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.
§ 5. His political activity after his return home.
| A decade had nearly passed before Bolingbroke’s pen was once more at work as a weapon of political warfare. In 1725, he had returned “two-thirds restored”—safe, that is, in person and estate, but with his attainder still hanging over him and debarring him from participation as a peer in the counsels of the nation. He had found the whig ministry under Walpole and Townshend in the plenitude of power, and the tory party reduced to what seemed hopeless impotence. It was not long before, in alliance with Pulteney, the leader of the discontented whigs, Bolingbroke engaged in a long-sustained and, ultimately, to some extent, successful endeavour to put an end to this condition of things. The assault may be said to have opened, on 5 December, 1726, with the appearance of the first number of The Craftsman; although, as a matter of fact, already, on 15 July of that year, Bolingbroke, under the pseudonym “Will, Johnson,” had contributed to a sheet called The Country Gentleman a homely apologue in derision of Walpole. The minister here appears as coachman to the worthy Caleb D’Anvers at his little country place near the town (in The Craftsman, of which D’Anvers was the figurehead, he is usually designated as of Gray’s inn); he proves untrustworthy, and ends by breaking his neck when his horses have been scared by an angry rustic populace. 7 |
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