mitted on those detached parties of pleasure. When the performance was ended, the king expressed himselfhighly pleased, and gave it extraordinary commendations. Then, sir,' said the lady, to shew you don't speak like a courtier, I hope you will make the performers a handsome present.' The king said he had no money about him, and asked the duke if he had any. To which the duke replied, I believe, sir, not above a guinea or two. Upon which the laugh. ing lady, turning to the people about her, and making bold with the king's common expression, cried, 'Od's fish! what company am I got into !'"*

Pennant tells us what the rooms were like in which this characteristic scene occurred :

"Mrs. Gwin's residence was in Pall Mall, in the first good house on the left side of St. James's Square, as we enter from Pall Mall. The back room on the ground-floor was (within memory) entirely of looking-glass, as was said to have been the ceiling. Over the chimney was her picture, and that of her sister was in a third room. At the period I mention this house was the property of Thomas Brand, Esq. of the Hoo in Hert fordshire." +

"Come hither, you little bastard!" said Neli one day to her eldest boy, in the presence of the king. The boy came, and the mother was reproved in a gentle manner by the merry monarch for calling her son by so foul a name. Nell was not wanting in a reply. She had no better name, she said, to call him by. The king understood the excuse, and on the 27th December, 1676, he was created Baron of Hedington and Earl of Burford. Other honours awaited him, and on the 10th January, 1683-84, eight days after the death of Harry Jermyn, Earl of Stellan, he was created Duke of St. Alban's. His brother James died at Paris, at the age of seven, in September 1680.

The two theatrical companies-the king's, under Killigrew's patent, and the duke's, under Davenant's-became one great company in the summer of 1682, and began to play together for the first time on the 16th November in that year. Nell ceased to act as soon as the union took place. Her last new part was that of Sunamire in the play of the Loyal Brother, or the Persian Prince;

Apology, ed. 1740, p. 448,

Southerne's first play. Hart quitted the stage at the union, and retired to Stanmore Magna, where he was buried on the 20th August, 1683. Hart may have remembered Nelly on his death-bed: the king, not long after, assuredly did. "He spake to the duke," says Evelyn, "to be kind to the Duchess of Cleveland, and especially Portsmouth, and that Nelly might not starve." "Let not poor Nelly starve!" were the words he is said, by Burnet, to have used on this occasion.

66

'I am resolved," says Nell, in her part of Florimel in the Maiden Queen-for there is no pleasure in reading the play without identifying pretty witty Nell with the character of Florimel-"I am resolved," she says, "to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle, and the reputation of five-and-twenty." What her age was when she died no one has told us; indeed, no one has as yet told us when Nelly died. Some writers say 1687, some 1691. Granger, for instance, says the former; Mrs. Jameson the latter. That she was buried in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was some clue to the period, and in the burial register of that parish, under the year 1687, we found the following entry :

"1687, Nov. 17, Elinor Gwin, w."

not more.

Look at

w. standing for woman, to denote that she had lived beyond girlhood. A common-looking entry it is, in a common handwriting, recording the burial of an uncommon woman. Poor Nelly! when Pepys first speaks of her, under the year 1665, she could not have been more than seventeen; and, consequently, at her death in 1687, at Florimel's age, fortyYoung, and without wrinkle, she certainly was. her face in whatever picture or engraving you may see it, and she is still young-young as Venus; young with her unemblematic lamb, young with a nosegay, young at Bap May's (see Mrs. Beale), young at Mr. Bérenger's (see Tom Davies), young in her half-length at Hampton Court, Grosvenor's, young at Sir Robert young at Welbeck, young at General Peel's, and young in Mathews' gal

+ Pennant's London, ed. 1813, p. 144.

* The London Evening Post, 27 Dec. 1791.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOrough.
No. I.

WE have now before us three out of the five octavo volumes, containing on an average about seven hundred closely printed pages apiece, which Sir George Murray has undertaken to give to the world as a selection from the despatches, or letters, written by the great Duke of Marlborough during the progress of the war in Germany and the Low Countries, of which, from 1702 to 1712, his grace directed the principal operations. We express ourselves thus, because the accomplished editor has stated in his preface that the mass now published constitutes but a very small portion of the duke's correspondence; that endless matters of detail are noticed and dealt with in other letters which he has thought it judicious to suppress, and that these are printed merely "that nothing should be withheld from publication which can contribute to throw light on any transaction of the period which is deserving of notice;" and "that the amplest means should be offered to public men in general, but especially to those of the military profession, to derive instruction from the practical lessons furnished by the conduct of a man remarkable for his ability and his success in the management of great and difficult affairs." Lastly, Sir George has rendered this service to the public in order that "the fullest information should be exhibited of the true character of the Duke of Marlborough by the best of all means of developing character-namely, the perusal of a correspondence carried on under circumstances which left no opportunity of aiming at any other object than the transaction of the business actually in hand.”

It is impossible too much to admire the modesty of these announcements, or to call in question the abstract justice of the conclusions to which they lead. Infinite good is done to our own and to all succeeding ages when we contrive, by any means whatever, to throw additional light upon the transactions of an important period in the world's history; and it is past dispute, that

the very best lessons in the art of war are to be gathered from the letters of a great general-that is, supposing him to enter in his correspondence into the details of his own plans, of his manner of carrying them out, and equipping, and otherwise preparing his soldiers for their execution. But the question naturally occurs,-How far, in the particular instance before us, have these important ends been gained? And we must confess that, according to our poor judgment, they have not been gained at all. The letters now on our table throw no new light upon any one of the great transactions which gave their own character to the reign and times of Queen Anne; they tell us nothing of which we were not previously aware, of the obstinacy of the Dutch, the selfishness of the Emperor, the stupidity of Prince Lewis, or the doggedness of the Elector of Hanover. The reference made in them to arrangements of state, whether in St. James's or any other of the European courts, are at once few, and in point of importance inconsiderable. And as to the exiled family, their plans, their hopes, the grounds on which they rested them, and their devices for bringing them to bear all these topics are as carefully shut out from the Marlborough Despatches as if they had reference to some other age, and that the writer had been wholly unconnected with them. Moreover, when we proceed to look for the practical lessons in the art of war which we had expected to find, the results are an entire disappointment. The Duke of Marlborough, undoubtedly, describes the march of columns of horse and foot, and the of rivers, and the attack of passage positions, and the formation of sieges; but it is uniformly in terms the most vague and general, in such terms as may be fitting when an officer desires to communicate to the government under which he serves, or to an ordinary correspondent, the results of his operations, and the designs with which they were undertaken; but, considering them as lessons in the art

1

of war, his descriptions are worth nothing. They contain no minute instructions to his inferiors, no detailed account of his own wants, or of the best means of supplying them. Not a word is said of the care that may have been taken to ensure the health, the proper equipment, and the general efficiency of his troops, or of the measures adopted or recommended to maintain discipline, both in the field and in quarters; indeed, of the sort of intercourse which must have been kept up between him and his inferiors in command, not a specimen have we been able to detect. How different, in these respects, are the Despatches of our own immortal Wellington! We do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Marlborough, or to rob him of one jot of the fame which universal opinion has awarded to him. As a leader of armies he stands second to no commander which the world has yet produced. But, if all his letters on professional subjects resemble those which Sir George Murray has brought into notice, it will certainly not be to him that the young officer will turn, either now or at any future period, for instruction in the science of war. We would not, looking at the matter in this light, give one of Gurwood's volumes for the whole five, of which we are already in possession of three, and for the remaining two of which we look forward without the smallest impatience.

Again, we really do not find in this collection one line which gives us a better insight into the personal

character of the writer than we had

before it appeared. The space of time over which the correspondence ranges puts out of the question all hope of obtaining by their means a more intimate knowledge of the writer's motives, first in deserting the house of Stuart, and by and by in plotting, or appearing to plot, for their restoration. It cannot be said, therefore, that we have experienced the smallest disappointment on that score. But the duke's alleged connivance at the extortionate government by one of his own officers of the province of Ghent, as well as the percentage which his enemies accused his grace of receiving out of sums paid through the com

troops; these blots in the great man's character, if such they were, undeniably befell between 1702 and 1712, and we confess that one of the chief inducements with us to a careful perusal of the present work was, that we both hoped and expected to find the injustice of the accusations demonstrated, and the illustrious general placed before the world in the light of one whose hands were clean from the feeblest stain of corruption. We are sorry to be obliged to acknowledge that the results have not answered our expectations. The charges may both be true or both false; we should be glad, if we could, to believe the latter. But, as far as this not unimportant feature in his character stands affected, Sir George Murray's publication leaves the Duke of Marlborough precisely where it found him.

We have yet another fault to find with Sir George Murray's publica tion. The high opinion which we entertain of the judgment and ability of the editor forbids us to doubt that out of the mass submitted to him he has chosen those letters which appeared to himself the best calcu lated to place the writer in a fair, and therefore in a favourable point of view before the world. But why has he given us a French book, and not an English one? It so happens, that if there be any great merit in any of these letters, it must be sought for precisely in those which, to the majority of Englishmen, are a sealed treasure. Was this right, particu larly on the part of one who dedi

cates his book to the British army,
and of course intends that the com-
pliment shall go down from the

commander-in-chief to the drum. boy? We must again repeat that, as far as our own opinion goes, the British army will not lose much in being unable to make a study of this work; but, supposing the case to have been otherwise, what benefit could the army derive from it in its present dress? The government has, with equal kindness and good policy, established at most of our military stations, at home and abroad, a gate rison library, for the maintenance and continued increase of which an

annual sum is voted by parliament.
But who will think of introducing

missary for the subsistence of the there, or placing side by side with

the Wellington Despatches, five huge volumes of letters, at least nine out ten of which are written in a language which the soldier cannot read? It appears, therefore, to us either that the dedication is an error, or that the letters deserved a translation. Why was not the latter afforded them?

The answer, of course, is that Sir George Murray possessed too much both of good sense and good feeling to enter upon such a task. It is a hazardous thing to transfer the opinions or statements of any man from the language in which they were originally recorded to another; for not only is there some risk, be the translator ever so skilful, of mistaking the author's purposes, or, if he may not go so far, of failing to represent them clearly; but the character of the man, his manner of thinking as well as expressing himself, must receive an unnatural colouring. There are idioms in every language peculiar to itself, and it is by the use which he makes of these, almost as much as by his studied phrases and expressions, that the writer places upon paper the impress, so to speak, of himself. Now, not to revert to the reasons which have already been enumerated, or to dwell more obstinately than may be fitting on the fact, that Marlborough's character is our property, and ought to be brought within the comprehension of the unlettered as well as of the scholar, there is one other consideration which, according to our view, bears with irresistible weight upon the point at issue. It may be doubted-we ourselves entertain no doubt about the matterthat the French letters in this collection are the duke's only in substance. We do not believe that the Duke of Marlborough was sufficiently master of the French tongue to keep up a correspondence in it, or, indeed, to express himself upon paper with any degree of accuracy through that medium. And we imagine that our belief is borne out by a weight of testimony which we defy either Sir George Murray or any other admirer of the great man to controvert. It

is this.

In the first place, all tradition represents the Duke of Marlborough as a man singularly gifted by nature; but, in regard to education,

using that term to imply the early training which is absolutely necessary to render men good linguists, deficient, even for the age in which he lived. It is certain that his orthography, his English orthography we mean, was most inaccurate, and we never heard that his opportunitics of becoming a more perfect master of a foreign tongue than of that which was domestic to him had been great. Indeed, the instances of Englishmen who were capable of writing French correctly, even among those who proved the most constant in their attendance about a court where French was the language of conversation, were few indeed. Bolingbroke himself, for example, perhaps the most accomplished courtier of his day, wrote a sort of French, of which his chief correspondent, De Torcey, used to say, "that he never knew which the most to admire, the hardihood of the man in making the adventure, or the strange medley in which it invariably issued." And if Bolingbroke, with all his time and love of study, lay open to this rebuff, it is surely not laying to the door of a soldier, whose whole life had been one of action, an invidious charge, when we assume that he neither was, nor pretended to be, such a Frenchman as these Despatches would lead the world to believe.

In the next place, we have something like an acknowledgment from the duke himself that he never wrote, on important subjects, at least, in French to any one, except by the hand of another. There is extant among the Hanover Papers, in the volume marked "The Princes," a letter written by the duke in English, wherein he apologises for having made use of his mother-tongue, and gives his reason, namely, because "poore Cardonale is sicke." Now we are not inclined, in reference to this fact, to go all the lengths to which Macpherson suffers himself to be carried. We do not believe that Marlborough "could not write the French language at all," much less can we admit that, though he employed Cardonnel to write for him, "when he wished to give effect to what he said he transcribed his secretary's draughts with his own hand." The duke's time was too precious to be wasted in the labour