Thackeray's Lectures - 1867 Author:William Makepeace Thackeray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 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 la... more »tter 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; 1 get, I say, no truth or only a portion of it in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Cox'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, " 0 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 partizans 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 t 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 Mr. Robinson Crusue, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no cbject" in setting themselves right with the public or their own conscienc...« less