THE LIFE

OF

HENRY ST. JOHN,

LORD VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.

THERE are some characters that seem formed by nature to take delight in struggling with opposition, and whose most agreeable hours are passed in storms of their own creating. The subject of the present memoir was perhaps of all others the most indefatigable in raising himself enemies, to show his power in subduing them; and was not less employed in improving his superior talents, than in finding objects on which to exercise their activity. His life was spent in a continued conflict of politics, and as if that was too short for the combat, he has left his memory as a subject of lasting contention.

It is indeed no easy matter to preserve an acknowledged impartiality, in talking of a man so differently regarded on account of his political, as well as his religious principles. Those whom his politics may please, will be sure to condemn him for his religion; and on the contrary, those most strongly attached to his theological opinions, are the most likely to decry his politics. On whatever side he is regarded, he is sure to have opposers, and this was perhaps what he most desired, having from nature a mind better pleased with the struggle than the victory.

HENRY ST. JOHN, Lord Viscount BOLINGBROKE, was born in the year 1678, at Battersea in Surrey, at a seat that had been in the possession of his ancestors for ages before. His family was of the first rank, equally conspicuous for its antiquity, dignity, and large possessions. Mabel, a female descendant of William de St. John, who held a post in the army of the Conqueror, at the time of the Norman invasion, married Adam de Post, who was descended from the barons of Basing, in Hampshire; a title VOL. I.-2

which had been enjoyed by the latter anterior to the Conquest. The heir of Adam de Post took the maternal name of St. John, which was retained by his issue. But the importance of this family did not depend on antiquity alone, even with the added lustre of wealth. It is found, in a succession of ages, to have produced warriors, patriots, and statesmen, some of whom were conspicuous for their loyalty, and others for their defending the rights of the people. Henry's grandfather, Sir Walter St. John, of Battersea, marrying one of the daughters of lord chief justice St. John, who, as all know, was strongly attached to the republican party, the subject of the present memoir was brought up in his family, and consequently imbibed the first principles of his education amongst the dissenters. Stress has been laid by more than one biographer on the probably injurious effects produced on the boy St. John, by his being subjected to the rigid discipline and mistaken zeal of his first teacher, Daniel Burgess. There are not wanting some who are disposed even to attribute his subsequent debaucheries and religious infidelity to the violence of reaction from these early injudicious restraints. But, in the case of St. John, as in the reputed analogous one of Voltaire, who was said, but erroneously, to have acquired a contempt for religion from the rigid observances imposed on him by his first teachers, the Jesuits, much greater importance must be attributed to the manner in which the period of adolescence was spent, and to the temptations then offered in the way of worldly pleasure, without the correctives of parental example and virtuous associates. That both Bolingbroke and Voltaire would be averse from engaging in polemics, and manifest a decided distaste for controversial and dogmatical theology, may be readily understood; but their scepticism in religious matters must be sought for in other sources than in such a one as that commonly assigned. Nor is justice done to Burgess in describing him, as Goldsmith has done, to have been a fanatic of a very peculiar kind; he was at once possessed of zeal and humor, and was as well known for the archness of his conceits as for the furious obstinacy of his principles. His quaint style of exhorting from the pulpit is illustrated, indeed, by a passage of a sermon, in which the preacher after having inveighed against pernicious doctrines, and enumerated many kinds, thus continued: " But above all other pernicious doctrines, beware, my beloved, of the thorough-paced doctrine; that doctrine, I mean, which, coming in at one ear, paces straight through the head and out at the other ear." It is well known that Burgess had been employed many years as private teacher to the sons of the nobility and gentry, first in England and then in Ireland, whither he went in 1667, at the particular solicitation of the Earl of Orrery, lord president of Munster. In private society, it

appears that, to all the strictness of the puritan he joined a cheerful and even facetious style of discourse-a quality which certainly could not be said to unfit him for procuring the good will and respect of his pupils. St. John himself, when speaking afterwards of the annoying tasks imposed on him at this time, says: "I was obliged, while yet a boy, to read over the commentaries of Dr. Manton, whose pride it was to have made a hundred and nineteen sermons on the hundred and nineteenth psalm." It must be admitted that Dr. Manton and his sermons were not likely to prevail much on one, who was, perhaps, the most sharpsighted in the world at discovering the absurdities of others, however he might have been guilty of exhibiting many of his own: but, as to the disgust he felt at this kind of study, we cannot be insensible to the truth of the remark, that, it is just as probable a boy would not have entertained much less dislike to a voluminous history, if he were obliged to read it when he wished to be idle.

Although the prejudices or the wishes of his grandmother were consulted in the selection of a teacher, it does not follow, indeed there is no proof, that great, if any, pains were taken to inculcate him with the doctrines of the dissenters. Sir Walter St. John, the grandfather, was a thorough, though a moderate churchman, a term used by English writers to designate a member of, or an adherent to, the Protestant Episcopal church. He repaired the church at Battersea more than once, erected an entire new gallery, and endowed a charity-school, all at his own expense. Hence it is probable, that young St. John, when he left home for the public school at Eton, belonged nominally to the church of England. From his father's example, he could not be supposed to derive either zeal or knowledge on this important matter. The elder St. John is represented by Swift to be "a man of pleasure, that walks the mall, and frequents St. James's coffee-house and the chocolate houses."

At Eton, St. John became the school associate of Robert Walpole, who was his senior by two years, and between whom and himself was early displayed a mutual dislike, in which we may trace the origin of the bitter and personal hostility that was afterwards manifested in their strife for political ascendency and distinction. "The parts of Mr. St. John," says Mr. Coxe, "were more lively and brilliant; those of Walpole more steady and solid. Walpole was industrious and diligent, because his talents required application; St. John was negligent, because his quickness of apprehension rendered less labor necessary." These characteristics prevailed in both throughout life.

It is not known how long he remained at Eton, from which he was removed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where wider

scope was furnished for the development of his intellect and the attainment of learning. His genius and understanding were seen and admired in both these seminaries, but his love of pleasure had so much the ascendency, that he seemed contented rather with the consciousness of his own great powers, than their exertion. However, his friends, and those who knew him most intimately, were thoroughly sensible of the extent of his mind; and when he left the university, he was considered as one who had the fairest opportunity of making a shining figure in active life.

If inquiry were instituted as to the precise extent of his classical education at Eton and Oxford, it would be discovered that he there laid the foundation of one, which, as in the case of all others who have shone as scholars, he afterwards completed. But, as remarked by one of our contemporary authorities, 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 Greek literature he seems not to have been familiar; nor can the reader of his works fail to perceive, that his style is not redolent of the flowers which grow in the more vigorous climate of the Attic school. (Edinburgh Review, No. CXLIII.)

Nature seemed not less kind to him in her external embellishments, than in adorning his mind. With the graces of a handsome person, and a face in which dignity was happily blended with sweetness, he had a manner of address that was very engaging. His vivacity was always awake, his apprehension quick, his wit refined, and his memory amazing: his subtlety in thinking and reasoning was profound, and all these talents were adorned with an elocution that was irresistible.

To the assemblage of so many gifts from nature, it was expected that art would soon give her finishing hand; and that a youth begun in excellence would soon arrive at perfection: but such is the perverseness of human nature, that an age which should have been employed in the acquisition of knowledge, was dissipated in pleasure; and instead of aiming to excel in praise-worthy pursuits, St. John seemed more ambitious of being thought the greatest rake about town. In this state of disorder he was not without his lucid intervals; and even while he was noted for keeping Miss Gumley, the most expensive prostitute in the kingdom, and bearing the greatest quantity of wine without intoxication, he still despised his paltry ambition. "The love of study, says he, and desire of knowledge, were what I felt all my life; and though my genius, unlike the demon of Socrates, whispered so softly, that very often I heard him not in the hurry of these passions with which I was transported,

yet some calmer hours there were, and in them I hearkened to him." These secret admonitions were indeed very few, since his excesses were well remembered in after days. I have spoken to an old man, says Dr. Goldsmith, who assured me that he saw St. John and another of his companions run naked through the Park, in a fit of intoxication; but then it was a time when public decency might be transgressed with less danger than at present.

During this period, as all his attachments were to pleasure, so his studies only seemed to lean that way. His first attempts were in poetry, in which he discovers more wit than taste, more labor than harmony in his versification. We have a copy of his verses prefixed to Dryden's Virgil, complimenting the poet, and praising his translation. There is another not so well known, prefixed to a French work, published in Holland, by the Chevalier de St. Hyacinth, entitled, le Chef d'Euvre d'un Inconnu. This performance is a humorous piece of criticism upon a miserable old ballad, and Bolingbroke's compliment, though written in English, is printed in Greek characters, so that at the first glance it may deceive the eye, and be mistaken for real Greek. There are two or three things more of his composition in poetry, which have appeared since his death, but which neither do honor to his parts nor his memory.

St. John travelled on the continent about this period, but whether this was enjoined on him with a view of enlarging his observation of men and things, and of thus completing a liberal education; or of detaching him from dissolute associates and expensive pleasures, which drew too heavily on his father's purse, we are not well informed. It is conjectured, for want of positive data, that he passed two years abroad; but it is certain, that during the period of his travels he acquired such a knowledge of the French language, as to enable him to write and speak it with perfect ease; an accomplishment which was found to be of signal service to him in his subsequent public career, and is said to have been the cause of his not losing office in one of the intrigues of Harley for that purpose. He was the only one of the ministry who understood and wrote French, and who was able to keep up the necessary correspondence in the negotiations then pending with France. Though still young, and a devotee of pleasure in all its aspects, he seems, on his return to England, to have sought more intently than before for an increase of those "calmer hours" in which he might gratify the love of study, and the desire of knowledge, that he professed, and no doubt truly, to have felt all his life. With such aspirations, St. John would the more incline to the wish of his friends that he should form a matrimonial connection: and, accordingly, a selec