ong in wise men, and wonderfully weak in fools), the honest
impulse of the citizen, and the better and higher sentiment, to which
Bolingbroke appeared peculiarly alive, of affection to mankind,--putting
these utterly aside,--it must be owned that resignation is the more
noble in proportion as it is the less passive; that retirement is only a
morbid selfishness if it prohibit exertions for others; that it is only
really dignified and noble when it is the shade whence issue the oracles
that are to instruct mankind; and that retirement of this nature is the
sole seclusion which a good and wise man will covet or commend. The very
philosophy which makes such a man seek the _quiet_, makes him eschew the
_inutility_ of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy to me would have
seemed Lord Bolingbroke among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among
haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a
profligate Minister and a venal parliament; very little interest in my
eyes would have attached itself to his beans and vetches, had beans and
vetches caused him to forget that if he was happier in a farm, he could
be more useful in a senate, and made him forego, in the sphere of a
bailiff, all care for re-entering that of a legislator.--ED.

"Yet why should retirement be rest? Do you recollect in the first
conversation we ever had together, we talked of Cowley? Do you recollect
how justly, and even sublimely, he has said, 'Cogitation is that which
distinguishes the solitude of a God from that of a wild beast'?"

"It is finely said," answered Bolingbroke; "but Swift was born not for
cogitation but action; for turbulent times, not for calm. He ceases to
be great directly he is still; and his bitterness at every vexation is
so great that I have often thought, in listening to him, of the Abbe de
Cyran, who, attempting to throw nutshells out of the bars of his window,
and constantly failing in the attempt, exclaimed in a paroxysm of rage,
'Thus does Providence delight in frustrating my designs!'"

"But you are fallen from a far greater height of hope than Swift could
ever have attained: you bear this change well, but not _I hope_ without
a struggle."

"You are right,--_not_ without a struggle; while corruption thrives, I
will not be silent; while bad men govern, I will not be still."

In conversation of this sort passed the time, till we arrived at Pope's
villa.

We found the poet in his study,--indued, as some of his