was like Swift to resent the well-meant kindness
of his patron, and to refuse to go near his house
till Harley had apologised for offering a gift which
had never been asked. But Harley was the last
man to be vexed at this show of independence,
which must have amused him ; for no one knew
better than he how dependent the best party
publicists were on high officials.
The able writers who were serving the Tory
party were eager for a reward in some form or
other, and when they received it in the shape of
an appointment they generally regarded it as less
218 ROBERT HARTLEY
than they deserved, and a demand for money some-
times followed.
"I'm no more to converse with the swains,
But go where fine people resort ;
One can live without money on plains,
But never without it at Court.
If when with the swains I did gambol,
I arrayed me in silver and blue ;
When abroad and in Courts I shall ramble, ,
Pray, my Lord, how much money will do?"
There are many ways of begging, and one could
not well be asked more agreeably than in these
lines, in which Gay, when he was appointed
through Harley s good offices secretary to Lord
Clarendon's mission to Hanover (1714), suggested
to the Lord Treasurer that a present would at the
moment be very acceptable.^
De Foe did not mince matters in this fashion ;
he expected to be paid, and when the money did
not come promptly, he asked for it. He would have
taken the fifty pounds which Swift refused without
ado, and we like him all the better for his sincerity.
* Gay's request for money so pleasantly placed before the Lord
Treasurer was evidently without effect, for among the Welbeck
papers is the following note from Gay: "1714, June 10. ā Your
Lordship's continued goodness towards me makes me presume to
remind you of your shepherd's petition. My Lord Clarendon tells
me he sends his things down the water to-morrow and embarks on
Saturday. The time to provide myself is very short, but I submit
myself entirely to your Lordship's will and pleasure, and now attend
your commands." ā Harley Papers^ iii. 457.
JOHN GA^ā
From an nnjittished sketch by Sir Godfrey Knelier in i/u A'ational Portrait Gallery
THE PATRON 219
For Harley knew quite well that behind this
outward pride of Swift's existed the aesire for a
reward greater than a sum of money. He was
well aware, too, how in the age of Anne literary
success depended not a little on the patronage of
a nobleman. It was as a patron that Harley was
first interested in Pope. At his suggestion and
that of the Duke of Shrewsbury, Pope versified
the Satires of Donne, a fact which years after its
occurrence he was careful to state ; for no writer
ever had a more business-like mind. " Pardon
me," he once wrote to Gay, *'if I add a word of
advice in the poetical way," and that advice was ā
" write something on the king or prince or princess."
And thus, while it pleased statesmen to believe
that they could suggest themes to an author, the
belief was still more agreeable to the writer, since
it enlisted in his favour the influence of powerful
patrons. It was a practice which, though it seemed
derogatory to the self-respect of a man of letters, was
well understood to be simply a form of advertise-
ment. No one took it very seriously, and its purpose
was achieved when it made known the work of an
author to a rather limited public. The news-letter,
the stage coach, and the patron were each of
them necessary in the existing state of society.
Harley had a kindly temperament, and was
without either pride or egotism. Nothing surprised
Swift more than that at the very beginning of their
220 ROBERT HARLEY
connection Harley should treat him like an old
friend. The highest honours did not change his
manner, and when Swift attended a levde soon
after Harley became Lord Treasurer in 1711, **he
whispered me," he writes in his Journal to Stella^
"a jest or two, and bade me come to dinner."
To appreciate the society of the great writers
who were gathered in London at the beginning of
the eighteenth century, it was not necessary either
to be an author or a man gifted with literary per-
ception ; no intelligent person with a knowledge of
the world could fail to enjoy the companionship of
the men who were grouped around the Lord Trea-
surer. Yet it is remarkable that this union, which
is so famous, lasted, so far as Harley is concerned,
for so short a time. De Foe, whose connection
with him began, as we have told, in 1703, took no
part in the literary gatherings in London. Swift
did not know Harley before his introduction in
1 7 10, and Swift and Dr. Arbuthnot,^ who was the
life and soul of the company, did not meet till 171 1.
^ John Arbuthnot, 1667- 1735. Born at Arbuthnot, Kincardineshire.
In 1689 took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at St. Andrews. He
came to London and gave lessons in mathematics ; from 1697-1700
published various scientific works. In 1704 Arbuthnot was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1705 Physician Extraordinary to
the Queen, and in 17 10 was admitted a Fellow of the College of
Physicians. In 17 12 he published Law is a Bottomless Pit^ or
the History of John Bull. He was the main if not the exclusive
author of the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, first published in an
edition of Pope's Works in 1714. In his last years he wrote more
scientific and medical works.
DR. ARBUTHNOT 221
No doubt Harley and Arbuthnot had been ac-
quainted before this year, for on 30th October
1705, Arbuthnot had become Physician Extra-
ordinary to the Queen. Though eminent in his
profession, he doubtless owed his appointment not
a Httle to his learning, humour, and agreeable
character.
"Preserve him cheerful, social, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a Queen,"
wrote Pope in a couplet admirably descriptive of
this excellent man and of the qualities which
tended to his advancement at Court. A distin-
guished physician, a scientific writer, and a wit who
could produce so permanent a pamphlet as the
History of John Bull, which gave to the Englishman
a sobriquet which has become perpetual, he was
valued by his friends as the most delightful of
companions. But besides Swift and Arbuthnot,
there were associated Gay,^ then quite young,
and but just beginning his odd life of mingled
failure and success ; and Parnell,^ who was now a
protege of Swift's, and whom he introduced to
^ John Gay, 1 688-1 732. Born at Barnstaple and educated at its
Grammar School. In 1708 he published his first poem, "Wine" ; in
1714, "The Fair and the Shepherd's Week." In the same year he
became secretary to Lord Clarendon, the Envoy to the Court of
Hanover, whose mission was ended by the death of the Queen. In
1 7 16 "Trivia" was published, in 1727 "The Fables," and in 1728
the famous " Beggars' Opera."
2 Thomas Parnell, 1679-17 18. Born in Dublin, he was educated
at Trinity College, ordained in 1700, and held various preferments.
He inherited an estate in Armagh from his mother. He first visited
222 ROBERT HARLEY
Harley in 17 12. Pope, too, and Prior, with an
acknowledged reputation as a diplomatist and a
poet, were of the company. Just when Harley
reached the height of his power in 171 1, the in-
dividual intercourse of these kindred spirits became
closer, and occasional meetings of the friends more
frequent, and from that tendency to form political
and social organisations which was to develop into
the modern club, there grew an organised company.
In June 171 1 a club or society was formed, Tory
in its politics, but not established directly for party
purposes, of which the inner circle, with a mixture
of pleasantry and affection, called each other brother.^
Its founder was Bolingbroke, and, strangely enough,
Harley was not elected to this company. "It
seems," says Swift in his Journal {21st June 1711),
** in my absence they had elected a club and made
me one, and we made some laws to-day which I
am to digest and add to against next meeting.
Our meetings are to be every Tuesday : we are
yet but twelve : Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer
were proposed : but I was against them and so
was Mr. Secretary, ^ though their sons are of it,
and so they are excluded. The end of our club
is to advance conversation and friendship and to
London in 1706. The first collected edition of his poems was pub-
lished in 1721.
^ The society has consequently become known as the Brothers'
Club.
2 Bolingbroke.
THE BROTHERS' CLUB 223
reward deserving persons with our interest and
recommendation. We take in none but men of
wit or men of interest : and if we go on as we
began, no other club in this town will be worth
talking of." Bolingbroke described it in similar
terms: *'The improvement of friendship and the
encouragement of letters are to be the two great
ends of our society."^ It met once a week, usually
at some tavern. ** Society day," notes Swift on
27th March 171 2, "you know that, I suppose.
Dr. Arbuthnot was President. His dinner was
dressed in the Queen's kitchen, and was mighty
fine. We ate at Ozindas Chocolate House just
by St. James'. We were never merrier nor better
company, and did not part till after eleven ... I
met Lord Treasurer to-day at Lady Masham's.
He would fain have carried me home to dinner.
No, no. What ! upon a society day ! " Sometimes
the members joined in a humbler repast at
Arbuthnot's rooms or at Prior's house, to which
Harley was invited ā a fact suggestive of his tastes ā
" Our weekly friends to-morrow meet.
At Matthew's palace, in Duke Street,
To try, for once, if they can dine
On bacon, ham, and mutton chine.
If, weary'd with the great affairs
Which Britain trusts to Harley's cares,
Thou, humble statesman, may'st descend
Thy mind one moment to unbend,
^ Bolingbroke to the Earl of Orrery, I2th June 171 1. ā Boling-
broke^s Corresp,, edited by Parke.
224 ROBERT HARLEY
To see thy servant from his soul
Crown with thy health the sprightly bowl ;
Among the guests which e'er my house
Received, it never can produce
Of honour a more glorious proof,
Though Dorset us'd to bless the roof."
Such was Prior's invitation to Harley to a dinner
of the club, which gradually increased in numbers.
Its repasts, too, became more costly. *' Our society
met to-day " (7th February 1 7 1 2) ; "we have lessened
our dinners, which were grown so extravagant that
Lord Treasurer and everybody else cried shame."
Harley was economical in private as in public
matters, and we see his judicious influence here ;
but it could not avail much, for Ormond, Bathurst,
and other noblemen who belonged to the club were
not the men to dine frugally. It was enjoyable
enough to listen to Swift and Prior demolish the
Whigs over the dinner-table, or to hear Swift read
his coming publications at dessert, but the evening
was pleasanter when the dishes and the wine were
as excellent as the company. Thus by the end of the
year the club had grown too fashionable and too
costly for some of its founders, and Swift was tired
of it. *' I propose (i8th December) our meetings
should be once a fortnight, for between you and
me we do no good. It cost me nineteen shillings
to-day for my club dinner; I don't like it." But
the men of letters who were members of it were as
close friends as ever ā vivacity and wit and high
THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB 225
spirits were their natural gifts, and under the in-
fluence of this union of qualities there grew that
unique literary and social companionship which
has become famous as the Scriblerus Club. Yet
stronger than the bond of intellectual was that of
personal sympathy, appreciation of and pleasure in
the attractive traits by which each friend was char-
acterised ā kindness, generosity, and open-hearted-
ness. Common intellectual tastes and a common
political interest would never alone have produced
that true and kindly union which was the basis of
the Scriblerus Club. And it certainly was not be-
cause of his interest in letters, or his power as head
of the Tory party, that Harley was admitted to its
meetings. For the society to which the Brothers'
Club, as it has been called, with its singular union
of men of letters and powerful noblemen, had given
place was at once more intimate, more personal, and
less formal, one to which a man was not elected
unless he were liked. " Men of interest," who were
to form one element in the larger club, were not
wanted at its gatherings, but men of common
sympathies ; and it was because Harley possessed
some of those agreeable qualities which tend to
good fellowship ā an equable and a cheerful temper,
and a simple and kindly nature ā that he became a
friend of the writers with whom he mingled on equal
terms, and who invited the Lord Treasurer to join
them in their meetings without ceremony, and in
15
226 ROBERT HARLEY
simple good comradeship, welcoming him not as
their political chief, but as a pleasant and appreci-
ative companion.
"Then come and take part in
The Memoirs of Martin,
Lay by your white staff and grey habit ;
For trust us, friend Mortimer,
Should you Hve years forty more,
Hoc olitn mefninisse Juvabit."
Such is the concluding stanza of the lines sent to
Harley and signed ** by order of ye Club " by Pope,
Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Parnell, bidding him to
their gatherings.^
The club itself was short-lived. We hear of it
first in 1 7 14, and it ceased on Harley 's fall in the
same year. The object of those members who
were at once men of letters and intimate friends
was to write a series of satires on pedantry and
pretended learning. Some of this congenial task
was accomplished, the principal result being the
Memoirs of Scriblerus, of which the first book only
was completed. To ** ridicule all the false taste in
learning, under the character of a man of capacity
enough that had dropped into every art and science
but injudiciously in each," was Pope's description
of these memoirs. Probably written almost entirely
by Arbuthnot, they were not published until 1741,
and then among Pope's Works, The **Art of
Sinking in Poetry," and "Straddling versus Stiles,"
^ Aitken's Life of Arbuthnot^ from the Longleat MSS., p. 56.
THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB 227
both in the same vein as the Memoirs, were origin-
ally published among Miscellanies in Prose and
Verse by Pope and Swift in 1727, whilst "An
Essay of the Learned Martinus Scriblerus con-
cerning the Origin of Sciences " appeared in another
volume of the same work in 1732. In these satires,
Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, as well as in some
measure Parnell and Gay, had a hand. Harley
may have given some hints, for, wrote Gay to
Swift in June 17 14, ''we had the honour of the
Treasurer's company last Saturday, when we sat
upon Scriblerus."^ This was the most critical time
in Harley's career, and it must have been with a
feeling of no little relief that he spent an evening
with these men of letters ā at once sociable, witty,
and irresponsible, talking of their friends and of their
literary projects, where he could forget for the hour
the jealousies, the intrigues, and the ambitions of
which the Cabinet of the Queen was the centre.
From this literary group, united not only by
intellectual but by the closest personal sympathies,
Harley disappeared with dramatic rapidity, and
never rejoined it, though in his occasional visits
to London he met some of his old friends. " The
Dragon," wrote Arbuthnot to Swift in 1718,
using the sobriquet which the Dean had given to
Harley, because, as he said, *' he was the mildest
Minister that ever served a prince," **is just as he
^ June 8th, 17 14. Aitken's Life of Arbuthnot, p. 60.
228 ROBERT HARLEY
was, only all his old habits ten times stronger upon
him than ever."^ Swift, too, departed from it
when he finally returned to exile in Ireland, to
be welcomed back only for a short time in 1727,
and Pope and Gay and Arbuthnot in after years
were left to represent the brilliant company which
the political cataclysm of 1714 permanently dis-
persed. In September of that eventful year Parnell
and Pope wrote to Arbuthnot a joint letter which
is a farewell to the club : ** It is a pleasure to us
to recollect the satisfaction we enjoyed in your
company, when we used to meet the Dean and
Gay with you ; and Greatness ^ itself condescended
to look in at the door to us. Then it was the
immortal Scriblerus smiled upon our endeavours,
who now hangs his head in an obscure corner
pining for his friends that are scattering over
the face of the earth." ^ By Harley these gather-
ings were remembered with satisfaction long after
those who formed them were dispersed by various
destinies. " I look back indeed," he wrote to Pope
in a dignified and friendly reply to the letter with
which in 1721 was sent the famous dedication to
Harley prefixed to the edition of Parnell's Poems,
** I look back to those evenings I have usefully
and pleasantly spent with Mr. Pope, Mr. Parnell,
Dean Swift, the Doctor, etc."*
^ Aitken's Life of Arbuthnot^ p. 92. ^ Harley.
3 Aitken's Arbuthnot ^ p. 79. * Pope's Works ^ viii. 189.
CHARACTER OF THE SOCIETY 229
Not one of Harley's memories, as in his peaceful
Herefordshire home he surveyed the critical and
anxious years of his public life, can have been so
agreeable as that of the hours which he passed in
Arbuthnot's rooms in St. James' Palace, with the
men of letters who are inseparably identified with
the age of Anne, and among whom the harassed
statesman for a short time could forget his political
anxieties.
But neither the Brothers' nor the Scriblerus
Club can be regarded as isolated groups, for
Addison and Steele were the comrades of Wharton
and Sunderland, as Pope, Swift, and Gay were of
Harley and Bolingbroke. The club formed part of
a unique society in which Harley was a conspicuous
figure, and which was as remarkable for its sense of
equality as for its ease and brilliancy. It retained
some of the brightest characteristics of the Restora-
tion, and it had not yet been overcome by the
dulness of the Court of the four Georges. The
easy sociability of the Lord Treasurer's weekly
political dinners on Saturday afternoons was as
agreeable as the more intimate causeries in Lady
Masham's apartments, and the universal apprecia-
tion of letters broke down social barriers. When
Swift was at Court, he tells Stella, one day in
December (171 1), as the Tories were rejoicing at
Harley's unhoped-for victory over the Whigs, *'the
Duchess of Shrewsbury came running up to me,
230 ROBERT HARLEY
and clapped her fan up to hide us from the
company, and we gave one another joy of this
change." In all that invaluable letter -diary of
Swift's we have no more vivid and suggestive
picture than this : the poor Irish parson ā for that is
what he was ā and the Duchess with their heads
together behind the fluttering fan, rejoicing over
the defeat of their political enemies. Literature
and politics, high society, personal ambition and
personal enmity, are personified in a moment, in a
corner of the Court, that Court which was the
scene of the triumphs and of the downfall of
Harley.
In concluding this review of the connection
between Harley and his literary friends, it is scarcely
needful to point out that the association of literature
with politics, and so of men of letters with the Court,
was not a mere accidental social phenomenon, but a
noticeable phase in the history of English letters,
a result of that enlargement of national life, and that
growth of the modern spirit which showed itself so
vividly both in politics and commerce during the
first years of the eighteenth century, when, after
passing through the two unexampled crises of the
Rebellion and the Revolution, and after dominat-
ing the Grand Alliance against France in a war
which raged from the Scheld to the Danube, the
nation was ripe for the commencement of a new
epoch of peaceable development. The widespread
LITERATURE AND POLITICS 231
interest which was felt from one end of England
to the other in the politics of the hour, gave,
when they discussed them, the largest scope to
the ablest writers of the day, the quickest and
surest rewards, the most extensive public applause.
Men of letters were never before or since so closely
concerned with public affairs, not in a special
capacity, as must always happen from time to time,
and as occurred in the secretaryship of Addison,
but as users of the pen. The open connection in
the age of Anne between statesmen and writers,
whether Whigs or Tories, was an official and public
recognition of the importance of their work and
of its increasing effect on English opinion ā a re-
cognition which, as it became more general, became
the appreciation of journalism as a great factor in
national life, while the personalities of the men who
did the work were lost in the force which their
celebrated predecessors had created. This out-
burst of literary activity in the form which has now
become so vast and so common, is the more striking
since it was not only sudden in its advent, but was
singularly brilliant. It produced publications which,
though ephemeral in intention, have long outlived
their authors, and were powerful without visible
effort, and as effective in purpose as they were
attractive in style, and have caused the work of
Swift and Addison, of Steele and ā though he was
not of the Court group, and an assistant, not a friend,
232 ROBERT HARLEY
of Harley ā it must be added, of De Foe, to
become English classics. The remarkable per-
ception which Harley possessed of the trend of
popular feeling, his natural love of books, his
kindly temperament, and his position as chief of
the Administration, caused him to become the
central figure round which were gathered in vary-
ing degrees of relationship or intimacy the men of
letters who were at work for the Tory party. In
the interest which is felt in the personal aspect of
these associations, one is inclined to overlook their
importance as incidents in the growth of national
life.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
SWIFT'S CHARACTER OF THE EARL OF
OXFORD 1
The Earl of Oxford is a person of as much virtue as can
possibly consist with the love of power; and his love of
power is no greater than what is common to men of his
superior capacities ; neither did any man ever appear
to value it less after he had obtained it, or exert it with
more moderation. He is the only instance that ever fell
within my memory or observation, of a person passing
from a private life, through the several stages of greatness,
without any perceivable impression upon his temper or
behaviour. As his own birth was illustrious, being
descended from the heirs general of the Veres and the
Mortimers, so he seemed to value that accidental advantage
in himself and others more than it could pretend to deserve.
He abounded in good nature and good humour ; although
subject to passion, as I have heard it affirmed by others,
and owned by himself ; which, however, he kept under the
strictest government, till toward the end of his ministry,
when he began to grow soured, and to suspect his friends ;
and, perhaps, thought it not worth his pains to manage
^ From an Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's Last Ministry with
relation to their quarrels among themselves and the design charged upon
them of altering the succession to the Crown.ā Swift's WorkSy v. 265.
\ 283
234 APPENDIX I
any longer. He was a great favourer of men of wit and
learning, particularly the former ; whom he caressed with-
out distinction of party, and could not endure to think
that any of them should be his enemies ; and it was his
good fortune that none of them ever appeared to be so ;
at least if one may judge by the libels and pamphlets
published against him, which he frequently read, by way
of amusement, with a most unaffected indifference : neither
do I remember ever to have endangered his good opinion
so much as by appearing uneasy when the dealers in that
kind of writing first began to pour out their scurrilities
against me ; which he thought was a weakness altogether
inexcusable in a man of virtue and liberal education. He
had the greatest variety of knowledge that I have
anywhere met with ; was a perfect master of the learned
languages, and well skilled in divinity. He had a
prodigious memory and a most exact judgment. In
drawing up any state paper, no man had more proper
thoughts, or put them in so strong and clear a light.
Although his style were not always correct, ā which,
however, he knew how to mend, ā yet often, to save time,