his works-the Dedication to Sir Robert Walpole' of the Dissertation on Parties : • You had a sermon to condemn and a parson to roast; (for that, I think, was the decent language of the time) and-to carry on the allegory-you roasted him at so fierce a fire that you burned your selves.' The taking one of the most remarkable passages in all the writings of the arch-Tory Bolingbroke, and after diluting its terseness and blunting its point, attributing it, as a 'quaint expression, to that arch-Whig Burnet, is assuredly such a complicated blunder, as might almost make us suspect that Mr. Cooke had been one of the historians of the Georgian Era! But how could he make such an incomprehensible blunder? if he had read the passage in Bolingbroke, how could he have mistaken the author, or misrepresented the words? and if he had not read the original passage, how came he to know anything about it? We think we can explain all that. Mr. Cooke in his preface speaks very slightingly of certain Memoirs of the Life and Public Conduct of Lord Bolingbroke,' published immediately after his death. From that despised work, however, he has borrowed, and in borrowing, blundered this story. That author (no doubt quoting from memory) gives the sentence in the very words which Mr. Cooke has copied, and Mr. Cooke never having (however incredible it may at first sight seem) read the original passage, did not suspect any variance. But how does he come to attribute it to Bishop Burnet-the very last man in the world who could have said it? Why, thus-Mr. Cooke, who seems not to have read Bolingbroke at all, read the anonymous author very hastily, and as this author did not mention Bolingbroke by name, and had in the preceding page made a long quotation from Burnet, Mr. Cooke, in his hurry, imagined that the subsequent quotation was from Burnet also. Of Mr. Cooke's pretence to minute accuracy and nice discrimination, when in truth he is absurdly incorrect and strangely negligent, we could produce many other instances. We must content ourselves with selecting one, which, on account of the eminence of the parties concerned and the notoriety of the facts, will we think be considered decisive. He that is ignorant of the history of Eneas will not be suspected of being very intimate with that of Gyas and Cloanthus. In relating the difference which arose between Warburton and Bolingbroke, on the occasion of Pope's showing to the former The Letters on the Study and Use of History' of the latter, Mr. Cooke tell us— The doctor (he was not yet a bishop) wished to be considered a second Longinus,' &c.-vol. ii. p. 172. This is an unlucky stumble at the threshold. Warburton, as Mr. Cooke so carefully observes, was, indeed, not yet a bishopbut, alas, neither was he a doctor !—nor for twelve years after the period in question!-nor till after the deaths of both Pope and Bolingbroke. Nor was this a trivial and unnoticed circumstance, for the very volumes, and the very pages of the volumes, which contain the statement of this affair, (more than once referred to by Mr. Cooke,) contain also, and under the same dates, an account of the affront which Warburton received in being refused the degree of doctor,' and the indignation of himself and his friend Pope, on that occasion.-(Pope's Letters, vol. ix. pp. 320, 329, 334-Warton's edition.) Mr. Cooke then proceeds When Pope asked the opinion of the Doctor on his friend's new work, he concealed the name of the author; and Warburton insinuates that he did not know whose production it was a circumstance which, if true, speaks little for his critical acumen, but which few will implicitly credit. The style of Bolingbroke is not easily mistaken; and the sentiments, the line of argument upon the Old Testament,the defence of the Treaty of Utrecht,-and the advocacy of Pope, must have betrayed the author to a man of less sagacity than Warburton." -vol. ii. p. 173. Now let us observe on this imputation of either falsehood or stupidity against Warburton, and the grounds on which it is made. The style of Bolingbroke is not easily mistaken,'-perhaps not, now-a-days, when we have all his works before us, (though we hold very low as evidence the mere similarity of styles,) but at that period none of what are called Bolingbroke's philosophical works had seen the light. What had been published of his were only collections of the scattered papers in the Craftsman,' and related almost exclusively to the politics of the hour, and are as unlike those 'Letters on History' as anything well can be. We confess that, even now, knowing that they are from the same pen, we are, as Pope himself professed to be, surprised at finding the factious partizan transformed into a metaphysician and a casuist, and wandering from the high 1oad of English history into the deep and tangled thickets of ecclesiastical controversies. But the sentiment, the line of argument against the Old Testament,' must have opened Warburton's eyes. As to the sentiment, if this means conversational opinion, we have to observe, that Warburton had at this period never seen Bolingbroke; and as to the line of argument on the Old Testament, where, we ask, was there any indication, in the then published works, of any sentiment or argument against the Old Testament? They are, indeed, but too abundant in Bolingbroke's later works; and Mr. Cooke, because he has the whole before him, forgets that Warburton Warburton had not seen the Essays' on which Mr. Cooke's comparison and opinion are formed. But the defence of the Treaty of Utrecht' in these letters is, it seems, conclusive. It would indeed be so-though fifty other writers might have defended the Treaty of Utrecht-because the writer avows, in terms, his share in that treaty; but Mr. Cooke has mutilated and mistaken one important point of Warburton's statement, which entirely overthrows his inference. Warburton states distinctly, that the book shown to him was only the first of the two volumes afterwards published;' and it turns out, that this defence and avowal of the Treaty of Utrecht is towards the conclusion of the last of the two volumes. A still more serious charge is made against Swift, and on still lighter authority. We consider this matter as deserving of peculiar notice, because it affects the character of one of the greatest writers of our nation, in its most delicate point; and involves also still higher interests, by registering, as we think, falsely and fraudulently, one of the most powerful intellects that ever existed, in the roll of infidels. 66 "that General Grimoard, in his "Essai sur Bolingbroke," says, he was intimate with the widow of Mallet the poet, who," he says, was a lady of much talent and learning, and had lived on terms of friendship with Bolingbroke, Swift, Pope, and many other distinguished characters of the day, who frequently met at her house." The General adds that HE has frequently heard this lady declare that these men were all equally DEISTICAL in their sentiments (que c'était une société de purs Déistes)-that Swift, from his clerical character, was a little more reserved than the others, but that he was evidently of the same sentiments at bottom,' &c.-vol. ii. p. 96. We must begin by charging Mr. Cooke with a blameable inaccuracy, in his announcement of this proposition. General Grimoard's hearsay evidence would not be worth much-even if it were exactly as is stated;-but it is not. The General says, that 'He had formerly known Mrs. Mallet, whose maiden name was Lucy Elstob, of York, who had died more than eighty years old; that this very clever woman had lived in the strictest intimacy-dans une étroite liaison-with Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, &c., who often met at her house; and she has been often heard to say-on lui a souvent entendu raconter-that it was a society of mere deists.'-p. 185. Now here is a very remarkable variance. Mr. Cooke makes the general say, that he had often heard '—the general does not he says he had known the woman; but when he comes to state what she had said, he changes the pronoun in a marked way, and does not say that she said it to him, but-on lui a souvent entendu raconter—' she has been often heard '—- but by whom heard' say so; VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII. 2 c 6 heard' is not added; and this is the more remarkable, because the General is at the moment weighing one hearsay authority against another; and if he had himself heard this story of Mrs. Mallet, his line of argument would have strongly induced him to say so. Mr. Cooke's studies as a lawyer should have taught him to have been more accurate in reporting the evidence; and his functions as an historian should have made him look a little deeper into the substance of the anecdote. Mallet's wife's maiden name was-as Grimoard truly states-Lucy Elstob, and we find that their marriage took place in 1742-(Gent. Mag. vol. xii. p. 546)-of course it was not before her marriage that this young Yorkshire lady had had a strict intimacy with Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, or that she could have received them at her house. Indeed it is clear, that it was her union with Mallet (who was Under Secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales, and by that connexion became known to Bolingbroke) which could alone have brought her into such society, and her acquaintance with these men must therefore have been subsequent to 1742. Now, unfortunately for the story, Swift's last visit to England was in 1728, -fourteen years before her marriage; so that it is almost impossible that she should have so much as seen Dean Swift-and the story of the strict intimacy,' and Swift's presence at the society of deists held at her house, must be purely fabulous. Pope she might have seen, for he lived two years after her marriage; and Bolingbroke she knew; but as to Swift, upon whom the anecdote hinges, it must be an absolute LIE. We have lately had occasion to observe that one of Swift's few published sermons is a most powerful defence of the doctrine of the Trinity. Swift, whatever else may be said of him, was no hypocrite, and any one who will read this vigorous and rational sermon will not only be convinced that Swift believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but confess that he has placed that doctrine in as intelligible and satisfactory a light as the limits of human understanding permit. It is the delight of little men to calumniate the great in station. and the great in intellect, and when a genius happens also to be a churchman, it is remarkable with what zeal every little slipslop anecdote is received and retailed which has a tendency to lower the lofty mind and the sacred character to the vulgar level. Mr. Cooke, we regret to say, is far from being exempt from this paltry system of defamation. We have just seen on what loose and, when examined, false authorities, he imputes infidelity and hypocrisy to the Dean of St. Patrick's. We must now notice one of several attempts to lower his social character: The characteristic vices of old age Bolingbroke never contracted -the -the avarice which tormented Swift never embittered his repose.'vol. ii. p. 95. - Now this imputation against Swift of an avarice so sordid as to embitter his repose is contrary to all the well-known details of his life, details more minute than ever were given of any other man's privacy, except, perhaps, Dr. Johnson's; and we even doubt whether, as to such petty and secret habits as characterise avarice, Johnson himself is so well known as Swift. His whole life was one of orderly and appropriate munificence of an expenditure fully adequate to his station,-and of no other economy than that which an honest and conscientious man-whatever be his means-must practise, if he wishes, while fulfilling his own legal obligations, to have a surplus for charity and beneficence. Always a humorist, his latter years were clouded by mental affliction, and many stories, not of avarice, but of whimsical parsimony in trifles, have been related of those sad days; but as Sir Walter Scott truly says, though his temper was economical, 'it was the reverse of avaricious,' and many of the instances which are given of his parsimony are really of the very contrary tendency, and prove rather a generosity pure and just in its principle, though eccentric and whimsical in its forms. He used to say, that he was the poorest gentleman in Ireland who was served in plate, and the richest who kept no carriage.' He left behind him only the sum of about 10,000l., the savings of thirty years during the eight or ten last of which, owing to his melancholy state, almost his whole income was saved-and after making a suitable provision for those who had claims on his bounty, he bequeathed the residue to a noble and much wanted charity. It really does not become Mr. Cooke to scatter imputations in this loose way, even with the object of eulogizing his hero: if Bolingbroke's character cannot be made respectable by his own qualities, Mr. Cooke will not do it much good by calumnies on his friends and colleagues. The Letter to Sir William Wyndham,' which we have already quoted, is perhaps the most celebrated of all Bolingbroke's political works, it is indeed his own autobiography of the most important period of his life. It is one of the first in literary merit, and certainly the most important in reference to his public character. We have just seen how Mr. Cooke has overlooked one prominent subject of that letter;-we shall now show that, in his account of it, he is guilty either of very bad faith, which we have no reason to suppose, or very blameable negligence. He introduces his mention of this work thus, In the next year, A.D. 1717, his affection for his party and a regard to his political fame, prompted him to exertion. The outcry against him still continued. The Jacobites and Tories had tacitly agreed to make him the scape-goat of the parties, and every man who had bungled 2 c2 what |