The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening to some equally valuable criticism uttered by the queen touching Goethe , Page xxxi

And Klopstock, and might have learned an important lesson of economy from the mode in which her majesty’s library had been formed. “1 picked the book up on a stall,” said the queen.  “Oh, it is amazing what good books there are on stalls!” Mrs. Delany, who seems to have understood from these words that her majesty was in the habit of exploring the booths of Moorfields and Holywell-street in person, could not suppress an exclamation of surprise.  “Why,” said the queen, “I don’t pick them up myself.  I have a servant very clever; and if they are not to be had at the booksellers, they are not for me more than for another.”  Miss Burney describes this conversation as delightful; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land encouraged literature.

The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the condescending kindness of the two great personages to whom she had been presented.  Her father was even more infatuated than herself.  The result was a step of which we cannot think with patience, but recorded as it is with all its consequences in these volumes deserves at least this praise, that it has furnished a most impressive warning.

A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the keepers of the queen’s robes, retired about this time, and her majesty offered the vacant post to Miss Burney.  When we consider that Miss Burney was decidedly the most popular writer of fictitious narrative then living, that competence, if not opulence, was within her reach, and that she was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited to make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we are divided between laughter and indignation.

What was demanded of her was that she should consent to be almost as completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to gaol for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman’s bell to a waiting-woman’s duties; that she should pass her whole life under the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was ready to swoon with hunger, should sometimes stand till her knees have way with fatigue; that she should not dare to speak or move without considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures.  Instead of those distinguished men and women, the flower of all political parties, with whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual companion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasperated by disease.  Now and then, indeed, poor Frances might console her-Page xxxii