(Henry St John) Viscount, was the only son of Sir Henry St John, a baronet of ancient family, and was born on the 1st of October 1678, at the family seat at Battersea. During the early years of his life he was intrusted to the care of his grandmother, a rigid and somewhat fanatical Presbyterian, from whose religious adviser, Daniel Burgess, the future orator received the rudiments of his education. Burgess, like his patroness, was somewhat of a fanatic, and was more desirous to indoctrinate his pupil in the principles of the Presbyterians, than in the languages of ancient Greece and Rome. To the injudicious rigour of his discipline may be traced that prejudice against religion which taints the most elaborate of St John's compositions. The time came at length when the pupil was delivered from the jurisdiction of both his grandmother and tutor, and to his great joy he was sent to Eton. Nothing is known of his history at that college, save that he made the acquaintance of Robert Walpole. The future statesmen were even at this early period rivals, and the bitter malignity with which Bolingbroke in after life assailed the great minister is said to have arisen out of the quarrels of their school days. From Eton he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he astonished his tutors by the extraordinary quickness of his apprehension and the strength of his memory; while he dazzled his fellow-students by the splendour of his appearance and the wit and brilliancy of his conversation. From Oxford he removed to London, where he persisted for a time in his career of debauchery with such success that he came to be regarded by the most licentious men of the age as an irreclaimable libertine, and by such of them as remembered the days of Charles II., was likened to the infamous Rochester. Even Swift does not attempt to defend this period of his life, but expresses his belief that he lived long enough to regret and repent of it. The intervals of his excesses he employed in writing poetry; and when Dryden published his translation of Virgil, he recommended it in a copy of verses prefixed to the first edition of that work. His next public appearance was made in 1700, when he gave to the world an ode entitled Almahide, which was so bad that it did not elicit even a hostile criticism. A few other pieces which he wrote at this time have not been preserved. About this time he went abroad and travelled on the Continent for two years, spending the most of his time in France and Italy. The knowledge of French which he was in this way enabled to acquire was of signal service to him in after life. In 1700 he married the daughter of Sir Henry Winchescomb, with whom he received a handsome fortune; but so incompatible was his temper with that of his bride, that in a short time they were formally separated. In the following year he began his political career, by representing in parliament the borough of Woolton Basset. The family to which he belonged had been known for several generations as firm supporters of the Whig faction; but the young member consulted at once his interests and his inclination by siding with the Tory party, then promising to become dominant in England. Harley was at this time speaker in the House of Commons; and his dexterity was such as to make him respected alike by his own friends and the Opposition. To Harley St John attached himself; and so effectually did he assist him in difficult conjunctures with the whole weight of his personal and family interest, and the fire of his splendid eloquence, that when Harley was made secretary of state in 1704, St John, as a reward for services, was appointed secretary at war. In 1707, after a long series of court intrigues, the queen was induced to dismiss her secretary, and St John, hitherto consistent, immediately gave in his resignation. He retired not only from office but from parliament, and for the next two years devoted himself wholly to study. These two years he repeatedly mentions as the happiest of his life. It was not long, however, before he was called upon to quit his retirement and direct his attention once more to public affairs. While St John was thinking and writing in the solitude of the country, Harley, after the manner of these days, had been busily intriguing at court. The result of his machinations was that the Whigs were in their turn ousted, and the Tory administration once more reinstated. Harley became chancellor of the exchequer. St John took office as secretary of state in 1710, and was soon acknowledged ministerial leader in the House of Commons. Circumstances, however, soon transpired which made it apparent that these two men, hitherto so true to each other, could no longer act in concert. For when in 1712, Harley, now Lord Oxford, refused to secure for his late confidant a rank in the peerage equal to his own, St John's indignation knew no bounds. He resolved, however, for the ultimate advancement of his interests, to maintain at least the appearance of friendship with the successful minister. Mr St John was therefore in the meantime obliged to content himself with the title of Viscount Bolingbroke. His ambition, however, was far from being satisfied even with so honourable a distinction, and he now determined to turn against his ancient friend and ally the very weapons by means of which that friend had cleared his way to power. He was no less skilful in the conduct of a court intrigue than Oxford himself had been, and at length, through the influence of Mrs Masham the queen's favourite, whose good graces he had cultivated assiduously for two years, he obtained the dismissal of the lord treasurer in 1714. Two years before this consummation he had been sent as ambassador to the French court, and his conduct while there was such as to justify his enemies in the clamorous outcry which they raised against him. It was suspected, and not without reason, that Bolingbroke's object in visiting Paris was not so much to negotiate the details of a general peace, as to make arrangements for the restoration of the exiled royal family. It was reported in England that he had had at least one interview with the Pretender; it is now clearly ascertained that he had two. His conduct, which had long been most suspicious, was now openly canvassed with the utmost freedom. His useless and wanton treachery in the matter of the peace of Utrecht was remembered against him; the readiness with which he had deserted his party and his old patron Oxford, when the opposition was once more in the ascendant, was not forgotten; and even the follies and vices of his early manhood were cast up to him. These circumstances all marked him out as a man eminently unscrupulous, and reckless of the national honour, when it interfered with the prospects of his personal advancement. The airy fabric of his ambition, however, was overthrown by a circumstance of which he had never contemplated the possibility, and which he could not prevent. The queen died; George I. was quietly proclaimed; and the ambitious secretary was deprived of the seals. Harley laboured under the same suspicions with himself; each was suspected of favouring the cause of the Pretender, though from different motives. It was now resolved that both of them should be impeached. Bolingbroke received notice of his impending danger and fled to France, where he was warmly welcomed by the Pretender and his party, and pressed to accept the office of secretary. This office he held for a very short time. He failed as completely to secure the confidence of his new master as of his old partizans in England, and in 1716 was dismissed. In 1718 his wife died. Two years after he married the Marquise de Villette, the niece of Madame Maintenon, a widow of large fortune. He resided for some years upon his wife's property, devoting his time entirely to literary pursuits, and the entertainment of literary men. Amongst others who visited him in his retreat was the young Voltaire, who submitted to him the manuscript of the Henriade, which he had just completed. It was now that he composed his Reflections upon Exile. In 1723 he was informed that he was at liberty to return to England. He accordingly returned to his native country, where he remained, however, for a very short time. He soon returned to France, and removed thence to Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1724 he once more revisited England, and had the satisfaction of learning in the following year that the bill of attainder against him was reversed, and that he was now at liberty to resume his title and his fortune. Provision, however, had been expressly made that he should never again cross the threshold of the House of Lords. This qualified pardon Bolingbroke attributed to the influence and intrigues of Sir Robert Walpole. His old hostility against that minister revived, and for ten years he opposed his policy with all the bitterness and malignity of which he was capable. His invectives he published in the form of letters, under the title of The Occasional Writer. The success which attended these letters, and another series that appeared in a paper called the Craftsman, was so great as to place their author above all the political pamphleteers of the day, Swift alone excepted. Some of these contributions were afterwards republished, and have descended to us as the Letters on the History of England. So great was the impression they produced that the government prosecuted the publisher, and menaced the author in a manner that elicited from him one of the most brilliant and witty of all his compositions. Finding at length that, on the accession of George II., his hopes of political preferment were blighted for ever, he resolved to retire to France, and devote the remainder of his days to the study of history and philosophy. He set out for the Continent with his wife early in 1735, and did not again visit England till summoned by the death of his father in 1742. Bad health once more drove him to France, and shortly after to the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1744 he had a last farewell to the Continent. He returned to England only to find that all the friends of his early years had passed away. Gay, Prior, Atterbury, and Windham were gone; Swift had recently died; and Pope did not survive him long. By his will the great poet appointed Bolingbroke his literary executor, and made over to him all his manuscripts "to preserve or to destroy." None of these documents were allowed to see the light, and the statesmen ever persecuted the memory of the poet with a rancour that has not yet been satisfactorily explained. From this time till his death he devoted all his time and energies to correcting and arranging his works for posthumous publication. Lady Bolingbroke, whose health had been for a long time declining, died in 1750, and on the 15th December 1751, her husband closed his stormy career. He was buried beside his wife in the family vaults at Battersea, where a long epitaph, written by himself, records his history, his virtues, and his misfortunes.

Bolingbroke's fame with posterity will rest chiefly on his oratory. No specimen of his oratorical powers has descended to our times, save a small fragment, of which the finest passage is avowedly borrowed from Demosthenes. When we recollect, however, the great natural advantages he possessed, the splendour of his personal appearance, his clear and powerful voice, and his action unsurpassed for ease and grace; when we remember, moreover, his great natural endowments, which he had taken care to improve by long and severe study, his great acquaintance with history, his brilliant wit, and the copious felicity of his diction, we cannot but believe that he takes rank as on the whole the greatest of British orators. Such was the opinion of Pitt, who, on one occasion discoursing on the lost treasures of the past, and hearing his friends lament, one the lost books of Livy, another those of Tacitus, declared that for his part he regretted most of all the speeches of Bolingbroke. Such, too, is the opinion of Lord Brougham, the greatest orator of our own day. As a writer his influence has long since passed away—a circumstance which made Burke ask "Who now reads Bolingbroke?" As a spectator he merits little gratitude from posterity. When Dr Johnson was asked his opinion of Bolingbroke's ethical works, he replied "Bolingbroke, sir, was a scoundrel and a coward; he loaded a blunderbuss against Christianity, which he had not the courage to fire during his lifetime; but left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotsman to draw the trigger after he was dead." The "hungry Scotsman" here alluded to was David Mallet, to