JOHN RETURNS TO LONDON, AND IS LED INTO BAD COMPANY.
While our worthy philosopher Freind was enlightening the priests of
Barcelona, and his son John delighting the ladies, Lord Peterborough
lost all favor with the queen and arch-duke for seizing Barcelona for
them. The courtiers censured him for taking the city contrary to all
rule, with an army less strong by half than the garrison. At first the
arch-duke was highly incensed; and our friend was obliged to print an
apology for the general. Yet this arch-duke, who had come to conquer
Spain, had not the worth of his chocolate. All Queen Anne had given him
was squandered.
Montecuculi, in his _Memoirs_, says three things are necessary to
maintain a war; 1st, money, 2nd, money, and 3rd, money. The arch-duke
wrote from Guadalaxara, where he was on the 11th of August, 1706, to
Lord Peterborough, a long letter signed "Yo el Rey," in which he begged
him to hasten to Genoa and raise on credit £100,000. So our Sartorius,
from general of an army, thus became a Genoese banker. He communicated
his distress to our friend Freind. They started for Genoa. I went with
them, for you know my heart leads me thither. I admired the skill and
spirit of conciliation my friend displayed in this delicate business. I
saw at once that intelligence may meet every exigency. Our great Locke
was a physician; he became the first metaphysician in Europe, and
restored the value of the British coinage. In three days Freind raised
the £100,000; but the court of Charles the VI. contrived to squander it
in three weeks. After this, the general, accompanied by his theologian,
was obliged to repair to London to justify himself before the parliament
for conquering Catalonia against all rule, and for ruining himself in
the common cause. The affair was protracted and vexatious, as are all
party disputes.
You know that Mr. Freind was a member of parliament before he became a
priest; and he is the only person who has been allowed to combine
functions so opposed. One day, when Freind was thinking over a speech he
intended to deliver in the house (of which he was a most respectable
member), a Spanish lady was announced as desirous of seeing him on
particular business. It was Donna Boca Vermeja herself, and in tears.
Our good friend ordered a luncheon. She took some refreshment, dried her
eyes, and thus began:
"You will remember, sir, when you went to Genoa, you ordered your son
John to leave Barcelona for London, and to commence his duties as a
clerk in the exchequer, a post which your influence had obtained for
him. He embarked in the Triton with a young bachelor of arts, Don Papa
Dexando, and others whom you had converted. You may well suppose that I,
with my dear friend Las Nalgas, accompanied them."
Boca Vermeja then told him, again shedding tears, how John was jealous,
or affected to be jealous, of the bachelor,--how a certain Madame
Clive-Hart, a very bold, spiteful, masculine, young married lady, had
enslaved his mind,--how he lived with libertines who had no fear of
God,--how, in a word, he neglected Boca Vermeja for the artful
Clive-Hart; and all because Clive-Hart had a little more red and white
in her complexion than poor Boca Vermeja.
"I will look into the matter at leisure," said the worthy Mr. Freind. "I
must now attend parliament, to look after Lord Peterborough's business."
Accordingly, to parliament he went; where I heard him deliver a firm and
concise discourse, free from commonplace epithets, and circumlocutions.
He never _invoked_ a law or a testimony. He quoted, enforced, and
applied them. He did not say they had taken the religion of the court by
surprise, by accusing lord Peterborough of exposing Queen Anne's troops
to risk; because it had nothing to do with religion. He did not call a
conjecture a demonstration, nor forget his respect to an august
parliament, by using common jokes. He did not call Lord Peterborough his
client, because client signifies a plebian protected by a senator.
Freind spoke with confidence and modesty; he was listened to in silence,
only disturbed by cries of "Hear him, hear him."
The House of Commons passed a vote of thanks to Earl Peterborough,
instead of condemning him. His lordship obtained the same justice from
the House of Peers, and prepared to set out with his dear Freind to
deliver the kingdom of Spain to the arch-duke. This did not take place,
solely because things do not always turn out as we wish them to.
On leaving the house, our first care was to enquire after the health of
John. We learnt that he was leading a dissipated and debauched life with
Mrs. Clive-Hart, and a party of young men,--intelligent,--but atheists,
who believed:
"That man is in no respect superior to the brutes;--that he lives and
dies as they do;--that both spring from and both return to the
earth;--that wisdom and virtue consist in enjoyment and in living with
those we love, as Solomon says at the end of the 'Coheleth,' which we
call 'Ecclesiastes.'"
These sentiments were chiefly advanced among them by one Warburton,[1] a
very forward licentious fellow. I have glanced at some of the poor
author's MSS., which heaven grant may not one day be printed. Warburton
pretends that Moses did not believe in the immortality of the soul,
because he never speaks of it, and considers that to be the only proof
of his divine mission. This absurd conclusion leads to the supposition
that the religion of the Jews is false. Infidels thence argue that ours,
being founded thereon, is false also; and _ours_, which is the best of
all, being false, all others are, if possible, still more false:
therefore there is no religion. Hence some conclude that there is no
God. Let us add to these conclusions, that this little Warburton is an
intriguing, slandering fellow. See what peril!
But worse than all, John was head over ears in debt, and had a strange
way of paying. One of his creditors came to him with a claim for a
hundred guineas, while we were in the house. John, who always appeared
polite and gentle, fought his creditor, and paid him with a sword-wound.
It was apprehended the wounded man would die; and John, notwithstanding
lord Peterborough's protection, ran the risk of imprisonment and
hanging.
[1] In 1737 Bishop Warburton published his famous work, _The Divine
Legation of Moses_, in which he asserted, "that the doctrine of a future
state of reward and punishment was omitted in the books of Moses," and
then proceeded to demonstrate "from that very omission, that a system
which could dispense with a doctrine, the very bond and cement of human
society, must have come from God, and that the people to whom it was
given must have been placed under His immediate superintendence." In
other words, the divine origin of the Mosaic "system" is demonstrated,
because Moses did not teach to the chosen people the doctrine of a
future life beyond the grave. Voltaire clearly saw the fallacy of this
fantastic argument, and has not failed to severely satirize the right
reverend author.
Robert Carruthers, Esq., in his _Life of Alexander Pope_ styles Bishop
Warburton "a learned, turbulent, ambitious adventurer"--"an
indefatigable and unscrupulous divine," and says of _The Divine Legation
of Moses_, that it was "so learned, so novel, so paradoxical, so
arrogant and absurd, that it took the world as it were by storm, and
challenged universal attention."
Dr. Johnson says that Warburton's "diction is coarse and impure, and his
sentences are unmeasured;" and a writer in the seventh volume of the
_Quarterly Review_ (as quoted by George Godfrey Cuningham, Esq., in his
_Lives of Eminent and illustrious Englishmen_) says: "the rudeness and
vulgarity of his manners as a controvertist, removed all restraints of
decency or decorum in scattering his jests about him. His taste seems to
have been neither just nor delicate." He combined "the powers of a giant
with the temper of a ruffian."
Gibbon, in his _History of Christianity_, pointedly alludes to the
author of _The Divine Legation of Moses_, and satirically styles the
omission of the doctrine of immortality from the law of Moses, as "a
mysterious dispensation of providence." "The real merit of Warburton,"
he says, "was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he
pronounced his infallible decrees."--E.