restraint. Not unnaturally it is with Bolingbroke that he is on terms of closest intimacy. He had shared that great man's secrets from the time of their first acquaintance. Together they had lived through the last troubled years of the Queen's reign. Together they had fallen into disgrace, and had known the misery of exile. And thus retired, both of them, from the competition of life, they were free to discuss philosophy and to defy the Whigs. While Bolingbroke affected a contempt of the world. Swift cried Vive la Bagatelle, and hoped to silence the voice of regret. But, if Bolingbroke was most intimate to his understanding, Arbuthnot was nearest to Swift's heart. The two men were of the same temperament, scholars and ironists both. Yet it was for themselves that Swift and Arbuthnot loved one another, not for their intellectual gifts. "All your honour, generosity, good nature, good sense, wit, and every other praise-worthy quality," wrote Swift to Arbuthnot in 1714, "will never make me think one jot the better of you. That time is now some years
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