![]() On the other side of the spectrum, Samuel Johnson told James Boswell that Bolingbroke Having previously engaged closely with Bolingbroke’s political journalism, David Hume was disparaging about Bolingbroke’s philosophical works when they appeared for the first time in the 1750s. When Edmund Burke wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790): “Who now reads Bolingbroke, whoever read him through?”, he was indeed referring to Bolingbroke’s philosophical works, and in particular his anti-clerical ones, as Burke would have known that Bolingbroke’s political writings were still widely read and cited. In the meantime, Bolingbroke returned to his second great passion besides politics: his love of letters and study.īolingbroke was a towering if controversial political figure and a sharp opposition pen in his lifetime, but his philosophical works, published posthumously, cast a long shadow over his legacy. He spent several years writing letters to various people trying to engineer a return, which eventually happened about a decade later. From then on, he would be mocked by the Whigs for having betrayed two kings in the space of one year.īolingbroke’s service at the Stuart court prevented him from returning to Britain. ![]() Bolingbroke took much of the flak for the failed rising and was dismissed from the Stuart court in 1716. There he was approached by exiled Jacobites and not long after he accepted the position of Secretary of State to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Pretender, serving the Jacobites during the botched ‘Fifteen’ rebellion. As a result of the Whigs’ vindictive behaviour (not unusual in eighteenth-century politics when ministries changed hands), Bolingbroke lost his nerve and went into exile in France. After the death of the queen and the accession of George I, who, as Elector of Hanover, viewed the Peace of Utrecht as a betrayal of Britain’s continental allies, the Tories, who were the peace party, were turned out and the Whigs returned to power. As a leading minister in Queen Anne’s Tory ministry between 17, Bolingbroke had negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 which ended Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. It was written in a period when Bolingbroke was in enforced exile in France. Previously, he had written mainly occasional poetry and on politics. Whether it was written in 1716 or in the early 1720s, it remains one of Bolingbroke’s earliest writings and probably one of his first, if not his very first, philosophical text. Mallet’s edition dated the Reflections as 1716, but a letter to Jonathan Swift in January 1722, where Bolingbroke said that he had just completed his treatise on exile, suggests that it is a later production. It had been published for the first time two years before together with the Letters on the Use and Study of History. But Bolingbroke did not only write about politics and history, he also wrote poetry, philosophical fragments and, perhaps most notoriously, about religion.īolingbroke’s Reflections upon Exile was printed as the second piece in the first volume of his collected works in 1754, edited by his literary executor, the Scottish poet David Mallet. As a political journalist in the opposition journal The Craftsman in the 1720s and 30s, he combined these two traits and talents. At the same time, he was also a quintessential eighteenth-century man of letters, drawn to study and contemplation. He was a man of action and a politician who was fond of power. Bolingbroke had two prominent character traits. The latter was partly imposed on him, and although he usually tried to escape his phases of seclusion, it was not a state he regretted entirely, at least not always. During his career, he alternated between moving in the circles of power and influence, and periods of isolation and exile. While Bolingbroke in many ways was an archetypal member of the British political class, he was also someone who managed to isolate himself politically on more than one occasion. In July 1712, he was raised to the House of Lords, having been made a viscount (although he wanted to be an earl like his one-time ally and now rival Robert Harley, earl of Oxford). ![]() Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) was one of the most prominent public figures in Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century, being ubiquitous in both political and intellectual life between entering Parliament in 1701 and the posthumous publication of his collected Works in 1754. For our latest blog welcomes Dr Max Skjönsberg (St Andrews) offering some insights into the early philosophical writings of Viscount Bolingbroke, written during the period of his first exile from Britain and after his unhappy involvement with the Jacobite court.
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