tible in society. We say nothing of its effect upon that early but important part of education which falls to the care of mothers. But it also makes a competent share of knowledge, a much more desirable, indeed an almost indispensable acquisition, to an English gentleman. We are not now speaking of understandings of the highest class of persons engaged in the great struggle for power and for fame; nor do we pretend that we are likely to have greater statesmen, poets, and philosophers than our forefathers, because modern ladies are better instructed than the wife of Burleigh, or the daughters of Milton. But there is in this country a large description of men who are either unemployed, or only half employed, in easy circumstances, void of ambition, indolent, and unwilling to take the trouble of acquiring more literary knowledge than is absolutely necessary to escape contempt. All such persons did formerly find great comfort and countenance in the entire ignorance of the female half of society. However schools and colleges might have failed of infusing into them any portion of learning, they were sure at least not to find themselves inferior to those whose tastes make the law of fashion, and whose influence, arising from the strongest feelings of our nature, enables them, in all civilized nations, to dispense the lesser honours of social life. That support is now withdrawn. Books have travelled from the library to the drawing-room, and have so completely established themselves there that it will be found impossible to dislodge them. Women read, and talk of what they have read, not out of affectation and pedantry, but as a common amusement, and a natural subject of conversation. Their society is no longer an asylum for ignorance, and any one that is desirous to shine as a man of fashion must submit to take a little literature as part of his stock in trade.

These remarks are suggested to us by the perusal of Mrs. Montagu's letters which are poured forth upon the public with a liberality somewhat approaching to profusion. They shew very clearly that she was a superior woman, and quite as clearly that in the early part of her life (though she died within our own recollection) women were very far from having reached their present standard of taste and knowledge. Her attainments would not now be consi dered as very remarkable, but it is evident that they were then admitted to be so, both by herself and her friends. She was naturally gay, intelligent, and ingenious, and her style is on the whole agreeable. But she deals largely-according, we presume, to the custom of the age among those that piqued themselves upon writing good letters-in stale, pedantic, unprofitable morality; praising that which was never blamed, insisting upon that which was never denied, and condemning that which nobody ever undertook to de

6

fend. But this was not her fault, but the fault of the age. No woman of three and twenty, clever, fashionable, and well educated, would now think it right to acquaint her correspondent, even though that correspondent were an uncle or a father, a bishop or a judge, that every thing in the world is of a mortal nature;' that true and faithful affection is not a pearl to be cast before the profane;' that hypocrisy is an abominable vice;' that happiness opens the heart to benevolence, and affliction softens it to pity;'all which apophthegms may be found in the space of two pages. But they by no means prove with regard to Mrs. Montagu, what they would most undoubtedly prove with respect to any person in these days that should be guilty of uttering them. They merely shew that people still thought it very pretty and proper to transplant sentences from copy books into their familiar correspondence, and that it was a great want of respect to their elderly friends and relations not to inflict upon them a large quantity of dulness and commonplace. She has considerable comic powers, which break out agreeably enough when she is writing with less care than usual, but on great occasions, when she is desirous of shewing herself to the best advantage, to duchesses and other high persons, her pleasantry becomes forced, wire-drawn, and childish to the most mclancholy excess. We can hardly bring ourselves to transcribe such trash as follows. She is writing to the duchess of Portland.

'It is a hard case that your Grace forgets your correspondents for your Bantam fowl. Though I have not my head so well curled as your Friesland hen, nor hold up my head like your upright duck, do you think I consent to be laid aside for them? Of all fowl I love the goose best, who supplies us with her quill; surely a goose is a goodly bird; if its hiss be insignificant, remember that from its side the engine is taken with which the laws are registered, and history recorded; though not a bird famous for courage, from the same ample wing are the heroes exploits engraven on the pillar of everlasting fame; though not an animal of sagacity, yet does it lend its assistance to the precepts of philosophy: if not beautiful, yet with its tender touch in the hands of some inspired lover is Lesbia's blush, Sacharissa's majesty, and Chloe's bloom, made lasting, and locks which curled or uncurled, have turned to grey,' by it continue in eternal beauty; and will you forsake this creature for a little pert fowl with a gaudy feather?

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No person now could mistake this for any thing but elaborate nonsense; but we make no doubt that her grace received it for sterling wit, and rejoiced in the incomparable ingenuity of her correspondent. Bad taste, of which no doubt she had before her innumerable examples, and the desire of shining continually, natural enough in a person who had in all probability been told often how much she was fitted to shine, are the defects that appear

in

almost

almost every page of these letters. Mrs. Montagu is evidently oppressed by the load of her own superiority. She writes like a person that has a character to support, and whose correspondents would have a right to complain if she ceased one moment to be very wise or very witty. One of her friends (Mrs. West, the wife of Gilbert West) tells her that public fame had acquainted her, that Mrs. Montagu was the most agreeable correspondent in the world.' Such a reputation was worth an effort to maintain, and that effort was almost unavoidably fatal to the ease and grace of that species of composition which more than any other seems to defy the power of labour and of art. Mrs. Montagu would, in all probability, have written much more agreeable and much more really sensible letters, if she had never once been led to suspect 'that she was the most agreeable correspondent in the world.

But though we do not think quite so highly of her as Mrs. West had been taught to think, we are far from denying that she writes with a vivacity and cleverness which account well enough for the impression she seems to have made upon her contemporaries. Her defects are to be ascribed to her situation and the fashion of the day; her merits are her own. There are, perhaps, five hundred women now that can write as well as Mrs. Montagu, and that too without being guilty of those sins against good taste with which she is justly chargeable. But how many of these would have written as well in her time, and in her circumstances, is quite another question. We are inclined to believe that the number would have been comparatively very small. On the other hand, if Mrs. Montagu had lived in our days, she would have maintained nearly the same station. Her acquirements would not have been so remarkable, which would have been attended by this advantage, that she would have thought less about them, and been free from that tinge of pedantry which is now visible in her writings. Her ethics would not have been so trite, nor her wit so laboured. But her talents would have carried her equally far in a happier direction. She would have been now, as she was then, one of the liveliest, cleverest, best-informed women of the age. In vigour, spirit, and originality, she was far, very far indeed, inferior to her incomparable namesake, Lady M. W. Montagu. But Lady Mary was so extraordinary a person, that she is perhaps hardly a fair object of comparison. However, although we have derived considerable amusement from these letters, and though they have, as we have already acknowledged, inspired us with a favourable opinion as to the talents of their author, we have some doubts whether they have quite body and substance enough for publication. Mrs. Montagu did not write at one of those distant periods when a mere account of the ordinary occurrences of life, and a mere picture of the state

of

of society as they appear in a familiar correspondence, interest one from their contrast with our own habits and manners; nor are her letters sufficiently interspersed with anecdotes of eminent persons in her own time, to gratify our curiosity in a different but equally agreeable manner. We own that we were at first a good deal disappointed at the little notice Mrs. Montagu takes of her illustrious contemporaries; and the more, because it is evident that she enjoyed the advantage of being familiarly acquainted with the greater part of them. However, upon consideration, it appears to us that though the absence of this sort of information renders her letters vastly less interesting now that they are published at an interval of two generations, it is no cause of just blame to the writer. Her correspondents were just as well acquainted with the history and character of the time as herself, and it would have been only telling stories they all knew, and delivering opinions in which they all agreed. Incidentally, however, she is sometimes led to speak of the eminent persons of that time, and from the letters in which these passages occur, we shall make one or two extracts. In general, we should say that the merit of her letters is in an inverse proportion to the pains she takes with them. Those addressed to her husband, and to Gilbert West, who appears to have been one of her earliest and most intimate friends, are often natural, lively, and agreeable. Those to Lord Lyttelton are vastly more laboured, and vastly less pleasant. But those, fortunately few in number, composed for the benefit of that very learned, very excellent, and very tiresome person, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, once very celebrated, and now almost forgotten, whom she seems desirous to dazzle by a prodigious display of wit, knowledge, taste, virtue, and piety, are the worst of all, and indeed absolutely unreadable.

Some of her opinions upon subjects of literature are somewhat curious. She assigns the highest place among the historical writers of that time to Lord Lyttelton, the next to Dr. Robertson; but as to Mr. Hume, she thinks his history lively and entertaining, but likely (she is afraid) to promote jacobitism.' She has a great contempt for Voltaire, particularly as a philosophical historian, and she is not at all affected by the Orphelin de la Chine.' 'As the world is fond of every thing Chinese, Mons. Voltaire has given us a Chinese tragedy, which I would send you if I thought it would entertain you, but I think your good taste would not be pleased with a Chinese tale dressed in a French habit. I read it without any concern.' vol. iv. p. 7. What she says of Bolingbroke is just and well written. She is speaking of the intended publication of his posthumous works. As to the rules of conduct to be given by this noble writer, I hope they will not be such as have governed him, for should they make us what they left him, virtue would

be

be no great gainer; none of the boisterous passions of his youth restrained; none of the peevish or mischievous ones of his old age mitigated or allayed; envy, ambition, and anger gnawing and burning in his heart to the last.' v. iii. p. 179. She had the good fortune to know, and the good taste to admire, Mr. Burke in the very early part of his life. We transcribe with pleasure the passage in

which she mentions him.

'I shall send you a Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, by Mr. Burke, a friend of mine. I do not know whether you will always subscribe to his system, but I think you will find him an elegant and ingenious writer. He is far from the pert pedantry and assuming ignorance of modern witlings, but in conversation and in writing an ingenious and ingenuous man, modest and delicate, and on great and serious subjects full of that respect and veneration which a good mind and a great one is sure to feel, while fools rush behind the altar at which wise men kneel and pay mysterious reverence.'

One cannot but rejoice to see that this great man was always consistent with himself, and that the same decency and worth in private life, the same humble and deep-rooted piety that adorned his maturer years, were already characteristic of him at his first entrance into life.

There are inserted in this collection a few letters from George, Lord Lyttelton. They are, as might be expected from such a person, elegant and gentlemanlike, but they contain nothing material. Two of them are written upon the death of the late king, and the accession of his present Majesty. The first of these is truly statesmanlike. The body of the letter, written under the recent impression of the intelligence that had just reached him, is employed entirely in conjectures as to the duration of the administration, and his own continuance in office. Certainly it is no season for any great changes.' 'As to my own situation, I doubt not it will be as it is.' It is not till the next day, in a postscript, that he recollects the proper decorums on such an occcasion, feels 'real grief for the death of his good master,'' hopes he is gone to receive an eternal crown,' &c. &c. according to the most authentic forms of lamentation.

In a subsequent letter he describes the state of things at that critical period.

'Hill-street, November 5, 1760. Wednesday night.

A THOUSAND thanks to the good Madonna for her last letter, which eased my heart of as much anxiety as it almost ever felt for the health of a friend; and, since it has been quite cured of ambition, that heart can hardly know much pleasure or pain but in its sensations for those it loves. You ought to value me a little on this account: for in the present conjuncture there are, I believe, few hearts in this state. Private friendships are little thought of: all attention now goes to political connections. But those connections, God be thanked, are not