“Often, out of fear of being imposed upon by an over-caution, she would impose upon herself; she took a delight in refusing those who were thought to have the greatest power with her, even in the most reasonable things, and such as were necessary for her service; nor would let them be done till she fell into the humor of it herself.” In her best days, Anne was merely a dull, uninformed woman, without the slightest literary tastes, and yet her reign is called the “Augustan Age of Anne,” and the “wits of Queen Anne’s time” are held only second to the “poets of the Elizabethan age.” No one would probably have been more surprised than Anne herself to have been thus classed with the glorious names of literary fame, for she never read, and was hardly cognizant of the existence of the brilliant minds which gave her reign its brightest lustre. Sir Isaac Newton, Pope, Dryden, Addison, Steele, Swift, De Foe, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Congreve, Young, Parnell, Granville, and Bishop Atterbury, were the most celebrated among the literary lights in her time. The daily etiquette of the court life of Queen Anne is thus described:— “The bedchamber-woman came into waiting before her majesty arose, and previous to prayers. If a lady of the bedchamber were present, the bedchamber-woman handed her the queen’s linen, and the lady put it on her Majesty. Every time the queen changed her dress in the course of the day her habiliments made the same formal progress from hand to hand. When the queen washed her hands, her page of the back stairs brought and set upon a side-table a basin and ewer. Then the bed-chamber-woman placed it before the queen, and knelt on the other side of the table over against the queen, the lady of the bedchamber only looking on. The bedchamber-woman poured the water out of the ewer on the queen’s hands. It was also her duty to pull on the queen’s gloves when her Majesty could not do it herself, which was often the case, owing to her infirmity of gout. The page of the back stairs was always called to put on the queen’s shoes. When Queen Anne dined in public, her page passed the glass to her bedchamber-woman, and she to the lady in waiting; in due time it reached the lips of royalty.”