oice, a word said in
joke, or a trifle in behaviour--the cut of his hair or the tie of his
neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or
at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says
something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which
alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on
quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is
so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for
example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of
Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part;
the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the
politics of the age--he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even
of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible
boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the
Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the
Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who
has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called
the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret
motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career,
which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and
treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on
the Hanoverian side--the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a
portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's
portrait or Swift's portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take
this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other,
and say to the Muse of History, "O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I
doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse!
For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more
trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look
down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers: Nonsense!
He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You
pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter
outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it,
and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me
an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those,
perhaps, of M