660 



MONTAGUE. 



Montague, na ; but, owing to the exorbitant demands of the lat- 

 *"" "Y"""* ter, his negociations entirely failed. His letters of re- 

 cal, countersigned by Addison, are dated 21st Octo- 

 ber, 1717 ; and on the following 5th of June, he and 

 his family commenced their journey to Britain, where, 

 after visiting Tunis, Genoa, Lyons, and Paris, they ar- 

 rived on the 30th of October, 1718. 



At the Court of George I., Lady Mary was received 

 with increased distinction. The celebrity arising from 

 her travels, the fund of new ideas acquired in the course 

 of them, the graphical and spirited mode in which she 

 described what she had seen, gave a new charm to her 

 already fascinating conversation. She obtained parti, 

 cular notice from the Princess of Wales, afterwards 

 Queen Caroline, and by her brilliant acquirements ex- 

 cited the praise or the envy of every competitor for 

 such honours as the admiration of a court can bestow. 

 The excellence of her sprightly conversation had al- 

 ready been stamped by the approbation of Pope ; and 

 at her return from Turkey, the poet appears to have 

 manifested the continuance of that friendship which his 

 lively, though rather affected, letters, had so warmly ex- 

 pressed during her absence. He earnestly invited her 

 to take up her residence at Twickenham, and had the 

 pleasure of successfully negociating a lease of Sir God- 

 frey Kneller's house for her reception. In this cele- 

 brated village, Lady Mary could occasionally exchange 

 the gaieties of fashionable life at London for the com- 

 pany of those celebrated characters who frequented the 

 society of Pope, and diversify the flatteries of Dr. 

 Young and her second cousin Henry Fielding, by the 

 conversation of Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot. 



But the friendship of wits is proverbially fragile. In 

 the case of Pope and Lady Mary, its existence, render- 

 ed precarious by the conflicting claims of a vanity, 

 which on both sides sought gratification in the dan- 

 gerous province of satire, was shortened by political 

 hostility. Dissatisfied with the quantity of praise which 

 the world bestowed on Pope for correcting her produc- 

 tions, and which the poet, it was thought, did not 

 steadily enough refuse, Lady Mary had for some time 

 omitted consulting him on such occasions ; and this 

 coldness was increased at the accession of George II. 

 "by her avowed partiality for Sir Robert Walpole, and 

 her intimacy with Lord Hervey, which could not but 

 offend a professed follower of Bolingbroke. The publi- 

 cation of the Tmvn Eclogues completed this alienation. 

 Lady Mary had several years before submitted these 

 poems to Pope's inspection, and, as the satire or scan- 

 dal they were supposed to contain, rendered them 

 an object of general curiosity, copies were extensively 

 circulated, and to print them became a fit speculation 

 for the noted Edmund Curl. In spite of remon- 

 strances and threats, the work came out under Pope's 

 name ; and Lady Mary defrauded of praise, and sus- 

 pecting collusion, not only renounced all intercourse 

 with him, but displayed the resentment of forfeited 

 friendship in bitter sarcasms, which were too faithfully 

 reported to the object of them. The irritable nature 

 of Pope was little calculated to brook such treatment. 

 His opinion of Lady Mary, under the name of Sappho, 

 expressed in his satires with more rancour than taste or 

 wit, called forth from his victim, and her coadjutor, 

 Lord Hervey, also stigmatised under the name of Spo- 

 rus, those " verses addressed to the translator of the 

 first Satire of the Second Book of Horace," the pri- 

 vate circulation of which produced a letter from Pope 

 to his antagonists, disavowing any such intention as 

 the one imputed to him. Much has been said of the 



malignity displayed by Pope in this nttack, and of the Montague. 

 meanness with which he attempted to recede from it. **~~T*~ 

 Certainly the accusations brought against Sappho are 

 of a character sufficiently black, and the author's equi- 

 vocal statements about their application seem to argue 

 considerable weakness of mind : but if, without inves- 

 tigating how far such accusations might be founded on 

 truth, we condemn the man who, under the mask of a 

 moralist, stoops to gratify his individual hatred, we are 

 compelled at the same time to admit, that his antago- 

 nists appear to have wanted the power rather than the 

 will, to be equally barbarous. It is matter of regret, 

 that the friendship of Pope and Lady Mary was con- 

 verted into enmity : but the means adopted by the one 

 party to satisfy that enmity were hardly less blameabte 

 than those adopted by the other. A fierce, though dull, 

 execration of Pope's malice and deformity, is but awk- 

 wardly blended with censures of his virulence and 

 coarseness. 



The quarrel with this formidable satirist produced 

 disagreeable results for Lady Montagu. It no doubt 

 contributed to spread those black reports about her 

 character and conduct, to which the many victims of 

 her sarcastic pleasantry were at all times willing list- 

 ners. She still lived at court with the great and gay, 

 sharing or directing their amusements, admired for the 

 pungency of her wit, and the sprightliness of her oc- 

 casional verses, but her life seems not to have been 

 happy. To other sources of solicitude, ill health was 

 at last added; and in 1739, with Mr. Wortley's con- 

 sent, she resolved to fix her abode in Italy. Passing 

 through Venice, where much respect was shewn to her, 

 she visited Rome and Naples, and after having spent 

 several months at Chamberry and Avignon, she finally 

 settled at Brescia. From this city, she afterwards re- 

 moved to Lover, on the northern shore of the Lake Iseo, 

 for the benefit of its mineral waters; where, having 

 purchased and refitted an elegant house, she divided 

 her attention between reading and managing the con- 

 cerns of her vineyard. With a small and select socie- 

 ty, she seems to have enjoyed more contentment in 

 this retired situation than her former habits would 

 have led us to expect. About the year 1758, however, 

 she exchanged her solitude for the amusements of Ve- 

 nice, in which city she remained till 1761, the period 

 of Mr. Wortley's death. She then yielded to the soli- 

 citations of her daughter, the Countess of Bute, and af- 

 ter an absence of twenty-two years, she returned to 

 England in the month of October. But her health had 

 suffered much, and a gradual decline terminated in 

 death, on the 21st of August, 1762. 



Overawed by Pope and his associates, Lady Mary 

 had ventured to publish nothing during her lifetime. 

 The Town Eclogues, above alluded to, were printed 

 under Pope's name, and though his editors have conti- 

 nued to assign the " Basset Table," with the " Draw- 

 ing Room," to him, and the " Toilet" to Gay, she 

 seems, in fact, to have been the author of them all. Se- 

 veral of her other poems had appeared in different col- 

 lections, but it was without her permission. If we may 

 judge, however, from an expression employed in writ- 

 ing to her sister, the Countess of Mar, it would seem 

 that Lady Mary contemplated the posthumous publica- 

 tion of her letters ; and, towards the conclusion of her 

 residence in Italy, she had actually transcribed that 

 part of them which relates to Mr. Wortley's embassy. 

 The manuscript, entrusted to Mr. Lowden, a clergy- 

 man at Rotterdam, was surreptitiously printed by 

 Beckett in 1763 ; and the curiosity which it had long 



