that there were not three men of whom he ever dropped a word with rancour.  What I meant of the clergy not forgiving Lord Bolingbroke, alluded not to his doctrines, but to the direct attack and war he made on the whole body.  And now, Sir, I will confess my own weakness to you.  I do not think so highly of that writer, as I seem to do in my book; but I thought it would be imputed to prejudice in me, if I appeared to undervalue an author of whom so many persons of sense still think highly.  My being Sir Robert Walpole’s son warped me to praise, instead of censuring Lord Bolingbroke.  With regard to the Duke of Leeds,[2] I think you have misconstrued the decency of my expression.  I said, Burnet[3] had treated him severely; that is, I chose that Burnet should say so, rather than myself.  I have never praised where my heart condemned.  Little attentions, perhaps, to worthy descendants, were excusable in a work of so extensive a nature, and that approached so near to these times.  I may, perhaps, have an opportunity, at one day or other of showing you some passages suppressed on these motives, which yet I do not intend to destroy.

[Footnote 1:  Sir R. Walpole was so far from having any personal quarrel with Bolingbroke, that he took off so much of his outlawry as banished him, though he would not allow him to take his seat in the House of Peers.]

[Footnote 2:  This celebrated statesman was originally Sir Thomas Osborne.  On the dissolution of the Cabal Ministry he was raised to the peerage as Earl of Danby, and was appointed Lord Treasurer.  An attempt to impeach him, which was prompted by Louis XIV., was baffled by Charles.  Under William III. he was appointed President of the Council, being the recognised leader of the Tory section of the Ministry; and in the course of the reign he was twice promoted—­first to be Marquis of Carmarthen, and subsequently to be Duke of Leeds.]

[Footnote 3:  Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, to whose “Memoirs of His Own Time” all subsequent historians are greatly indebted.  He accompanied William to England as his chaplain.]

Crew,[1] Bishop of Durham, was as abject a tool as possible.  I would be very certain he is an author before I should think him worth mentioning.  If ever you should touch on Lord Willoughby’s sermon, I should be obliged for a hint of it.  I actually have a printed copy of verses by his son, on the marriage of the Princess Royal; but they are so ridiculously unlike measure, and the man was so mad and so poor, that I determined not to mention him.

[Footnote 1:  Crew was Bishop of Durham.  He is branded by Macaulay (c. 6) as “mean, vain, and cowardly.”  He accepted a seat on James’s Ecclesiastical Commission, and when “some of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by sitting on an illegal tribunal, he was not ashamed to answer that he could not live out of the royal smile.”]

If these details, Sir, which I should have thought interesting to no mortal but myself, should happen to amuse you, I shall be glad; if they do not, you will learn not to question a man who thinks it his duty to satisfy the curiosity of men of sense and honour, and who, being of too little consequence to have secrets, is not ambitious of the less consequence of appearing to have any.