The Editor has, throughout this work,
usually, but not invariably, noted the passages in Bolingbroke's
writings, in which there occur similes, illustrations, or striking
thoughts, correspondent with those in the text.

I answered Bolingbroke as men are wont to answer statesmen who complain
of their calling,--half in compliment, half in contradiction; but he
replied with unusual seriousness,

"Do not think I affect to speak thus: you know how eagerly I snatch
any respite from state, and how unmovedly I have borne the loss of
prosperity and of power. You are now about to enter those perilous
paths which I have trod for years. Your passions, like mine, are strong!
Beware, oh, beware, how you indulge them without restraint! They are the
fires which should warm: let them not be the fires which destroy."

Bolingbroke paused in evident and great agitation; he resumed: "I speak
strongly, for I speak in bitterness; I was thrown early into the world;
my whole education had been framed to make me ambitious; it succeeded
in its end. I was ambitious, and of all success,--success in pleasure,
success in fame. To wean me from the former, my friends persuaded me
to marry; they chose my wife for her connections and her fortune, and
I gained those advantages at the expense of what was better than
either,--happiness! You know how unfortunate has been that marriage, and
how young I was when it was contracted. Can you wonder that it failed in
the desired effect? Every one courted me; every temptation assailed me:
pleasure even became more alluring abroad, when at home I had no longer
the hope of peace; the indulgence of one passion begat the indulgence of
another; and, though my better sense _prompted_ all my actions, it never
_restrained_ them to a proper limit. Thus the commencement of my actions
has been generally prudent, and their _continuation_ has deviated into
rashness, or plunged into excess. Devereux, I have paid the forfeit of
my errors with a terrible interest: when my motives have been pure, men
have seen a fault in the conduct, and calumniated the motives; when my
conduct has been blameless, men have remembered its former errors,
and asserted that its present goodness only arose from some sinister
intention: thus I have been termed crafty, when I was in reality rash,
and that was called the inconsistency of interest which in reality was
the inconsistency of passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn you
how you suffer you