1825.] 
possible for any man to forgive her, 
and it was with the utmost difficulty 
that the more lenient Cibber could pre- 
serve his heroine from this disgraceful 
catastrophe. 
The pedestrians of Pall-Mall may 
amuse themselves by the contrast as 
they meditate upon scenes which Van- 
brugh has laid in the vicinity, the Park, 
and Spring Gardens. Marlborough 
House stands in Pall-Mall, a proud 
memento of British arms upon the con- 
tinent, and of the gratitude of a gene- 
rous nation to one of its most renowned 
generals. The Duke of Marlborough 
is scarcely more celebrated for his bat- 
tles abroad, than the Duchess for her 
squabbles at home. In her time, the 
polish of the Chesterfield school had 
not been introduced, and ladies of high 
birth and breeding descended to man- 
ners and language, which now would 
be considered disgraceful in any female 
above the lowest classes of society. 
Unable to curb the violence of her tem- 
per, she even dared to insult the Queen : 
but this fiery vehemence might have 
been excused, had it not been accom- 
panied by a base treachery towards her 
husband. Macpherson has accused the 
Duke of Marlborough of betraying King 
William’s designs upon Brest to Louis 
XIV.; the truth is, says Horace Wal- 
pole, “the Duke entrusted the secret 
to the Duchess, and the Duchess to her 
sister, the Duchess of Tyrconnel, poor 
and a papist, and warmly attached to 
the party of James II.” King William 
taxed the Duke with having revealed 
his plans : Marlborough replied, * Upon 
my hononr, Sir, I told nobody but my 
wife!” “ And IJ,” said the sententious' 
monarch, “ did not tell it to mine !” 
Strife and intrigue seem to have been 
absolutely necessary to the existence of 
the Duchess of Marlborough ; after the 
Duke’s death, when she could no longer 
guide a faction, or sow discord in the 
cabinet, she condescended to exert her 
talents in a smaller way, by pleading 
her own cause in a court of law, and 
thus realizing Congreve’s pleasant eon- 
ception of the widow Blackacre. The 
building of, Blenheim. involved her in 
an interminable suit with Sir Jobn 
Vanbrugh, over whom she very nearly 
obtained a victory; and in some dis- 
pute concerning the Duke’s sword of 
state, she declared that she would not 
give it up to the heir, because she feared 
that he would pawn it: an expression 
which was then reprobated as most un- 
becoming and dreadful even from the 
Ninon de Ul Enclos. 
39 
‘licensed tongue of the Duchess, but in 
the present day may be considered as a 
memorable prediction. 
—— 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
Sir: 
MONG the records of well-attested 
marvels of longevity, &c., the cir- 
cumstance has often been alluded to in 
literary commentary, that the noblest 
tragedy of the noblest of dramatic wri- 
ters, Sophocles, was written after he 
had completed his ninetieth year. But 
the longevity of youth and beauty is a 
circumstance more extraordinary than 
that of genius and intellect; for the 
mental faculties, especially those of in- 
vention and judgment, do not necessa- 
rily decline with the corporeal, but oc- 
casionally continue their growth and 
vigour, till life itself becomes extinct. 
The Paradise Lost was not the work of 
Milton’s youth, but of those declining 
days when he was 
** With darkness and with danger compase’d round ;’ 
and the powers of Dryden continued to 
increase to the very ebb of existence. 
Of his dramas, in particular, almost all 
that are worth reading were written in 
his old age; and when he was oppressed 
by neglect and poverty. But, that beauty 
and apparent youthfulness should tri- 
umph over the withering wrath of time, 
and its blossoms continue to bloom 
through the winter of accumulating 
years, may certainly be recorded among 
the rarest phenomena of human exist- 
ence. Yet the celebrated Ninon de 
lEnclos* had a lover in her eightieth 
year; aiid; to shew that even then she 
had not become insensible, at least, to 
the vanity of the passion she had still 
beauty enough to excite, it is recorded, 
that, although in no part of her life she 
had been over-chastely coy, she chose 
to resist the eager advances of her gal- 
lant till the anniversary of her birth-day 
was past, in order, as she afterwards 
confessed to him, that she might have 
the glory of saying, “she had a lover 
after she was eighty.” 
This anecdote, though not very in- 
structive, may perhaps be as amusing to 
some of the readers of the Monthly 
Magazine, as many of those which might 
be selected from Sir John Sinclair’s 
voluminous history of longevities ; or, at 
any rate, may have a chance of being 
excused as a part of the garrulity of 
An Otp Fetiow. 
" Of the fact of whose fadeless charms 
see a more tragical illustration, in the poe- 
tical department of our last Supplement. 
