The conduct of the Duchess towards her sovereign has been, by party writers, severely stigmatised, and not without justice. There was, on both sides of this memorable quarrel, much to blame. A long course of arrogance, imprudence, and negligence, on the part of the Duchess, led to the alienation of Anne. Yet even the Queen specifically declared, and reiterated, that she had no fault to allege against the haughty Sarah, except “inveteracy to poor Masham.” It was not in the Duchess’s nature to check that inveteracy. A generous, high-minded line of conduct was beyond her power. Yet, at any rate, the alleged cause of her disfavour was not a crime of heinous character. It was the mode in which she revenged the injuries which she received, that constitutes her delinquency. Her character of her royal mistress was written in the spirit of revenge; her pen was fledged with satire as it traced the lines in which the follies and defects of Anne are described. Years failed to soften the bitterness of her vindictive spirit. Death had not the power to disarm her rancour. The publication of certain letters, an act with which she frequently threatened the Queen;[410] the careful insertion in her narrative of every circumstance that can throw ridicule upon a mistress once her benefactress, one who descended from her high rank to claim the privileges of friendship: these are acts which must be heavily charged upon the Duchess. Age and affliction ought to have taught the relentless writer a better lesson. The Queen was no more—the Duchess tottering towards the tomb. Their mutual animosities should not by the survivor have been dragged forth to gratify revenge. Such a breach of confidence, such an outrage upon the sacred name of friendship, society ought not to pardon. Such an offence, of too frequent occurrence, where disgust has superseded confidence, renders affection a snare to be dreaded by the unsophisticated mind, and must entirely preclude those who hold offices of responsibility from the necessary relief of confidence; and, were such acts of treachery excused, monarchs might indeed tremble, before they indulged the amiable inclinations of minds not corrupted by the intoxicating possession of power. The office which the Duchess held about the person of the Queen rendered silence an imperative claim of honour; but, with an unrelenting coarseness, the Duchess laid bare the very privacies of the closet, the foibles, the vacillations, the manœuvres, the weaknesses, the peculiarities of her sovereign. No self-justification could be worth such a price—revenge upon the memory of one silent in the grave.