This, however, was never performed, why, we can only conjecture. The book was, on the whole, very well received, but, naturally, everyone noted that it stopped in the middle of the story. In answer to an anxious inquiry which I sent off on receiving my copy of the two volumes, Wolseley wrote: I hope the book will pay the publisher. If it does, I shall write the military part of Marlborough's life, which, of course, would be to me a more interesting undertaking than describing my hero through a period already well known from the pages of our greatest historical novelist, Macaulay. This shows that, in April, 1894, no part of the continuation was actually written, but I doubt not that he had made copious notes of some of the 1702-1710 campaigns. Indeed, on one occasion much later, when I was trying to urge him to return to so congenial an enterprise, he told me that the Battle of Malplaquet was actually finished; and Mr. Richard Bentley informs me that this MS. was actually at one time in his father's hands. Wolseley also is known to have described the march along the Danube in 1705, but not reaching the Battle of Blenheim. These fragments must surely exist among Lord Wolseley's MSS., and I urge Sir George Arthur to make careful search for them. They ought to be well worthy of publication. That, at the age of sixty-one, and in active State employment, Lord Wolseley did not feel able to pursue his hero over the innumerable battlefields from Venloo to Oudenarde is easily comprehensible, but that he should have stopped just where he did is lamentable. We may wish that he had been inspired to start, instead of stopping, at 1702. A side of Lord Wolseley's mental temperament which was little known was his sympathy with the imaginative literature of the East. He could not, I suppose, be called a scholar, but he had more acquaintance with Oriental languages than was generally suspected. In particular, the poetry of Persia exercised a great fascination over him. He studied both Persian and Hindustani for a couple of years, and kept a learned Munshi with him all that time as a travelling tutor. This man had a passion for the poets, and, as Wolseley told me, constantly held him in conversation on the subject of Persian history and made him read Persian books. Wolseley learned quotations from the poets by heart, and afterwards, in speaking with exalted or highly-educated natives of India, he found that the apt introduction of such tags from the classics was greatly appreciated, and was made the subject of compliment. Wolseley was very amusing about this.