called him; and it is difficult to know why his easy declamation was so
long mistaken for profound thought. Much, doubtless, is due to that
personal fascination which made him the inspiration of men so different
as Pope and Voltaire; and the man who could supply ideas to Chatham and
Disraeli cannot be wholly devoid of merit. Certainly he wrote well, in
that easy elegance of style which was the delight of the eighteenth
century; and he is consistently happy in his choice of adjectives. But
his work is at every point embellished with that affectation of
classical learning which was the curse of his age. He sought no general
truths, and he is free from the accusation of sincerity. Nor has he any
enthusiasm save that of bitter partisanship. He hated Walpole, and his
political writings are, at bottom, no more than an attempt to generalize
his animosity. The _Dissertation on Parties_ (1734) and the _Idea of a
Patriot King_ (1738) might have betrayed us, taken alone, into regarding
their author as a disinterested observer watching with regret the
development of a fatal system; but taken in conjunction with the _Letter
to Sir W. Windham_ (1717), which was not published until after his
death, and is written with an acrid cynicism fatal to his claim to
honesty, they reveal the opinions as no more than a mask for ambition
born of hate.

The whole, of course, must have some sort of background; and the
_Letters on the Study of History_ (1735) was doubtless intended to
supply it. Experience is to be the test of truth, since history is
philosophy teaching by example. But Bolingbroke's own argument supplies
its refutation. His history is an arbitrary selection of instances
intended to illustrate the particular ideas which happened to be
uppermost in his mind. The Roman consuls were chosen by annual election;
whence it is clear that England should have, if not an annual, at least
a triennial parliament. He acknowledges that the past in some degree