erably fair one. It need hardly
be said, that coming from the pen of such a writer, it is lively,
animated, and distinct. But Voltaire was not a military historian; he
had none of the feelings or associations which constitute one. War, when
he wrote, had been for above half a century, with a few brilliant
exceptions, a losing game to the French. In the War of the Succession
they had lost their ascendancy in continental Europe; in that of the
Seven Years, nearly their whole colonial dominions. The hard-won glories
of Fontenoy, the doubtful success of Laffelt, were a poor compensation
for these disasters. It was the fashion of his day to decry war as the
game of kings, or flowing from the ambition of priests; if superstition
was abolished, and popular virtue let into government, one eternal reign
of peace and justice would commence. With these writers the great object
was, to carry the cabinets of kings by assault, and introduce
philosophers into government through the antechambers of mistresses.
Peter the Great was their hero, Catharine of Russia their divinity, for
they placed philosophers at the head of affairs. It was not to be
supposed that in France, the vanquished country, in such an age justice
should be done to the English conqueror. Yet such were the talents of
Voltaire, especially for making a subject popular, that it is on his
work, such as it is, that the fame of Marlborough mainly rests, even in
his own country.

Marlborough, as might be expected, has not wanted biographers who have
devoted themselves, expressly and exclusively, to transmit his fame and
deeds to posterity. They have for the most part failed, from the faults
most fatal, and yet most common to biographers--undue partiality in
some, dulness and want of genius in others. They began at an early
period after his death, and are distinguished at first by that rancour
on the one side, and exaggeration on the other, by which such
contemporary narratives are generally, and in that age were in a
peculiar manner, distinguished. I. An abridged account of his life,
dedicated to the Duke of Montague, his son-in-law, appeared at Amsterdam
in 12mo; but it is nothing but an anonymous panegyric. II. Not many
years after, a life of Marlborough was published, in three volumes
quarto, by Thomas Ledyard, who had accompanied him in many of his later
travels, and had been the spectator of some of the last of his military
exploits. This is a work of much higher author