9781787803473 by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous [Anonymous]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

"And the only opposition was from Mr. Shippen—Downright Shippen, as Pope called him—the Jacobite who ventured to describe the late King as a stranger to our language and constitution, and was sent to the Tower for his insolence," said Durnford.

"Well, there is one to whom his late Majesty's fatal apoplexy—caused, Dean Swift tells me, by a melon—has dealt a death-blow, one whom I could almost pity, unprincipled and shifty as he has ever been."

"Do you mean Bolingbroke?" asked Durnford.

"Whom else could I mean? The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind. Assuredly he has quite as good a right to that description as Bacon ever had, though Pope, who adores him, would never believe it. How marvellously does his career illustrate that old vulgar saw which tells us honesty is the best policy! Never did Nature and fortune so smile upon a man as upon Harry St. John, who was Secretary at War at twenty, and Secretary of State at thirty, who had the ear of his Queen and the admiration of all England, and might have kept both could he only have been honest. Twice has death ruined his schemes when they were ripest. He had plotted to bring over the Chevalier, had the Stuart succession in his pocket as it were, the Queen on the very point of recognising her brother's claim; and lo! Death seizes his royal mistress, and grins at him across her shoulder. Again, but yesterday, when, after years of exile, still as keenly ambitious as in his brilliant youth, he had bought her Grace of Kendal's favour, and had his foot planted, ready to throw that stout wrestler Robin, again grim death intervenes and reduces the Duchess to a cipher: and Lady Bolingbroke's hand-over of eleven thousand to the Duchess's niece has to be written down as a loss in the St. John ledger."

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