But what I gain on clearly deduced from, and related to, each other. the side of philosophy I lose on the side of poetry; the flowers are gone when the fruits begin to ripen, and the fruits perhaps will never ripen perfectly."1 He endeavoured to draw Swift over to England by expressions of his desire to receive and care for him, and by describing the more hopeful state of political life. "Here are a race sprung up," says he, "of young patriots who would animate you." And again "I have acquired, without my seeking, a few chance acquaintances of young men, who look rather to the past age than the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of them. If I love them it is because they honour some of those whom I and the world have lost, or are losing. Two or three of them have distinguished themselves in Parliament, and you will own in a very uncommon manner, when I tell you it is by their asserting of independency and contempt of corruption." 2 And, in another letter: "Though one or two of our friends are gone since you saw your native country, there remain a few more who will last so till death, and who, I cannot but hope, have an attractive power to draw you back to a country which cannot be quite sunk or enslaved while such spirits remain. And let me tell you there are a few more of the same spirit, who would awaken all your old ideas, and revive your hopes of her future recovery and virtue.”3 In these allusions we find the first references to Pope's close connection with the Parliamentary Opposition; and in order to understand the full force of Swift's savage invective against the age, of Pope's praises of the rising patriots in Parliament, and of the satires which he produced at this period of his life, it is necessary to appreciate with some exactness the existing political situation. For many years Walpole had enjoyed something like a monopoly of power. One after another he had seen the statesmen who were qualified to dispute his supremacy-Stanhope, Sunderland, Carteret-removed from his path by death or 1 Letter from Pope to Swift of March 25, 1736. 2 Letter from Pope to Swift ot December 30, 1736. 3 Letter from Pope to Swift of March 23, 1736-7 failure, while latterly, by the retirement of Townshend, his old ally and recent rival, he was left almost alone in the confidence of the King. This position he owed mainly to his own consummate address and sagacity, but partly also to a concourse of favouring circumstances, especially the unfailing support afforded him by the Queen, the distracted state of the Opposition, and the disputes of the European Powers, which prevented a coalition on behalf of the Pretender. The great end of his policy was the safe establishment on the English throne of the Hanoverian dynasty, which object he sought to secure by extending the commerce of the country and by preserving the peace of Europe. The sagacity of his aims is now generally acknowledged; to him, perhaps more than to any other statesman, England is indebted for the foundations of an imperial greatness, laid in the midst of unsettlement and revolution. But the means which he was forced to adopt in the execution of his policy show the difficulties with which he was beset. Abroad he preserved the peace of Europe and extended the commerce of the country by shifting his alliances just as the expediency of the moment seemed to dictate. At home he was obliged to work as the servant of Sovereigns who had but small sympathy with purely English interests, and by means of a Party which had no hold on the public imagination. To secure the stability of his Ministry he had recourse to an unblushing system of bribery, both in the House of Commons and in the electorate, and he employed without hesitation, low and venal writers to influence public opinion. Hence his conduct of foreign affairs, though distinguished by extreme adroitness, seemed wanting in principle, while his management of Parliament was open to the charge of cynicism. The nation settled down quietly under the House of Brunswick, but without any love for its Sovereigns; it enjoyed the fruits of liberty, but was uneasy at the sight of a wide-spread corruption; it felt the advantage of European peace, but was angry that it appeared to be purchased with dishonour. All these sources of weakness were noted and utilised by Walpole's most able adversary. Though Bolingbroke was indebted to the Minister for his amnesty, he hated him because he had failed to reinstate him in his political privileges, and he was passionately desirous to drive him from office. Ever since his return to England this had been the object of his intrigues. With George I. he had failed completely. The high hopes which the Opposition had entertained on the accession of George II. had been disappointed, partly by the address of Walpole, supported by the influence of the Queen, and partly through their own mistake in believing that the King's confidence could be secured through his mistress, Lady Suffolk. Bolingbroke now saw that the only way in which Walpole could be overthrown was by uniting against him the various sections of the Opposition in Parliament, and by arousing a hostile opinion in the electorate. He laid his plans in both these directions with his usual ability. Through his influence with Sir William Wyndham, the leader of the Tories, he brought about a co-operation between that party and the discontented Whigs, led by Pulteney, Sandys, and Sir John Barnard, and he supported the action of this Parliamentary coalition by weekly attacks on the Ministry in the 'Craftsman.’ This paper was started on the 5th of December, 1726, the year following the Treaty of Hanover. In it Bolingbroke, under the signature of Caleb D'Anvers, with the occasional assistance of Pulteney, dressed in the most brilliant colours of wit, eloquence, and reasoning, all the arguments calculated to injure Walpole in the opinion of the country. His purpose was to represent the Minister as an unscrupulous and avaricious adventurer, bent on raising himself to absolute power by means of constitutional forms. Every action of the Government was interpreted in the 'Craftsman' in the light of this hypothesis. Walpole himself was compared week after week to the various corrupt Court favourites in Roman and English history. His foreign policy was assailed, now for its servile subordination of English to VOL. V. X Hanoverian interests, now for the sacrifice of an old ally like the Emperor to the ambitious Bourbons, now for the tame surrender of the rights of British commerce to the encroachments of Spain. In domestic affairs Mr. D'Anvers dwelt upon the Minister's fondness for Standing Armies and a National Debt; his intimate relations with the dishonest stock-jobbing interest; his favour of monopolists; his cynical employment of all the arts of bribery and corruption; all which conduct, it was argued, was the infallible sign of a dark conspiracy against the liberties of the country. In short, the method of Bolingbroke in the 'Craftsman' may be said to have furnished the model on which all unscrupulous Oppositions have since been careful to form their tactics. The general style of his rhetoric may be illustrated by a few sentences taken from the Preface to the collected papers published in 1731. "We thought this a proper season to rise up in defence of our national interests, and to animate our countrymen with a becoming zeal on such a melancholy occasion. The supineness and indolence which we observed to reign amongst a great part of them added spurs to our design, and quickened us in the prosecution of it. We judged it necessary to awake them from that lethargy which they had suffered to creep upon them, and to revive that ancient spirit which is the Palladium of our Constitution." Sentiment and language of this kind were extremely congenial to the taste of Pope. He was at this period completely under the intellectual influence of Bolingbroke, from whom he imbibed with eagerness political principles the real factiousness of which was disguised by the sounding phrases of philosophy. At the same time he undoubtedly enjoyed the atmosphere of mystery and intrigue by which he found himself surrounded. His villa at Twickenham was well situated to catch all the scandal that floated from the three Royal residences of Kew, Richmond, and Hampton Court. "I am not, I own," he writes to Gay, "altogether so divested of terrene matter, not altogether so spiritualized, as to be worthy of admission to your depths of retirement and contentment. I am tugged back to the world and its regards too often; and no wonder, when my retreat is but ten miles from the capital. I am within ear-shot of reports, within the vortex of lies and censures." 1 The effects of this curious blending of the spirit of the philosopher and the political partizan are first seen in the 'Epistle to Bathurst,' which, though superficially a Moral Essay on the proper Use of Riches, is, in fact, a bitter satire on the abuse of them by the monied interest, an important bulwark of Walpole's power. The apparently common-place balancing of the advantages and evils of a currency with which the Epistle opens, veils poignant sarcasms on the corruption of this class of the community. Among the persons specially selected as examples of the abuse of Riches are representatives of the Charitable Corporation, the Commission of the forfeited Derwentwater Estates, and the South Sea Company, all associated in the public mind with fraudulent dealings, which Walpole, against the opinion of his own friends, had prevented the House of Commons from investigating. Here and there the satire contains an ironic allusion to Walpole himself, as in the wizard's prophecy of the South Sea Bubble: "At length Corruption, like a general flood, (So long by watchful Ministers withstood) Shall deluge all.” And again in the couplet: "Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys? To which Pope, in 1735, added the following note: "Many people about the year 1733 had a conceit that such a thing was intended, of which it is not improbable this lady might have some intimation." Couplet and note are both extremely interesting examples of Pope's minute satiric method. The poem was written in 1732. In that year Walpole had imposed an excise duty on salt, which the Opposition loudly 1 Letter from Pope to Gay of September 11, 1730. |