open negotiations for peace: "Prior has been absent out of town these three months, nobody knows where, and is lately returned. People confidently affirm that he has been in France, and I half believe it. The Secretary pretends he knows nothing about it."1 At a later date: They say it is certain Prior has been in France. Nobody doubts it. I had not time to ask the Secretary, he was in such haste." "Here is the Duke of Marlborough 66 going out of England. Lord knows why! which causes many speculations.' "Lord Bolingbroke told me I must walk away when dinner was done, because Lord Treasurer and he and another were to enter upon business. I said it was fit that I should know their business as anybody, for I was to justify." He stayed, indeed, but we have his own words that "it was so important that he was like to sleep on it." Once more. The proofs of the whole Tory Ministry, and the Queen at the head of them, being engaged in intrigues with St. Germains are so strong that no one now doubts them for an instant; yet so completely was Swift in the dark, that he asserts," The Queen, to my knowledge, hated and despised the Pretender." And in another place," "Ministers would never have held the mask on before me, and if such affairs were in agitation, I must have had very bad luck not to have discovered some grounds for suspicion." That he was imposed on, or, what is the more rational view of the matter, that he imposed on himself and his friends, there cannot, after such testimony, be a shadow of doubt. In addition to this, there is the evidence suggested by the characters of the individual Ministers with whom Swift had to deal. Men with such little natural affinity for 1 Diary. 3 Ibid. 2 Ibid. Enquiry into the behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry." "Note to Burnet," vi. 68. each other would hardly have combined to trust Swift; for it must be remembered, so far from there being any cordiality, the quarrels of the Cabinet had become the talk of every coffee-house. Common friends saw the issue, shrugged their shoulders, but refused to intermeddle. Swift, indeed, was an exception. His interest depended on their reconciliation, and he was indefatigable in his efforts to reconcile. He was continually manoeuvring to bring the Secretary and Treasurer together in Mrs. Masham's drawing-room, but of no avail. Once he contrived for them to travel five hours in the same coach to Windsor; but Harley only remained reserved, Bolingbroke suspicious. Several times he harangued them seriously, told them their mischiefs might be ended in two minutes, or would end the Ministry in two months, and that he would retire. His success was never varied; the Secretary generally nodded, the Treasurer asked him to dinner next day. There never were colleagues less morally and intellectually adapted to command the confidence of each other, or to suggest a mutual deposit of confidence in their friends. To the title of statesman, Harley had very little claims, in the scientific sense of the word. His ideas of statesmanship may be gathered from what he used to tell Swift, that "wisdom in public affairs is not what is commonly believed, the forming of schemes with remote views, but the making use of such incidents as happen." This is diplomacy; but it is not statesmanship. But he did not even fulfil the ordinary duties of the head of a Cabinet. The complaints against him on this score were numerous on all sides. He was tainted with that "evil affection inherent in power," stigmatized so long ago by Æschylus, the τοις φιλοῦσι μή πεποίθεναι, He 1 Swift, "Letter to Arch. King," July 12, 1711. affected to this end the most mysterious air of secrecy. It pervaded all he did or said, every feature in his countenance, every muscle in his body. I have always thought that the character of Dubius in Cowper's "Conversation" is an admirable portrait of Harley: 3 "He would not with a peremptory tone He humbly hopes, presumes it may be so. Knows what he knows as if he knew it not, His ambiguities his total sum. He might as well be blind, and deaf and dumb." 2 It was rarely an ambassador at a levee could get more than a monosyllable from him, and that monosyllable uttered above a whisper.' Harcourt declared that he never knew any more of the measures of the Court than his footman, and that Lord Oxford scarcely knew him. He screens so, writes another correspondent, that not even any of the first nobility can get an audience without difficulty. He seldom gave a direct answer; and it was the current report that he only gave a direct answer when he did not mean to adhere to it. He rarely could be induced to appoint the hour for an interview; and if he appointed an hour, he rarely kept it. Such talents, it is plain, might have regulated an attorney's office, but were ill adapted to carry on a government. Harley refused to see that a Prime Minister must not always wear the cloak of the conspirator, that it is sometimes even his interest to be a little more candid and a little less circumlocutive than a pettifogger. He forgot that punctuality and decision are as much the duty of a 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 532. 1 Macph. "Papers," vol. ii. p. 518. 3 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 296. statesman as of a tradesman; that the science of government is a science requiring as strict an observance of time, place, and method, as the science of barter; that it is sometimes a dangerous over-refinement to act in common business out of the common road; that a contempt for forms and ceremonies, for little helps and little hindrances, may do very well for a philosopher like Hobbes to write about as the essence of magnanimity, but that in the case of so complicated a piece of machinery as a Cabinet it is apt to lead to chaos; that, to use Swift's expression, a small infusion of the alderman is absolutely necessary to those engaged in the administration of public affairs. A great deal of this awkward reserve in the distribution of power, this tricksy polypragmacy, as the lampoons of the day called it, was doubtless assumed, and assumed probably to hide a want of power. It was one of his maxims that, for a minister to preserve the reputation of power, he must preserve the appearance of it. And this motive explains at once that affected indifference to censure, and that tardiness of selfvindication, which Swift put down to good-nature and benevolence. His moderation was in fact cowardice; his philosophy covetousness. The Queen was a most difficult person to move. Harley could not endure the suspicion that he was not able to move her. He could endure any amount of abuse from his colleagues for not doing what they wished, rather than own that he had too little influence with his mistress and theirs to do it. "It was whipping day," he used to say, and they might rail as they please. He always took the blame on himself, in order to assume the power to himself. He rather affected his fault to be real, than allow his power to be fictitious. On Bolingbroke's individual character, I shall dwell at some length. It is, indeed, one of those brilliant, attractive characters that sometimes flash across the student's path, and invite an almost rapt contemplation. Irrespectively of his connection with Swift, I shall therefore make no apology for bringing to bear upon it labours consummated elsewhere. History, especially the history of our own country, abounds in a certain class of characters whose names, though still inserted in capitals on its pages, are scarcely ever mentioned above a whisper; whose titles to immortality are rather assumed than allowed; and the state of whose reputation, so far from enjoying a flourishing vitality, resembles more the condition of Dante as he describes himself in a single line of the "Inferno before the awful presence of Dis :— "I died not, yet no life was in me left." Foremost among this class I would assign Bolingbroke a place. Even while living he enjoyed, I believe, but a very equivocal repute. To those who were capable of judging he seems to have appeared to borrow a very significant expression from the "Merchant of Venice --every man in no man, a statesman without statesmanship, a philosopher without philosophy, an enthusiast without enthusiasm. Now that he is dead, and his speculations are buried with him, there is little really worth the tribute of a monument from posterity. It is only on those enlarged principles of public justice that led the ancients to pay funeral honours alike to those who failed and those who won in their battles, that posterity can condescend to notice him. The preservation of his memory, in fact, like the preservation of those bodies which the skill of the embalmer and mason has bequeathed to the latest ages, is due to the share of neglect he has met with. Such neglect becomes an absolute kindness, and "Rudeness to him were fairest courtesy." But, though looked upon with suspicion as something of |