The 12th died Lord Bolingbroke;[190] a man who will not be seen in less extraordinary lights by posterity than he was by his contemporaries, though for very different reasons. His own age regarded him either as the greatest statesman, oppressed by faction, and the greatest genius persecuted by envy; or as the most consummate villain, preserved by clemency, and the most treacherous politician, abandoned by all parties whom he had successively betrayed. Posterity will look on him as the greatest philosopher from Pope’s writings; or as an author of a bounded genius from his own. To see him in a true light, they must neither regard all the incense offered to him by Tories, nor credit all the opprobrium cast on him by Whigs. They must see him compounded of all those vices and virtues that so often enter into the nature of a great genius, who is not one of the greatest. Was it being master of no talents to have acted the second part, when little more than a youth, in overturning such a Ministry, and stemming such a tide of glory, as Lord Godolphin’s and the Duke of Marlborough’s? Were there no abilities, after his return from banishment, in holding such a power as Sir Robert Walpole’s at bay for so many years, even when excluded from the favourable opportunity of exerting his eloquence in either House of Parliament? Was there no triumph in having chiefly contributed to the fall of that Minister? Was there no glory in directing the councils and operations of such men as Sir William Windham, Lord Bath, and Lord Granville? And was there no art in persuading the self-fondest and greatest of poets, that the writer of the Craftsman was a more exalted genius than the author of the Dunciad? Has he shown no address in palliating the exploded treaty of Utrecht? Has he not, in his letters[191] on that event, contrived to make assertions and hypothesis almost balance stubborn facts?[192] To cover his own guilt, has he not diverted our attention towards pity for the great enemy, in whose service he betrayed his own country?