The lines in “Paracelsus,” vol. ii., p. 36, which are in this view so appropriate to the case of Christopher Smart, bore reference to him.  The main facts of his life may be found in any biographical dictionary.

With GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON is a lesson in the philosophy of intrigue, or the art of imposing on our fellow men.  It is addressed to Bubb Dodington[127] as to an ambitious, obsequious, unscrupulous, and only partially successful courtier; and undertakes to show that, being (more or less) a knave, his conduct also proclaimed him a fool, and lost him the rewards of knavery.  Mr. Browning does not concern himself with the moralities of the case; these, for the time being, are put out of court.  He assumes, for the purposes of the discussion, that everyone is selfish and no one need be sincere, and that “George” was justified in labouring for his own advancement and cheating others, if possible, into subservience to it; but he argues that the aim being right, the means employed were wrong, and could only result in failure.

The argument begins and ends in the proposition, in itself a truism but which receives here a novel significance, that nothing in creation obeys its like, and that he who would mount by the backs of his fellow men must show some reason why they should lend them.  In the olden time, we are reminded, such reasons were supplied by physical force; later, force was superseded by intelligence, i.e., wit or cunning; and this must now be supplemented by something deeper, because it has become the property of so many persons as to place no one person at an advantage.  Bubb Dodington’s methods have been those of simple cunning, and therefore they have not availed him.  The multitude whom he cajoled have seen through his cajoleries, and have resented in these both the attempt to deceive them and the pretension—­unfounded as it proved—­to exalt himself at their expense.

How then can the multitude be deceived into subservience?—­By the pretence of indifference to them.  An impostor is always supposed to be in earnest.  The commonplace impostor is so:  he has staked everything on the appearance of being sincere.  He, on the other hand, who is reckless in mendacity, who cheats with a laughing eye; who, while silently strenuous in a given cause, appears to take seriously neither it, himself, nor those on whom both depend, irresistibly strikes the vulgar as moved by something greater than himself or they.  A “quack” he may be, but like the spiritualistic quack, he invokes the belief in the Supernatural, and perhaps shares it.  He has the secret which Bubb Dodington had not.

It may be wondered why Mr. Browning treats the shallower political cunning as merely a foil to the deeper, instead of opposing to it something better than both:  but he finds the natural contrast to the half-successful schemer in the wholly triumphant one:  and the second picture, like the first, has been drawn from life.  It is that of the late Lord Beaconsfield—­as Mr. Browning sees him.