"Thus would I fain Britannia's wars rehearse In the smooth records of a faithful verse; That, if such numbers can o'er time prevail, May tell posterity the wondrous tale. When actions unadorned are faint and weak Cities and countries must be taught to speak; Gods may descend in factions from the skies, And rivers from their oozy beds arise; Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays, And round the hero cast a borrowed blaze. Marlbro's exploits appear divinely bright, And proudly shine in their own native light; Raised in themselves their genuine charms they boast, And those that paint them truest praise them most." The design here avowed is certainly not poetical, but it is eminently business-like and extremely well adapted to the end in view. What Godolphin wanted was a set of complimentary verses on Marlborough. Addison, with infinite tact, declares that the highest compliment that can be paid to the hero is to recite his actions in their unadorned grandeur. This happy turn of flattery shows how far he had advanced in literary skill since he wrote his address _To the King_. He had then excused himself for the inadequate celebration of William's deeds on the plea that, great though these might be, they were too near the poet's own time to be seen in proper focus. A thousand years hence, he suggests, some Homer may be inspired by the theme, "and Boyne be sung when it has ceased to flow." This could not have been very consolatory to a mortal craving for contemporary applause, and the apology offered in _The Campaign_ for the prosaic treatment of the subject is far more dexterous. Bearing in mind the fact that it was written to order, and that the poet deliberately declined to avail himself of the aid of fiction, we must allow that the construction of the poem exhibits both art and dignity. The allusion to the vast slaughter at Blenheim, in the opening paragraph-- "Rivers of blood I see and hills of slain, An Iliad rising out of one campaign"-- is not very fortunate; but the lines describing the ambition of Louis XIV. are weighty and dignified, and the couplet indicating, through the single image of the Danube, the vast extent of the French encroachments, shows how thoroughly Addison was imbued with the spirit of classical poetry: "The rising Danube its long race began, And half its course through the new conquests ran." With equal felicity he describes the position and intervention of England, seizing at the same time the opportunity for a panegyric on her free institutions: