The children thus entrusted to their maternal grandmother became a solace to the Duke and Duchess, and were nurtured with attention, both to the elegance of their minds and to their happiness. There is nothing more touching than the affection of the old for infants, nothing more consolatory than to observe how beautifully Providence renews the greatest of all pleasures, in restoring to the grandfather the tenderness, and the consequent parental joys, of the father. Those who have represented Marlborough as of a narrow spirit, and a cold, designing heart, should have beheld him gazing with delight upon his youthful granddaughters, when taking lessons in music and dancing, or performing such parts as were suited to their capacity in certain dramas, which turned often upon the exploits of the grandfather, and on the gifts and graces of the grandmother. In the decline of life, Marlborough listened, with a pleasure which he cared not to conceal, to the recital of his own deeds from infantine lips; and there were others, distinguished in their way, who deemed it not beneath their high vocations to aid such entertainments as were the recreations of the beloved grandchildren at Holywell House, or at Windsor Lodge.[254] Dr. Hoadley, at this time Bishop of Bangor, and afterwards of Winchester, was the intimate associate, and, as it seems from certain anecdotes, the spiritual friend of Marlborough in his latter days. He was a controversialist of the first order, had signalised himself in an intellectual combat of this kind against Atterbury, and also, on a later occasion, in the noted Bangorian controversy, in which his adversary, the celebrated William Law, is said to have gained the ascendency. The Bishop, with all his learned acquirements, was formed to enliven society by his cheerfulness, as well as to elevate its tone by his superior intellect. He entered, with the kindness that becomes the learned so well, into the amusements and pursuits of the young favourites of his illustrious friend. Though not a dramatist himself, he was the father of two very celebrated dramatists, at this time children; the one, Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, physician to George the Second, and the author, among other plays, of the “Suspicious Husband;” and the other, Dr. John Hoadly, a clergyman, whose most serious composition was the oratorio of Jephtha, but who thought it not inconsistent with his sacred character to write humorous farces, and to perform with Garrick and Hogarth a parody upon the ghost scene of Julius Cæsar.[255] Dr. Hoadley, though the father of dramatists, was not, if we may believe Pope, the most lively writer among the many noted controversialists of the day. He dwelt in long sentences, to which Pope alluded when he wrote “——Swift for closer style,[256] But Hoadly for the period of a mile.”