Bolingbroke had died in 1751, and in 1754 his philosophical works were posthumously given to the world by David Mallet, Dr. Johnson’s beggarly Scotchman, to whom Bolingbroke had left half-a-crown in his will, for firing off a blunderbuss which he was afraid to fire off himself.  The world of letters had been keenly excited about Bolingbroke.  His busy and chequered career, his friendship with the great wits of the previous generation, his splendid style, his bold opinions, made him a dazzling figure.  This was the late Noble Writer whose opinions Burke intended to ridicule, by reducing them to an absurdity in an exaggeration of Bolingbroke’s own manner.  As it happened, the public did not readily perceive either the exaggeration in the manner, or the satire in the matter.  Excellent judges of style made sure that the writing was really Bolingbroke’s, and serious critics of philosophy never doubted that the writer, whoever he was, meant all that he said.  We can hardly help agreeing with Godwin, when he says that in Burke’s treatise the evils of existing political institutions, which had been described by Locke, are set forth more at large, with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence, though the declared intention of the writer was to show that such evils ought to be considered merely trivial.  Years afterwards, Boswell asked Johnson whether an imprudent publication by a certain friend of his at an early period of his life would be likely to hurt him?  “No, sir,” replied the sage; “not much; it might perhaps be mentioned at an election.”  It is significant that in 1765, when Burke saw his chance of a seat in Parliament, he thought it worth while to print a second edition of his Vindication, with a preface to assure his readers that the design of it was ironical.  It has been remarked as a very extraordinary circumstance that an author who had the greatest fame of any man of his day as the master of a superb style, for this was indeed Bolingbroke’s position, should have been imitated to such perfection by a mere novice, that accomplished critics like Chesterfield and Warburton should have mistaken the copy for a firstrate original.  It is, however, to be remembered that the very boldness and sweeping rapidity of Bolingbroke’s prose rendered it more fit for imitation than if its merits had been those of delicacy or subtlety; and we must remember that the imitator was no pigmy, but himself one of the giants.  What is certain is that the study of Bolingbroke which preceded this excellent imitation left a permanent mark, and traces of Bolingbroke were never effaced from the style of Burke.