The most probable solution must conform to these data. Pope's Atossa was
a portrait which would fit either lady, though it would be naturally
applied to the most famous. It seems certain also that Pope had received
some favours (possibly the 1000_l._ on some occasion unknown) from the
Duchess of Marlborough, which was felt by his friends to make any attack
upon her unjustifiable. We can scarcely believe that there should have
been a direct compact of the kind described. If Pope had been a person
of duly sensitive conscience he would have suppressed his work. But to
suppress anything that he had written, and especially a passage so
carefully laboured, was always agony to him. He preferred, as we may
perhaps conjecture, to settle in his own mind that it would fit the
Duchess of Buckingham, and possibly introduced some of the touches to
which Mr. Dilke refers. He thought it sufficiently disguised to be
willing to publish it whilst the person with whom it was naturally
identified was still alive. Had she complained, he would have relied
upon those touches, and have equivocated as he equivocated to Hill and
Chandos. He always seems to have fancied that he could conceal himself
by very thin disguises. But he ought to have known, and perhaps did
know, that it would be immediately applied to the person who had
conferred an obligation. From that guilt no hypothesis can relieve him;
but it is certainly not proved, and seems, on the whole, improbable that
he was so base as the concessions of his biographers would indicate.
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