s his eloquence,
which according to Swift was acknowledged by men of all factions to be
unrivalled. None of his great orations has survived, a loss regretted by
Pitt more than that of the missing books of Livy and Tacitus, and no art
perishes more completely with its possessor than that of oratory. His
political works, in which the expression is often splendidly eloquent,
spirited and dignified, are for the most part exceedingly rhetorical in
style, while his philosophical essays were undertaken with the chief
object of displaying his eloquence, and no characteristic renders
writings less readable for posterity. They are both deficient in
solidity and in permanent interest. The first deals with mere party
questions without sincerity and without depth; and the second, composed
as an amusement in retirement without any serious preparation, in their
attacks on metaphysics and theology and in their feeble deism present no
originality and carry no conviction. Both kinds reflect in their
Voltairian superficiality Bolingbroke's manner of life, which was
throughout uninspired by any great ideas or principles and thoroughly
false and superficial. Though a libertine and a free-thinker, he had
championed the most bigoted and tyrannical high-church measures. His
diplomacy had been subordinated to party necessities. He had supported
by turns and simultaneously Jacobite and Hanoverian interests. He had
only conceived the idea of _The Patriot King_ in the person of the
worthless Frederick in order to stir up sedition, while his eulogies on
retirement and study were pronounced from an enforced exile. He only
attacked party government because he was excluded from it, and only
railed at corruption because it was the corruption of his antagonists
and not his own. His public life presents none of those acts of devotion
and self-sacrifice which often redeem a career characterized by errors,
follies and even crimes.

One may deplore his unfortunate history and wasted genius, but it is
impossible to regret his exclusion from the government of England. He
was succeeded in the title as 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, according to the
special remainder, by his nephew Frederick, 3rd Viscount St John (a
title granted to Bolingbroke's father in 1716), from whom the title has
descended.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Bolingbroke's collected works, including his chief
political writings already mentioned and his philosophical essays
_Concerning the Nature, Extent