Bolingbroke amused his unwelcome leisure during his exile in studying the infidel philosophy which prevailed in France. The vices of his nature are conspicuous in his metaphysical writings. He pretends to abstruse learning, and it is apparent that he has done little more than pick up fragments of systems at second-hand. He assumes a commanding superiority over his illustrious predecessors, of whom he commonly speaks with insane contempt, and he has not enunciated a single new doctrine, or put one old doctrine in a novel light. He affects to soar above sinister motives and prejudices, and writes with the rancour of a bitter partisan who is the creature of passion. He denounces the dishonesty of christian apologists, and perpetually misrepresents them; he inveighs against their inconsistencies, and falls himself into repeated contradictions. The characteristics of the old political debater are preserved intact in the philosopher. He kept his parliamentary style with the rest,--the diffuse rhetoric, the constant repetitions, the lengthy preparation for ideas not worth the prelude. The mind droops over the pretentious verbiage, and the magnificent promise of results which never come. "Who," said Burke, "now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?"[737] The cheat once detected, no one wearies himself in the pursuit of a flying phantom. In 1723 Bolingbroke was permitted to return to England. After a short visit he went back to France, and did not settle here till October, 1724. He soon contracted an intimacy with Pope, and imparted to him his irreligious metaphysics. Bolingbroke's knowledge of philosophy, though not profound, was respectable, and with the uninformed he could disguise his want of depth by a flux of specious language. Pope, ignorant of mental, moral, and theological science, mistook his oracular arrogance for real supremacy, his discordant sophisms for demonstrations, his hackneyed plagiarisms for originality. He thought him by much the greatest man he had ever known, and of all his titles to fame the chief he imagined was as a "writer and philosopher."[738] He ranked him among the metaphysical luminaries of the world, and never suspected that the moment his disquisitions were communicated to the public they would be tossed aside with disdain, and consigned to lasting neglect.