In  his  luminous  Letter  to  Sir  William  Windham,^  by  far
the  most  memorable  and  the  best  written  of  all  his  pieces, 4

I  So  Mr.  Lecky,  i.   120.
*  There  was  a  groiip  of  Hanoverian  or  "  whunsical "  Tories,
but  these  were  mere  parliamentary  strategists,  not  representative
of  the  true  Tory  spirit.
3  This  is  Bohngbroke's  speUing  of  the  name,  now  commonly
written  Wyndham.
4  Cp.  Hallam,  Const.  Hist.,  11th  ed.  ii.  227,  note.  It  is  still  common
to  give  this  praise  to  the  Letters  on  the  Study  of  History.  The  student
can  decide  for  himself  which  in  the  more  vital  performance — the


BOLINGBROKB   AND  TORYISM  51

he  has  revived  the  situation  for  us  with  the  vividness
of  an  embittered  memory.  With,  for  once,  the  keen
concision  of  a  great  writer  handling  themes  he  is  long
master  of,  he  retails  the  causes  of  the  collapse  of  the
Jacobite  party  ;  of  the  first  fatal  hesitation,  of  the  later
drifting  and  blundering.  But  all  the  while  nothing  is
more  clear  than  his  own  defect  of  political  motive  and
purpose,  other  than  self-advancement.
No  doubt  he  might  have  played  the  game  better  if  he
had  earlier  had  the  leadership  of  his  party.  Whether
or  not  his  colleague  Harley,  Lord  Oxford,  was  as  vacilla-
ting as  Bolingbroke  alleged, ^  the  latter  would  certainly
have  steered  the  course  with  more  zeal  for  Toryism  as
a  faction  than  Oxford  ever  showed.  It  was  well  for
England  that  he  was  thwarted.
concrete  narrative,   vibrating  with  actuality,  or   the   declamatory
review  of  a  telescoped  past,  of  which  the  writer  had  only  loose  and
unstudious  knowledge.     The   best   part   of   the  Letters  is  precisely
that   (Let.  viii)  which  deals  with  Bolingbroke's  own  time.
«  Letter  to  Windham,  ed.   1753,  pp.   55-66.
