Marlborough College

“ This poem is a lament over the departure of a Marlborough master, the laureate of the school, who had resigned and left Marlborough at the end of the previous summer term. The author's acquaintance with him was entirely an out-of-school one. See note on XXXVI. Line 1: Granham hill, on the opposite side of the Kennet from Marlborough College. The horse is a rather inferior specimen of the "white horses," cut out in the chalk, of which there are other and more famous examples in the Wiltshire and Berkshire downs. ”

“ The Duke of Marlborough was born 2, 1822, and was educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford. As Marquis of Blandford he was returned to the House of Commons in April, 1844, before reaching his twenty-second year, as a member in the Conservative interest for the family borough of Woodstock. He represented his borough, except for two years, 1845 and 1846, until he succeeded his father as Duke of Marlborough, July 1, 1857. He became prominent in Parliament through his efforts to increase the usefulness of the Established Church. ”

“ The same impulse which has put new life into the endowed grammar-schools throughout England has worked even more remarkably in another direction. The Victorian age bids fair to rival the Elizabethan in the number and importance of the new schools which it has founded and will hand on to the coming generation. Marlborough, Haileybury, Uppingham, Rossall, Clifton, Cheltenham, Radley, Malvern, and Wellington College, are nine schools which have taken their place in the first rank. ”

“ With this career in view, Oxford would naturally succeed to Marlborough, and at Oxford the natural college for a Marlborough boy to go to was Exeter. There was a strong connexion between the West-country school and the West-country college; and several of the Marlborough masters were Exeter men. But Morris was not high up in school, and was more of an expert in silkworms' eggs and old churches than in exact scholarship, while the condition of the school in the last year of Dr. ”

“ At this time Marlborough won more scholarships at Oxford than any other school, Rugby alone coming at all near it. The fame of Marlborough crossed the Channel, and when in 1866 the French government sent Demogeot to study the English public-school system, he had instructions to visit Marlborough, and was warmly welcomed by Bradley. ”

“ His genius was animated by the spirit of the fourteenth, but it was guided by the knowledge of the seventeenth, century.
Bred in the school of Turenne, placed, like him, at the head of a force raised with difficulty, maintained with still greater trouble, Marlborough was the greatest general of the methodical or scientific school which modern Europe has produced. No man knew better the importance of deeds which fascinate the minds of men; none could decide quicker, or strike harder, when the proper time for action arrived. ”

“ His brilliant scholarship, and the friends that it brought around him, his ability literally to speak Greek and Latin as he could German and French, his exceptionally developed mental as compared with his physical gifts, were undoubtedly the reasons that a very ordinary English boy could not appreciate him.
At fourteen years of age, at Marlborough School, I was asked if I wished to be confirmed. Every boy of that age was. It permitted one to remain when "the kids went out after first service." It added dignity, like a football cap or a mustache. ”

“ He was a soldier of the old school, brave as a lion, but wanting in judgment, cautious, methodical, a stickler for form. He joined the others in counsel at Gros Heppach, and being the eldest in rank expected that they would yield him the chief command. But the execution of their plan, so daringly conceived, demanded qualities he did not possess, and Marlborough had to exercise all the tact and patience of which he was so consummate a master. ”

“ But if Marlborough’s soul was mean and sordid, his genius was vast and powerful. In parliament, at St. James’s, in foreign councils, in foreign courts, on the field of battle, everywhere he dominated men. His education had been so very much neglected that he could scarcely write correctly his native English, and yet, when he rose to speak in the House of Lords, the entire assembly hung upon his words, and the most consummate orators, the heads of the British forum, were envious of that natural eloquence which without effort went straight to the heart ”

“ That they included no lawbooks at a time when Mercer was preparing for the law is an indication of his broad taste for literature and learning.
Marlborough, we can see, was occupied by a young man of talent, energy, and creativity. He alone, of the many men who had envisioned a center of enterprise on Potomac Neck, was possessed of the drive and the simple directness to make it succeed. For George Mason and the Waughs, Mercer was the ideal solution for their Marlborough difficulties. ”

“ This longing for home, and for the undisturbed enjoyment of all that home gives, appears in every effusion of that warm heart, the natural feelings of which neither the dissipations of a court, nor the possession of power, nor the incense of nations, could alienate from the fondest objects which life presents to a mind not vitiated by selfishness. Marlborough, amidst all his troubles, was happiest in his nursery. There the guilelessness, the freshness of the infant 175mind appeared to him in beautiful contrast with the measured phrase, and the mask of prudence, adopted insensibly in the world ”

“ George Andrews and Peter Beach, somewhat less distinguished, were perhaps the only full-time residents from among the first grantees. After 1708 Thomas Ballard and possibly William Barber were also householders.
Thus, few of the ingredients of an active community were to be found at Marlborough, the skilled craftsmen or ship’s chandlers or merchants who might have provided the vitality of commerce and trade not having at any time been present. ”

“ Hardly a line in the poetry of our language is better known or more often quoted. Where did Johnson get the idea that Marlborough had sunk into dotage before his death? There is not the slightest foundation for such a belief. All that we know of Marlborough's closing days tells us the contrary. Nothing in Marlborough's life, not even his serene disregard of dangers and difficulties, not even his victories, became him like to the leaving of it. No great man ever sank more gracefully, more gently, with a calmer spirit, down to his rest. ”

“ It was a common saying at the time, that neither man nor woman could resist him. "Of all the men I ever knew," says no common man, himself a perfect master of the elegances he so much admired, "the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them. Indeed he got the most by them, and contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events, I ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness to those graces. He had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. ”

“ In the gymnasium at Marlborough, how the few clumsy specimens are ragged and despised and jeered at by the rest of the squad; in the gymnasium here you should hear the sounding cheer given to the man who has tried for eight weeks to make a long-jump of eight feet and at last by the advice and assistance of others has succeeded. They seem instinctively to regard a man singly, at his own rate, by his own standards and possibilities, not in comparison with themselves or others: that’s why they are so far ahead of us in their treatment and sizing up of others. ”

“ The moral character, as well as the intellectual powers, of Marlborough, underwent a remarkable change in the course of his chequered career. Few of those men, perhaps erroneously called heroes, could ever look back upon their progress to military fame with so little cause for remorse as John Duke of Marlborough. He left a name unsullied by cruelty. A remarkable combination of strong affections, with a natural suavity of temper, rendered him the beloved friend of men whose nature was not disposed to friendship. ”

“ Marlborough, the slave of his country, the instrument and the controller at once of states and allied armies,—Marlborough, at length, was free,—at length he was permitted, even constrained, to return to the ordeal of private life; for to all men who have played a conspicuous part on the great theatre of the busy world, a domestic sphere must prove an ordeal which few, so situated, sustain with credit.
Since the first years of their early marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had scarcely passed a year of uninterrupted conjugal enjoyment. ”

“ Until after the defection of Harley from the ministry, Marlborough and Bolingbroke were more than political allies. The great general admired the talents of the young debater, and loved his society; as men who have lived long enough to appreciate all the various sorts of excellence, love the promise of the young, and hail its progress with almost prophetic accuracy. ”

“ We may be assured that the petty penuriousness which was ascribed to Marlborough has at all events been greatly exaggerated,—as such errors are always magnified by report. His early narrowness of fortune produced notions of exactness, into which men of business-like habits are prone to fall; and when wealth flows in, it is not easy to discard the small practices which have crept in upon us, step by step, imperceptibly, and which originated in a virtuous principle. Marlborough, however, had one great attribute, possessing which, no man ought to be severely deprecated for penuriousness. ”

“ But the enjoyments of Marlborough’s declining years were few and transient, whether they consisted in the exalting contemplation of a 316noble structure, the suggestion, though not the gift, of a nation’s gratitude; or in the small, the very small gratification of saving a sixpence, imputed to him by his contemporary; though it is possible, and to the good-natured it may appear probable, that to the humbled invalid, conscious of decay, the satisfaction of being able to resume old habits of activity, the habits of military life, may have been one source of the pleasure. ”

“ But whilst the measures which he advocated were thus carried into effect, Lord Marlborough had the mortification to perceive a growing coolness between himself and Lord Rochester, an impetuous and well-intentioned man, between whom and Lord Marlborough there had been a friendship of long standing, unshaken by Lady Marlborough’s dislikes and bickerings. [426] In quitting the shores of England, the great general experienced, in the midst of many sources of vexation, how invariably the eminent, and the successful, pay a tax to the rest of mankind for the possession of their envied advantages. ”

“ The rapid rise of Marlborough to the highest position in the State was due to his singular tact and his diplomatic skill in the management of men. In an age remarkable for grace of manner and for adroitness of compliment, his courteous demeanour and the art with which he refused or granted a favour extorted the admiration of every one with whom he came in contact. ”

“ After the return of the Duke and Duchess to England, it was the arduous office of the Countess of Sunderland to interpose her mild influence between the hasty temper of her husband and the overbearing spirit of her mother. She was the only one of “Marlborough’s daughters” who could brook the maternal authority, exercised even over her grown-up children with unsparing rigour; and Marlborough regarded this dutiful and forbearing child with peculiar affection, on that very account. ”

“ It was Lady Marlborough’s lot chiefly to observe the higher orders of society, whose immediate interests were affected by the success of those opinions which they maintained, and she could not, from experience, be aware that it is the middling classes who really and earnestly cherish certain notions, in the importance of which to the public good they firmly believe. ”

“ For some years after the accession of George the First, Marlborough continued to be a healthy and an active man; riding on horseback or driving about, and delighting, when he was at Blenheim, in walking about the grounds, inspecting those beautiful 268ornate scenes which his taste and wealth had caused to flourish around him. In the evening he received his friends without ceremony, and joined in the games of ombre, basset, and picquet, or of whist, his favourite game; and the illustrious and amiable Marlborough often descended to a pool of commerce with his grandchildren. ”

“ Rude houses placed informally and connected by lanes and footpaths, the courthouse attempting to dominate them like a village schoolmaster in a class of country bumpkins, a few outbuildings, a boat landing or two, some cultivated land, and a road leading away from the courthouse to the north with another running in the opposite direction to the creek—this is the way Marlborough must have looked even in its best days in 1708. ”

“ He possesses also a fair and equitable judgment, much discrimination, evident talent for drawing characters, and that upright and honourable heart, which is the first requisite for success in the delineation, as it is for success in the conduct of events. His industry in examining and collecting authorities is great; he is a scholar, a statesman, and a gentleman—no small requisites for the just delineation of noble and generous achievements. But notwithstanding all this, his work is not the one to rescue Marlborough's fame from the unworthy obscurity into which, in this country, it has fallen. ”