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I never loved the cause of the Stuarts, unfortunate, and therefore interesting, as the Stuarts were; by a very stupid and yet uneffaceable confusion of ideas, I confounded it with the cause of Montreuil, and I hated the latter enough to dislike the former: I fancy all party principles are formed much in the same manner. I frankly told Bolingbroke my disinclination to the Chevalier.
This the Jacobites who affect moderation and candour shrug their shoulders at: they are sorry for it, but Lord Bolingbroke can never wash himself clean of this guilt; for these succours might have been obtained, and a proof that they might is that they were so by others. These people leave the cause of this mismanagement doubtful between my treachery and my want of capacity.
Topham Beauclerk, who had married the Duke's sister, after she had been divorced for adultery with him from her first husband Viscount Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246, note 1. See post, Dempster's Letter of Feb. 16, 1775. See ante, ii. 340, where Johnson said that 'if he were a gentleman of landed property, he would turn out all his tenants who did not vote for the candidate whom he supported.
* She was brought up at St. Cyr. And Bolingbroke entering, I took my leave of this lively and interesting lady and entered his carriage. As soon as we were seated, he pressed me for my reasons for refusing to prolong my visit.
"Reflect," he said, as he drew him apart, "that, when on this spot landed Henry of Bolingbroke, he gave not out that he was marching to the throne of Richard II. He professed but to claim his duchy, and men were influenced by justice, till they became agents of ambition. This be your policy; with two thousand men you are but Duke of York; with ten thousand men you are King of England!
He practised his arts on such small occasions, that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages and turnips."
I will do so by using the thoughts of a mind not the least beautiful and accomplished which this country has produced. 'Of all which belongs to us, said Bolingbroke, 'the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of Nature, the world.
From the other big houses of that prosperous neighborhood were coming, also in working clothes, the fathers, and occasionally the sons, of families he was accustomed to regard as "all right for Saint X." At the corner of Cherry Lane, old Bolingbroke, many times a millionaire thanks to a thriving woolen factory, came up behind him and cried out, "Well, young man! This is something like."
"He is happy, though at times he is restless. How, chained to this oar, can he be otherwise?" answered Lady Bolingbroke, with a sigh; "but his friends," she added, "who most enjoy his retirement, must yet lament it. His genius is not wasted here, it is true: where could it be wasted? But who does not feel that it is employed in too confined a sphere?
Ay, better than behind his back!" cried the defiant Princess. "And to thy face, Harry of Bolingbroke, I do thee to wit that thou art no king of mine, nor I owe thee no allegiance! Wreak thy will on me for saying it! After all, I can die but once; and I can die as beseems a King's daughter; and I would as lief die and be rid of thee as 'bide in a world vexed with thy governance." "Custance!
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