the peculiar character of his career. He had attained to the highest
office under Anne at an exceptionally early age; and his period of
power had been distinguished by the vehemence with which he pursued the
ideal of a strict division of parties and the expulsion of all alien
elements from the government. But he had staked all his fortunes upon a
scheme he had neither the resolution to plan nor the courage to execute;
and his flight to France, on the Hanoverian accession, had been followed
by his proscription. Walpole soon succeeded alike to his reputation and
place; and through an enormous bribe to the bottomless pocket of the
King's mistress St. John was enabled to return from exile, though not to
political place. His restless mind was dissatisfied with exclusion from
power, and he occupied himself with creating an alliance between the
Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance
succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of
success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint
of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation,
moreover, of the _Craftsman_--the first official journal of a political
party in England--showed his appreciation of the technique of political
controversy. Most of it is dead now, and, indeed, no small part of its
contemporary success is due to the making of comment in terms of the
immediate situation, as also by its consistent use of a personal
reference which has, save in the mass, no meaning for today. Though,
doubtless, the idea of its inception was derived from journals like
Defoe's _Review_ and Leslie's _Rehearsal_, which had won success, its
intimate connection with the party leadership was a novel element; and
it may therein claim a special relation to the official periodicals of a
later generation.

The reputation of Bolingbroke as a political philosopher is something
that our age can hardly understand. "A solemn trifler," Lord Morley has