A series of attacks upon all the members of government was now carried on with vigour for some years; but Swift, the intimate associate of the Masham family, directed his inuendoes, and the force of his irony, chiefly against the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, both in prose and verse. Those well-known stanzas, beginning “A widow kept a favourite cat, At first a gentle creature; But when he was grown sleek and fat, With many a mouse and many a rat, He soon disclosed his nature,” are attributed alike to the Dean and to Prior. The virulent observations on eminent persons, in Swift’s “Four Last Years of the Reign of Anne,” excited even the indignation of Bolingbroke. These attacks extended, of course, to the Duchess; but after her complete retirement from a public career, and when the total cessation of all intercourse between her and Queen Anne annihilated the former favourites, such animadversions on her, in particular, became of rare occurrence. The retirement of St. Albans was, indeed, more than once invaded by the scurrilous sneers of those who, perhaps, envied the calm but not neglected retreat of the injured Marlborough. Contented, as he was wont to say, with his share of life and fame, he had, at this time, doubtless made up his mind to bid adieu for ever to politics; but his adversaries gave even to his amusements some peculiar meaning; and various comments in the newspapers of the day were intended at once to point out the party of friends with whom he held frequent commune, and to introduce a reflection side-ways, on the imputed narrowness of the Duke’s conduct.[200] The visit of Prince Eugene, in 1712, broke upon this privacy. Eugene became acquainted with the dismissal of Marlborough, when on his passage, at the Nore, receiving at the same time a caution from Mr. Drummond, a spy of Bolingbroke’s, who was despatched by government to receive him, “that the less he saw of the Duke of Marlborough the better,”—a caution which the fine spirited Prince sedulously and openly disregarded. The well-known and happy allusion which he made to Marlborough’s disgrace showed the good-breeding and amiable feeling which subsisted between these mighty men, and was conceived in better taste than most compliments. When Harley, entertaining Eugene, declared that he looked upon that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see the greatest general of the age in his house, Eugene wittily replied, “that if it were so, he was obliged to his lordship for it;”—alluding to Harley’s dismissal of Marlborough from his command of the army.