A few years after this note was written, I met with the following words in the eleventh letter of the Dissertation on Parties, p. 151, of the quarto edition: “Should a King obtain, for many years at once, the supplies and powers which used to be granted annually to him, this would be deemed, I presume, even in the present age, an unjustifiable measure, and an intolerable grievance; for this plain reason, because it would alter our constitution in the fundamental article, that requires frequent assemblies of the whole legislature, in order to assist, and control too, the executive power, which is entrusted with one part of it.” What must be the heart of that man, who, merely to load an envied Minister, could suppose instances of wicked administration, which had not entered into the head of any other man; and who could afterwards adopt those suppositions himself, and try to recommend himself to a Prince by those individual bad measures, the creatures of his own brain: and this at past seventy years old! hazarding, for a very few years of unenjoyable power, to entail so calamitous a system on his country!
[195] Lord Bolingbroke had trusted him to get six copies printed off of his Letters on Patriotism; after Pope’s death, it was discovered that he had secured a vast number of copies for his own benefit. [Vide the Preface] to the Idea of a Patriot King, where this story is exposed. What aggravated Lord Bolingbroke’s exposing his friend was, that after his own death it was discovered that he had secretly preserved a copy of Dr. Middleton’s Essay on Prayer, which his lordship had persuaded the doctor’s executors to burn.
[197] Sir Robert Walpole was killed by Jurin’s medicine for the stone; Lord Bolingbroke by a man who had pretended to cure him of a cancer in his face.
[198] In quibusdam virtutes non habent gratiam, in quibusdam vitia ipsa delectant.—Quintil.
[199] This allusion is manifestly borrowed from Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who, in an epistle written in 1745, but not printed till many years afterwards, thus draws the character of Mr. Pelham, and contrasts him with Sir Robert Walpole. Apostrophizing the Goddess of Prudence, he says—
Turn to your altars, on your votaries shine,
See Pelham ever kneeling at thy shrine;
By you at first by slow degrees he rose,
To you the zenith of his power he owes;