It was her practice to write down her impressions and recollections of the various circumstances in which she had been engaged, and to entrust them to such friends as were likely to be interested in those details. Many of these productions she put into the hands of Bishop Burnet. Her character of Queen Anne; her able account of Sacheverell, written with impartiality and clearness; her character of Lord Halifax, of the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lord Somers, Lord Cowper, Swift and Prior, and others, have been preserved among her papers, and were composed expressly for her friends.[387] It was during the Duchess’s residence abroad that she is supposed by Dr. Coxe to have written her long letter in vindication of her general conduct to Mr. Hutchinson; from which unpublished document many facts in this work have been taken. But in 1788, a little book, called “Opinions of the Duchess of Marlborough,” collected from her private papers, was printed, but not published, with a preface, and notes by an anonymous editor, known to be Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Hailes. These memoranda, for they scarcely deserve a more imposing name, were commenced in the year 1736, and terminated in 1741. They are undoubtedly genuine, and are written with a spirit and fearlessness which plainly speak their source.[388] The learned antiquary and eminent historian who collected and honoured them with a preface, was not an admirer of the high-spirited lady, upon whose political conduct he has commented unsparingly in his memorials of Great Britain. Yet he could scarcely have done more to place the Duchess on a footing with the many other female writers who have added to the stores of British literature, than in preserving, as the shadow of his name must preserve, these specimens of the occupations of her solitary hours. The aversion of the Duchess to Sir Robert Walpole appears to have been the ruling passion of her mind. “I think,” she writes, “’tis thought wrong to wish anybody dead, but I hope ’tis none to wish he may be hanged, for having brought to ruin so great a country as this.” Yet she declares herself still partial to the Whig principles, observing, nevertheless, that both parties were much in fault; and the majority in both factions she calls by no milder term than “knaves,” ready to join with each party for the sake of individual benefit, or for the purpose of carrying any particular measure.[389]