No More Learning



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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.


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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.


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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


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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


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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


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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.


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232
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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.
>


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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


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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.