The conduct of Marlborough in prosecuting the war so long, and, as it was urged, without adequate necessity, is even more open to censure than the previous passages of his public career. His success was intoxicating, even to his calm temper, and well-poised mind. But the man who could kindly familiarise himself with his soldiery, share their hardships, so as to obtain the name of the “Old Corporal,” and inculcate the necessity of religious observances upon those who looked up to him with enthusiastic respect, was not likely to sacrifice those troops to a wanton desire for fame, unconnected with some signal public good. The letters of Marlborough plainly show that such was his conviction, and the treaty of Utrecht seemed to justify the conclusion that peace had arrived too soon,—if ever, except at the expense of future tranquillity, it can arrive too soon. The tenderness of Marlborough towards the lowest in degree; his piety, which led him never to omit the duty of prayer before and after a battle; the sinking health which rendered his later campaigns severe trials to his harassed frame; his pining for home, and for her whom he regarded as the day-star of his existence; all tend to encourage the opinion, that concerning the much-contested question of the war, he was, if in error, a sincere believer in the necessity of its continuance, and a sanguine expectant of much good to be derived from its ultimate success. In moral conduct, the Duke of Marlborough, after the early period of his youth, gave to the world an edifying and an uncommon example. Numerous as his enemies were, they could not, even with the assistance of Mrs. Manley, bring home one accusation of gross immorality to his charge, after his early, and it must be allowed for many years, happy marriage. His foes, at a loss for subjects of invective, passed on to another theme, regarding which one would gladly be silent: the charge of avarice. This is one of his failings, respecting which we would gladly say with Lord Bolingbroke, when checking a parasite who sought to please him by ridiculing the penuriousness of the Duke of Marlborough; “He was so very great a man, that I forget he had that vice.”[293] His enemies, indeed, took care that it should not be forgotten. It became proverbial in their mouths. “I take it,” says Swift, in one of his letters, “that the same grain of caution which disposeth a man to fill his coffers, will teach him how to preserve them at all events; and I dare hold a wager, that the Duke of Marlborough, in all his campaigns, was never known to lose his baggage.”[294] The story of the Duke’s chiding his servant for his extravagance in lighting four candles in his tent when Prince Eugene came to confer with him,[295] is of that species of anecdote to which no one can attach either credit or importance.