Her religious views were broad. She felt “no great reverence for Kings.” In politics she was a Whig. “I was born and bred in Whiggism,” which word, she tells us, was synonymous to “fool and rascal,” from Johnson’s lips. It may be added that Johnson also said, “the Devil was the first Whig.” She confessed she had no great appetite for politics, though she expressed her views pretty freely on the subject. In 1790 the titles of nobility were suppressed in France, and Anna Seward disapproved of Burke’s vindication of hereditary honours. She thought that “they are more likely to make a man repose, with slumbering virtue upon them, for the distinction he is to receive in society, than to inspire the effort of rendering himself worthy of them. They are to men what beauty is to women, a dangerous gift, which has a natural tendency to make them indolent, silly, and worthless. Let property be hereditary, but let titular honours be the reward of noble or useful exertions. France, in her folly, has destroyed them totally, instead of making them conditional.” Howbeit, titled people appear to have been highly honoured by her, notwithstanding these observations. By 1797 she had lost her long-existing confidence in Pitt’s wisdom and integrity, and in 1798 she thought he was “disqualified for retaining the reasonable confidence of the people of England.” In 1801 she wrote of “Pitt’s low and perfidious manœuvres,” and she never changed her opinion of him. She seemed unable to write what is called plain English. Archdeacon Vyse is described by her as “a man of prioric talents in a metrical impromptu.” Another person “evinced an elevated mind,” while a third exhibited an “attic spirit” in her writings. An evening is described as being “attic”; but even Pope, we may remark, calls a nightingale an “attic warbler.” It is true, however, he was writing poetry, not prose. Though a Bluestocking, her praise was usually generously bestowed; she knew well how to flatter. She, though unacquainted with Latin, paraphrased Horace; and she admitted her ignorance of French. She loved all animals, notably cats and dogs, and, believing in a future existence for the dumb creation, wrote a poem, entitled “On the Future Existence of Brutes.” The following are three of more beautiful stanzas:— “Has GOD decreed this helpless, suffering train Shall, groaning yield the vital breath he gave, Unrecompens’d for years of want, and pain, And close on them the portals of the grave? Ah, no! the great Retributory Mind Will recompense, and may, perhaps, ordain Some future mode of being, more refin’d Than ours, less sullied with inherent stain; Less torn by passion, and less prone to sin, Their duty easier, trial less severe, Till their firm faith, and virtue prov’d, may win The wreaths of life in yon Eternal Sphere.