ho seemed to him worth pursuing. Like Faust,
he loved to reel from desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment back
again into desire. Bolingbroke was the first of a great line of
parliamentary debaters who have made for themselves a distinct place in
English history, and whose rivals are not to be found in the history of
any other parliament. It is difficult at this time to form any
adequate idea of Bolingbroke's style as a speaker or his capacity for
debate when compared with other great English parliamentary orators.
But so far as one may judge, we should be inclined to think that he
must have had Fox's readiness without Fox's redundancy and repetition;
and that he must have had the stately diction and the commanding style
of the younger Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which {28} the
younger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's English prose style
is hardly surpassed by that of any other author, either before his time
or since. It is supple, strong, and luminous; not redundant, but not
bare; ornamented where ornament is suitable and even useful, but
nowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary and artificial
brilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in any case have held a high
place among his contemporaries, and probably if Bolingbroke had
possessed the political and personal virtues of men like Burke and
Pitt, or even the political virtues of a man like Charles Fox, he would
have been remembered as the greatest of all English parliamentary
statesmen. But, as we have already said, the one defect filled him
with faults. The lack of principle gave him a lack of purpose, and
wanting purpose he persevered in no consistent political path. Swift
has observed that Bolingbroke "had a great respect for the characters
of Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he would
gladly be thought to resemble." He came nearer at his worst to
Petronius than at his best to Alcibiades. Alcibiades, to do him
justice, admired and understood virtue in others, however small the
share of it he contrived to keep for himself. It is impossible to read
that wonderful compound of dramatic humor and philosophic thought,
Plato's "Banquet," without being moved by the generous and impassioned
eulogy which Alcibiades, in the fulness of his heart and of his wine,
pours out upon the austere virtue of Socrates. Such as Alcibiades is
there described we may suppose Alcibiades to have been, and no one who
has followe