VII. A.D. 1725 to 17 35. CHAPTER VII. Bolingbroke's Literary Occupations during this period-His CHAP. WE have hitherto reviewed the political portion only of those labours which relieved the monotony of Bolingbroke's rustic retirement. These, however, formed but a small part of his literary occupations. It had been happy for his fame as a philosopher, and his reputation as a member of society, had all the efforts of his powerful mind been made in the pursuit of objects as laudable as those which prompted his contributions to the Craftsman. Posterity might then have regarded him as a man who retrieved the errors of his youth by the virtues of his age, and his country might have received the unbought services of his later years in expiation of the evils which he had inflicted as the leader of a faction. But the biographer is not allowed to draw a curtain over a peculiar feature of his subject's character. We must exhibit Bolingbroke as his life and conversation portrayed him to his contempora ries, and as his works have transmitted him to pos- CHAP. terity. When Bolingbroke returned from his long exile, and abandoned himself to rustic employments, domestic duties, and literary leisure, he was in his forty-sixth year; an age when the judgment is matured without being impaired, and the mind is fortified with experience without being weakened by age. The vices of youth had then lost their power, and the passions which had lent them force had expired with the strength and vigour which prompted and sustained them. The characteristic vices of old age Bolingbroke never contracted. The avarice which tormented Swift never embittered his repose; on the contrary, one of his friends remarks that he never knew him live so expensively as he did for some time after his return from exile.* Thus, with no irregularities to indulge or palliate, we might expect to find him abandoning, with the practice, the sentiments of the libertine, and assenting with an unbiassed judgment to the truths which his passions had before disguised or concealed. But very different was the conduct of this extraordinary man. He had been early disgusted by a puritanical tutor, and he afterwards easily coincided with the opinions of the company he affected. He had originally received his sceptical ideas from disgust and example, he now retained them from what he considered to be the dictates of his reason. * Pope's Letters. VII. A.D. 1725. to 1735. A.D. 1725 to 1735. CHAP. Unhappily, he had not sufficient resolution to conVII. fine his sentiments to his own breast. There is a spirit of proselytism which comprehends error as well as truth; and although during his lifetime his infidelity was masked to the world, it was discovered to his private friends. The chief of these friends were Pope and Swift: with the former, during his seclusion, he maintained an uninterrupted friendship; with the latter he exchanged a frequent and copious correspondence. In this correspondence the scepticism of the writer occasionally peeps out. Swift is sometimes told that mystery is his profession, and hints are often dropped that it was a mystery rather politically useful than intrinsically sacred. These profane and jesting allusions seem never to have called forth a reproof from the dignitary to whom they were addressed in his replies they are rather eluded than reproved. Swift's later biographers have represented him as a pattern of unostentatious piety; and his family prayers and his attention to his clerical duties are triumphantly brought forward to repel the accusations which have not unfrequently been brought against him, that he himself had little confidence in the doctrines he preached.* The opinions of his contemporaries cer * General Grimouard, in his "Essai sur Bolingbroke," says, that he was intimate with the widow of Mallet the poet, who, he says, was a lady of much talent and learning, and had lived upon terms of friendship with Bolingbroke, Swift, Pope, and many other distinguished characters of the day, who frequently met at her house. The general adds, that this lady has been frequently heard to declare. that these men were all equally VII. A.D. 1725 to 1735. tainly inclined to this decision. It is well known CHAP. that the queen, upon the representation of one of her prelates, absolutely refused to confer upon Swift a bishoprick which her ministers had reserved for him; a resolution which, as he was never accused of gross immorality, must have proceeded rather from his presumed opinions than his actions. The loss of his support in the house of lords was at this season no slight inconvenience to the ministry; and if their representations had no weight with Anne, she must have been thoroughly convinced of the validity of the objections which had been made to him.* An imputation was yet more publicly cast deistical in their sentiments; ("que c'était une société de purs déistes ;") that Swift from his clerical character was a little more reserved than the others, but that he was evidently of the same sentiments at bottom. There is a remarkable passage in one of Pope's in one of Pope's letters to Swift, which seems rather corroborative of this account of the general's. He is inviting Swift to come and see him. "The day is come,” he says, "which I have often wished, but never thought to see, when every mortal that I esteem is of the same sentiment in politics and religion." Dr. Warton remarks upon this paragraph, "At this time therefore, (1733,) he and Boling VOL. II. broke were of the same senti- * Dr. King says, that he was H VII. A.D. 1725 to 1735. CHAP. upon his religious character. The Earl of Nottingham, in the debate upon the Dissenters' Bill, chiefly founded his objection to the provision that the bishops should have the only power of licensing tutors, upon the likelihood, he said, there was that a man was then in a fair way of becoming a bishop who was hardly suspected of being a Christian.* This pointed allusion to Swift passed without comment or reply, in a public assembly composed in a great measure of his private friends and associates. This seems to intimate that the opinion of his contemporaries was not very strong in favour of Swift's religious principles, though it certainly does not prove that their opinion was correct. It has been attempted, with equal zeal but with even less probability, to show that Pope had no community of feeling with Bolingbroke; that he was the dupe of the latter's designing infidelity, and was even ignorant that he entertained the sentiments he found means to promulgate through him. Dr. Johnson says,† probably upon Bishop Warburton's authority, (an authority for which upon other occasions he shows little deference,) that Bolingbroke boasted, among those who were in his confidence, of the deception he had practised upon the poet. Who those persons were who were so honoured with his confidence, we are not told; but it will require very strong evidence to prove, that the man who was Bo *Parliamentary History. + Life of Pope. |