The same feature of mind is conspicuous in the friendships of Marlborough. Though the scandalous world imputed to the intimacy of his wife with his dearest friend, Godolphin, motives which it is easy to attach to any friendship between persons of different sex, the confidence which Marlborough reposed in that friend, in absence, under circumstances the most trying, was never shaken. He knew the principles of action which actuated his wife; principles far more adequate to keep a woman pure, and a man faithful, even than the strongest attachment. Integrity of purpose is the only immutable bond. For his generous and happy confidence, Marlborough was well repaid. His friendship for Godolphin, the only stay of his public career, and his affection for his wife, ended only with existence. We must recur to the question, what were the feelings, the pursuits, the enjoyments of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough in private life? In order adequately to discuss this subject, it is necessary to draw a sketch of the state of the country, and of parties, after the retirement of the Duke and Duchess; and to show how, unhappily, the leisure of these, their latter days, was disturbed by cabals, and by schemes of ambition with which they would have done wisely to have dispensed; and which darkened those years which might otherwise have been devoted to objects of higher and more enduring interest. Dr. King, Archbishop of Dublin, writing to Swift, in alluding to the various factions which had prevailed in England, remarks, “I believe I have seen forty changes; nor would I advise my friend to sell himself to any (government) so as to be their slave.”[198] This advice was not very likely to be acceptable to the individual, nor to the age in which the good prelate wrote. Swift, as it is apparent in those letters which he addressed to the unhappy and infatuated Stella—letters sufficiently disgusting to have cured any woman of an ill-placed attachment—betrays with an unblushing coarseness, characteristic of the times, his readiness to prostitute his talents to which party soever would be the least likely, as they had found him “Jonathan,” “to leave him Jonathan.”[199] The Whig party in literature, boasted, in 1710, when faction was at its height, the names of Addison, Steele, Burnet, Congreve, Rowe, and others. The Tory side, those of Bolingbroke, Atterbury, Swift, and Prior. But when Swift, after a vigilant study of the political atmosphere, declared himself ready to take the whole burden of periodical warfare on his shoulders, Addison meekly retired from the contest, leaving his friends to be assaulted and laid low by this irresistible champion.