t passionate admirers, if Lord Orrery did not
show that smooth lines have as much influence over some people as the
authority of the Church in these countries, where it cannot only veil,
but sanctify any absurdity or villany whatever. It is remarkable that
his lordship's family have been smatterers in wit and learning for three
generations: his grandfather has left monuments of his good taste in
several rhyming tragedies, and the romance of Parthenissa. His father
began the world by giving his name to a treatise wrote by Atterbury and
his club, which gained him great reputation; but (like Sir Martin
Marall, who would fumble with his lute when the music was over) he
published soon after a sad comedy of his own, and, what was worse, a
dismal tragedy he had found among the first Earl of Orrery's papers.
People could easier forgive his being partial to his own silly works, as
a common frailty, than the want of judgment in producing a piece that
dishonoured his father's memory.

"Thus fell into dust a fame that had made a blaze by borrowed fire. To
do justice to the present lord, I do not doubt this fine performance is
all his own, and is a public benefit, if every reader has been as well
diverted with it as myself. I verily believe it has contributed to the
establishment of my health."

Nor was Lady Mary more kindly about the writings and character of Lord
Bolingbroke, for whom she had always had a feeling even more of hatred
than disapproval.

"I have now read over the books you were so good to send, and intend to
say something of them all, though some are not worth speaking of" (she
wrote to her daughter). "I shall begin, in respect to his dignity, with
Lord Bolingbroke, who is a glaring proof how far vanity can blind a man,
and how easy it is to varnish over to one's self the most criminal
conduct. He declares he always loved his country, though he confesses he
endeavoured to betray her to popery and slavery; and loved his friends,
though he abandoned them in distress, with all the blackest
circumstances of treachery. His account of the Peace of Utrecht is
almost equally unfair or partial: I shall allow that, perhaps, the views
of the Whigs, at that time, were too vast and the nation, dazzled by
military glory, had hopes too sanguine; but sure the same terms that the
French consented to, at the treaty of Gertruydenberg, might have been
obtained; or if the displacing of the Duke of Marlborough raised the
spirits of o