A skeleton in outward figure,
His meagre corps, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him, were it bigger.
So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion,
He's with you like an apparition.
Shines in all climates like a star;
In senates bold, and fierce in war;
A land commander, and a tar:
Heroic actions early bred in,
Ne'er to be match'd in modern reading,
But by his namesake, Charles of Sweden.[2]
[Footnote 1: Who in the year 1705 took Barcelona, and in the winter
following with only 280 horse and 900 foot enterprized and accomplished
the conquest of Valentia.--_Pope_.
"--he whose lightning pierc'd th'Iberian lines,
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain."
POPE, _Imitations of Horace_, ii, Sat. 1.
Lord Peterborough seems to have been equally famous for his skill in
cookery. See note to above Satire, Pope's Works, edit. Elwin and
Courthope, iii, 298.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 2: See Voltaire's "History of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden."
"He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale.
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