love of flattery on the one side, and the love of money on the other.  Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherley, Mr. Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the Dean’s whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preaching against money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it up.  There cannot be a stronger proof of his being capable of any action for the sake of gain than publishing his literary correspondence, which lays open such a mixture of dulness and iniquity, that one would imagine it visible even to his most 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