Devereux — Complete

46

“Occasional Writer,” No. 1. The Editor has, throughout this work, usually, but not invariably, noted the passages in Bolingbroke’s writings, in which there occur similes, illustrations, or striking thoughts, correspondent with those in the text.

47

This I do believe to be the real (though perhaps it is a new) light in which Lord Bolingbroke’s life and character are to be viewed. The same writers who tell us of his ungovernable passions, always prefix to his name the epithets “designing, cunning, crafty,” etc. Now I will venture to tell these historians that, if they had studied human nature instead of party pamphlets, they would have discovered that there are certain incompatible qualities which can never be united in one character,—that no man can have violent passions to which he is in the habit of yielding, and be systematically crafty and designing. No man can be all heat, and at the same time all coolness; but opposite causes not unoften produce like effects. Passion usually makes men changeable, so sometimes does craft: hence the mistake of the uninquiring or the shallow; and hence while———writes, and———compiles, will the characters of great men be transmitted to posterity misstated and belied.—ED.

48

The Emperor Julian. The original expression is paraphrased in the text.

49

“Spirit of Patriotism.”

50

It is impossible to read the letter to Sir W. Windham without being remarkably struck with the dignified and yet open candour which it displays. The same candour is equally visible in whatever relates to himself, in all Lord Bolingbroke’s writings and correspondence; and yet candour is the last attribute usually conceded to him. But never was there a writer whom people have talked of more and read less; and I do not know a greater proof of this than the ever-repeated assertion (echoed from a most incompetent authority) of the said letter to Sir W. Windham being the finest of all Lord Bolingbroke’s writings. It is an article of great value to the history of the times; but, as to all the higher graces and qualities of composition, it is one of the least striking (and on the other hand it is one of the most verbally incorrect) which he has bequeathed to us (the posthumous works always excepted). I am not sure whether the most brilliant passages, the most noble illustrations, the most profound reflections, and most useful truths, to be found in all his writings, are not to be gathered from the least popular of them,—such as that volume entitled “Political Tracts.”—ED.

51

Tacitus.

52

This reflection, if true, may console us for the loss of those village dances and pleasant holidays for which “merry England” was once celebrated. The loss of them has been ascribed to the gloomy influence of the Puritans; but it has never occurred to the good poets, who have so mourned over that loss, that it is also to be ascribed to the liberty which those Puritans generalized, if they did not introduce.—ED.

53

A terrible kind of flogging, but less severe than the knout.

54

Upon his death-bed Peter is reported to have said, “God, I dare trust, will look mercifully upon my faults in consideration of the good I have done my country.” These are worthy to be the last words of a king! Rarely has there been a monarch who more required the forgiveness of the Creator; yet seldom perhaps has there been a human being who more deserved it.—ED.

55

Letter to Sir W. Windham.—ED.

56

“It becomes us neither to court nor to despise honours.”

57

On the death of Dubois, the Regent wrote to the Count de Noce, whom he had banished for an indiscreet expression against the favourite, uttered at one of his private suppers: “With the beast dies the venom: I expect you to-night to supper at the Palais Royal.”

58

It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions; this is one of the most customary traits of insanity.—ED.

59

I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character of Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But the writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has pillaged scenes in “The Disowned” with a most gratifying politeness.

60

I need scarcely remind the reader that Lord Bolingbroke, though he had received a full pardon, was forbidden to resume his seat in the House of Lords.—ED.

61

T am not ashamed to say to you that I admire her more every hour of my life.—Letter from Lord Bolingbroke to Swift.

Bolingbroke loved her to the last; and perhaps it is just to a man so celebrated for his gallantries to add that this beautiful and accomplished woman seems to have admired and esteemed as much as she loved him.—ED.

62

She was brought up at St. Cyr.—ED.

63

In this letter Swift adds, “I should be ashamed to say this if you [Lord Bolingbroke] had not a spirit fitter to bear your own misfortunes than I have to think of them;” and this is true. Nothing can be more striking, or more honourable to Lord Bolingbroke, than the contrast between Swift’s letters and that nobleman’s upon the subject of their mutual disappointments. I especially note the contrast, because it has been so grievously the cant of Lord Bolingbroke’s decriers to represent his affection for retirement as hollow, and his resignation in adversity as a boast rather than a fact. Now I will challenge any one thoroughly and dispassionately to examine what is left to us of the life of this great man, and after having done so, to select from all modern history an example of one who, in the prime of life and height of ambition, ever passed from a very active and exciting career into retirement and disgrace, and bore the change—long, bitter, and permanent as it was—with a greater and more thoroughly sustained magnanimity than did Lord Bolingbroke. He has been reproached for taking part in political contests in the midst of his praises and “affected enjoyment” of retirement; and this, made matter of reproach, is exactly the subject on which he seems to me the most worthy of praise. For, putting aside all motives for action, on the purity of which men are generally incredulous, as a hatred to ill government (an antipathy wonderfully strong in wise men, and wonderfully weak in fools), the honest impulse of the citizen, and the better and higher sentiment, to which Bolingbroke appeared peculiarly alive, of affection to mankind,—putting these utterly aside,—it must be owned that resignation is the more noble in proportion as it is the less passive; that retirement is only a morbid selfishness if it prohibit exertions for others; that it is only really dignified and noble when it is the shade whence issue the oracles that are to instruct mankind; and that retirement of this nature is the sole seclusion which a good and wise man will covet or commend. The very philosophy which makes such a man seek the quiet, makes him eschew the inutility of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy to me would have seemed Lord Bolingbroke among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate Minister and a venal parliament; very little interest in my eyes would have attached itself to his beans and vetches, had beans and vetches caused him to forget that if he was happier in a farm, he could be more useful in a senate, and made him forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering that of a legislator.—ED.

64

Thus very inadequately translated by Pope (see his Letter to Edward Blount, Esq., descriptive of his grotto):—

“Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep,
And to the murmur of these waters sleep:
Ah, spare my slumbers; gently tread the cave,
And drink in silence, or in silence lave.”

It is, however, quite impossible to convey to an unlearned reader the exquisite and spirit-like beauty of the Latin verses.—ED.

65

Pope seems to have been rather capricious in this respect; but in general he must be considered open to the sarcasm of displaying the bounteous host to those who did not want a dinner, and the niggard to those who did.—ED.

66

This beautiful sentiment is to be found, with very slight alteration, in a letter from Bolingbroke to Swift.—ED.