debate when compared with other great English parliamentary orators. But so far as one may judge, we should be inclined to think that he must have had Fox's readiness without Fox's redundancy and repetition; and that he must have had the stately diction and the commanding style of the younger Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which {28} the younger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's English prose style is hardly surpassed by that of any other author, either before his time or since. It is supple, strong, and luminous; not redundant, but not bare; ornamented where ornament is suitable and even useful, but nowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary and artificial brilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in any case have held a high place among his contemporaries, and probably if Bolingbroke had possessed the political and personal virtues of men like Burke and Pitt, or even the political virtues of a man like Charles Fox, he would have been remembered as the greatest of all English parliamentary statesmen. But, as we have already said, the one defect filled him with faults. The lack of principle gave him a lack of purpose, and wanting purpose he persevered in no consistent political path. Swift has observed that Bolingbroke "had a great respect for the characters of Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he would gladly be thought to resemble." He came nearer at his worst to Petronius than at his best to Alcibiades. Alcibiades, to do him justice, admired and understood virtue in others, however small the share of it he contrived to keep for himself. It is impossible to read that wonderful compound of dramatic humor and philosophic thought, Plato's "Banquet," without being moved by the generous and impassioned eulogy which Alcibiades, in the fulness of his heart and of his wine, pours out upon the austere virtue of Socrates. Such as Alcibiades is there described we may suppose Alcibiades to have been, and no one who has followed the career of Bolingbroke can believe it possible that he ever could have felt any sincere admiration for virtue in man or woman, or could have thought of it otherwise than as a thing to be sneered at and despised. The literary men, and more especially the poets of the days of Bolingbroke, seem to have had as little scruple in their compliments as a French _petit-maitre_ might have in sounding the praises of his mistress to his mistress's ears. Pope talks of his villa, where, "nobly {29} pensive, St. John sat and thought," and declared that such only might Tread this sacred floor Who dare to love their country and be poor. [Sidenote: 1714--Pope's praises]