CONTENTS. A Letter to Sir William Windham: written in the year one thou- sand seven hundred and seventeen, 111 179 181 201 210 240 261 A Final Answer to the Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication; and to all the Libels which have come, or may come from the same quarter, against the Person last mentioned in the Craftsman of the 22d of May, 1731, 478 492 496 509 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 and acknowledge 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.-B 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 scepticisim 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 a private teacher to the sons of 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 Ꮴ |