of the greatest general the world ever knew:
'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men
cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my
Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into
prison or into the pillory without the least commiseration.

From having been a man of arms Mr. Esmond had now come to be a man of
letters, but on a safer side than that in which the above-cited poor
fellows ventured their liberties and ears. There was no danger on ours,
which was the winning side; besides, Mr. Esmond pleased himself by
thinking that he writ like a gentleman if he did not always succeed as a
wit.

Of the famous wits of that age, who have rendered Queen Anne's reign
illustrious, and whose works will be in all Englishmen's hands in ages
yet to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at public places chiefly; never
having a great intimacy with any of them, except with honest Dick Steele
and Mr. Addison, who parted company with Esmond, however, when that
gentleman became a declared Tory, and lived on close terms with the
leading persons of that party. Addison kept himself to a few friends,
and very rarely opened himself except in their company. A man more
upright and conscientious than he it was not possible to find in public
life, and one whose conversation was so various, easy, and delightful.
Writing now in my mature years, I own that I think Addison's politics
were the right, and were my time to come over again, I would be a Whig
in England and not a Tory; but with people that take a side in politics,
'tis men rather than principles that commonly bind them. A kindness or a
slight puts a man under one flag or the other, and he marches with it
to the end of the campaign. Esmond's master in war was injured by
Marlborough, and hated him: and the lieutenant fought the quarrels of
his leader. Webb coming to London was used as a weapon by Marlborough's
enemies (and true steel he was, that honest chief); nor was his
aide-de-camp, Mr. Esmond, an unfaithful or unworthy partisan. 'Tis
strange here, and on a foreign soil, and in a land that is independent
in all but the name, (for that the North American colonies shall remain
dependants on yonder little island for twenty years more, I never can
think,) to remember how the nation at home seemed to give itself up to
the domination of one or other aristocratic party, and took a Hanoverian
king, or a French one, according