He has been in the hands of justice more than once for such practices, but he is a sly dog, and manages matters with so much craft, that hitherto he has escaped for a short imprisonment.

As for the general, you may see he has owed his promotion more to his interest than his capacity; and, now that the eyes of the ministry are opened, his friends dead or become inconsiderable, he is struck off the list, and obliged to put up with a yearly pension.
In consequence of this reduction, he is become malcontent, and inveighs against the government in all companies, with so little discretion, that I am surprised at the lenity of the administration, in overlooking his insolence, but the truth of the matter is, he owes his safety to his weakness and want of importance.

He has seen a little, and but a little, service, and yet, if you will take his word to it, there has not been a great action performed in the field since the Revolution, in which he was not principally concerned.

When a story is told of any great general, he immediately matches it with one of himself, though he is often unhappy in his invention, and commits such gross blunders in the detail, that everybody is in pain for him.

Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great, are continually in his mouth; and, as he reads a good deal without any judgment to digest it, his ideas are confused, and his harangues as unintelligible as infinite; for, if once he begin, there is no chance of his leaving off speaking while one person remains to yield attention; therefore the only expedient I know, for putting a stop to his loquacity, is to lay hold of some incongruity he has uttered, and demand an explanation; or ask the meaning of some difficult term that he knows by name; this method will effectually put him to silence, if not to flight, as it happened when I inquired about an epaulement.