Thus got rid of by an intrigue, the Tories, and at their head the two celebrated statesmen, Harley and Bolingbroke, worked steadfastly in the dark to regain power. Harley was a skilful and eloquent orator. He had quitted the bar to enter parliament, and his suppleness as well as his talents had rapidly carried him on to the Speakership and the Ministry. He had specially directed his attention to finance, and passed for the most skilful financier of his day. A man of wit and taste, he loved books and manuscripts, and patronised the most illustrious writers of the reign: Swift, the English Rabelais, Pope, Boileau, and Prior, the Regnier of Great Britain. But he was not unjustly reproached for his obstinacy of character, the changeableness of his opinions, his proneness to descend to little means, and an unfortunate passion for drink.[42]
[42] This habit of drinking had then invaded even the highest ranks of English society, the Queen herself not being exempt. Walpole, Harley's enemy, has traced a curious and tolerably accurate portrait of him in his "Letters."
The other chief of the Tory party was Henry St. John, so well-known under the name of Bolingbroke.[43] He descended from an old Norman family allied to the royal house of Tudor. His grandfather, as though he had foreseen the future, had bequeathed him the greater part of his property, and Bolingbroke began the world under the happiest auspices of birth and fortune. At twenty-six, after a career of youthful licentiousness, he married and entered parliament. He had all the necessary qualifications for playing a distinguished part therein: a noble countenance, ready eloquence, an incredible capacity for work, a mind which later astonished Voltaire, a memory so retentive that he avoided reading mediocre books from the fear of retaining their contents. At thirty, his lofty and copious oratory, unceasingly fed by study of the ancient models, captivated both Lords and Commons. His powerful and versatile genius embraced at once poetry and jurisprudence, history and the _belles lettres_. He was associated, like Harley, with the first writers in England--Pope, Prior, Swift, Dryden, even with Addison himself, the Whig poet and essayist. He was one of those consummate orators who, joining grace to eloquence, was the foremost alike in pleasure or business. He was in the habit of saying that only fools were unable to find or enjoy leisure. He possessed, in short, the peculiar talents and vices which were destined later to immortalise as well as disgrace Mirabeau.