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Bolingbroke, during his lifetime, had never scrupled to publish criticisms, remarkable for their freedom, on religious subjects. I cannot gather to what he refers; and Mr. Walter Sichel, in his copious biography (2 vols. 1901-1902), indicates no such publications. The Letters on the Study and Use of History, which contain (Lett. iii, sect. 2) a skeptical discussion of the Pentateuch as history, though written in 1735-36, were only posthumously published, in 1752. The Examen Important de Milord Bolingbroke, produced by Voltaire in 1767, but dated 1736, is Voltaire's own work, based on Bolingbroke. In his letter to Swift of September 12, 1724 (Swift's Works, Scott's ed. 1824, xvi, 448-49), Bolingbroke angrily repudiates the title of esprit fort, declaring, in the very temper in which pious posterity has aspersed himself, that
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In this letter he even affects to believe in
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He began to write his essays, it is true, before his withdrawal to France in 1735, but with no intention of speedily publishing them. In his Letter to Mr. Pope (published with the Letter to Wyndham, 1753), p. 481, he writes:
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I have been a martyr of faction in politics, and have no vocation to be so in philosophy. Cp. pp. 485-86. It is thus a complete blunder on the part of Bagehot to say (Literary Studies, Hutton's ed. iii, 137) that Butler's Analogy, published in 1736, was
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It is even said (Warton, Essay on Pope, 4th ed. ii, 294-95) that Pope did not know Bolingbroke's real opinions; but Pope's untruthfulness was such as to discredit such a statement. Cp. Bolingbroke's Letter as cited, p. 521, and his Philosophical Works, 8vo-ed. 1754, ii, 405. It is noteworthy that a volume of controversial sermons entitled A Preservative against unsettled notions and Want of Principles in Religion, so entirely stupid in its apologetics as to be at times positively entertaining, was published in 1715 by Joseph Trapp, M.A.,
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Chaplain to the Right Honble. The Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.