No More Learning

, pp. 694-7.
15-2


## p. 228 (#252) ############################################

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.
2 See bibliography, and of. the article on Boyer by Espinasse, Francis, in vol. vi of
The Dict. of Nat. Biogr. (1886). As to Boyer's English translation of the Mémoires of
Gramont, see ante, vol. VIII, p. 451.


## p. 237 (#261) ############################################

6
Boyer. Oldmixon
237
Anne has been found extremely useful, not to say indispensable,
by modern historians (by no means only in the 'Annual List of the
Deaths of Eminent Persons' appended to it with short obituary
notices—'whoever pretends to write Characters ought,' he ventures
to think, 'to be well acquainted with those he describes ') and
shows him capable of applying the principles of historical writing,
as to both matter and manner, effectively abstracted by him ‘for
his own Instruction, and laid down in his preface. ' A continua-
tion of the work to the death of George I was published in 1747.
English historical composition was greatly indebted to the infusion
of French lucidity in arrangement and treatment; and, for this
quality, Boyer, too, deserves praise.
Little purpose would be served by entering at length into
the qualities of John Oldmixon as a historical writer. . In
The Dunciad', Pope abuses him without, perhaps, very much
point; but, in a note to the passage, he describes him with
undeniable truth as having been 'all his life a virulent Party-
writer for hire,' who received his reward in a small place'-
the collectorship of the port of Bridgwater. It was not till 1717,
or thereabouts, that Oldmixon obtained this ill and irregularly
paid post-about nine years after he had first exchanged his
efforts as a poet and dramatist for a long series of labours as a
party historian and journalist. These need not here be examined in
detail. His earliest historical work, The British Empire in America
(2 vols. 1708), was at least designed to meet a real need; The
Secret History of Europe (4 parts, 1712—5) was a frank and fierce
attack upon the tory government and its subservience to France.
But the special enmity of the opposition wits he incurred by his
Essay on Criticism, prefixed to the third edition (1727) of The
Critical History of England, Ecclesiastical and Civil (2 vols.
1724-6). The Essay, an avowedly and, perhaps, intentionally
rambling discourse, supposed to be in the manner of Montaigne,
contains some fair hits at Dryden, Addison, Pope and others, and
keeps up a steady fire of minute criticism against Echard as a
historian. Of The Critical History itself, the first volume carries
on this attack in a sort of running commentary upon previous
historians, especially Echard and Clarendon, in a vein frequently
flippant, but by no means without occasional sensible remarks.
Each section ends with a list of authorities to be studied, so that
the book is a curious combination of party pamphlet and school
1 Bk n, 11. 283—90.


## p. 238 (#262) ############################################

238
Historical and Political Writers
manual. The second volume covers much the same ground,
although more particularly devoting itself to ecclesiastical history,
and intended to show that the protestant dissenters ‘have a Claim
to our Indulgence and Good-will, as they are Brethren of the
Reformation,' and that Echard's charges against them of 'sedition
and enthusiasm are 'groundless and scandalous. ' From a dif-
ferent point of view, as showing that no literary fashion endures
for ever, Oldmixon's remark upon the 'affectation of continually
drawing characters,' especially 'when they are arbitrary and are
not of the subject,' is worth noting. Of The History of England
during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart, the first volume,
published in 1729, states at length the charge, already noticed and
adverted to in The Critical History of England, against the
Oxford editors of Clarendon, of having altered his text for party
ends. The second volume of the later work (1735) carried on
the narrative to the reign of George I, and the third (1739) took it
back to the last four Tudor reigns, the whole being written in the
spirit of whig constitutionalism. 'In the midst of all the infirmities
of old age, sickness, lameness, and almost blindness,' Oldmixon
wrote Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political, for Thirty
Years Past, from 1710 to 1740; but he did not live to see the
book, which has much biographical interest, published. He died
in 1742; the hardships of his laborious career seem to belie the
commonplace that, in a free country, there is nothing like sticking
to one's party.
Though also confessedly composed by a partisan-who avows
that ‘he knows not by what influence or means he took very early
to the loyal side,' and who consistently speaks of its opponents
as 'the faction against monarchy' or 'the faction' pure and
simple-Roger North’s biographies hold an enduring position in
English historical literature. The period with which they deal
extends but slightly beyond the reign of Charles II; but the
most important of them, The Life of Francis North, Lord
Guilford, was repeatedly revised, and was not published with
the companion Lives of the Hon. Sir Dudley North and the
Hon. and Rev. Dr John North till 1740, immediately after the
author's Examen; while Roger North’s own Autobiography
was not generally accessible till 1887, when an edition of it was
brought out by Jessopp, who has identified himself with The
Lives of the Norths.
1 Ante, vol. VIII, p. 444.
: Cf. ante, p. 234, note 1.
* See his standard complete edition in 3 vols. , 1890.


## p.
239 (#263) ############################################

North's Lives
of the Norths
239
6
Roger North, who confesses that he was himself of a timid
disposition, gifted neither with readiness of speech nor with the
quickness of thought which underlies it, and whose innate modesty
is not the least pleasing element in the altruism which ennobled his
character, was a true believer in his family. The Norths, he says,
were a numerous flock, and no one scabby sheep in it’; and,
though the eldest of the brothers (Lord North and Gray of
Rolleston) had 'attached himself to the faction, the rest were
‘in all respects helpful and assistant to each other. . . nor the least
favour of difference or feud found amongst them. ' Roger became
the biographer of four of them, including himself. Specially in-
timate were his relations with the third of the brothers, Francis, who
became Lord Guilford and keeper of the great seal. The advance-
ment of Francis in place and prosperity was also that of Roger,
whom he associated with himself in every stage of his career,
who lodged with him, was a daily guest at his table and, for many
years, never failed to see him safe to bed; who, in short, as Roger him-
self expresses it, was his brother's 'shadow. With the frankness
which adds both value and charm to his narrative, Roger confesses
that his nature at one time rebelled against this dependence ; but
he never broke through it, and the sincerity with which he judges
his brother's character and career is never devoid of piety. Their
intimacy enabled the biographer to interpret the laconic notes
kept by the successful counsel and eminent judge with a fulness
which converts them into so many episodes of legal experience, as
well as to expand the speculums' that represented his passing
thoughts on the multifarious problems of his public and private
life. Thus, Francis North's complex but masculine, though, in
more respects than one, not very attractive, character is brought
before the reader with all the force of veracity--for he was
cautious as well as ambitious, not overscrupulous so long as he
kept well within the law (within which he consistently conjured
king Charles II to keep); but, at the same time, straightforward
in his private and in his public acts, and content to leave the latter
without any affected lustre or handles to fame if he could avoid
them. ' 'No wonder,' writes his biographer, with telling irony,
'he is so soon forgot? . ' The account of his matrimonial and
1 Though lord keeper North had the chief share in directing the proceedings
against those accused of complicity in the Rye house plot, there is no reason for
attributing to him any share in A True Account of that Horrid Conspiracy against the
late King, His Present Majesty and the Government, drawn up at his suggestion, but
composed by Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, and published in 1685. It speaks of
Russell's adherence to the doctrine of resistance as . conformable to his Presbyterian
6


## p. 240 (#264) ############################################

240
Historical and Political Writers
6
electioneering operations illustrates the social and political ethics
of the age rather than his own. The characters of Lord
Guilford's contemporaries in the higher judiciary are drawn with
less reticence and extraordinary force—such portraits as those of
*Silenus' Saunders and Jeffreys, in their way, are immortal, the
latter more especially so because Macaulay's portrait owes to it some
of its most telling features ; while the finer touches which reveal
the biographer's antipathy against Sir Matthew Hale are at least
equally to the credit of his artistic skill. By the side of these
portraits of legal luminaries may be mentioned the admirable
portrait of one whose light was hid behind the backstairs-Will
Chiffinch.
To the literary ability of Roger North, the second of these
Lives, that of Sir Dudley North, the great Turkey merchant,
afterwards, at a critical season, appointed sheriff of London by a
more than doubtful process dictated by the policy of the court",
bears signal witness. This biography depicts, with singular
fidelity and force, the career of a young man of family who, virtually,
began his mercantile life as supercargo on a ship bound for
Archangel, and ended it as treasurer of the Turkey company at
Constantinople. The account, derived from him by his brother,
of the Turkish system of government (the description of avanios
or exactions from Christian states and persons is specially in-
teresting), law and society, is as full of interest as, when first made
known, it must have been of novelty; and the personal character
of the great merchant-whose eastern notions were not, like his
mustachios, suppressed on his return home—is brought out with
much affectionate humour. The honours gained by Sir Dudley
North after his return nearly involved him in serious trouble after
the revolution of 1688: Roger's account of his brother's examina-
tion before the House of Commons is one of the best-told episodes
in the story. The third of the Lives, that of John North, master
of Trinity college, Cambridge, has a very different interest; it
relates the story of the life of a Cambridge don, first at Jesus, where
7
education' and of Sidney (sarcastically) as '& stubborn Asserter of the Good Old
Cause. '
1 An account of these proceedings, from the point of view of those who took the
lead in opposing them, will be found in a book based on materials constituting a most
valuable addition to the memoir-literature of this period, Papillon, F. W. , Memoirs of
Thomas Papillon of London, Merchant (1623—1702). Thomas Papillon, of distinguished
Huguenot descent, was twice an exile-once for joining in an effort to restore Charles I
to power, once for his action with regard to the London charter and North's election.
He was member for Dover both before and after his second absence from England.


## p. 241 (#265) ############################################

North's Lives of the Norths
241
his younger brother was his pupil but where he grew tired of the
'grave, and perhaps empty seniors,' then at Trinity lodge, where
he was on uneasy terms with the fellows, very unpopular with the
undergraduates and ‘so nice that he never completed anything'
in the way of a book. In the end, his intellectual powers decayed
with those of his body ; through life, his greatest happiness seems
to have been the occasional society of his brothers.
Roger, the sixth and youngest of his father's sons, was, as has
been observed, born to be the biographer of those among them
whose worldly success had outstripped his own. He judged himself
humbly, but without hypocrisy—though not of prime of my
rank, yet not contemptible. ' His tastes were intellectual: mathe-
matics and music had a special attraction for him, and, of amuse-
ments, he preferred that of sailing. That he had a genuine literary
gift, he seems hardly to have suspected—for he never himself
published anything but A Discourse of Fish and Fish Ponds (1683);
but, during the long evening of his life (from 1690 to 1734), which
he spent in his own house at Rougham in Norfolk, after, as a non-
juror, he had given up practice at the bar, he wrote the Lives of
which mention has been made and his own Autobiography. The
latter breaks off with an account of his long services as trustee
under Sir Peter Lely's will, which, like those by him performed
under that of his brother Lord Guilford, long occupied most of his
leisure. But, though only a fragment, and a repetition, here and
there, of what he had already told in the Lives of his brothers, it
is not the least engaging of his productions, and, occasionally,
lifts an unsuspected corner of his inner nature--as in the strange
passage concerning a man's right to end his own existence.
In a lighter vein is the comparison—which must amuse readers
of The Rape of the Lock—of the life of men to a game at
ombre.
The merits of Roger North's biographies consist in their trans-
parent candour, combined, as it is, with a shrewdness partly due to
experience and partly to an innate insight, and in a naturalness
of style which, at the same time, is always that of a well-bred
scholar. He never shrinks from the use of an idiomatic phrase or
proverbial turn, still less from that of an apposite anecdote; but
they never have the effect of interrupting the pleasant, if some-
what sedate, progress of his narrative. The minutiae' for which
he goes out of his way to apologise are, of course, welcome in
themselves to readers of later generations ; but the effect of each
biography, as a whole, is not trifling or petty, and the dignity of the
16
E. L. IX,
CH. VIII.


## p. 242 (#266) ############################################

242
Historical and Political Writers
theme-whether it be that of legal eminence, mercantile enter-
prise, or scholarly calm—is invariably maintained without any
apparent effort. Here and there, although he is constantly
referring to the fuller treatment a subject has received in his
Examen, Roger North becomes lengthy; but the total effect
of his Lives, as that of all biographies of real excellence, is
not less entertaining than it is instructive for those who are
open to the appeal of a human life intelligently, truthfully and
sympathetically told.


## p. 243 (#267) ############################################

CHAPTER IX
MEMOIR-WRITERS, 1715—60
UNDER the first two Georges, English society became con-
solidated into what Disraeli, with his accustomed iridescence,
described as a 'Venetian oligarchy. Placemen in, and patriots
out of, office flit across the scene. The big county interests of the
aristocracy rule, subject to occasional correction from the growing
power of finance or the expiring growls of the city mob, and
Walpole and Pelham, or their inferiors, pull the strings. The
nation, hoping eternally to see corruption extinguished and a new
era of virtue and public spirit inaugurated, is, again and again,
disappointed. Placemen and patriots cross over, and the game
begins anew. But, behind the chief actors in the comedy, may be
perceived a slowly gathering knot of observers and note-takers,
the chroniclers and memoir-writers of the period. They offer us
a unique and fascinating picture of the privileged classes who
then presided over the fortunes of the country; and they open a
new chapter in literary history. Through them, the eighteenth
century is self-portrayed with a vivid insight and picturesqueness
probably unrivalled, save in the parallel descriptions of French
society from 1648 to 1789.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, one must imagine, was a lady
of far more masculine understanding and knowledge than most
of the classical ladies of whose attainments Johnson thought
highly. As a descriptive topographer, she was a keen observer,
not superior to the love of gossip, with a quick eye for the telling
features of a story or a situation and an easy, effective style. Her
manner is one of conscious superiority. She belonged to the
great whig aristocracy which ruled England. Her father, Evelyn
Pierrepont, was connected with the Evelyns of Wootton, and
married Mary Feilding, daughter of the earl of Denbigh, from one
of whose brothers Henry Fielding the novelist descended. Mary
16-2


## p. 244 (#268) ############################################

244
Memoir-Writers, 1715—60
a
was born in May 1689; a year later, her father became earl of
Kingston and, at the whig triumph of 1715, duke of Kingston;
she was brought up, carelessly enough, in a library. One of her
girl friends was Anne Wortley Montagu, a granddaughter of the
first earl of Sandwich (Pepys's chief), whose father had, on marry-
ing an heiress, taken the name Wortley. Anne's favourite brother
Edward, a most unromantic young man, was strongly attracted
by Lady Mary's lucidity of both mind and visage. A number
of letters between them are extant. The young pair were, un-
mistakably, in love; but Kingston was inexorable on the subject
of settlements and tried to coerce his daughter into another match;
whereupon, she eloped with Edward Wortley (August 1712). With
the whigs' advent to power, the period of narrow means came to an
end, and Edward, a relative of Halifax, became M. P. for Westminster
and, in 1716, was appointed ambassador to the Porte. In 1717, the
couple journeyed to Constantinople, by way of Vienna and Belgrade.
Her most vivid letters were written during this period and remain
an imperishable monument of her husband's otherwise undistin-
guished embassy ; for it was upon his successors that devolved the
important task of concluding the peace of Passarowitz. It must
not be supposed that we have the letters in their original form.
Moy Thomas came upon a list of letters written by the ambassadress,
with notes of their contents. The published letters correspond but
imperfectly to the précis, and only two are indexed as copied at
length. Of those remaining to us, some that had been copied
were reproduced with small alteration; the majority were recon-
structed from the diary in which she was accustomed to note the
events and thoughts of every day, and from which she had pre-
BU bly drawn freely for the original correspondence; others,
less finished in form, for the most part, have been found and
incorporated since. The substance of many letters hitherto un-
known was given as late as 1907 by 'George Paston' in her Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times. The Turkish Letters
(May 1716—November 1718), which are the most finished and the
most original, were evidently prepared for publication, though
they were not actually published until after Lady Mary's death.
They were, no doubt, handed round among the writer's private
friends. The prefaces are dated 1724—5 and are attributed to
Mary Astell; and the early editions include a frontispiece, 'Lady
M-y W-r-t-l-y M-nt-g-e The Female Traveller, in the Turkish
Dress. ' Lady Mary, in this respect at all events, was a pre-
cursor of Lady Hester Stanhope. Besides assuming Turkish


## p. 245 (#269) ############################################

Lady Mary Montagu's Life and Letters 245
attire, she studied the Turkish language, and did her best to
disabuse English minds of a vast accumulation of ludicrous
prejudice on the score of Ottoman cruelty, luxury and sensuality.
It may be added that she gave expression to the common English
antipathy of her day (fully brought out by Smollett in the next
generation) to Roman catholicism. Her letters still delight by
their high power of communicativeness.
In 1739 (after her daughter's elopement with Lord Bute), Lady
Mary determined to go abroad for a lengthened residence.
The
letters of the next two and twenty years of her life, addressed,
for the most part, to Lady Bute, are the most natural and,
perhaps, the most charming that she ever wrote. She had
seen a little of Italy on her return from Pera, by way of Tunis,
Genoa and the Mont Cenis. After experiences in Venice, Chambéri
and Avignon, she determined, in 1743, to settle at Lovere on
Lago d'Iseo, forty miles from Brescia. There, she spent eighteen
fairly serene, though solitary, years. Rising at six, after breakfast
she worked with her weaving women till nine, inspected poultry,
bees and silkworms and, at eleven, allowed herself the pleasure of
an hour's reading-all that her eyesight would permit. She dined
at twelve, then slept till three, and woke to play whisk with
three old priests at a penny a corner, till it was cool enough to set
out upon those rides in the mountains which were as delightful as
a romance, or to float under her lute-string awning on the river
waiting for a fish to bite. 'I confess I sometimes wish for a little
conversation, but then,' she added gaily, 'gardening is the next
amusement to reading. When the winter came, she found herself
obliged to keep the house and wrote to thank Lady Bute for pre-
suming her taste was still undivorced from the gay part of reading
-by which she meant novels. These were sent out in cases from
England (the beginning of British novel export) and aroused the
utmost excitement upon their arrival, as they well might when one
single box is reported to have contained Peregrine Pickle, Roderick
Random, Clarissa Harlowe and Pompey the Little. She set to
work at once to read them, and whole letters to her daughter are
devoted to discussing the characters and the intrigues of the stories.
With her strong and satirical, by this time almost sardonic,
understanding, Lady Mary professed a solid English woman's good-
natured contempt for the epistolary light wine of Mme de Sévigné;
nevertheless, as she grew older, her letters came more and more to
resemble the epistles of that incomparable model, and the resem-
blance is strengthened by the fact that most of the letters are to
a


## p. 246 (#270) ############################################

246 Memoir-Writers, 1715460
her daughter Lady Bute. On 1 January 1761, her curmudgeon of a
husband died, leaving an immense fortune to Lady Bute; and the
widow had to return home. She was sick of life. 'I am preparing
for my last and longest journey and stand on the threshold of this
world, my several infirmities like post-horses ready to hurry me
away. ' Horace Walpole saw her again, and repeated his libellous
saying about the 'she meteor,' complaining of her dirtiness, avarice
and eccentricity, her cheating ‘horse and foot,' her hideous style of
dress. Mrs (Elizabeth) Montagu refers to her as speaking, acting,
dressing like nobody else. Society had unconsciously caught the
tone of the venomous master detractor of Twickenham, whose
vendetta against Lady Mary is completely explained only by the
unhappy combination in him of bad heart and bad health.
Everyone in London agreed as to her preserved liveliness
and unimpaired faculties ; but it soon became known that the
intrepid 'female traveller' was suffering from cancer; and of this
disease she died, in her seventy-fourth year, at her house in
Great George street, 21 August 1762. She was buried in the
Grosvenor chapel in South Audley street, where Lord Chesterfield
was interred some ten years later. Her letters, collectively
regarded and interpreted, form the autobiography of a warm-
hearted, but disappointed, unloved and solitary woman.
When Lady Mary died, Walpole reports, in a letter to Mann,
that she left twenty-one large MS volumes, in prose and verse,
to her daughter Lady Bute. At least nineteen volumes were
actually left to Lady Bute; two, containing the letters during
her husband's embassy at Constantinople, had been given to
Mr Sowden of Rotterdam. There were duplicates of these and
they form the basis of the Letters given to the world in two
volumes in 1763. The miscellaneous correspondence in Lady
Bute's hands, or portions of it, were first edited by James Dallaway
(1803). The voluminous diary was always kept under lock and
key, and, although Lady Bute often read passages aloud to her
daughters and friends, she never trusted it out of her hands, with
the exception of the first five or six copy-books, which she once
permitted Lady Louisa to peruse alone, on condition that nothing
should be transcribed. When she felt her end drawing near, Lady
Bute burned the diary (1794), and the eighteenth century lost a
document which might have proved of unique interest.
Apart from Lady Mary's Letters, her other writings are in-
significant and unattractive. They include a translation of the
Enchiridion of Epictetus, written in 1710, at the time when her


## p. 247 (#271) ############################################

Lady Mary in Verse and Prose
247
6
>
marriage was in debate, and submitted to the taste and judgment
of her old friend and adviser Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Sarum? Her
Town Eclogues were written during the period of her friendly inti-
macy with Pope and owe something to his inspiration, if not to his
'correction. They fell by some 'mischance' into the hands of
Edmund Curll, who published them in 1716 (through his colleague
James Roberts), under the title Court Poems by a Lady of Quality.
Only three, 'The Basset-table, An Eclogue,''The Drawing-Room' and
'The Toilet,' were included in this thin quarto (misdated 1706),
'publish'd faithfully, as they were found in a Pocket-Book taken
up in Westminster-Hall, the Last Day of the Lord Winton's Tryal,'
and, upon a perusal at St James's coffeehouse, 'attributed by the
General Voice to be the Production of a Lady of Quality. The
eclogues numbered six, one for each week-day (1747). Their delicacy
and refinement is not conspicuous, and their metrical sprightliness
in no way remarkable; their only value, today, consists in the
little intimate touches that describe the social arcana of the period.
Lady Mary was certainly no poet. Her mind was the reverse
of poetical. All that can be said of her heroic verse is that it is
generally fluent, often lively and sometimes forcible. She is at
the best when, like Gay, she paints the manners of the times in
Town Eclogues. Her serious satires are far-away echoes of
Pope. The prose essays published with her other remains are
trite and show that her talent did not easily work in that form.
It is to the Letters, and to these alone, that she owes her niche
in the house of fame. Without being sympathetic or humourous,
and with no great store of wit or fancy, she is rich in descriptive
faculty, keen perception, good spirits and glorified common sense.
Her style, though correct and perspicuous, is unstudied, natural,
flowing, spirited; she never uses an unnecessary word, or a phrase
savouring of affectation. At the same time, she meant to write
well and was conscious of having succeeded. Before the Bible
society letters of George Borrow appeared, it is doubtful if any
traveller's letters have proved so generally entertaining, unless we
make exception of Smollett's Letters from France and Italy,
published in 17662 Lady Mary was almost the first to enter the
rich mine of eastern manners and colouring. The travellers of
the early seventeenth century wrote in an obsolete fashion and
employed an antiquated prose. The historians of Turkey, such as
Knollys and Rycaut,' are full of fabulous detail. She was one of
1 The learned prelate's corrections were printed in italics.
9 Cf. vol. , chap. II, post.


## p. 248 (#272) ############################################

248
Memoir-Writers, 1715460
the earliest (long before Pierre Loti) to make a plain tale of the
treatment of women in the east (Turkey was far more remote
then than Turkestan or Korea are now), and she did not waste
her opportunities. Entertaining, however, as Lady Mary was,
whether as a discerning traveller or as a writer with a relatively
modern style, her fame for a hundred years depended largely, if
not mainly, upon the supposed mystery of her life. That the
daughter of a duke, the wife of a millionaire and the mother of a
man so much talked of as Edward Wortley should be unhappy and
should seek refuge abroad in eccentric solitude and isolation from
her quality was, to the early eighteenth century, a thing incredible.
The malignity of Walpole and the vindictive line of Pope about the
lady who 'starved a sister' and 'denied a debt'stimulated fresh
curiosity concerning the cleverest woman of the day.
With the gradual decline of her notoriety and the eclipse, at
least in not a few ostensible ways, of her achievement, Lady
Mary's writings have received less and less attention, and are now,
perhaps, in danger of being as much undervalued as they are
generally admitted to have been at one time overrated. Frag-
ments of her criticism have survived the general wreck of her
descriptive writings, such as the wellknown division of the human
race into men, women and Herveys, her comparison of Fielding
and Steele, with her diagnosis of the happy temperament which
forgot everything over a venison pasty and a flask of champagne,
and her hearty contempt for Richardson, over whose novels she
confessed to sobbing in a most scandalous manner. Her Con-
stantinople Letters (of 1763) soon became popular and classical all
over Europe. They were reprinted in the successive editions of
Lady Mary's Letters and Works? , of which her great-grandson
Lord Wharncliffe's (1837) remained the standard edition till its
contents were considerably enriched, but not substantially altered,
in that of Moy Thomas (1861). His canon includes twelve letters to
Mrs Hewett, twelve in correspondence with Anne Wortley, thirty-
nine with Wortley Montagu, sixty dealing with the embassy of
1716—18, twenty from Pope to Lady Mary, dated 1716–21, fifty-
two letters to the countess of Mar 1721–7, twenty-four items
of miscellaneous correspondence, and two hundred and seventy-
five letters written between 1738 and 1762 to the countesses
of Pomfret, Oxford, Bute, Wortley Montagu and others.
There are, also, some sixty-four occasional poems and versions
besides Town Eclogues, the Enchiridion, four essays, two of
1 See bibliography,


## p. 249 (#273) ############################################

Lady Cowper's Diary
249
them in French, the second of which, 'On a maxim of La Roche-
a
foucauld about marriage,' is as humourous as anything Lady Mary
ever wrote, besides a rather interesting fragment upon the court
of George I at the time of his accession.
One of the most intimate pictures we possess of the court at the
beginning of the Brunswick dynasty is the work of another diarist
and letter-writer, Mary Clavering, of the Durham family, who
married, in 1706, William Cowper, lord and afterwards first earl
Cowper. She corresponded with the electoral princess of Han-
over, afterwards queen Caroline, whose household she entered in
October 1714, when she began to keep a diary. This extended,
originally, to 1720; the last four years of it were, however, all but
completely destroyed by the writer in 1722, when her husband
was under suspicion of complicity in the Jacobite plot.
Lady Cowper tells some amusing stories of her mistress, such
as that of the snub administered to Robinson, bishop of London :
This day (Dec. 23, 1714) the Bishop of London waited on my mistress and
desired Mrs Howard to go into the Princess and say he thought it his duty
to wait upon her, as he was Dean of the Chapel, to satisfy her in any Doubts
or Scruples she might have in regard to our Religion and to explain anything
to her which she did not comprehend. She was a little nettled when
Mrs Howard delivered this message to her, and said, 'Send him away
civilly; though he is very impertinent to suppose that I who refused to be
Empress for the sake of the Protestant Religion, don't understand it fully. '
The amount of bargaining and backstair dealing revealed in this
diary is astonishing; but the notes are too summary to aspire to
literary art, and there is little picturing, hardly any descriptive
energy. Lady Cowper naturally saw a good deal of the domestic
quarrels of the Hanoverian court; but she lets us hear little
about them. Very probably, this was the portion destroyed.
The mutilated diary was handed down with the other Cowper
manuscripts and edited by Spencer Compton in 1864. The
Mrs Howard to whom it refers, Henrietta Hobart, afterwards
Mrs Howard and countess of Suffolk, was, as is well known,
adored by the earl of Peterborough and became the mistress of
George II. Her husband anticipated coming events by paying
his court with her at Herrenhausen in 1712; and, after she
had been appointed bedchamber woman to the princess of
Wales, her rooms in St James's palace became the place of
reunion for the little court of the heir apparent. She cultivated
the society of men of letters, such as Gay and Arbuthnot, and was


## p. 250 (#274) ############################################

250
Memoir-Writers, 1715—60
the subject of Peterborough's lines 'I said to my heart, between
sleeping and waking' and of Pope's complimentary verses,
I knew a thing that's most uncommon
(Envy be silent and attend ! )
I knew a reasonable woman,
Handsome and witty, yet a friend.
Lady Hervey, Miss Bellenden, Pulteney, Pelham, Pitt, Horace
Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, Swift and Young were among her
correspondents, and most of them celebrate her wit and reason-
ableness, She wrote an often quoted Gulliverian letter to
Swift, which he professed to be unable to understand. George II
built her a house at Marble hill, Twickenham, where her literary
friends professed to act as chamberlains. Though she lacked suf-
ficient skill for prevailing against queen Caroline, her conciliatory
temper, not less than her position at court, made her the recipient
of many confidences from the intrigants about St James's. A
judicious selection from her correspondence entitled Letters to
and from Henrietta, countess of Suffolk, and her second husband,
the Hon. George Berkeley from 1712 to 1767 was edited anony-
mously by the editor of Lord Hervey's Memoirs (John Wilson
Croker), in 1824.
Precursor in chief of Horace Walpole as court gossip, scandal-
monger and memoir-writer was John Lord Hervey, ‘remorse-
less Hervey of the coffin face and painted cheeks, a miniature
St Simon at the early Hanoverian court, though, it must be
admitted, a St Simon rather lacking in the artistic precision and
measured science of his prototype. Lord Hervey's father and
grandfather (Sir Thomas Hervey, son-in-law of Sir Humphrey
May, who drew a touching portrait of Charles I's last hours) were
both great letter-writers; and their letters from 1651 to 1731
have now been published, in three volumes. The MS diary of John,
first earl of Bristol, ranging from 1688 to 1742, is largely a ledger
of payments and expenses; but the letters furnish an intimate and
attractive portrait of a noble family at the close of the seventeenth,
a
and beginning of the eighteenth, century. John had a half-brother,
Carr Hervey, whose mother was the earl's first wife; but he was
himself the eldest son of the second countess, a merry lady, who
was a correspondent of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and lady of the
bedchamber to queen Caroline. Educated at Westminster under
Freind, and at Clare hall, Cambridge, he inherited from both
parents, but especially from his mother, a gift for repartee and a


## p. 251 (#275) ############################################

Lord Hervey
251
fondness for riming. After his return from Hanover, in a fine flush of
Hanoverian zeal, he declined hard labour and gravitated between
Ickworth, where he browsed on poetry, and the court at Richmond.
Early in 1720, when a handsome youth of twenty-four, he secretly
married the beauty of the younger court, Mary Lepell, ‘Youth's
youngest daughter, sweet Lepell,' who had charmed all the wits,
including Pope. The reciprocal devotion between the Herveys
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu offended both Pope and Horace
Walpole, who suspected the ladies of scandal about his paternity.
Pope was jealous, with the result that, in the first of his imitations
of Horace, addressed to Fortescue, 'Lord Fanny' and 'Sappho '
were generally identified with Hervey and Lady Mary. Hervey
had already been attacked in The Dunciad and Bathos, and he
now retaliated. There is no doubt that he had a share (possibly
the sole share) in Verses to the Imitator of Horace (1732). In
Letters from a nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of
Divinity (1733), he scoffed at Pope's deformity and humble birth.
Pope's reply was A Letter to a noble Lord, dated November 1733,
and the scathing portrait of Sporus in the Epistle to Dr Arbuth-
not (1735). Hervey also quarrelled fiercely with Pulteney over a
libel and was very nearly a victim to his adversary's rapier. He
also fell out with Frederick, prince of Wales, in the matter of an
amour with one of the queen's maids of honour, Anne Vane, who
became the prince's mistress. He was thus much exposed on every
side to the malice and detraction of declared enemies ; and this
fact helps to account for the cynicism and venom which overflow
in his Memoirs. Meanwhile, in 1723, by the death of his brother,
he became heir to the earldom of Bristol and assumed the title
by which he is rememberedt. In the new reign, his advancement
was assured, inasmuch as, with a strong feeling for self-preserva-
tion, he had made sure of all the approaches, and all the back-
stair exits, of the innermost court.
After a spell of Italian travel, in which he had engaged
partly for the sake of his health (which, according to the parental
view, had been undermined by that 'poisonous plant tea'),
he returned in 1729, and, having given in his adherence to the
victorious wing of the party in power, was promptly pensioned
and appointed vice-chamberlain, with the special purpose of serving
as Walpole's agent about the person of queen Caroline, whose
closest confidences he shared. Walpole employed his incisive
1 In June 1733, he was called to the House of Lords by writ in virtue of his father's
barony.


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pen to refute the libels contributed to The Craftsman by
Pulteney, whose barbed retorts suggested most of the ugly insinua-
tions which Pope worked up into his scarifying caricature of
'Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk. ' After the queen's
death in November 1737, Lord Hervey was admitted to the
cabinet as lord privy seal, but, much against his inclination, was
thrown out of office by the fall of Walpole. His pamphlets, such
as Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Present Posture of Foreign
and Domestic Affairs and his Three Speeches on the Gin Act
(1742–3), show that his mental vigour was unimpaired. His
health, however, was gradually failing ; and he died, in the life-
time of his father, on 5 August 1743, aged only 46, and was buried
in the family tomb at Ickworth. During the last fifteen years of his
life, he had been composing his both lifelike and highly polished,
but thoroughly cynical, Memoirs, which extend from his first coming
to court to the death of the queen. The manuscript of these
Memoirs, entirely in autograph, was left to his sons, by whom it
appears that several sheets referring to the more intimate dis-
sensions in the royal family were destroyed.