unguarded hours, and at a crisis when she was conscious Sir Robert was apprised of her inimical machinations in favour of Lord Bolingbroke, enjoined the few Germans who accompanied the King at those dinners to prevent his Majesty from drinking too freely.  Her spies obeyed too punctually, and without any address.  The King was offended, and silenced the tools by the coarsest epithets in the German language.  He even, before his departure, ordered Sir Robert to have the stone lodge finished against his return:  no symptom of a falling minister, as has since been supposed Sir Robert then was, and that Lord Bolingbroke was to have replaced him, had the King lived to come back.  But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly corroborated by what had recently passed:  the Duchess had actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his closet.  That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse coolly at his leisure.  The King kept the paper, but no longer than till he saw Sir Robert, to whom he delivered the poisoned remonstrance.  If that communication prognosticated the minister’s fall, I am at a loss to know what a mark of confidence is.

Nor was that discovery the first intimation that Walpole had received of the measure of Bolingbroke’s gratitude.  The minister, against the earnest representations of his family and Most intimate friends, had consented to the recall of that incendiary from banishment, (68) excepting only his readmission into the House of Lords, that every field of annoyance might not be open to his mischievous turbulence.  Bolingbroke, it seems, deemed an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his hand to launch every envenomed shaft against his benefactor, who by restricting had paid him the compliment of avowing that his eloquence was not totally inoffensive.  Craftsmen, pamphlet, libels, combinations, were showered on or employed for years against the prime-minister, without shaking his power or ruffling his temper; and Bolingbroke had the mortification of finding his rival had abilities to maintain his influence against the mistresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had plotted in vain to overturn him. (69)

(57) Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria.  In 1671 she became the second wife (his first being poisoned) of the brother of Louis xiv. by whom she was the mother of the regent, Duke of Orleans.  She died in 1722.  A collection of her letters, addressed to Prince Ulric of Brunswick, and to the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, was published at Paris in 1788.-E.

(58) These celebrated M`emoires of the Court of Louis xiv. were first published, in a mutilated state, in 1788.  A complete edition, in thirteen volumes, appeared in 1791.-E.