"Ah, my dear Judith, no woman can appreciate the grace of Boccaccio nor the wit of Rabelais. Your sex is seldom delicately critical. A butcher brute, like Shakespeare, pleases you because he conjures up scenes of blood and murder which your imagination can easily realise; but the niceties of wit are beyond your comprehension."
"I would rather have written the Rape of the Lock than all Shakespeare's plays and poems to boot. 'Tis the best mock-heroic poem that ever was written," said Voltaire, pleased to compliment Lord Bolingbroke by praising his friend. To the exile, the favour of the Lord of Dawley was not altogether unimportant, and Arouet had been on a footing of friendship with Bolingbroke and his wife for some years, a favoured guest at his lordship's château near Orleans. He had sat at Bolingbroke's feet, and imbibed his opinions.
The Henriade was still awaiting publication, and Francis Arouet had an eye to his subscription-list; a man at all times supple and adroit, ever able to make the best of every situation, dexterous alike as wit and poet, courtier, lover, speculator, flushed with the small social successes of his brilliant youth, secure in the friendship of royal duchesses and roué princes, accepted in a society far above his birth, envied and hated by the malignant few—witness M. de Rohan's brutal retaliation—but petted and caressed by the many. Who could wonder that such a man, accustomed to float easily on the very crest of the wave, should be quite at home at Ringwood Abbey, oppressed neither by Bolingbroke's intellectual superiority nor by Lady Judith's insolent beauty?
"Nothing can excel perfection," answered Bolingbroke blandly. "My little friend's poem is an Y entire and perfect chrysolite; but it is perfection in miniature. I hope to see Pope excel on a larger scale and with a loftier theme. He is capable of writing a great philosophical poem, which shall place him above Lucretius."
"Hang up philosophy! I only care for Pope when he is personal," said Lady Judith. "He is like that other small creature, the adder, only of consequence when he stings."
"One would suppose he had stung you," retorted her husband.
"No, I have not yet been assailed in print. My time is to come, I suppose. But last summer, when all the world was at Twit'nam, there was not a day passed that I did not hear of some venomous shaft which Poet Pug had let fly at one of my friends. No doubt he is just as spiteful about me, only one's friends don't repeat such things to one's face."
"Not to such a face as yours, madam," said the Frenchman. "Malevolence itself must yield to the magic of incomparable charms."
The conversation meandered on in the same trifling strain, Lavendale silent for the most part, standing in the shadow of the carved oak mantelpiece and casting uneasy glances from time to time towards his hostess, who seemed too much occupied by Lord Bolingbroke to be aware of anybody else's presence, save when she flung some casual speech into the current of idle talk. It was but eight o'clock, and they had dined at five. Seldom did that deep drinker, Henry St. John, leave the table so early. To-night he had not stayed to finish his second bottle of Burgundy ere he joined Lady Judith in the drawing-room, and had given the signal for the breaking up of the party, much to the disappointment of Sir Tilbury Haskell, an honest Hampshire squire, who had heard of Bolingbroke as a four-bottle man, and had hoped to make a night of it in such distinguished company. Mr. Topsparkle had that Continental sobriety which is always offensive to Englishmen, and Voltaire was equally temperate. Sir Tilbury rolled his ponderous carcass to the billiard-room to snore on a sofa until supper-time, when there would be a well-furnished table for the sportsmen and more Champagne and Burgundy.
Bolingbroke was charmed with his hostess. That proud beauty, in its glorious prime of early womanhood, made him for the moment forgetful of his accomplished French wife, who was just then invalided at Bath, where he was to join her in a few days. It was not that he was unfaithful to his wife even in thought, but that his vanity hungered for new conquests. The triumphant Alcibiades of Anne's reign had become the boastful libertine who would fain be credited with new successes in the hour when he feels his seductive power on the wane.