in many

illustration, constant references to history, many attacks upon existing parties; but nothing can be less like what we commonly term a Dissertation. The same remark applies to almost all his writings. He is clear, strong, copious; he is never methodical; the subject is attacked in various ways; it is taken up by the first end that presents itself, and it is handled skilfully, earnestly, and strikingly, of its parts; it cannot be said to be thoroughly gone through, though it be powerfully gone into; in short, it is discussed as if a speaker of great power rather than a writer, were engaged upon it; and accordingly nothing can be more clear than that Bolingbroke's works convey to us the idea of a prodigious orator rather than of a very great and regular writer. When Mr. Burke asked, “Who now reads Bolingbroke?" he paved the way for another equally natural exclamation, "What would we not give to hear him ?" and this was Mr. Pitt's opinion, when, as has already been observed, the question being raised in conversation about the desiderata most to be lamented, and one said the lost books of Livy, another those of Tacitus, a third a Latin tragedy-he at once declared for "A Speech of Bolingbroke." Nor is it the method-rather the want of method—the easy and natural order in which the topics follow one another, not taken up on a plan, but each, as it were, growing out of its immediate predecessor, that makes his writings so closely resemble spoken compositions. The diction is most eminently that of oratorical works. It is bold, rapid, animated, natural, and racy, yet pointed and correct, bearing the closest scrutiny of the critic, when submitted to the eye in the hour of calm judgment; but admirably calculated to fill the ear, and carry away the feelings in the moment of excitement. If Bolingbroke spoke as he wrote, he must have been the greatest of modern orators, as far as composition goes; for he has the raciness and spirit, occasionally even the fire, perhaps not the vehemence of Fox, with richer imagery, and far more correct diction; the accurate composition of Pitt, with infinitely more grace and variety; the copiousness, almost the learning, and occasionally the depth of Burke, without his wearily elaborate air; for his speech never degenerates for an instant into dissertation, which Burke scarcely ever avoids.

To characterize his manner of speaking from his writings would be difficult and tedious, if possible. There are in these, however, passages which plainly bear the impress of his extraordinary oratorical powers, and which, if spoken, must have produced an indescribable effect. Take a noble passage from the 'Dissertation on Parties :'

"If King Charles had found the nation plunged in corruption; the people choosing their representatives for money, without any other regard; and these representatives of the people, as well as the nobility, reduced by luxury to beg the unhallowed alms of a court, or to receive, like miserable hirelings, the wages of iniquity from a minister; if he had found the nation, I say, in this condition (which extravagant supposition one cannot make without horror), he might have dishonoured her abroad, and impoverished and oppressed her at home, though he had been the weakest prince on earth, and his ministers the most odious and contemptible men that ever presumed to be ambitious. Our fathers might have fallen into circumstances which compose the quintessence of political misery. They might have sold their birthright for porridge which was their own. They might have been bubbled by the foolish, bullied by the fearful, and insulted by those whom they despised. They would have deserved to be slaves, and they might have been treated as such. When a free people crouch, like camels, to be loaded, the next at hand, no matter who, mounts them, and they soon feel the whip and the spur of their tyrant, whether prince or minister, who resembles the devil in many respects; particularly in this-he is often both the tempter and the tormentor. He makes the criminal, and he punishes the crime."

Another fine passage, admirably fitted for spoken eloquence by its rapidity, its point, its fulness of matter, each hit rising above the last, may be taken from the celebrated Dedication to Sir Robert Walpole :—

"Should a minister govern, in various instances of domestic and foreign management, ignorantly, weakly, or even wickedly, and yet pay this reverence and bear this regard to the constitution, he would deserve certainly much better quarter, and would meet with it too from every man of sense and honour, than a minister who should conduct the

administration with great ability and success, and should at the same time procure and abet, or even connive at, such indirect violations of the rules of the constitution, as tend to the destruction of it, or even at such evasions as tend to render it useless. A minister who had the ill qualities of both these, and the good ones of neither; who made his administration hateful in some respects, and despicable in others; who sought that security by ruining the constitution, which he had forfeited by dishonouring the government; who encouraged the profligate and seduced the unwary to concur with him in this design, by affecting to explode all public spirit, and to ridicule every form of our constitution; such a minister would be looked upon most justly as the shame and scourge of his country; sooner or later he would fall without pity, and it is hard to say what punishment would be proportionable to his crimes.""

Lastly, take this instance of another kind, but alike fitted for the senate :

"The flowers they gather at Billingsgate to adorn and entwine their productions, shall be passed over by me without any explication. They assume the privilege of watermen and oysterwomen: let them enjoy it in that good company, and exclusively of all other persons. They cause no scandal; they give no offence; they raise no sentiment but contempt in the breasts of those they attack: and it is to be hoped, for the honour of those whom they would be thought to defend, that they raise, by their low and dirty practice, no other sentiment in them. But there is another part of their proceedings which may be attributed by malicious people to you, and which deserves, for that reason alone, some place in this Dedication, as it might be some motive to the writing of it. When such authors grow scurrilous, it would be highly unjust to impute their scurrility to any prompter, because they have in themselves all that is necessary to constitute a scold-ill-manners, impudence, a foul mouth, and a fouler heart. But when they menace, they rise a note higher. They cannot do this in their own names. Men may be apt to conclude, therefore, that they do it in the name, as they affect to do it on the behalf, of the person in whose cause they desire to be thought retained."

The gracefulness of Bolingbroke's manner has been so greatly extolled by his contemporaries, that we can hardly believe his eloquence to have risen into the vehemence ascribed to it by one who had studied his works more than other men, for he had written an excellent imitation of his style. Mr. Burke speaks of that rapid torrent of “ an impetuous and overbearing eloquence for which he is justly admired," as well as "the rich variety of his imagery." There is assuredly nothing in his style to discountenance this notion; and, as Burke lived much nearer Bolingbroke's times than we do, there can be little doubt that his panegyric is correct. But all accounts agree in describing the external qualities (so to speak) of his oratory as perfect. A symmetrically beautiful and animated countenance, a noble and dignified person, a sonorous and flexible voice, action graceful and correct, though unstudied, gave his delivery an inexpressible charm with those who witnessed his extraordinary displays as spectators or critics; and armed his eloquence with resistless effect over those whom it was intended to sway, or persuade, or control. If the concurring accounts of witnesses, and the testimony to his merits borne by his writings, may be trusted, he must be pronounced to stand, upon the whole, at the head of modern orators. There may have been more measure and matured power in Pitt, more fire in the occasional bursts of Chatham, more unbridled vehemence, more intent reasoning in Fox, more deep-toned declamation in passages of Sheridan, more learned imagery in Burke, more wit and humour in Canning;† but, as a whole, and taking in all rhetorical gifts, and all the orator's accomplishments, no one, perhaps hardly the union of several of them, can

Preface to the Vindication of Natural Society (sub fine). It is inconsistent with the plan of this work to treat of living speakers; and this imposes a restraint in illustrating by comparison. For who can fail to recollect that the utmost reach of eloquence has been attained by those who survive? Who can doubt that Lord Plunket will, in after times, be classed with the very greatest orators; and that his style, of the highest excellence, is also eminently original, entirely his own? It affords the most perfect study to those whom its perfection may not make despair. In confining the mention of Mr. Canning to wit and humour, it must be understood that we speak only of the thing defective in Bolingbroke, not as confining Mr. C's excellence to that department; he was a very considerable orator in other respects.

match what we are taught by tradition to admire in Bolingbroke's spoken eloquence, and what the study of his works makes us easily believe to be true.

In considering Bolingbroke's character, there is even less possibility than in ordinary cases of separating the politic from the natural capacity: less pretence for making the distinction, so often, and so incorrectly, and so mischievously made between that which is becoming or honest in political life, and that which is virtuous or pure in private. It is seldom, indeed, that the lax morality can be tolerated, or even understood, which relieves the general reputation of a man from the censure naturally descending upon it, by citing personal merit as a kind of set-off to political delinquency; seldom that there is any kind of sense in believing a man honest who has only betrayed his colleague, because he never cheated his friend; or in acquitting of knavery the statesman who has sacrificed his principles for preferment, merely because he has never taken a bribe to break some private trust, embezzled a ward's money, sold a daughter or a wife. Nothing can be more shadowy than such distinctions, nothing more arbitrary than such lines of demarcation. To say that a dishonest, or sordid, or treacherous politician may be a virtuous man, because he has never exposed himself to prosecution for fraud, or forgery, or theft, is near akin to the fantastical morality which should acquit a common offender of horsestealing because he had never been charged with burglary. It must, however, be confessed, that as there are cases of political offences much worse than others, so in these the impossibility of making such distinctions becomes more apparent; and both the kind and the amount of the crimes charged upon Bolingbroke seem to point him out as an instance in which all contrast between public and private character signally fails. If, then, we advert to his conduct under these two heads, it is only in order to treat of different kinds of delinquency, in separation and in suc

cession.

some

He came into Parliament as a declared Tory; the ancient families from which he sprung, the St. Johns and the Ports, had ever been of that faith. In the ministry which the Queen formed during the latter years of her reign from