could be trusted, and who, when he promised to take a certain course, would be sure to follow it. That very pride which made him habitually ridiculous raised him on great occasions above any suspicion of mercenary or personal views in politics. One of his contemporaries describes him as "so humorsome, proud, and capricious, that he was rather a ministry spoiler than a ministry maker." In the present condition of things, however, he could be made use of for the purpose of making one ministry after spoiling another. When he carried his great personal influence over to the side of the Hanoverian accession, and joined with Argyll and with Shrewsbury, it must have been evident, to men like Bolingbroke at least, that the enterprises of the Jacobites {44} would require rare good-fortune and marvellous energy to bring them to any success. [Sidenote: 1714--The coup d'etat] Poetry and romance have shown to the world the most favorable side of the character of John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, who was then at least as powerful in Scotland as the Duke of Somerset in England. Pope describes him as Argyll, the State's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field. Scott has drawn a charming picture of him in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart must "be cold as death can make it when it does not warm to the tartan"--the kind and generous protector of Jeanie Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a soldier, a statesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ramilies and Oudenarde, had rallied a shrinking column at Malplaquet, and served in the sieges of Ostend and Lille and Ghent. His eloquence in the House of Lords is said to have combined the freshness of youth, the strength of manhood, and the wisdom of old age. Lord Hervey, who is not given to praise, admits that Argyll was "gallant, and a good officer, with very good parts, and much more reading and knowledge than generally falls to the share of a man educated a soldier, and born to so great a title and fortune." But Hervey also says that Argyll was "haughty, passionate, and peremptory," and it cannot be doubted that he was capable of almost any political tergiversation, or even treachery, which could have served his purpose; and his purpose was always his own personal interest. He changed his opinions with the most unscrupulous promptitude; he gave an opinion one way and acted another way without hesitation, and without a blush. He was always equal to the emergency; he had the full courage of his non-convictions. He was the grandson of that Argyll whose last sleep before his execution is the subject of Mr. Ward's well-known painting; his great-grandfather, too, gave up his life on the scaffold. He did not want any of the courage of his ancestors; but he was {45} likely to take care that his advancement should not be to the block or the gallows. At such a moment as this which we are now describing his adhesion and his