misery of it, with a steadily increasing hatred.
Among the stirring and splendidly patriotic thunderings of Henry V., Shakespeare puts into the mouths of the unlettered soldiery of his day a most poignant sense of the heavy responsibility their ruler will bear if he sends them to kill and be killed in a fight that is not just. Addison's verses on the battle of Blenheim give an elegant and flattering picture of Marlborough in the hour of triumph, but you need not grudge the Duke his compliment, for, when in due season he died, Swift wrote the satirical elegy upon him that is surely the bitterest, most mordant protest ever raised against a successful war and its commander:
Behold his funeral appears:
No widows' sighs nor orphans' tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that? his friends may say—
He had those honours in his day:
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.
