nversation with General Webb; and his lady, who adored her
general, and thought him a hundred times taller, handsomer, and braver
than a prodigal nature had made him, hated the great duke with such an
intensity as it becomes faithful wives to feel against their husbands'
enemies. Not that my lord duke was so yet; Mr. Webb had said a thousand
things against him, which his superior had pardoned; and his grace, whose
spies were everywhere, had heard a thousand things more that Webb had
never said. But it cost this great man no pains to pardon; and he passed
over an injury or a benefit alike easily.

Should any child of mine take the pains to read these, his ancestor's
memoirs, I would not have him judge of the great duke(10) by what a
contemporary has written of him. No man hath been so immensely lauded and
decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever
deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If the
present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private pique
of his own may be the cause of his ill-feeling.

On presenting himself at the commander-in-chief's levee, his grace had not
the least remembrance of General Lumley's aide de camp, and though he knew
Esmond's family perfectly well, having served with both lords (my Lord
Francis and the viscount, Esmond's father) in Flanders, and in the Duke of
York's Guard, the Duke of Marlborough, who was friendly and serviceable to
the (so-styled) legitimate representatives of the Viscount Castlewood,
took no sort of notice of the poor lieutenant who bore their name. A word
of kindness or acknowledgement, or a single glance of approbation, might
have changed Esmond's opinion of the great man; and instead of a satire,
which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that the humble historian
might have taken the other side of panegyric? We have but to change the
point of view, and the greatest action looks mean; as we turn the
perspective-glass, and a giant appears a pigmy. You may describe, but who
can tell whether your sight is clear or not, or your means of information
accurate? Had the great man said but a word of kindness to the small one
(as he would have stepped out of his gilt chariot to shake hands with
Lazarus in rags and sores, if he thought Lazarus could have been of any
service to him), no doubt Esmond would have fought for him with pen and
sword to the utmost of his might; but my lord the lion did not want mas