come to maturity. With what admirable skill and incomparable address
Marlborough kept together the unwieldy alliance will hereafter appear.
Never was a man so qualified by nature for such a task. He was courtesy
and grace personified. It was a common saying at the time, that neither
man nor woman could resist him. "Of all the men I ever knew," says no
common man, himself a perfect master of the elegances he so much
admired, "the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the
highest degree, not to say engrossed them. Indeed he got the most by
them, and contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always
assign deep causes for great events, I ascribe the better half of the
Duke of Marlborough's greatness to those graces. He had no brightness,
nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent
plain understanding, and sound judgment. But these qualities alone would
probably have never raised him higher than they found him, which was
page to James the Second's queen. But there the grace protected and
promoted him. His figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible,
either by man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that
he was enabled, during all his war, to connect the various and jarring
powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of
the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies,
and wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged
to go to restive and refractory ones) he brought them into his measures.
The pensionary Heinsius, who had governed the United Provinces for forty
years, was absolutely governed by him. He was always cool, and nobody
ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse
more gracefully than others could grant, and those who went from him the
most dissatisfied as to the substance of their business, were yet
charmed by his manner, and, as it were, comforted by it."[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Letters and Despatches of John Churchill, First Duke of
Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712._ Edited by SIR GEORGE MURRAY, G.C.B.,
Master-General of the Ordnance, &c. 3 vols. London, 1845.

[2] "Marlborough," says Swift, "is as voracious as hell, and as
ambitious as the devil. What he desires above every thing is to be made
commander-in-chief for life, and it is to satisfy his ambition and his
avarice that he has opposed so many intrigues to the efforts made for
the restoration of