ur enemies to a degree of refusing what they had before
offered, how can he excuse the guilt of removing him from the head of a
victorious army, and exposing us to submit to any articles of peace,
being unable to continue the war? I agree with him, that the idea of
conquering France is a wild, extravagant notion, and would, if possible,
be impolitic; but she might have been reduced to such a state as would
have rendered her incapable of being terrible to her neighbours for some
ages: nor should we have been obliged, as we have done almost ever
since, to bribe the French ministers to let us live in quiet. So much
for his political reasonings, which, I confess, are delivered in a
florid, easy style; but I cannot be of Lord Orrery's opinion, that he is
one of the best English writers. Well-turned periods or smooth lines are
not the perfection either of prose or verse; they may serve to adorn,
but can never stand in the place of good sense. Copiousness of words,
however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on
some sort of understandings. How many readers and admirers has Madame de
Sevigne, who only gives us, in a lively manner and fashionable phrases,
mean sentiments, vulgar prejudices, and endless repetitions? Sometimes
the tittle-tattle of a fine lady, sometimes that of an old nurse, always
tittle-tattle; yet so well gilt over by airy expressions, and a flowing
style, she will always please the same people to whom Lord Bolingbroke
will shine as a first-rate author. She is so far to be excused, as her
letters were not intended for the press; while her labours to display to
posterity all the wit and learning he is master of, and sometimes spoils
a good argument by a profusion of words, running out into several pages
a thought that might have been more clearly expressed in a few lines,
and, what is worse, often falls into contradiction and repetitions,
which are almost unavoidable to all voluminous writers, and can only be
forgiven to those retailers whose necessity compels them to diurnal
scribbling, who load their meaning with epithets, and run into
digressions, because (in the jockey phrase) it rids the ground, that is,
covers a certain quantity of paper, to answer the demand of the day. A
great part of Lord B.'s letters are designed to show his reading, which,
indeed, appears to have been very extensive; but I cannot perceive that
such a minute account of it can be of any use to the pupil he pretend