“That great captain, the Duke of Marlborough,” says Dr. King, “when he was in the last stage of life, and very infirm, would walk from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings, in a cold, dark night, to save sixpence in coach-hire. If the Duke,” he adds, “who left at his death more than a million and a half sterling, could have foreseen that all his wealth and honours were to be inherited by a grandson of my Lord Trevor’s, who had been one of his enemies, would he have been so careful to save a sixpence for the sake of his heir? Not for his heir, but he would always have saved a sixpence.”[272] Whilst thus retaining what was more in him a habit than a passion, the Duke left Bath, to view with peculiar pleasure the progress of the great palace at Blenheim, where he expressed satisfaction on beholding that tribute to his former greatness. But the enjoyments of Marlborough’s declining years were few and transient, whether they consisted in the exalting contemplation of a noble structure, the suggestion, though not the gift, of a nation’s gratitude; or in the small, the very small gratification of saving a sixpence, imputed to him by his contemporary; though it is possible, and to the good-natured it may appear probable, that to the humbled invalid, conscious of decay, the satisfaction of being able to resume old habits of activity, the habits of military life, may have been one source of the pleasure. During November, however, in the same year of his first attack, the Duke was threatened with immediate death. The remaining members of his family hastened to bid him what they expected would prove a last farewell. Their parent, however, was for the time spared to them. Again he recovered his health sufficiently to remove to Marlborough house. His reason was happily restored to him, but the use of speech for some time greatly impaired. He recovered it, however, and conversed, though he could not articulate some words. His memory, and the general powers of his mind, were also spared. The popular notion of his sinking into imbecility is, therefore, unfounded, and in this respect it is unfair, and erroneous, to couple him with Swift. “From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show,”