It is allowed, from the instances you have in view, returned Dr. ARBUTHNOT, that her nature was something high and imperious. But these sallies of passion might well enough consist with her general character of affability.
Hardly, as I conceive, answered Mr. ADDISON, if you reflect that these sallies, or rather habits of passion, were the daily terror and vexation of all about her. Her very minions seemed raised for no other purpose, than the exercise of her ill-humour. They were encouraged, by her smile, to presume on the royal countenance, and then beaten down again in punishment of that presumption. But, to say the truth, the slavish temper of the time was favourable to such exertions of female caprice and tyranny. Her imperious father, all whose virtues, she inherited, had taught her a sure way to quell the spirit of her nobles. They had been long used to stand in awe of the royal frown. And the people were pleased to find their betters ruled with so high a hand, at a time when they themselves were addressed with every expression of respect, and even flattery.
She even carried this mockery so far, that, as HARRINGTON observes well, “she converted her reign, through the perpetual love-tricks that passed between her and her people, into a kind of romance.” And though that political projector, in prosecution of his favourite notion, supposes the queen to have been determined to these intrigues by observing, that the weight of property was fallen into the popular scale; yet we need look no further for an account of this proceeding, than the inherent haughtiness of her temper. She gratified the insolence of her nature, in neglecting, or rather beating down, her nobility, whose greatness might seem to challenge respect: while the court, she paid to the people, revolted her pride less, as passing only upon herself, as well as others, for a voluntary act of affability. Just as we every day see very proud men carry it with much loftiness towards their equals, or those who and raised to some nearness of degree to themselves; at the same time that they affect a sort of courtesy to such, as are confessedly beneath them.
You see, then, what her boasted affability comes to. She gave good words to her people, whom it concerned her to be well with, and whom her pride itself allowed her to _manage_: she insulted her nobles, whom she had in her power, and whose abasement flattered the idea, she doted upon, of her own superiority and importance[93].