Marlborough, who in his old age was making the same figure
at Court that he did when he first came into it--I mean, bowing and
smiling in the antechamber while Townshend was in the closet,--was not,
however, pleased with the Walpole, who began to behave to him with the
insolence of new favour, and his Duchess, who never restrained her
tongue in her life, used to make public jokes of the beggary she first
knew him in, when her caprice gave him a considerable place, against the
opinion of Lord Godolphin and the Duke of Marlborough.

"To balance these, he had introduced some friends of his own, by his
recommendation to Lord Townshend (who did nothing but by his
instigation). Colonel Stanhope was made the Secretary of State. He had
been unfortunate in Spain, and there did not want those who attributed
it to ill conduct; but he was called generous, brave, true to his
friends, and had an air of probity which prejudiced the world in his
favour.

"The King's character may be comprised in very few words. In private
life he would have been called an honest blockhead; and Fortune that
made him a king, added nothing to his happiness, only prejudiced his
honesty, and shortened his days. No man was ever more free from
ambition; he loved money, but loved to keep his own, without being
rapacious of other men's. He would have grown rich by saving, but was
incapable of laying schemes for getting; he was more properly dull than
lazy, and would have been so well contented to have remained in his
little town of Hanover, that if the ambition of those about him had not
been greater than his own, we should never have seen him in England; and
the natural honesty of his temper, joined with the narrow notions of a
low education, made him look upon his acceptance of the crown as an act
of usurpation, which was always uneasy to him. But he was carried by the
stream of the people about him, in that, as in every action of his life.
He could speak no English, and was past the age of learning it. Our
customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to
understand, nor was capable of understanding if he had endeavoured it.
He was passively good-natured, and wished all mankind enjoyed quiet, if
they would let him do so.

"The mistress that followed him hither was so much of his own temper,
that I do not wonder at the engagement between them. She was duller than
himself, and consequently did not find out that he was so; and had lived