§2. His Contributions to "The Examiner". VIII. Historical and Political Writers. Vol. 9. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

VIII. Historical and Political Writers.

§ 2. His Contributions to The Examiner.

This was The Examiner (to be distinguished from other periodicals of that name), of which between thirty and forty numbers appear to have been published up to the spring of 1712. According to the general account, 3 Bolingbroke’s first and most important contribution to this journal appeared in no. X, and contained an attack on Marlborough’s conduct of the war, with a fierce attack on the duchess. This description, however, does not apply to the number in question; but elsewhere 4 is reprinted what is called “St. John’s Letter to The Examiner,” which inveighs against the whigs, their clubs, their journals, and their literary champions such as “the Hector of Sarum” (Burnet), and speaks of the subjection of the queen “to an arbitrary junto, and to the caprice of an insolent woman.” No. XVII of this Examiner, it may be added, contains a letter which attacks the duke under the thin disguise of “Crassus,” but makes no special attack upon the duchess.

Note 3. See Macknight, T., The Life of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, pp. 158–9. [ back ]

Note 4. In Somers’ Tracts, vol. XIII, p. 71; also in The History of His Own Time, by Matthew Prior (ed. Drift, A.), 1740, pp. 306 ff. This letter was answered by A Letter to Isaac Bickerstaffe, Esq., by earl “Cooper,” 1710. [ back ]