THE LIFE OF LORD BOLINGBROKE. THERE are some characters that seemed formed by Nature to take delight in struggling with opposition, and whose most agreeable hours are passed in storms of their own creating. The subject of the present sketch was perhaps of all others the most indefatigable in raising himself enemies, to shew his power in subduing them; and was not less employed in improving his superior talents, than in finding objects on which to exercise their activity. His life was spent in a continual conflict of politics, and as if that was too short for the combat, he has left his memory as a subject of lasting contention. It is indeed no easy matter to preserve an acknowledged impartiality, in talking of a man so differently regarded on account of his political, as well as his religious principles. Those, whom his politics may please, will be sure to condemn him for his religion; and on the contrary, those most strongly attached to his theological opinions, are the most likely to decry his politics. On whatever side he is regarded, he is sure to have opposers; and this was perhaps what he most desired, having from nature a mind. better pleased with the struggle than the victory. Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, was born in the year 1672, at Battersea in Surrey, at a seat seat that had been in the possession of his ancestors for ages before. His family was of the first rank, equally conspicuous for its antiquity, dignity, and large possessions. It is found to trace its original as high as Adam de Port, Baron of Basing in Hampshire, before the conquest; and in a succession of ages to have produced warriors, patriots, and statesmen, some of whom were conspicuous for their loyalty, and others for their defending the rights of the people. His grandfather Sir Walter St. John, of Battersea, marrying one of the daughters of lord chief justice St. John, who as all know was strongly attached to the republican party. Henry, the subject of the present memoir, was brought up in his family, and consequently imbibed the first principles of his education amongst the dissenters. At that time Daniel Burgess, a fanatic of a very peculiar kind, being at once possessed of zeal and humour, and as well known for the archness of his conceits as the furious obstinacy of his principles, was confessor in the presbyterian way to his grandmother, and was appointed to direct our author's first studies. Nothing is so apt to disgust a feeling mind as mistaken zeal; and perhaps the absurdity of the first lectures he received might have given him that contempt for all religions, which he might have justly conceived against one. 'Indeed, no task can be more mortifying than what he was condemned to undergo: "I was obliged," says he, in one place, "while yet a boy, to read "over the commentaries of Dr. Manton, whose 66 pride it was to have made an hundred and nine"teen sermons, on the hundred and nineteenth "psalm." Dr. Manton and his sermons were not likely to prevail much on one, who was, perhaps, the most sharp-sighted in the world at discovering the absurdities of others, however he might have been guilty of establishing many of his own. But |