part with him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought to feel grateful but cannot. {208} [Sidenote: 1721-1722--Marlborough's closing days] A far greater man than Sunderland was soon to pass away. "From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow." These are the famous words in which Johnson depicts the miserable decay of a great spirit, and points anew the melancholy moral of the vanity of human wishes. 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. We get some charming pictures of Marlborough's closing days. Death had given him warning by repeated paralytic strokes. On November 27, 1721, he was seen for the last time in the House of Lords. He was not, however, quite near his death even then. He used to spend his time at Blenheim, or at his lodge in Windsor. To the last he was fond of riding and driving and the fresh country air. In-doors he loved to be surrounded by his granddaughters and their young friends, and to join in games of cards and other amusements with them. They used to get up private theatricals to gratify the gentle old warrior. We hear of a version of Dryden's "All for Love" being thus performed. The Duchess of Marlborough had cut out of the play its unseemly passages, and even its too amorous expressions--the reader will probably think there was not much left of the piece when this work of purification had been accomplished--and she would not allow any embracing to be performed. The gentleman who played Mark Antony wore a sword which had been presented to Marlborough by the Emperor. The part of the high-priest was played by a pretty girl, a friend of Marlborough's granddaughters, and she wore as {209} high-priest's robe what seems to have been a lady's night-dress, gorgeously embroidered with special devices for the occasion. A prologue, written by Dr. Hoadly, was read, in which the glories of the great Duke's career were glowingly recounted. Some painter, it seems to us, might make a pretty picture of this: the great hall in Blenheim turned into a theatre, the handsome young men and pretty girls enacting their chastened parts, the fading old hero looking at the scene with pleased and kindly eyes, and the imperious, loving old Duchess turning