AN INTERVIEW.
I WENT a little out of my way, on departing from Paris, to visit Lord
Bolingbroke, who at that time was in the country. There are some men
whom one never really sees in capitals; one sees their masks, not
themselves: Bolingbroke was one. It was in retirement, however brief it
might be, that his true nature expanded itself; and, weary of being
admired, he allowed one to love, and, even in the wildest course of his
earlier excesses, to respect him. My visit was limited to a few hours,
but it made an indelible impression on me.
"Once more," I said, as we walked to and fro in the garden of his
temporary retreat, "once more you are in your element; minister and
statesman of a prince, and chief supporter of the great plans which are
to restore him to his throne."
A slight shade passed over Bolingbroke's fine brow. "To you, my
constant friend," said he, "to you,--who of all my friends alone
remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfortune,--to you I will
confide a secret that I would intrust to no other. I repent me already
of having espoused this cause. I did so while yet the disgrace of an
unmerited attainder tingled in my veins; while I was in the full tide of
those violent and warm passions which have so often misled me. Myself
attainted; the best beloved of my associates in danger; my party
deserted, and seemingly lost but for some bold measure such as then
offered,--these were all that I saw. I listened eagerly to
representations I now find untrue; and I accepted that rank and power
from one prince which were so rudely and gallingly torn from me by
another. I perceive that I have acted imprudently; but what is done, is
done: no private scruples, no private interest, shall make me waver in a
cause that I have once pledged myself to serve; and if I /can/ do aught
to make a weak cause powerful, and a divided party successful, I will;
but, Devereux, you are wrong,--this is /not/ my element. Ever in the
paths of strife, I have sighed for quiet; and, while most eager in
pursuit of ambition, I have languished the most fondly for content. The
littleness of intrigue disgusts me, and while /the branches/ of my power
soared the highest, and spread with the most luxuriance, it galled me to
think of the miry soil in which that power was condemned to strike /the
roots/,* upon which it stood, and by which it must be nourished."
* "Occasional Writer," No. 1. The Editor has, throughout this work,
usually, but not invariably, noted the passages in Bolingbroke's
writings, in which there occur similes, illustrations, or striking
thoughts, correspondent with those in the text.
I answered Bolingbroke as men are wont to answer statesmen who complain
of their calling,--half in compliment, half in contradiction; but he
replied with unusual seriousness,
"Do not think I affect to speak thus: you know how eagerly I snatch any
respite from state, and how unmovedly I have borne the loss of
prosperity and of power. You are now about to enter those perilous
paths which I have trod for years. Your passions, like mine, are
strong! Beware, oh, beware, how you indulge them without restraint!
They are the fires which should warm: let them not be the fires which
destroy."
Bolingbroke paused in evident and great agitation; he resumed: "I speak
strongly, for I speak in bitterness; I was thrown early into the world;
my whole education had been framed to make me ambitious; it succeeded in
its end. I was ambitious, and of all success,--success in pleasure,
success in fame. To wean me from the former, my friends persuaded me to
marry; they chose my wife for her connections and her fortune, and I
gained those advantages at the expense of what was better than
either,--happiness! You know how unfortunate has been that marriage,
and how young I was when it was contracted. Can you wonder that it
failed in the desired effect? Every one courted me; every temptation
assailed me: pleasure even became more alluring abroad, when at home I
had no longer the hope of peace; the indulgence of one passion begat the
indulgence of another; and, though my better sense /prompted/ all my
actions, it never /restrained/ them to a proper limit. Thus the
commencement of my actions has been generally prudent, and their
/continuation/ has deviated into rashness, or plunged into excess.
Devereux, I have paid the forfeit of my errors with a terrible interest:
when my motives have been pure, men have seen a fault in the conduct,
and calumniated the motives; when my conduct has been blameless, men
have remembered its former errors, and asserted that its present
goodness only arose from some sinister intention: thus I have been
termed crafty, when I was in reality rash, and that was called the
inconsistency of interest which in reality was the inconsistency of
passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn you how you suffer your
subjects to become your tyrants; and believe me no experience is so deep
as that of one who has committed faults, and who has discovered their
causes."
* This I do believe to be the real (though perhaps it is a new) light in
which Lord Bolingbroke's life and character are to be viewed. The same
writers who tell us of his ungovernable passions, always prefix to his
name the epithets "designing, cunning, crafty," etc. Now I will venture
to tell these historians that, if they had studied human nature instead
of party pamphlets, they would have discovered that there are certain
incompatible qualities which can never be united in one character,--that
no man can have violent passions /to which he is in the habit of
yielding/, and be systematically crafty and designing. No man can be
all heat, and at the same time all coolness; but opposite causes not
unoften produce like effects. Passion usually makes men changeable, so
sometimes does craft: hence the mistake of the uninquiring or the
shallow; and hence while ------ writes, and ------ compiles, will the
characters of great men be transmitted to posterity misstated and
belied.--ED.
"Apply, my dear Lord, that experience to your future career. You
remember what the most sagacious of all pedants,* even though he was an
emperor, has so happily expressed,--'Repentance is a goddess, and the
preserver of those who have erred.'"
* The Emperor Julian. The original expression is paraphrased in the
text.
"May I /find/ her so!" answered Bolingbroke; "but as Montaigne or
Charron would say,* 'Every man is at once his own sharper and his own
bubble.' We make vast promises to ourselves; and a passion, an example,
sweeps even the remembrance of those promises from our minds. One is
too apt to believe men hypocrites, if their conduct squares not with
their sentiments; but perhaps no vice is more rare, for no task is more
difficult, than systematic hypocrisy; and the same susceptibility which
exposes men to be easily impressed by the allurements of vice renders
them at heart most struck by the loveliness of virtue. Thus, their
language and their hearts worship the divinity of the latter, while
their conduct strays the most erringly towards the false shrines over
which the former presides. Yes! I have never been blind to the
surpassing excellence of GOOD. The still, sweet whispers of virtue have
been heard, even when the storm has been loudest, and the bark of Reason
been driven the most impetuously over the waves: and, at this moment, I
am impressed with a foreboding that, sooner or later, the whispers will
not only be heard, but their suggestion be obeyed; and that, far from
courts and intrigue, from dissipation and ambition, I shall learn, in
retirement, the true principles of wisdom, and the real objects of
life."
* "Spirit of Patriotism."
Thus did Bolingbroke converse, and thus did I listen, till it was time
to depart. I left him impressed with a melancholy that was rather
soothing than distasteful. Whatever were the faults of that most
extraordinary and most dazzling genius, no one was ever more candid* in
confessing his errors. A systematically bad man either ridicules what
is good or disbelieves in its existence; but no man can be hardened in
vice whose heart is still sensible of the excellence and the glory of
virtue.
* It is impossible to read the letter to Sir W. Windham without being
remarkably struck with the dignified and yet open candour which it
displays. The same candour is equally visible in whatever relates /to
himself/, in all Lord Bolingbroke's writings and correspondence; and yet
candour is the last attribute usually conceded to him. But never was
there a writer whom people have talked of more and read less; and I do
not know a greater proof of this than the ever-repeated assertion
(echoed from a most incompetent authority) of the said letter to Sir W.
Windham being the finest of all Lord Bolingbroke's writings. It is an
article of great value to the history of the times; but, as to all the
higher graces and qualities of composition, it is one of the least
striking (and on the other hand it is one of the most verbally
incorrect) which he has bequeathed to us (the posthumous works always
excepted). I am not sure whether the most brilliant passages, the most
noble illustrations, the most profound reflections, and most useful
truths, to be found in all his writings, are not to be gathered from the
least popular of them,--such as that volume entitled "Political
Tracts."--ED.