Happily for her grace’s fame, she was vindicated by one man of ability, Henry Fielding, whilst her traducers, except in one instance, were devoid of talents sufficient to bear down the testimony of her plain facts, or to weaken the effect of her shrewd arguments.[396] The Duchess was unfortunate in provoking the malignant wit of Horace Walpole, whose satire, couched in terms of playful gossip, like nauseous medicines in sweet syrup, has been spread far and wide in his universally popular works. Horace Walpole is an instance, that to be what Dr. Johnson calls a “good hater,” it is not necessary to cherish the brooding enmities of a misanthropic retirement, in which the angry and vindictive passions are supposed to be fostered with propitious care. The only proof of attachment which he evinced to his family was his bitterness towards their foes, a bitterness indulged with all the rancour of a worldly man, who knows not the virtue of forbearance. His estimate of the Duchess’s character is well known. He allows her not one good quality, and seems to experience a gratification such as fiends might betray, when, in a tone of exultation, he announces her death. The dislike which the Duchess manifested for Sir Robert Walpole was attributed by his son to a base spirit of revenge. Among the few favourites whom she possessed among her relations, was Lady Diana Spencer, afterwards Duchess of Bedford. It became, according to Horace Walpole, a scheme of the Duchess of Marlborough to marry this young lady to Frederic Prince of Wales. She offered her to his royal highness with a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and a day was fixed for the nuptials, which were to be solemnized secretly at the Lodge in the Great Park at Windsor; but Sir Robert Walpole gained intelligence of the plot, and “the secret was buried in silence.”[397] In the gloom of the sick chamber, to which by the infirmities of old age she was frequently confined, the unbroken spirit of the Duchess showed itself still. “Old Marlborough is dying,” writes Horace Walpole to his friend Sir Horace Mann; “but who can tell? Last year she had lain a great while ill, without speaking; her physicians said she must be blistered, or she would die; she called out, ‘I won’t be blistered, and I won’t die.’ If she takes the same resolution now, I don’t believe she will.”[398] This passage forms a melancholy sequel to hints of infirmities, and reflections on approaching death, contained in the Duchess’s Opinions. As on this subject the least reserved of our species are seldom disposed to converse, since the stranger knoweth not the heart, and “intermeddleth not” with its joys or sorrows, we may receive, as her genuine sentiments, the plaintive reflections of the feeble and declining Duchess, couched in such terms as these.