seraph. His intellect was brilliant, though disordered; splendid, though erring; bright, but blasted. The gorgeous structure of his philosophy is riven to the foundation; but genius always commands our sympathy, for, 'like the temples of the gods, she is venerable even in ruins.' I have never read Bolingbroke without a feeling of deep melancholy; so sincere and elevated are his aspirations, so vain and errabund his theories. He often seems to feel the hollowness of the portion which he had chosen, but there abides within him a native nobility of soul, an inherent dignity of character, which forbids the vanity of regret or the weakness of a groan. We find in him none of those fretful and deep repinings, whereby Byron hourly showed that the load which he had assumed was too heavy for him, and daily crushed him to the earth; nor, on the other hand, do we see that either the wild revelry of the feebler children of perdition, or that rigid calmness beneath which the archapostate veiled from his peers the burning anguish of his soul; but rather the sad cheerfulness and vain hopefulness of one that did not feel that all the fault was his. Towards the regions of moral truth he often turns a sightless eye; but the placid countenance tells that the blindness was not wilful. He reminds me of a benighted fisherman, who, to join his family on shore, makes his way cheerily over the ice with pole and push, and dexterous leap; not seeing that the field which he is crossing is detached from the land, and is drifting away to the solitudes of the midnight sea. Though he shivers by the flickering bonfire of deism, he utters no complaint; though he wanders through the sands of barren and irremediable error, he never quits the philosophic dignity of the flowing robe and burnished ring. His step along the paths of infidelity is like the tread of Vathek down the stairs of the hall of Eblis; for though the road is to utter and eternal perdition, the feet of a born king of men are upon it. We might liken him to a banished noble among the frosts of Siberia; noble, though banished,-though destitute, still dignified; con scious that there still remained to him an order,' from which none could degrade him, and that a star still shone upon his breast, which no monarch could strike off." "In pronouncing sentence upon the moral course of a man like St. John, we must take into account those splendid infirmities of nature which ensure for genius the fame of a conqueror, and the fate of a victim; that irrepressible ardour of spirit, which, while it kindles the intellect into a flashing fire, clouds the judgment with the fumes of excitement, and disturbs the reason with its wild impatience. His is a breast which passion has vexed with all its storms. The chords of sensibility have been swept from the highest to the lowest note by the tempest blasts of suffering. Yet is his mind redolent of much of that fresh purity which grand and generous thoughts bring with them. Throughout all his nature there are traits of high nobility; there is visible in him none of the languor of a mind washed with debauchery, or drenched in the sickly dews' of selfishness; le vice l'entrainait sans l'asservir.' Much still 6 sounds man' about him. For the waywardness of his temper and the madness of his conduct, some excuse may be found in the tormenting persecutions and mortifying irritations which harassed his life. Soon after his entrance into public life, he found a youthful rival, whose character he detested, and whose talents he despised, safely fixed in circumstances to laugh at his impotent ragings, and by force of dull and regular exertion pinning him to the stake of exile and contempt. He found factions using him when they needed his assistance, and turning from him in the day of his calamity. He had early thrown a fatal die, and must through life abide the cast. With energies that demanded action, and a heart which domestic interests could not satisfy, he was doomed to feel in the flush of early manhood, that his day had gone by for ever. Idolising reputation, he lived long years with the sting of a moral attainder tingling in every vein.' When I look upon him strug gling under the deadly-precious load of genius, and taking his steps, perforce unsteady, over the burning marle' of statesmanship, at a time when politics swayed the hearts of men with the firmness of a principle, and the fervour of a passion, I confess that I cannot discover his failings; and before I have finished his majestic apologies for his errors, I have already forgotten what they were. It has been his misfortune that there are few persons who have been capable of representing him justly; for those who admired his politics were sure to abhor his philosophy. The eunuch-mind of the younger Walpole could as little taste the strong and rasping sense of the moralist, as his filial tenderness could tolerate the contemptuous energy of the politician. This variety of quality which made his character inconsistent, entered likewise into his genius, and made it copious. He partook of the best essence, and was tinged with the distinct peculiarities of many of those distinguished persons by whom he was companioned and courted. He had much of the steel-toothed sagacity of Swift, all of the moral purpose, mild fancy, and untrembling judgment of Pope, the severe taste of Atterbury, and the rich scholarship of Arbuthnot. I think that his power of sarcasm was by nature both stronger and more delicate than that of his poetical friend; but the latter had so educated his mind in bitterness, that he had become, like Lot's wife, a pillar of salt. His sneer is often savage, but it is never the sneer of jealousy or hate; it seems to proceed from conscientious contempt. More usually he flashes the stings of satire under the cover of a graceful irony, and like the panegyrist of Harmodius, linking an energetic purpose with a classic elegance, he wreathes his dagger in myrtle. He unites the full compass of English sense with the pointed vigour of the wits of France. His style has a corresponding breadth and liberality, and lies between the high cathedral style of Milton and the sauntering grace of Addison. He exhibits a fresh and ever-springing life of mind. Every sentence rays distinct and vivid thought. He is not a formal reasoner; he does not deal in technical argumentation; he plays no tunes with his ponderous. hammer. He tears down systems with the naked hand of masculine sense; and like a moral Milo, he rends the aged trunks of philosophic theories with the bare arm of unschooled force. He confronts the gowned professors of philosophy, in the natural majesty of unrobed reason. His manner most felicitously seconds his purpose. His sentences are not rich nor highly wrought it is their tone, rather than their structure which gives them their weight. Burke builds up his style with a laborious carpentry beneath your eye, and it is clear that the author is below his character; he has put on his stage robes, and is mounted on a platform. Bolingbroke's manner, though lofty, is not stilted. His sentences have all the natural joints of lively thought. He wears no pasteboard limbs. In his paragraphs every member tells; in every sentence, and the tiniest part of it, you see the force and shaping of a serious mind. He never writes for display, but, in an earnest way, to communicate his thoughts. His stately tread is the accustomed princely step of one who has ever moved on marble, reposed on velvet, and breathed the air of palaces. The grave procession which rests in the spectator's mind as a passing dream of splendour, is the daily condition of his life. There is nothing dreamy or scholastic about Bolingbroke: he is always fresh with the hourly interests of life. He examines theories of metaphysics with the closeness and seriousness of one discussing measures in council. He states his system with the air of a man ready to furnish an estimate, or to embody his sentiments in resolutions. Without dreaming of comparing the magnificent moral force of the patriot with the merely intellectual vigour of the partisan, I must say, that as a stylist, as a communicator of thoughts, I prefer the well-laced sobriety of Bolingbroke to the Persian prodigality of Burke. Bolingbroke shapes his thoughts into ornament; Burke weaves decorations around his. Beauty, with one, is 1 |