Richard II.
2


## p. 234 (#258) ############################################

234
Historical and Political Writers
contributions to English biographical literature something will
be said below, put forth an elaborate criticism of its concluding
volume, under the title Examen, or an Inquiry into the Credit
and Veracity of a pretended Complete History, viz. the supple-
mentary volume aforesaid, of which White Kennett was the
author! Kennett, who died as bishop of Peterborough in 1728,
.
after an active literary career (which had begun, or almost begun,
by his breaking a lance with Atterbury in the wellknown con-
vocation controversy (1701), and of which his Register and
Chronicle, Ecclesiastical and Civil? forms the concluding item),
was author of the concluding volume. The character of Charles II
which it contains is, no doubt, extremely acrid (it ends with a
note on the resemblance of Charles in his outward features, and,
to some extent, in other points, to Tiberius); in general, how-
ever, the author is temperate in statement, although, in the usual
fashion, he inveighs against Cromwell, whose 'policy' is margined
as ‘his only piety. For the rest, Kennett was a sound whig, who
ventured to answer Sacheverell in a sermon preached before the
lord mayor, and who, before he was consecrated bishop, was por-
trayed as Judas Iscariot in a London church, being a safer object
of insult than Burnet.
1 This very substantial work, which, besides being, perhaps, the most elaborate
criticism ever attempted of a section of an English historical narrative, contains so
much important information as to support effectively the author's contention in
favour of contemporary history over critical compilation, must primarily be set down
as a thoroughly partisan review of what may be allowed to be, in certain respects, &
partisan text. Its avowed purpose is ‘to vindicate the Honour of Charles II and his
Happy Reign' from the aspersions cast upon it by the writer of The Compleat History;
its author takes the earliest opportunity of announcing that, while the historian must
never exceed or fall short of truth, 'good' and 'bad' are qualities antecedently deter.
mined by a standard possessed of an authority superior to that of any reader or writer of
history. Thus, he can, at the same time, censure without fear and (so it seems) always in
accordance with his own political and religious views. The career of Shaftesbury, the
80-called 'popish plot,' the 'sham plots' connected with it, and the transactions of the
latter years of Charles II's reign are all effectively reviewed from a standpoint which
the critic never finds it necessary to desert, and the king's action is consistently
defended in his relation to the whole inner history of his reign. As for the papers found in
his strong box after his death-would the evidence as to their authorship be accepted in
& court of justice? At the same time, North has some excellent bits at the methods
of his author—which are not peculiar to him—especially at his suggestion of possible
alternatives (the alternatives which he desires to insinuate) by means of the disjunctive
'or,' and his leaving the unwary to distinguish unproved deductions from well
warranted facts. -Appended to Montagu North's edition of his father's Examen are
Reflections upon some passages in Mr Le Clerc's Life of Mr John Locke by the same
hand, in which Shaftesbury and Ignoramus once more figure.
2 Vol. 1 only was published in 1728); the sequel (reaching to 1679) remains in manu-
script in the British Museum, where, also, are many other of Kennett's manuscripts.


## p. 235 (#259) ############################################

6
Echard. Rapin. Lediard. Tindal
235
A rival'complete history' to Kennett’s, for a considerable period,
was that of Laurence Echard, the 'excellency' of which, in the
amiable phrase of Roger North”, “is coming after a worse. ' It was
conceived on a smaller scale than Kennett's; but, on the other
hand, it was the work of a single man. Of his History of
England from the First Entrance of Julius Cæsar, the first
volume, carrying the narrative down to the death of James I,
appeared in 1707; the second and third, which continued it to
'the establishment of King William and Mary,' in 1718. Echard
(who, in 1712, was named archdeacon of Stow) was a strong
protestant, as favourable to Cranmer as he was bitter against
Mary I, but he was no friend of dissent, and rather cynically
attributed 'the Beginnings of Presbitery' in England to Cart-
wright's personal jealousy of a Cambridge rival? When he comes
to the Stewart times, he professes to take great care to observe
Deference to the Stations and Characters' of those whose conduct
he reviews; but, as he seems to think that James II might have
been forgiven much of his religious policy had he only kept his
word and prefers to let him 'fall gently' because of his two
daughters, there must be allowed to be method in his defence.
The dedication of his second volume to George I sufficiently
attests his political ‘standpoint' and helps to explain the attacks
made on him by Bolingbroke.
It can, however, hardly be denied that the best, and certainly,
by far, the most useful, collective history of England in the earlier
half of the century was not an English book at all, but the
French Histoire d'Angleterre of Paul de Rapin, sieur de Thomas, il
composed in exile at Wesel and published at the Hague, in eight !
volumes, in 1724. A criticism of this work, which reaches to the
death of Charles I, or of its French continuation, to the revolution
of 1688, by David Durand (1734), would be out of place here;
but it should be noted that the whole French History was trans-
lated by Nicholas Tindal with additional notes' in 15 volumes
(1723-31). Thomas Lediard, author of The Naval History of
England (2 vols. 1735), and The Life of John Duke of Marlborough
(3 vols. 1736), largely from original documents, wrote The History
of the Reigns of William III and Mary, and Anne, in continua-
tion of Rapin ; and, in 1744-5, his translator, Tindal, published,
in folio, The Continuation of Mr Rapin de Thoyras's History of
6
Preface to The Life of Francis North, Lord Guilford.
· Cf. below, as to Oldmixon's censure of Echard's attacks on the dissenters.


## p. 236 (#260) ############################################

236
Historical and Political Writers
England, from the Revolution to the Accession of King George II,
which was immediately followed by an octavo edition in 13 volumes,
making the whole series amount to 28? Rapin, in a letter to his
.
fellow Huguenot Robethon, had humourously described his com-
pleted work as ‘no inconsiderable undertaking for a Gascon’; the
indefatigable Tindal survived his historical labours for many years
(till 1774). English historical writing owes him a great debt ;
for, like Rapin himself, whom he introduced to English readers, he
provided a solid substructure of well-authenticated and well-
arranged facts, together with a narrative free from party bias and
written with a single-minded desire to record ascertained truth. It
should be added that master and follower alike cite their authori-
ties without ostentation but with perfect clearness, and that the
English folios are supplied with an admirable collection of por-
traits, maps and plans.
From these writers of collective histories we go back slightly
in order of time, so as to mention, in conclusion, one or two
historical authors of the unmistakable partisan type. Abel
Boyer, like Rapin, was a French Huguenot, who settled in
England in 1689 and, after several years of strenuous endeavour,
gained a long-lived reputation by an Anglo-French and Franco-
English dictionary, professing to have been composed for the
use of the duke of Gloucester, to whom, in 1692, Boyer had
been appointed French tutor. In 1702, when this dictionary
was published at the Hague, Boyer also brought out, in
English, his History of William III (which included that of
James II); and, in the following year, he began the yearly publi-
cation of The History of the Reign of Queen Anne digested into
annals, which was preceded by a similar register of political
events, notable for the reports of parliamentary debates contained
in it, and extending over the years 1713—29. In 1722 appeared
his History of Queen Anne, of which a second edition, with
numerous appendixes, followed in 1735. Boyer was a voluminous
producer of books, pamphlets and contributions to journalism, all
in the whig interest? . Among the pamphlets, one had nearly cost
him dear, as it attacked Swift, who, in an often quoted passage of his
Journal to Stella, vowed vengeance on the ‘French dog' (a term of
abuse to be found already in Froissart). Boyer's History of Queen
1 It was afterwards further continued by Smollett.