say something of them all, though some are not worth speaking of" (she
wrote to her daughter). "I shall begin, in respect to his dignity, with
Lord Bolingbroke, who is a glaring proof how far vanity can blind a man,
and how easy it is to varnish over to one's self the most criminal
conduct. He declares he always loved his country, though he confesses he
endeavoured to betray her to popery and slavery; and loved his friends,
though he abandoned them in distress, with all the blackest
circumstances of treachery. His account of the Peace of Utrecht is
almost equally unfair or partial: I shall allow that, perhaps, the views
of the Whigs, at that time, were too vast and the nation, dazzled by
military glory, had hopes too sanguine; but sure the same terms that the
French consented to, at the treaty of Gertruydenberg, might have been
obtained; or if the displacing of the Duke of Marlborough raised the
spirits of our enemies to a degree of refusing what they had before
offered, how can he excuse the guilt of removing him from the head of a
victorious army, and exposing us to submit to any articles of peace,
being unable to continue the war? I agree with him, that the idea of
conquering France is a wild, extravagant notion, and would, if possible,
be impolitic; but she might have been reduced to such a state as would
have rendered her incapable of being terrible to her neighbours for some
ages: nor should we have been obliged, as we have done almost ever
since, to bribe the French ministers to let us live in quiet. So much
for his political reasonings, which, I confess, are delivered in a
florid, easy style; but I cannot be of Lord Orrery's opinion, that he is
one of the best English writers. Well-turned periods or smooth lines are
not the perfection either of prose or verse; they may serve to adorn,
but can never stand in the place of good sense. Copiousness of words,
however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on
some sort of understandings. How many readers and admirers has Madame de
Sévigné, who only gives us, in a lively manner and fashionable phrases,