502 Dat BIOGRAPHY. 
signalised himself, and when he died, he, he will be disappointed. The enki 3 
may refer to this little pocket volume, ornamented with portraits of a few of thé | 
and probably have his enquiries correctly most celebrated characters. Fronti nulla | 
answered ; if heexpects any thing more fides! ‘ , : 
Agr. XII. The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Ine 
cluding. her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays. 
Genuine Papers. 5 vols. crown 8vo. 
THE letters of Lady Mary Wortley, 
during her travels and residence in 
Turkey, have been long. and universally 
admired as the best models in that kind 
of composition which our language af- 
fords. The -liberality of her grandson, 
the marquis of Bute, therefore, in per- 
mitting the present enlarged collection 
of her epistolary writings to meet the 
public. eye, must ensure for him the 
gratitude of every friend to polite litera- 
ture. 
' Mr. Dallaway, the eaitor of these vo- 
lumes, has prefaced them with ‘ Me. 
moirs” of the author, whick yield to 
few similar performances in meagreness 
of information and tediousness of di- 
gression. The few facts we were able 
to collect from them, we shall lay before 
our readers as a necessary introduction 
to our subsequent remarks. 
Lady Mary Pierrepoint, daughter of 
Evelyn, duke of ‘Kit.gston, was born at 
Thorsby in Nottinghanishire, about the 
year 1690.. Her father was induced 
by the early promise of her genius to 
bestow on her a classical education. 
—Under the same masters with her 
brother, she acquired the rudiments 
of Latin, Greek, and French; and her 
further studies were superintended by 
bishop Burnet, who did not fail to dis- 
cover and applaud her superior talents. 
Her youth was principally spent in hi- 
terary retirement; and it was not till 
1714, two years after her marriage, that 
she blazed upon the court in the meridian 
of wit and bewty, and formed inti- 
macies with Addison, Pope, and the 
other wits cf the age. In 1717, she 
accompanied her husband on his embassy 
to the Porte, whence she wrote those 
admirable letters, to the accuracy of 
which, in the delineation of Turkish 
manners, and description of Turkish 
scenes, Mr. Dallaway has been enabled 
by local knowledge to bear. the fullest 
testimony. In 1718, she returned to, 
England, and entitled herself to the 
Jasting gratitude of her country. by in- 
troducing the practice of inoculation. 
Her difference with Pope which ter- 
Published by Permission from her 
minated in an open and irreconcilable 
enmity, about the year 27, was the 
most important event of many subse- 
quent years of Lady Mary’s life, and 
was certainly the origin of most of those 
tales unfavourable to her reputation, 
which appear to have obtained too much 
credit both with her contemporaries and 
with posterity. Pope, mortified at find. 
ing himself, after all his fulsome adu- 
lation, superseded by the Herveys in 
the good graces of Lady Mary, and 
eclipsed in conversation by her wit, was 
provoked, after several skirmishes of 
petulant repartee, in which he appears 
to have gained no advantage, to recur 
to that cruel and dishonourable mode of 
attack by which any woman, however 
respectable, may be overcome by any 
man, however despicable. Female ho« 
nour is.astructure so easy to be assaulted, 
so difficult to be defended, so impossible 
to be repaired, that to a mean ungener« 
ous adversary (and such was Pope) it 
offers irresistible opportunities of inflicte 
ing injuries which cannot be retaliated. 
How far any levities in her ladyship’s 
conduct might give a plausible colour 
to scandal, which envy, vice, and folly 
were glad to believe of a beauty, a wit, 
and a satirist; but which unbiassed pos- 
terity will be loth to credit on the word 
of an enemy, contrary to many pre- 
sumptions, cannot now be ascertained. 
The reasons which induced her to leave 
her native country in the year 1739, 
with a resolution of passing the rest of 
her life in Italy, are equally involved in 
mystery :—it is by no means probable 
that the decline of her health, the mo- 
tive assigned by Mr. Dallaway, was the 
real, or, at least, the only one. Her 
return to England in 61, immediately 
on Mr. Wortley’s death, seems to point 
at a separation from her husband as the 
true cause of her expatriation, but that 
this parting was amicable, ‘and by mu- 
tual consent, is fully proved by the inti- 
mate epistolary intercourse kept up be- 
tween them during tke remainder of 
their lives. After an absence of twenty-. 
two years, Lady Mary returned at the, 
