‘Eloquence has charms to lead mankind, and gives a nobler superiority than power that every dunce may use, or fraud that every knave may employ.’
And then follows a good deal about Demosthenes and Cicero, and other talkers of old time.
This may or may not be a fine passage; but if we allow it to be the former, we cannot admit that as it flows it fertilizes.
Bolingbroke and Chesterfield are two of the remarkable figures of the first half of the last century. They are both commonly called ‘great,’ to distinguish them from other holders of the same titles. Their accomplishments were as endless as their opportunities. They were the most eloquent men of their time, and both possessed that insight into things, that distinction of mind, we call genius. They were ready writers, and have left ‘works’ behind them full of wit and gracious expressions; but neither the one nor the other has succeeded in lodging himself in the general memory. The ill-luck which drove them out of politics has pursued them down the path of letters, though the frequenters of that pleasant track are wisely indifferent to the characters of dead authors who still give pleasure.
No shrewder men ever sat upon a throne than the first two Georges, monarchs of this realm. The second George hated Chesterfield, and called him ‘a tea-table scoundrel.’ The phrase sticks. There is something petty about this great Lord Chesterfield. The first George, though wholly illiterate, yet took it upon himself to despise Bolingbroke, philosopher though he was, and dismissed an elaborate effusion of his as ‘bagatelles.’ Here again the phrase sticks, and not even the beautiful type and lordly margins of Mallet’s edition of Lord Bolingbroke’s writings, or the stately periods of that nobleman himself, can drive the royal verdict out of my ears. There is nothing real about these writings save their colossal impudence, as when, for example, in his letter on the State of Parties on the accession of George I., he solemnly denies that there was any design during the four last years of Queen Anne’s reign to set aside the Hanover succession, and, in support of his denial, quotes himself as a man who, if there had been anything of the sort, must have known of it. By the side of this man the perfidy of Thurlow or of Wedderburn shows white as wool.
By the aid of his own wits and a cunning wife, and assisted by the growing hatred of corruption, Bolingbroke, towards the close of his long life, nearly succeeded in securing some measure of oblivion of his double-dyed treachery. He managed to inflame the ‘Young England’ of the period with his picture of a ‘Patriot King,’ and if he had only put into the fire his lucubrations about Christianity he might have accomplished his exit from a world he had made worse for seventy-five years with a show of decency. But he did not do so; the ‘cur Mallet’ was soon ready with his volumes, and then the memory of Bolingbroke was exposed to the obloquy which in this country is (or was) the heritage of the heterodox.
Horace Walpole, who hated Bolingbroke, as he was in special duty bound to do, felt this keenly. He was glad Bolingbroke was gibbeted, but regretted that he should swing on a wrong count in the indictment.
Writing to Sir Horace Mann, Walpole says:
‘You say you have made my Lord Cork give up my Lord Bolingbroke. It is comical to see how he is given up here since the best of his writings, his metaphysical divinity, has been published. While he betrayed and abused every man who trusted him, or who had forgiven him, or to whom he was obliged, he was a hero, a patriot, a philosopher, and the greatest genius of the age; the moment his “Craftsmen” against Moses and St. Paul are published we have discovered he was the worst man and the worst writer in the world. The grand jury have presented his works, and as long as there are any parsons he will be ranked with Tindal and Toland—nay, I don’t know whether my father won’t become a rubric martyr for having been persecuted by him.’