tanhope
well says of him "His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted to
crawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked mazes and
dirty by-paths of intrigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, its
smallness and meanness were exposed to all the world." Even his
private life had not the virtues which one who reads some of the
exalted panegyrics paid to him by contemporary poets and others would
be apt to imagine. He was fond of drink and fond of pleasure in a
small and secret way; his vices were as unlike the daring and brilliant
profligacy of his colleague and rival Bolingbroke as his intellect was
inferior to Bolingbroke's surpassing genius. For all Pope's poetic
eulogy, the poet could say in prose of Lord Oxford that he was not a
very capable minister, and had a good deal of negligence into the
bargain. "He used to send trifling verses from court to the Scriblerus
Club every day, and would come and talk idly with them almost every
night, even when his all was at stake." Pope adds that Oxford "talked
of business in so confused a manner that you did not know what he was
about, and everything he went to tell you was in the epic way, for he
always began in the middle." Swift calls him "the greatest
procrastinator in the world." It is of Lord Oxford that the story is
originally told which has been told of so many statesmen here and in
America since his time. Lord Oxford, according to Pope, invited Rowe,
the dramatic poet, to learn Spanish. Rowe went to work, and studied
Spanish under the impression that some appointment at the Spanish court
would follow. When he returned to Harley and told him he had
accomplished the task, Harley said, "Then, Mr. Rowe, I envy you the
pleasure of reading 'Don Quixote' in the original." Pope asks, "Is not
that cruel?" But {32} others have held that it was unintentional on
Lord Oxford's part, and merely one of his unthinking oddities.

[Sidenote: 1714--Walpole]

Another man, fifteen years younger than Harley, a school-fellow at Eton
of Bolingbroke, was rising slowly, surely, into prominence and power.
All the great part of his career is yet to come; but even already,
while men were talking of Marlborough and Bolingbroke, they found
themselves compelled to give a place in their thoughts to Robert
Walpole. If Bolingbroke was the first, and perhaps the most brilliant,
of the great line of parliamentary debaters who have made debate a
moving power in English histo