beyond almost any other, dropping down dead in his declamation, from excess of vehemence: and at this time he was between forty and fifty years of age.

II.

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

FEW men whose public life was so short, have filled a greater space in the eyes of the world during his own times than Lord Bolingbroke, or left behind them a more brilliant reputation. Not more than fifteen years elapsed between his first coming into Parliament and his attainder; during not more than ten of these years was he brought forward in the course of its proceedings; and yet as a statesman and an orator his name ranks among the most famous in our history, independently of the brilliant literary reputation which places him among the first classics of what we generally, but erroneously, call our Augustan age. Much of his rhetorical fame may certainly be ascribed to the merit of his written works; but had he never composed a page, he would still have come down to our times as one of the most able and eloquent men of whom this country ever could boast. As it is upon his eloquence that his great reputation now rests, as upon that mainly was built his political influence, and as upon it alone any commendation of his political character must proceed, we shall do well to begin by examining the foundation before we look at the superstructure.

And here the defect, so often to be deplored in contemplating the history of modern oratory, attains its very height. Meagre as are the materials by which we can aim at forming to ourselves some idea of the eloquence of most men who flourished before our own day; scanty as are the remains even of the speakers who figured during the Seven Years' War, and the earlier part of the American contest; when we go back to the administration of Walpole, we find those vestiges to be yet more thinly scattered over the pages of our history; and in Queen Anne's time, during which alone Bolingbroke spoke, there are absolutely none. It is correct to affirm that of this great orator-one of the

very greatest, according to all contemporary history, that ever exercised the art, and these accounts are powerfully supported by his writings-not a spoken sentence remains, any more than of the speeches of Demades,* one of the most eloquent of the Greeks, any more than of Cicero's translation from Demosthenes, or the lost works of Livy and of Tacitus. The contemplation of this chasm it was that made Mr. Pitt, when musing upon its brink, and calling to mind all that might be fancied of the orator from the author, and all that traditional testimony had handed down to us, sigh after a "speech of Bolingbroke,"-desiderating it far more than the restoration of all that has perished of the treasures of the ancient world.

But, although we may well join in these unavailing regrets, attempt vainly to supply the want by our conjectures, and confess our ignorance of the peculiar character of his oratory, the fact of its mighty power is involved in no doubt at all. The concurring testimony of all parties leaves this a matter absolutely certain. The friends and supporters of Walpole, to whom his whole life was hostile, all his acts, his speeches, and his writings, are here agreed with the friends, the associates of Bolingbroke; and no diversity of shade marks the pictures which have come down to us from the hand of the antagonist and of the panegyrist. His most intimate companion, Dean Swift, may be suspected of partiality when he represents him as "having in his hands half the business of the nation, and the applause of the whole;" but when he tells us that "understanding men of both parties asserted he had never been equalled in speaking," and that he had "an invincible eloquence, with a most agreeable elocution," we can find no fault with the exaggeration, for this account falls short of what others have told. In truth, his impression upon the men of his own age may well be conceived to have been prodigious, when we reflect that hardly any English orator can now be cited as having flourished before his time. This circumstance might even detract from the weight of contemporary testimony in his favour, if we had not more specific reasons

*The fragment given in some codices as his appears of more than doubtful authenticity. The finest portion is taken from a very-well known passage in Demosthenes.

for believing implicitly in it than the mere concurrence of general reputation.

He had received at Eton a complete classical education ; rather, let us say, had laid there the foundation of one, which, like all others who have shone as scholars, he afterwards completed. But his attention was more bestowed upon the remains of Rome than of Athens; he was extensively and thoroughly acquainted with Latin writers, as indeed his frequent quotation of passages little known may show. With Greck literature he seems not to have been familiar; nor can the reader of his own works fail to perceive, that his style is not so redolent of the flowers which grew in the more rigorous climate of the Attic school. With the authors of the age immediately preceding his own-the true Augustan age of English letters—he was well acquainted; and, although his style is quite his own, none being more original, it is impossible to doubt that he had much studied and much admired (as who can stint himself in admiring ?) the matchless prose of Drydenrich, various, natural, animated, pointed, lending itself to the logical and the narrative, as well as the pathetic and the picturesque, never baulking, never cloying, never wearying. To the literature of ancient and modern times he added a consummate knowledge of their history, and indeed appears of this to have made his principal study; for of natural science he was no professor, and his metaphysical writings have gained but little fame. Yet, that he was a profound moralist, had thoroughly studied the sources of human action, was well acquainted with the nature and habits of the mind, and had an understanding adapted by its natural acuteness to take part in the most subtle discussions, as well as habituated to them by study, it would be absurd to doubt, merely because his metaphysical speculations have been unsuccessful, as it would be the height of unworthy prejudice to deny it, merely because his opinions are tinged with scepticism, and because an unhappy veil of infidelity darkened his life, while it shrouded his posthumous works. They who look down upon even the purely ethical and purely metaphysical writings of Bolingbroke would do well to show us any statesman or any orator, except perhaps Cicero, who in any age has

brought to the senate the same resources of moral science which even the failures of Bolingbroke as a professed author on these subjects prove him to have possessed; and it is hardly necessary to remark how vast an accession of force to his eloquence, whether in its argumentative, its pathetic, or its declamatory department, would have been gained by even far less skill, capacity, or practice, than he had as a moral philosopher, a student of the nature of the mind, or an expert logician.

Accordingly, when all these accomplishments, joined to his strong natural sagacity, his penetrating acuteness, his extraordinary quickness of apprehension, a clearness of understanding against which sophistry set itself up in vain, as the difficulties of the most complicated subject in vain opposed his industry and his courage; with a fancy rich, lively, various beyond that of most men, a wit exuberant and sparkling, a vehemence of passion belonging to his whole temperament, even to his physical powers-came to be displayed before the assembly which he was to address; and when the mighty "Armamentaria Cali" were found under the command of one whose rich endowments of mind, and whose ample stores of acquired virtue, resided in a person of singular grace, animated a countenance at once beautiful and expressive, and made themselves heard in the strains of an unrivalled voice,-it is easy to comprehend how vast, how irresistible must have been their impression. That is easy; but unhappily all we can now obtain is the apprehension that it must have been prodigious, without being able ourselves to penetrate the veil that hides it, or to form any very distinct notion of its peculiar kind. For the purpose of approximating to this knowledge, it is necessary that we should now consider the style of his written discourse; because, although in general the difference is great between the same man's writings and his oratory (witness the memorable example of Mr. Fox, who, however, increased the diversity by writing on a system, and a bad one)-yet in some this difference is much less than in others, and there seems abundant reason to believe that in Bolingbroke's case it was as inconsiderable as in any other.

If we inquire on what models Bolingbroke formed his style; the result will be, the case of all other great men

and original writers, that he was rather imbued with the general taste and relish of former authors than imitated any of them. That he had filled his mind with the mighty exemplars of antiquity is certain-for, though of Greek he had small store, with the Latin classics he was familiar, and habitually so, as his allusions and his quotations constantly show. As might be supposed in one of his strong sense, knowledge of man and of men, as well as free habits, Horace seems to have been his favourite; but the historians also are plainly of his intimate society. Among modern authors he appears to have had Dryden's prose, and the admirable composition of Shaftesbury, most in his mind. The resemblance of manner may indeed be frequently found with these excellent models-of whom the former, with Bolingbroke himself, may perhaps be admitted to stand at the head of all our great masters of diction. But though in vigour, in freedom, occasionally in rhythm also, in variety that never palls nor ever distracts from the subject, in copiousness that speaks an exhaustless fountain for its source, nothing can surpass Dryden; yet must it be confessed that Bolingbroke is more terse, more condensed where closeness is required, more epigrammatic, and of the highest order of epigram, which has its point not in the words but the thoughts; and when, even in the thoughts, it is so subdued as to be minister of the composer, and not his master-helping the explication, or the argument, or the invective, without appearing to be the main purpose of the composition. In another and a material respect he also greatly excels Dryden; there is nothing slovenly in any part of his writings; he always respects his reader, his subject, and himself, too much to throw out matter in a crude and half-finished form, at least as far as diction is concerned: for the structure of his works is anything rather than finished and systematic, Even his tract On Parties,' which he calls a Dissertation, though certainly his most elaborate work, perhaps also the most admirably written, has as little of an orderly methodical exposition of principles, or statement of reasonings, as can well be imagined. It is a series of letters addressed to a political paper, abounding in acute, sagacious, often profound reflections, with forcible arguments, much happy