years, this bond was at last broken, she had grown suspicious and hard to be led, even by the politician who had shown to her the irksomeness of the old guidance. The devotion of Abigail never became to her as the friendship of Mrs. Freeman. The Duchess of Somerset seems in some degree, by the great charm of her manner, to have taken the place in the queen's affections of her imperious predecessor (see Dartmouth's note to Burnet, vi. 34, where he also states that the Queen of Sicily, Anna Maria of Savoy, was the only relation he ever heard Queen Anne speak of with much tenderness). Peculiarly susceptible to the influences of friendship, the queen was at the same time, as has been sufficiently seen, an affectionate wife and a tender mother. Nor, having suffered herself, was she without ready sympathy for the sufferings of others (see her letter to the duchess on the death of Lord Blandford, Coxe, i. 164; and her letter to Rooke, Ellis, 3rd series, iv. 330).
The personal tastes of Queen Anne show little or no love of the polite arts which had characterised our earlier Stuart kings, and had left some faint traces in the pursuits and pleasures of her father and uncle. It is wonderful how few of the literary stats of the ‘age of Queen Anne’ seem ever to have crossed her orbit. She took no interest in the theatre, except to check its more obvious immoralities (see her proclamation of January 1704 in Ashton, 255). She never visited the public playhouses; but plays seem now and then to have been performed at court (Strickland, xii. 103; cf. Ashton, 255). In a graver department of literature it was in a sense an accident that her illustrious grandfather's historical work did not see the light of publicity till soon after the commencement of her reign, when it was printed with a dedication to her (1702). Another great historical publication, though not the work of a great author — Rymer's ‘Fœdera’ — was published at her sole charge ; and the compiler, who had been appointed historiographer royal in the preceding reign, was under her encouraged by an annual grant of 100l. (Treasury Papers, 1702-7, 28; 1714-19, 63). It has been seen that she had the honour of knighting Isaac Newton.
For art she cared as little as for letters. Wren was her court architect, but on her splendid gift of Blenheim Palace Vanbrugh was employed. Early in her reign Verrio finished the famous frescoes at Hampton Court, which began to be out of fashion already under her successor. Of course she sat to Kneller. For music she cared so little, that in 1708 she is stated never to have heard her own band play (Court and Society, ii. 337). The personal tastes of Queen Anne went in a different direction. There is no proof that she cared much for jewellery, notwithstanding the stir made by Marlborough about the jewels inherited by her from her sister, and withheld from her in Holland (Marlborough Despatches, i. 10-11, 35, &c.); nor for lace, in which she does not seem to have been extravagant. Her predilections were rather in favour of open-air amusements, more especially that of hunting. Swift tells Stella of the famous chaise, or ‘open calash,’ as Luttrell calls it (v. 205), arranged so as to fit only the portly figure of the queen, and drawn by one horse, ‘which she drives herself, and drives furiously like Jehu,’ following the stag-hunt in Windsor forest (Craik, 225; cf. Strickland, xi. 361). But even in this species of recreation, in which she indulged almost to the last, she did not affect variety. Her patronage of racing may have been largely due to a wish to respond to the tastes of her husband. She did not care for a present of hawks sent by the King of Denmark (Treasury Papers, 1702-7, Preface, xxix); and the spaniel keeper of Charles II, James II, and Queen Mary, found under her his occupation, or, at least, his profits, gone (ibid. 164).
In person Queen Anne is described by Smollett (ii. 279) as ‘of the middle size, well proportioned. Her hair was of dark brown colour, her complexion ruddy; her features were regular, her countenance was rather round than oval, and her aspect more comely than majestic.’ With this judicious description may be compared the portrait drawn by the Duchess of Marlborough of the queen in her last years when she had grown ‘exceeding gross and corpulent’ (Private Correspondence, ii. 119 seq.). Her hand was considered very beautiful, and may be still admired in Kneller's portrait at Windsor (Strickland, xii. 53). She suffered greatly from her eyes, to the weakness of which she refers in a letter to Marlborough (Coxe, iii. 127, and see the anecdote in Somerville, 267; her oculists were Read and Grant, both advertising quacks, of whom the former was knighted, Ashton, 323-5). In compensation she was gifted ‘with a softness of voice, and sweetness in the pronunciation, that added much life to all she spoke’ (Burnet, v. 2, where the annotators state that Charles II was so pleased with the natural sweetness of her voice that he had her taught to speak by the famous actress, Mrs. Barry). Neither Kneller's brush nor Bird's less fortunate chisel,
