he proposes to speak of me, for a reason quite opposite to that which weighed with Cicero when he wrote to his friend Lucceius. I fear praise, because I fear ridicule. I have other things to say to you on this subject, but this will do for the present. Keep my secret, and send your answer at leisure."

What steps the lady took, or what answer she sent, we are not informed: but, in about a month, the following sentences are addressed to her by Lord Bolingbroke :

"What you relate respecting Voltaire and his projects accords with his character, and is quite probable: but what he says to me is quite the reverse. Some time hence I will reply to him, and will leave him all his life the satisfaction of believing that he has made me his dupe by means of a little verbiage. I should be very sorry to have the cook, who offered himself to M. le Chevalier de Rochepierre: he is not a bad cook, but is far from being half so good as he thinks himself, and besides he is mad. I only require a servant who has taste, the first principles of his art, and docility; I will do the rest myself, and I will make his fortune, if he will trust to me," &c. Vol. iii. p. 274.

We found the temptation irresistible to extract this critique on M. de Rochepierre's cook, and the idea of a perfect cook that ensues. His Lordship appears to undertake for a series of instruction not inferior to what he afterward presented to "a patriot prince!" Let it be observed, too, that my lord is every thing on the occasion, and that my lady seems to have no share of empire in the culinary dominions. Principally, however, we quoted these passages because they give an opportunity of adverting to the suspicious and distrustful character of Lord Bolingbroke. What projects existing in the mind of Voltaire the female negotiator may have brought to light, we are at a loss to conjecture: but surely his offer of dedicating to a foreigner, in exile, the greatest of his poetical works, proves the disinterested admiration with which Voltaire regarded his character, and was in itself no despicable compliment. Why should it be doubted whether he entertained the design, when he actually made the offer; and how could he be suspected of meditating such praise as would make its object ridiculous, when the dedication was to be prefixed to a work to which he was extravagantly partial, and in which his own glory was involved?

The reader shall now be presented with a passage in which the writer paints his own situation and sentiments with some labour, and which perhaps he would have been more likely to select for publication than any other in this collection :

"I should have been extremely sorry, my dear Abbé (Alari), if my letter had made you return from Courbevoie a moment sooner than you intended. I ask for your friendship with perfect sincerity, as I give you mine: but I should expect you to refuse it, if, in your

intercourse

intercourse with me, you admitted the same forms that are introduced into the ordinary commerce of life by those who understand the world as well as you do. Politeness, and even ceremony, are benefits in civil society, and therefore ought to be maintained: but they have O little connection with friendship, that if we always remained within the bounds prescribed by them, we should never arrive at it.

"You have not discovered, you say, any parologism, (a word, which to say the truth I do not very well understand,) in the conversation held between us at the races. This may be so, and it proceeds from your not paying the same attention to a conversation so vague as ours, that I have since given to the reflections suggested by it.

Nothing is so worthy of man as a sincere search after truth, but few apply to it. You do, and I rejoice at it. At your age, and with your talents, a great progress may be made. I am but beginning; and neither the consideration of the time which I have lost, nor that of a much impaired state of health, can discourage me:

"Est quodam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra.”

"Those truths of which the knowlege is necessary to our living happily, and dying with tranquillity, are neither numerous nor difficult to discover, provided that we act with simplicity, and do not de ceive ourselves; a conduct which is much less frequent than is generally supposed. In my own way of thinking, and in that of Fortune to wards me, there is every appearance that I shall pass the rest of my days in solitude; perhaps in that very retirement in which I now am, I dare promise you, beforehand, that I shall never regret the loss of that opulence to which I was born, and still less the loss of that to which I once aspired: I shall live there perfectly happy, if I can escape the greater sorrows of the world, and if the silence of my retreat may be sometimes interrupted by conversation so agreeable as yours. Occupied with these ideas, I am labouring to make this place the pleasantest and the most commodious that can be formed, without departing from philosophical moderation. I should be charmed if you could see it in its unimproved state, and I hope that you will often enjoy it when made beautiful. With designs of study, we will unite those of building and gardening; we will read, write, confer, make levels, raise hills, and plant.

"As you have had the goodness to give me the explanations which I desired, I must tell you my reasons for making the request. The little of antient history which I read in my youth left in my mind the idea that it is impossible to have the least probable knowlege of the events of those times: that the historical and chronological systems, which the learned announce with so much parade and confidence, are founded only on perpetually begging the question; that, if we had the books of which the Greeks have preserved the titles and some fragments, we should only have contradictory and uncertain collections, the vague traditions of two or three nations, each of which wished to assume to itself the honour of antiquity, the birth of gods, the in vention of arts, &c.; that it is consequently ridiculous to study

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much

much the morceaux that we have, or greatly to regret the loss of what we have not. In meditating on these subjects, many ideas have occurred to me which struck me as new, and pleased me. I amuse myself in examining them with the assistance of three or four books that I have here; and perhaps, when the wreck of my library arrives, and the reparations of Marcilli shall be made, I may reduce into some form all these ideas, and the proofs that support them," &c.

In these latter sentences, we find the germ of the once formidable Letters on History. Precisely the same set of ideas also recurs in the long and eloquent address to Lord Bathurst.

The opinion entertained by Lord Bolingbroke, respecting the learned coadjutor in his arduous inquiries, appears in one of his letters to Madame de Ferriol: "His illness alarmed me extremely. Great probity of heart, great sweetness of temper, and great politeness of manner, with a vast store of learning, form the character of a man whom it would be melancholy to lose at five-and-twenty," &c. To transcribe even half the passages in which similar sentiments of friendship, esteem, and admiration are expressed, would be a formidable task: but it is lamentable to find that the intercourse between these two persons was entirely broken off, in consequence of a remonstrance made by the Abbé, from a feeling of anxiety for the safety of his friend, against mixing in politics after a return to England, to which his unwearied endeavours had powerfully contributed. The blame of this estrangement we lay entirely to the proud and irritable disposition of Bolingbroke; whose more advanced age, whose superior rank, and in whom the obligations which he had incurred to the Abbé, ought to have prevented any temporary vehemence of manner from interrupting their good understanding. That haughty temper appears, indeed, to have affected all who ever came within the sphere of his intimacy. With his father and brothers he lived in a state of continual discord: he was separated from his first wife: he hated and suspected the man with whom his ministerial power was shared, and his interests were identified: we have seen him jealous of sincere and well-intended civility; and we know that his dearest friend Pope was scarcely cold in his grave, before his memory was assailed with the bitterest libels from the pen of Bolingbroke. Surely all these persons could not be uniformly bent on injuring and degrading him; and perhaps it will not be deemed uncharitable to ascribe his long and apparently cordial union with a man of the character of Dean Swift, to the sea that rolled between them. In the following passage, it will be seen that the harmony of his domestic life was not undisturbed by dreadful gusts of jealousy and passion

• He became acquainted, about the beginning of 1717, with the Marquise de Villette; whose family name was Deschamps de Marcilly; and who was the daughter or niece of the governor of La Meute. She was educated at St. Cyr, and married the Marquis de VilletteMursay, a relation of Madame de Maintenon, a widower with children. He died in 1707, without issue of his second marriage. In 1717 his widow was fifty-two years of age, had a very considerable fortune, and many law suits. Without being handsome, she understood the art of pleasing; she had wit, and would even have spoken with elegance, if she had spoken rather less. Bolingbroke was enchanted by her, and she fell in love with him: but the jealousy of the former more than once disturbed their union. Persuaded that an Englishman (Scotchman) cailed Macdonald, then first groom to the Pretender, and a very handsome man, was agreeable to Madame de Villette, Bolingbroke was so offended that, when dining one day at her house in company with the supposed rival, he overturned the glasses and the table. The Marquis de Matignon, one of the guests and their common friend, reconciled them this time, and many others. The young Abbé Alari, who witnessed the scene, related it afterward to the Marquis de Sancé; adding that, in 1715, Madame de Villette had charged him to confide to the Comte de Boulainvilliers, who piqued himself on drawing horoscopes, the date of her birth, and some other signs of the same sort; and that, after having declined the commission, he took the paper to the pretended astrologer, who replied: This person has a great many passions; but she will encounter one greater than all the rest at fifty-two, and will die in a foreign land."

It can scarcely be necessary to state that the letters to Madame de Ferriol and the Abbé Alari are written in French, of which Lord Bolingbroke is said to have been a complete master; though we have often discovered slight corrections made by the editor, in several idioms of the French portion of the political correspondence here printed from the publication of Mr. Park. That correspondence is also given with many omissions and some mutilations. Such of the letters of Pope and Swift as have been adopted are translated into French. The notes are very copious, and are principally devoted to characters mentioned in the text; not only including various highly entertaining anecdotes of distinguished families, which we are sorry to be debarred by our limits from detailing, but adding biographical notices of the worthies of antient times, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato, &c.-with translations of every Latin quotation. For this addition an apology is made, stating that the knowlege of Latin has become so rare, as to make such translation necessary in France!

Some account is given of the life of Abbé Alari, and of a political society called the Entresol, from assembling in the Abbé's apartments of that denomination, but which was suppressed by the jealousy of the French government. These details are foreign

to

to our present purpose, but we shall be excused for reporting one of the anecdotes of this gentleman:

During the two months which were passed by the Abbé Alari in London, he visited the University of Cambridge, and the great Newton, who then enjoyed in the capital of England the general esteem of Europe, and 50,000 livres (2000) a year, as Master of the Mint. The Abbé waited on him at nine in the morning; and the Englishman opened the conversation by telling him that he was eighty-three years old. In his room was the portrait of Lord Halifax his protector, and that of Abbé Varignon; whose geometrical works he valued. 66 Varignon, and Father Sabastian the Carmelite,” said he," are those who have best understood my system of colours." The conversation then turned on antient history, on which Newton was at that period employed. The Abbé, full of Greek and Latin reading, pleased him, and was invited to dinner: but the repast was detestable; for Newton was avaricious, and gave his guest only Palm wine and Madeira, which he had received as presents. After dinner, he took the Abbé to the Royal Society of London, of which he was president, and placed him at his right hand. The sitting began, and Newton fell asleep. At the end of the sitting, every one signed the register, and the Abbé among the rest. Newton took him back to his house, and kept him there till nine at night.'

It is time for us to direct our attention to M. GRIMOARD'S historical essay, which might be more justly termed an elaborate panegyric, on the life of Bolingbroke. If that nobleman's disapprobation of Dean Swift's history of the last four years of Queen Anne, on account of its barefaced partiality, was not altogether assumed, he would still more earnestly have deprecated the publication of the present piece of biography: but if Warburton was right, in attributing that disapprobation to the superiority assigned by Swift to Lord Treasurer Oxford, Bolingbroke certainly would find in this memoir no reason for such a complaint. Achilles is not more absolutely the hero of Homer, nor Æneas of Virgil, than the English statesman has obtained that rank in the narration of the French General. As much as possible he has made Bolingbroke a witness in his own cause, by copying largely from all the political statements drawn up by him at various times: in other points he has closely followed the authority of Swift; who, besides the motives of private friendship which could not fail to bias his judgment in weighing characters, deserves to be ranked with the most violent party-writers that ever united the strongest prejudices with the most extraordinary talents. The Dean is said by M. GRIMOARD to be too little known to the French public; and his friend Mr. Quintin Craufurd, whom we have before mentioned, has it in contemplation to introduce him to their better acquaintance by a work expressly composed on the

subject