The queen was unremittingly sweet and gracious, never making me sensible of any insufficiency from My single attendance; which, to me, was an opportunity the most favourable in the world for becoming more intimately acquainted with her mind and understanding.  For the excellency of her mind I was fully prepared ; the testimony of the nation at large could not be unfaithful ; but the depth and soundness of her understanding surprised me :  good sense I expected — to that alone she could owe the even tenor of her conduct, universally approved, though examined and judged by the watchful eye of multitudes.  But I had not imagined that, shut up in the confined limits of a Court, she could have acquired any but the most superficial knowledge of the world, and the most partial insight into character.  But I find, now, I have only done justice to her disposition, not to her parts, which are truly of that superior order that makes sagacity intuitively supply the place of experience.  In the course of this month I spent much time quite alone with her, and never once quitted her presence without fresh admiration of her talents.

There are few points I have observed with more pleasure in her than all that concerns the office which brings me to her in this private and confidential manner.  All that breaks from her, in our t`ete-`a-t`etes, upon the subject of dress, is both edifying and amiable.  She equips herself for the drawing-room with all the attention in her power; she neglects nothing that she thinks becoming to her appearance upon those occasions, and is sensibly conscious that her high station makes her attire in public a matter of business.  As such, she submits to it without murmuring; but a yet stronger consciousness of the real futility of such mere outward grandeur bursts from her, involuntarily, the moment the sacrifice is paid, and she can never refuse herself the satisfaction of expressing her contentment to put on a quiet undress.  The great coats are so highly in her favour, from the quickness with which they enable her to finish her toilette, that she sings their praise with fresh warmth every time she is allowed to wear them, archly saying to me, with most expressive eyes, “If I could write—­if I could but write!—­how I would compose upon a great coat!  I wish I were a poetess, that I might make a song upon it—­I do think something very pretty might be said about it.”

These hints she has given me continually ; but the Muse 425

was not so kind as ever to make me think of the matter again when out of her sight-till, at last, she one day, in putting on this favourite dress, half gravely, said, “I really take it a little ill you won’t write something upon these great coats!”

I only laughed, yet, when I left her, I scribbled a few stanzas, copied them very fairly, and took them, as soon as they were finished, into her room ; and there kept them safely in my pocket-book, for I knew not how to produce them, and she, by odd accident, forbore from that time to ask for them, though her repeated suggestion had, at last, conquered my literary indolence.(221)