Bolingbroke

“ On September 17, Norroy, King at Arms, came solemnly down to the House of Lords and razed the names of Ormond and of Bolingbroke from the roll of peers. Bolingbroke had some consolation of a sham kind. He had wished and schemed to be Earl of Bolingbroke before his fall, and now his new king, James of St. Germains, had given him the patent of enhanced nobility. If he ceased to be a viscount in the eyes of English peers and of English heralds, he was still an earl in the Pretender's court. Bolingbroke had too keen a sense of humor not to be painfully aware of the irony of the situation. ”

“ He would not decide which card to play till he knew which was the trump suit. The intervention of Argyle and Somerset, and the appointment of Shrewsbury as treasurer just before the queen's death, destroyed Bolingbroke's power (in regard to this incident see Lecky, i. 164 n.) ‘Oxford was removed on Tuesday, the queen died on Sunday,’ wrote Bolingbroke to Swift (3 Aug.) . ‘What a world this is! and how does fortune banter us!’
The dismissal of Bolingbroke from his office was among the first acts of the new king. He had held office for nearly four years of extraordinary activity. ”

“ Compare Bolingbroke—not with the men and by the rules of this day, but with the men and by the rules of the last. He will lose nothing in comparison with a Walpole, with a Marlborough on the one side,—with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other.
And now, my dear Auldjo, you have had enough of my egotisms. As our works grow up,—like old parents, we grow garrulous, and love to recur to the happier days of their childhood; we talk over the pleasant pain they cost us in their rearing, and memory renews the season of dreams and hopes ”

“ Gay turned his eyes to the open window.
"I don't want to think of the rascally knave or the rabble either. My thoughts are on yonder pretty little jade. Look for yourself, Bolingbroke. You're not so insensible to beauty as Lance Vane is at this moment."
"Faith, I hope not. Where's the charmer?" said Bolingbroke walking to the window.
"Stay. She's going to sing. She has the voice of a nightingale. I've heard her before. Lord! to think she has to do it for a living!"
"Humph. She has courage. Most girls would die rather than rub shoulders with that frousy, bestial, drunken mob." ”

“ From none of these men could Bolingbroke have much favor to expect. Those who were honest and unselfish would be ill-disposed towards him because of their honesty and unselfishness; those who were not exactly honest and certainly not unselfish, would, by reason of their character, probably be only too anxious to help the winning party to get rid of him. But the names that must have showed most formidable in the eyes of Bolingbroke and his friends were those of Robert Walpole and Richard Hampden. ”

“ Herrick told Bolingbroke all that had passed between him and Lavendale last night; and then the two men talked together earnestly for a considerable time, walking up and down the wintry alley, where two rows of clipped pyramid-shaped yews wore as verdant a livery as if it had been midsummer.
"One can scarce conceive that imagination could be powerful enough to kill a man," said Bolingbroke, after a long discussion, "yet I apprehend there is a state of the nerves and organs in which a mental shock may be fatal. ”

“ Upon his dismissal Bolingbroke retired to Bucklebury. His papers had been seized, and a pamphlet called ‘The Secret History of the White Staff,’ said to have been written by Defoe at Oxford's instigation, endeavoured to show that Bolingbroke's high-handed policy was leading him to the Jacobites, and that Oxford had done his best to resist. A pamphlet in answer has been attributed to Bolingbroke. The new parliament was controlled by the whigs. Bolingbroke, on the motion for an answer to the king's speech, spoke against a passage reflecting upon the queen's ministers (22 March) . ”

“ The clouds were rolling away, and against a strip of lemon-green sky, Sirius showed faintly, as a point of silver wire. A thrush, on a naked copper-beech, burst into its recurrent phrase.
Bolingbroke consulted his watch.
“Ought to be over. Lord, we're a pair of precious churchyard ghouls, on the gloat.”
“I know.” Wicks spoke deprecatingly. “But I understand that this operation can only give partial relief—merely a prolongation of misery. God knows I wish for no man's death!”
“And God knows I do!” Bolingbroke gripped Wicks's shoulder and spoke in a sharpened tone. ”

“ Lord Bolingbroke has both a tongue and a pen to persuade; his manner of speaking in private conversation is full as elegant as his writings; whatever subject he either speaks or writes upon, he adorns with the most splendid eloquence; not a studied or labored eloquence, but such a flowing happiness of diction, which (from care perhaps at first) is become so habitual to him, that even his most familiar conversations, if taken down in writing, would bear the press, without the least correction either as to method or style. ”

“ With a dignified smile Lord Bolingbroke then put his hand to his heart, and bowed profoundly; the Duchess looked a little abashed, but returned the courtesy quickly and slightly, and renewed her conversation.
"Faith, my Lord," cried the young gentleman who had before spoken, "you managed that well! No reproach is like that which we clothe in a smile, and present with a bow."
"I am happy," said Lord Bolingbroke, "that my conduct receives the grave support of a son of my political opponent." ”

“ The insects we despise as they buzz around us become dangerous when they settle on ourselves and we feel their sting! But,” added Bolingbroke, suddenly relapsing into a smile, “I have long wanted a nickname: I have now found one for myself. You know Oxford is called ‘The Dragon;’ well, henceforth call me ‘St. George;’ for, as sure as I live, will I overthrow the Dragon. I say this in jest, but I mean it in earnest. And now that I have discharged my bile, let us talk of this wonderful poem, which, though I have read it a hundred times, I am never wearied of admiring.” ”

“ The difficulty illustrates Bolingbroke's real attitude. He had no enthusiasm for the Stuarts, and in fact no man despised their religious and political creed more heartily. It is doubtful whether a restoration of the Pretender ever appeared practicable either to Oxford or Bolingbroke (cf. Wyon, Queen Anne, ii. 517–19) . Their position, however, as leaders of the tories compelled them to keep up some relations with the Jacobites. The accession to the crown of the elector of Hanover meant inevitably the triumph of the whigs and the ruin of the ministers responsible for the peace. ”

“ Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke—
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
SERVANT.
What, are they dead?
GARDENER.
They are. And Bolingbroke
Hath seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself. ”

“ Lord Bolingbroke joined all the politeness, the manners, and the graces of a courtier, to the solidity of a statesman, and to the learning of a pedant. He was 'omnis homo'; and pray what should hinder my boy from being so too, if he 'hath, as I think he hath, all the other qualifications that you allow him? Nothing can hinder him, but neglect of or inattention to, those objects which his own good sense must tell him are, of infinite consequence to him, and which therefore I will not suppose him capable of either neglecting or despising. ”

“ I said, as we walked to and fro in the garden of his temporary retreat, "once more you are in your element; minister and statesman of a prince, and chief supporter of the great plans which are to restore him to his throne."
A slight shade passed over Bolingbroke's fine brow. "To you, my constant friend," said he, "to you,—who of all my friends alone remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfortune,—to you I will confide a secret that I would intrust to no other. I repent me already of having espoused this cause. ”

“ He was the inspirer of writers. Burke devoured Bolingbroke, and when he took up his pen, wrote with the same magnificent, stately minuet step. Finally he was full of the essence of Bolingbroke to the point of saturation, and then he began to criticize him. ”

“ Bolingbroke (18 July 1732) offered to procure him an exchange for the rectory of Binfield in Berkshire, which Swift declined as inadequate. He continued, however, to write to his friends Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot in letters touching from the evident desire for affection, and showing increasing symptoms of decay. He is querulous over old grievances: the 1,000l. owing to him from the crown when he accepted the deanery, and the medals which the queen never remembered to give. He hopes for death. ”

“ In Richard II,' iii, 2, 50, the King, likening himself to the sun, says that, as the "eye of heaven" reveals the dark deeds of night when he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, "So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke ... Shall see us rising on our throne, the east, His treasons will sit blushing in his face." And again, Ibid., iv, 1, 260, transferring the metaphor to Bolingbroke, he wails: "O, that I were a mockery King of snow Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in waterdrops." ”

“ The very caprice and levity of the jester seemed more perilous, because less to be calculated upon, than a systematic principle of bitterness or satire. Bolingbroke compared him, not unaptly, to a child who has possessed himself of Jupiter’s bolts, and who makes use of those bolts in sport which a god would only have used in wrath. ”

“ Viscount Bolingbroke (Henry St. John) , 1678-1751: as an erratic statesman, a notorious free-thinker, a dissipated lord, a clever political writer, and an eloquent speaker, Lord Bolingbroke was a centre of attraction in his day, and demands observation in literary history. During the reign of Queen Anne he was a plotter in favor of the pretender, and when she died, he fled the realm to avoid impeachment for treason. In France he joined the pretender as Secretary of State, but was dismissed for intrigue; and on being pardoned by the English king, he returned to England. ”

“ Bolingbroke, when in office, sat up whole nights drinking, and in the morning, having bound a wet napkin round his forehead and his eyes, to drive away the effects of his intemperance, he hastened without sleep to his official business. [218]
[Pg 294]
Lord Stair, in a letter to Horace Walpole, writes:—
Poor Harry (Bolingbroke) is turned out from being Secretary of State.... They call him knave and traitor.... I believe all poor Harry’s fault was that he could not play his part with a grave enough face.... He got drunk now and then. ”

“ He even took more than once a certain kind of part in politics—that is in pamphleteering; he tried to be the inspiration and the guiding-star of Pulteney and other rising men who had come, for one reason or another, to detest Walpole. But even these soon began to find Bolingbroke rather more of a hinderance than a help, and were glad to shake him off and be rid of him. He becomes everything by turns; plays at cool philosophy and philosophic retreat; is always assuring the world in tones of highly suspicious eagerness that he is done forever with it and its works and pomps ”

“ There was nothing very deeply to rouse the passions and imaginations of men. There was, indeed, the usual amount of political squabbles; but when a Bolingbroke was the most eloquent and admired of parliamentary orators, what moral grandeur could be expected? There was a Jacobite faction, perpetually undermining and sometimes breaking out into open rebellion; but their enthusiasm, save in Scotland, was mingled with no poetical elements, although there certainly it produced many exquisite strains of ballad poetry. ”

“ A Life by Thomas Macknight (1863) shows more research, though not always accurate. Mr. John Churton Collins's Bolingbroke, a Historical Study (with Voltaire in 1886) , gives a spirited summary and criticism. Life by Thomas Harrop (1884) , and Dr. Moritz Brosch's Lord Bolingbroke und die Whigs und Tories seiner Zeit (1883) , add little. Mr. Arthur Hassall's Bolingbroke (1889) , in the Statesman Series, Dr. Gottfried Koch's short notice, ‘Bolingbroke's politische Ansichten und die Squirearchei’ (1890) , and Walter Sichel's ‘Bolingbroke and his Times’ (1901–2) may also be noticed. ”

“ Thus did Bolingbroke converse, and thus did I listen, till it was time to depart. I left him impressed with a melancholy that was rather soothing than distasteful. Whatever were the faults of that most extraordinary and most dazzling genius, no one was ever more candid* in confessing his errors. A systematically bad man either ridicules what is good or disbelieves in its existence; but no man can be hardened in vice whose heart is still sensible of the excellence and the glory of virtue. ”

“ Adieu, my pen is ready to drop out of my hand, it being now three o’clock in the morning; believe that no man loves you better, or is more faithfully yours, &c.
‘BOLINGBROKE.’ There are several other letters from Bolingbroke to Prior, which, were it necessary, we might insert as evidences of his esteem for him; but Mr. Prior was in every respect so great a man, that the esteem even of lord Bolingbroke cannot add much to the lustre of his reputation, both as a statesman, and a poet. ”