Doddington's vanity was extreme. He prided himself upon his person, manners, and ancestry, though he was ugly, awkward, and the son of an obscure father.

This concentration of self-esteem was expressed in a superb bearing, which, when it took the form of distant civility, would have been very irritating to Pope.ELWIN, WHITWELL, 1871, ed., The Works of Alexander Pope, vol. VII, p. 319, note.

DIARY

Although it may reflect a considerable degree of honour on his Lordship's abilities, yet, in my opinion, it shews his political conduct (however palliated by the ingenuity of his own pen), to have been wholly directed by the base motives of avarice, vanity, and selfishness.

I am aware that, in treating the character of my Author thus freely, I shall appear as an extraordinary Editor, the practice of whom has generally been, to prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to justice. But it may be worth considering whether my method or the common one is the less injurious to the character of an author; and whether the reader may not be more inclined to overlook or pardon those errors, which he is previously instructed to expect, than he would be, if every page contradicted the favourable impressions, which the Editor had been industriously labouring to fix on his mind. -WYNDHAM, HENRY PENRUDDOCKE, 1784, ed. The Diary of George Bubb Dodington, pp. viii, x.

It had been well for lord Melcombe's memory, if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his wit, and the

evidence of his poetry. The posthumous publication of his own Diary has not enlarged the stock of his reputation, nor reflected more credit on his judgment than on his steadiness. Very sparingly strewed with his brightest talent, wit; the book strangely displays a complacency in his own versatility, and seems to look back with triumph on the scorn and derision with which his political levity was treated by all to whom he attached or attempted to attach himself. He records conversations in which he alone did not perceive, what every reader must discover, that he was always a dupe. And so blind was his self-love, that he appears to be satisfied with himself, though he relates little but what tended to his disgrace: as if he thought the world would forgive his inconsistencies as easily as he forgave himself. Had he adopted the French title Confessions, it would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence. But vain-glory engrossed Lord Melcombe. He was determined to raise an altar to himself; and for want of burnt-offerings, lighted the pyre, like the great author (Rousseau), with his own character. However, with all its faults and curtailments, the book is valuable.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1796, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland and Ireland, vol. IV, p. 276.

The Diary of Dodington, Lord Melcombe, must by no means be neglected, for by its means we are allowed a slight glance into the intrigues and cabals of the times. It is generally amusing, and sometimes important.-SMYTH, WILLIAM, 1840, Lectures on Modern History.

M

y W

of English Authors, p. 201

PERSONAL

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, WHO HAPPILY INTRODUCED FROM TURKEY INTO THIS COUNTRY

THE SALUTARY ART

OF INOCULATING THE SMALLPOX.

CONVINCED OF ITS EFFICACY

SHE FIRST TRIED IT WITH SUCCESS
ON HER OWN CHILDREN

AND THEN RECOMMENDED THE PRACTICE
OF IT

TO HER FELLOW-CITIZENS.
THUS BY HER EXAMPLE AND ADVICE
WE HAVE SOFTENED THE VIRULENCE
AND ESCAPED THE DANGER OF THIS MALIG-
NANT DISEASE.

TO PERPETUATE THE MEMORY OF SUCH
BENEVOLENCE

AND TO EXPRESS HER GRATITUDE
FOR THE BENEFIT SHE HERSELF RECEIVED
FROM THIS ALLEVIATING ART,
THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY
HENRIETTA INGE-

RELICT OF THEODORE WILLIAM INGE, ESQ., AND DAUGHTER OF SIR JOHN WROTTELSEY, BART.,

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1789. INSCRIPTION ON CENOTAPH, Litchfield Cathedral.

The boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and playing, very impatient for his supper, I pray God my next may give as good an account of him. I cannot engraft the girl, her nurse has not had the small-pox.-MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY, 1718, Letter to Mr. Montagu, March 23.

The playful smiles around the dimpled mouth,
That happy air of majesty and truth;

So would I draw (but oh! 'tis vain to try,
My narrow genius does the power deny).
The equal lustre of the heavenly mind,
Where every grace with every virtue's joined;
Learning not vain, and wisdom not severe,
With greatness easy, and with wit sincere,
With just description shew the soul divine,
And the whole princess in my work should
shine.

-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1720, On the Picture of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by Kneller. What lady's that to whom he gently bends? Who knows not her? Ah, those are Wortley's eyes.

How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends;

For she distinguishes the good and wise. -GAY, JOHN, 1727, Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece.

Thus in the dame each nobler grace we find, Fair Wortley's angel accent, eyes, and mind. -SAVAGE, RICHARD, 1729, The Wanderer, C. v.

A woman of as fine a genius, and endu'd with as great a strength of mind as any of her sex in the British kingdoms.VOLTAIRE, FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET, 1732? Letters Concerning English Nation.

Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled, an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a, partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1740, Letter to Conway, Sept. 25; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. 1, p. 57.

There is more fire and wit in all the writings of that author than one meets with in almost any other; and whether she is in the humour of an infidel or a devotee, she expresses herself with so much strength that one can hardly persuade oneself she is not in earnest on either side of the question. Nothing can be more natural than her complaint of the loss of her beauty [vide the "Saturday" in her "Town Eclogues"]; but as that was only one of her various powers to charm, I should have imagined she would only have felt a very small part of the regret that many other people have suffered on a like misfortune; who have nothing but the loveliness of their persons to claim admiration; and consequently, by the loss of that, have found all their hopes of distinction vanish much earlier in life than Lady Mary's; for if I do not mistake, she was near thirty before she had to deplore the loss of beauty greater than I ever saw in any face beside her own.-HERTFORD, LADY (DUCHESS OF SOMERSET), 1741, Letters: Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century, by Paston, p. 33.

Now I must tell you a story of Lady Mary. As she was on her travels, she had occasion to go somewhere by sea, and (to save charges) got a passage on board a man of war: the ship was (I think) Commodore Barnet's. When he had landed her, she told him, she knew she

was not to offer to pay for her passage, but in consideration of his many civilities intreated him to wear a ring for her sake, and pressed him to accept it, and he did. It was an emerald of remarkable size and beauty. Some time after, as he wore it, some friend was admiring it, and asked him how he came by it. When he heard from whom it came, he laughed and desired him to shew it to a jeweller, whom he knew. The man was sent for. He unset it; it was a paste not worth forty shillings.-GRAY, THOMAS, 1761, Letter to Thomas Wharton, Jan. 31.

Lady Mary Wortley is arrived. I have seen her. I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her language, is a galimatias of several countries; the groundwork rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black laced hood represents the first; the fur, of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers act the part of the last. WALPOLE, HORACE, 1762, Letter to George Montagu, Feb. 2; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. III, p. 480.

She does not look older than when she

Her

went abroad, has more than the vivacity of fifteen, and a memory which, perhaps, is unique. Several people visited her out of curiosity, which she did not like. I visited her because her husband and mine were cousin-germans. Though she had not any foolish partiality for her husband or his relations, I was very graciously received, and you may imagine entertained, by one who neither thinks, speaks, acts, or dresses, like anybody else. domestick is made up of all nations, and when you get into her drawing-room, you imagine you are in the first story of the Tower of Babel. An Hungarian servant takes your name at the door; he gives it to an Italian, who delivers it to a Frenchman; the Frenchman to a Swiss, and the Swiss to a Polander; so that, by the time you get to her ladyship's presence, you have changed your name five times, without the expense of an act of parliament. -MONTAGU, ELIZABETH, 1762, A Lady of the Last Century, p. 129.

To Congreve she was all brightness, life and spirit; her silvery laugh sounded like

divinest melody; but when I stood before her, scarcely daring to look into those. eyes for that sacred love after which I pined, she was cold, severe, and silent. When Pope was near, when Wharton was by her side, gazing at her with his large and earnest eyes, how beautiful she appeared; all her genius shone out of her spirit face; her features glowed with animation; her tongue spake in softest accents, and she seemed a something more than earthly. But when the visitor departed, a magic change came over hershe froze, as it were, into marble; she grew cold, still, selfish, unfeeling, capricious, and exacting. One reads in old romances of a beautiful damsel discovered in a forest by some brave, errant knight; she weeps, she prays, she smiles, she fascinates. The gallant adventurer vows to devote his life to her service; she leads him to her bower, or to some faërie castle. Something in her appearance suddenly awakens suspicion, and the noble knight clutches his good sword Excalibar within his mailed hand, and mayhap as an additional precaution lifts up a prayer to God and the Virgin. Scarcely has he done it, when a transformation is seen- -a mighty transformation indeed; and the virgin disappears, and he sees only a venomous serpent looking at him with deadly eyes, as Lucifer looked on Eve, and hissing forth cold poison. Such was the difference between my mother before her visitors, and my mother with her son. -MONTAGU, EDWARD WORTLEY, 1776? An Autobiography, vol. I, p. 97.

Mr. Horace Walpole remembers Lady M. W. Montague perfectly well, having passed a year with her at Florence. He told me this morning that she was not handsome, had a wild, staring eye, was much marked with the smallpox, which she endeavoured to conceal, by filling up the depressions with white paint. She was a great mischief-maker, and had not the smallest regard for truth. Her first gallant after her marriage was Lord Stair, our ambassador at Paris. Worsdale, the painter, told Mr. Walpole that the first cause of quarrel between her and Pope was her borrowing a pair of sheets from the poet, which, after keeping them a fortnight, were returned to him unwashed. -MALONE, EDMOND, 1789, Maloniana, ed. Prior, March 8, p. 149.

Lady Mary had Lord Byron's fate. . . Lord Byron was a moody, fiery, brooding child, full of passion, obstinacy, and irregularity, in his teens;-Lady Mary was a single-thinking, classical, daring, inspired girl long under one-and-twenty. Lord Byron at a plunge formed his own spreading circles on the glittering still-life lake of fashionable society: Lady Mary with her beauty and her genius effected the same result by the same impetuosity. Lady Mary made, as it would appear, a cold unsatisfactory marriage, but, it must be admitted, with one possessed of a patience untainted by genius: Lord Byron iced himself into the connubial state, but shuddered at its coldness. The press, and the poets, and the prosers united with serene ferocity against both. Both, alas! were

"Souls made of fire and children of the sun, With whom revenge was virtue!"

Their revenge was mutual-minded. Misunderstood, calumniated, they quitted the land which was not worthy of them. Genius-born, they both passed to the east; and to them we owe the most sensible,the most passionate, -the most voluptuous, and the most inspired pictures of "the land of the citron and myrtle," that have ever waked the wish and melted the heart of us southron readers.-REYNOLDS, HAMILTON, 1837, A Critical Gossip with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Bentley's Miscellany, vol. 1, p. 140.

The most entertaining, fascinating, witty and brilliant of her sex; learned, accomplished, graceful and beautiful, the irresistible Lady Mary Pierrepont gave from her earliest years promise of what she afterwards became. At eight years old she was a toast, and the fame of her beauty and talents spread from that time, every fresh year adding to her attractions, and luring new admirers, until the crowd of those who followed in her train filled every country through which she passed. She was the very impersonation of all the beauties and enslavers which poets and romancers feign: she might have sat for the portrait of the most finished fine lady, the most enchanting coquette; and she probably, in effect, supplied many a writer with such a heroine as was the fashion of her day. Yet, with the admirers innumerable, and all appliances and means to boot that should have enabled her to make

a happy marriage, the charming Lady Mary was unhappy in the choice she made. She possessed so many useful virtues, had so much philanthropy and feeling, that it is impossible but that she would have made a good wife, even in spite of the danger she had run of being spoilt by indulgence. and adulation, if she had met with a man of suitable mind, who would have appreciated her good qualities; but Mr. Wortley was a cold, severe, unimaginative person, who, marrying her, a youthful beauty and coquette, should have known how, judiciously, to correct her errors, and brought forth the excellencies which existed in her mind; instead of treating her with the sullen neglect to which, from an early period of her marriage, he condemned her. . . . It is to be regretted that she made a match so unsuitable to her; for had she fortunately married a man of a different character from the cold, harsh, severe person, for whom she gave up all her early brilliant prospects, no doubt she would have been as valuable in domestic life, as she was admirable in literary attainments, and fascinating in the qualities which delight the world.COSTELLO, LOUISA STUART, 1844, Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen, vol. IV, pp. 231, 400.

And so farewell, poor, flourishing, disappointed, reconciled, wise, foolish, enchanting Lady Mary! Fair English vision in Turkland; Turkish vision in ours; the female wit of the days of Pope; benefactress of the species; irritating satirist of the circles. Thou didst err for want of a little more heart,-perhaps for want of finding enough in others, or for loss of thy mother in infancy, but thy loss was our gain, for it gained us thy books, and thy inoculation. thy inoculation. Thy poems are little. being but a little wit in rhyme, vers de société; but thy prose is much,-admirable, better than acute, idiomatical, off-hand, conversational without inelegance, fresh as the laugh on the young cheek, and full of brain. The conventional show of things could not deceive thee: pity was it that thou didst not see a little farther into the sweets of things unconventional,-of faith in the heart, as well as in the blood and good sense! good sense! Lovable, indeed, thou wert not, whatever thou mightst have been rendered; but admirable thou wert, and ever wilt thou be thought so, as long as

pen writeth straight-forward, and sense or Sultana hath a charm.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1847, Men, Women and Books, vol. II, p. 218.

Had Lady Mary Wortley lived in the days of heathen Greece or Rome, such service as she performed in the introduction of inoculation, would have enrolled her name among the deities who have benefited mankind. But in Christian England, her native land, on which she bestowed such a vital blessing, and through it, to all the people of the West, what has been her recompense? We read of princely endowments bestowed by the British government upon great generals; of titles conferred and pensions granted, through several generations, to those who have served their country; of monuments erected by the British people to statesmen and warriors, and even to weak and worthless princes; but where is the national monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu? Is it in Westminster Abbey? Or has it been only by the private bounty of a woman that her good deed has a record? On the pages of history, and in the annals of medicine, the name of Lady Montagu must find its place; but should not England be proud to honor her noble daughter, whose memory, from royal palace to pauper's hut, ought to be held in grateful affection?-HALE, SARAH J., 1856, ed., The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Memoir, p. xvii.

we can

We doubt whether at any moment of his life, Mr. Wortley was a loving and affectionate husband. So far as fathom his character, he appears to have been a man of shrewd good sense, upright and honourable, but of a mean and penurious nature, which after his father's death, and when the possible million of which he died possessed loomed in the distance, became an all-absorbing passion. In the eyes of the "wits," Lady Mary was remarkably mean; in the eyes of her husband she was extravagant. - DILKE, CHARLES WENTWORTH, 1861-75, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Papers of a Critic, vol. I, p. 354.

The members of the very exclusive KitKat Club assembled in council at the commencement of the London Season, 1698, to nominate the lady who should be their standing toast for the current year—have her honoured name inscribed upon their

drinking-glasses, and her portrait painted. in Kit-Kat fashion, -were considerably puzzled for a choice; when the Earl of Dorchester, afterwards Duke of Kingston, suggested the eldest of his three daughters, the Lady Mary Pierrepont. This proposition being demurred to, inasmuch as the said Lady Mary Pierrepont was personally unknown to the members of the club, the Earl volunteered to go at once and bring her there for approval. He soon returned, bringing with him a beautiful child of about eight years of age, the Lady Mary in question, who was received with acclamation, declared the toast of the year, and remained throughout the banquet, receiving the compliments and caresses of the members with a delightful ease far more womanly than childlike, so early responsive to opportunity was her gay coquetry of nature. The emotions of gratified vanity excited upon this occasion left an indelible impression on her mind. "Pleasure were too poor a word," she exclaims, "to express my sensations: never again throughout my life have I spent so happy a day." There is an unconscious self-revelation in these few words rarely observable in her ladyship's clever and elaborate correspondence with all its artistic confidences, and here and there apparent abandon.-RUSSELL, WILLIAM, 1864, Extraordinary Women, p. 143.

Whatever esteem we may feel for the talents and merits, whatever toleration we may be inclined to extend over the eccentricities and audacities, of such women as Lady Mary Wortley Montague, it is the rankest and most nauseous cant of hypocritical chivalry to pretend that they have a right to expect the same tender and reverent forbearance which all but the vilest of men and subscribers feel for "any woman, womanly."-SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1886, Miscellanies, p. 42.

The fact seems to have been that Lady Mary, like many of the men of the eighteenth century, had developed the intellectual and practical side of her nature at the expense of the emotions. There is no proof that she was ever in love with anyone but her husband; and her affection for him began in intellectual companionship, and consisted to a considerable extent Her in respect, with a touch of fear. love-letters are full of business details,