S it is natural to have a Fondness for what has coft us much Time and Attention to produce, I hope Your Grace will forgive an Endeavour to preserve this Work from Oblivion, by affixing to it Your memorable Name. I shall not here prefume to mention the illuftrious Paffages A 2 of of Your Life, which are celebrated by the whole Age, and have been the Subject of the moft fublime Pens; but if I could convey You to Posterity in your private Character, and defcribe the Stature, the Behaviour and Afpect of the Duke of Marlborough, I queftion not but it would fill the Reader with more agreeable Images, and give him a more delightful Entertainment than what can be found in the following, or any other Book. ONE cannot indeed without Offence, to Yourself, obferve, that you excel the rest of Mankind in the leaft, as well as the greatest Endowments. Nor were it a Circumftance to be mentioned, tioned, if the Graces and Attractions of Your Perfon were not the only Preeminence You have above others, which is left, almoft, unobserved by greater Writers. YET how pleasing would it be to thofe who fhall read the furprising Revolutions in your Story, to be made acquainted with your ordinary Life and Deportment? How pleafing would it be to hear that the fame Man, who had carried Fire and Sword into the Countries of all that had opposed the Cause of Liberty, and ftruck a Terrour into the Armies of France, had, in the midft of His high Station, a Behaviour as gentle as is usual in the first Steps Steps towards Greatnefs? And if it were poffible to express that eafy Grandeur, which did at once perfuade and command; it would appear as clearly to those to come, as it does to his Contemporaries, that all the great Events which were brought to pass under the Conduct of fo well-governed a Spirit, were the Bleffings of Heaven upon Wifdom and Valour; and all which feem adverse fell out by divine Permission, which we are not to fearch into. YOU have pafs'd that Year of Life wherein the most able and fortunate Captain, before Your Time, declared he had lived enough both to Nature and to |