CHAPTER VI.
In 1769, the critical state of public affairs drew from Mrs. Montagu the following reflection: “I hope I shall see all my friends safe and well at my return to town; but, indeed, a wicked mob and a foolish ministry may produce strange events. It was better in old times, when the ministry was wicked and the mob foolish.... Ministers, however wicked, do not pull down houses, nor ignorant mobs pull down government. A mob that can read and a ministry that cannot think are sadly matched.”
In truth, however, Mrs. Montagu was engaged during this year on a work which was not only praiseworthy for the motive which induced her to undertake it, but honourable to her for its execution, and it may almost be added, glorious to her personally in its results.
In 1769 Mrs. Montagu published, anonymously, her “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare.” This work, once widely famous, may still be read with pleasure. It was written in reply to Voltaire’s grossly indecent attack on our national poet. Some previous allusion which he had made to Shakespeare, to show his own learning, had directed the notice of French readers to a new dramatic literature which soon won their admiration. Voltaire’s jealousy induced him to denounce what he had before extolled,and he did this in the spirit of the tiger and the monkey—the component elements, according to his own mendacious saying, of all Frenchmen. He had no deep knowledge of the subject he affected to criticise, and was not made of the stuff that could lead him to feel sympathy with the lofty sentiments, or to be stirred by the searching wit of the greatest of dramatic poets. Voltaire could no more appreciate Shakespeare than he could estimate the divine character of Joan of Arc. If Joan’s own countrymen betrayed her, Voltaire stands foremost among Frenchmen as the beastly polluter of her spotless reputation.
Mrs. Montagu makes the following playful allusion to her authorship, in a letter to Lord Lyttelton, December, 1769: “I am sorry to tell you that a friend of yours is no longer a concealed scribbler. I had better have employed the town crier to proclaim me an author; but, being whispered, it has circulated with incredible swiftness. I hear Mr. Andrew Stone is very indulgent to my performance, which much flatters my vanity. Mr. Melmoth, at Bath, flatters me; but I am most flattered that a brother writer says the book would be very well if it had not too much wit. I thought there had been no wit at all in it; and I am as much pleased as M. Jourdain was when his preceptor told him he spoke prose. If my wit hurts anybody or anything, it is chance-medley—no premeditated malice; neither art nor part has my will therein. I don’t love wit: it is a poor, paltry thing, and fit only for a Merry Andrew.
“I look very innocent when I am attacked about the essay, and say, ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ I shall set about a new edition as soon as your lordshipcomes to town; for the first thousand is in great part sold, tho’ the booksellers have done me all the prejudice in their power.” The new edition was even more successful than the first.
Mrs. Montagu’s defence may appear a little too apologetic now; but it is marked by good taste, by evidences of deep thought, by flashes of wit, and by the grasp she has, firmly and gracefully, on her subject. She deals with dramatic poetry and the historical drama, examines the first and second parts of “Henry IV.,” treats of the preternatural beings of Shakespeare, and ends by a comparison of “Cinna” and “Julius Cæsar.” If any may differ with her in respect to Corneille, whose third act of “Cinna” is worthy of the great French dramatic poet, no reader will hesitate to praise the earnestness and delicacy with which this Lady of the Last Century has executed her noble task.
A French translation appeared in Paris in 1777—the year before Voltaire died. In England, six editions of the essay were published, the last in 1810. In 1827, it had the honour of being noticed with high praise, by M. Villemain, in his “Nouveaux Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires;” and in 1840, an edition in Italian was published in Florence.
Few English readers had read Voltaire so thoughtfully as Mrs. Montagu, and perhaps none reflected more on what they read than she did, or gave more graceful expression to consequent judgment. One side of Voltaire’s character she described (while the witty Frenchman was preparing his attack on Shakespeare) to Lord Kames.
“Voltaire sent a tragedy to Paris, which he saidwas composed in ten days. The players sent it back to him to correct. At threescore and ten one should not think his wit would outrun his judgment; but he seems to begin a second infancy in wit and philosophy,—a dangerous thing to one who has such an antipathy to leading-strings.” It was Voltaire’s self-praise that offended Mrs. Montagu as much as his offensive condescension to, and disparagement of, Shakespeare. When she was told that Voltaire had said boastingly: “C’est moi qui autrefois parlai le premier de ce Shakespeare. C’est moi qui le premier montrai aux Français quelques perles que j’avais trouvé dans son fumier.” “Ah!” replied Mrs. Montagu, with great readiness, “C’est un fumier qui a fertilisé une terre bien ingrate.” French fashionable circles, which loved wit and cared not a jot who suffered by it, received and repeated the saying of the accomplished English lady as if it had been ten times more brilliant than it was in reality.
Mrs. Montagu’s defence of Shakespeare was not too tenderly treated by her own friends. All the frankness of friendship was cheerfully given to it. The plain-spoken Dowager Countess Gower thus wrote soon after the appearance of the Vindication:
1769.—“Fortune has blest this forest with the geniuses of the age; Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Dunbar, etc., etc., and Lord Lyttelton are at Sunning Wells, and sport sentiment from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve. I molest ’em not; contenting myself in my rustic simplicity. ’Tis a stupidity that may be felt, I don’t doubt, but not by me. Mrs. Montagu has commenced author, in vindication of Shakespeare, who wants none; therefore her performancemust be deemed a work of supererogation. Some commend it. I’ll have it, because I can throw it aside when I’m tired.” Johnson treated it with greater brutality. He had once compared Mrs. Montagu with Queen Elizabeth, and had recognized in the former the greater qualifications. Now, he denounced the essay when he had only looked into it. He had taken up an end of the web, and finding packthread, thought it useless, as he said, to go further in search of embroidery. Reynolds thought it did her honour, which Johnson allowed, but he spoiled the admission by asserting that it would do honour to no one else. Garrick said she had pointed out Voltaire’s blunders; to which Johnson replied, that it wasn’t worth while, and that there was no merit in the way of doing it. Subsequently, he declared: “Neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale could get through the book!”—a declaration which was unfounded, as far as Mrs. Thrale was concerned; for she protested that she had read it with pleasure. The great man, in short, talked nonsense, but dressed it in fine words. “There was no real criticism in it,” he said, “showing the beauty of thought, as formed in the workings of the human heart.” Mrs. Montagu did not feel called on to exhibit any such beauty or any such superstructure. She exposed the blundering arrogance of Voltaire, who first praised Shakespeare, for the annoyance of his own countrymen, and then, finding the French inclined to accept the praise, aspersed brutally the poet whom he had pillaged without mercy.
Johnson thought little of Garrick, probably because Garrick approved the object of Mrs. Montagu’s Shakespearian essay, and because the lady gave veryhigh praise to Garrick as an actor. Johnson thought it was fit that she should say much, and that he should say nothing, in Garrick’s praise. Accomplished Bruin, however, said much to the great player’s disparagement. He maintained that Garrick had been overpaid for what he had done for Shakespeare. “Sir, he has not made Shakespeare better known. He cannot illustrate Shakespeare!” When Johnson afterward wrote to Mrs. Thrale, that speaking of “Shakespeare and Nature” rightly brought Mrs. Montagu into his mind, he is supposed to be inconsistent, when he was, it may be, only satirical. He certainly uttered a judgment on the essay, which is not to be gainsaid, when he maintained, according to Mr. Seward, that the work was “ad hominem, conclusive against Voltaire,” and that “she had done, sir, what she intended to do.”
The greatest praise which the essay received was awarded to it by Cowper many years after it was published. Writing on May 27, 1788, to Lady Hesketh, Cowper said: “I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment. I am now reading and have reached the middle of her essay on the genius of Shakespeare—a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence.
“The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that hisantagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the Bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them.”
While honour was being showered on the writer of the essay, ill health, from which she suffered long and frequently, marred her triumph.
Writing to Mrs. W. Robinson, from Hill Street, November the 19th, 1770, she says: “... I fell ill on my journey to Denton, or rather, indeed, began the journey indisposed, and only aggravated my complaints by travelling. Sickness and bad weather deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the beauties of Derbyshire. However, I got a sight of the stately Palace of Lord Scarsdale, where the arts of antient Greece and the delicate pomp of modern ages unite to make a most magnificent habitation. It is the best worth seeing of any house, I suppose, in England. But I know how it is that one receives but moderate pleasure in the works of art. There is a littleness in every work of man. The operations of nature are vast and noble, and I found much greater pleasure in the contemplation of Lord Breadalbane’s mountains, rocks, and lakes than in all the efforts of human art at Lord Scarsdale’s.”
Mrs. Montagu’s illness increasing at Denton, she writes: “Doctor Gregory came from Edinburgh to make me a visit, and persuaded me to go back with him. The scheme promised much pleasure, and, I flattered myself, might be conducive to health, as the doctor, of whose medical skill I have the highestopinion, would have time to observe and consider my various complaints. I was glad also to have an opportunity of amusing my friend, Mrs. Chapone, whom I carried into the north with me. We had a pleasant journey to Edinburgh, where we were most agreeably entertained in Doctor Gregory’s house, all the literate and polite company of Edinburgh paying me all kind of attentions; and, by the doctor’s regimen, my health improved greatly; so that I was prevailed upon to enjoy my love of prospects by another trip to the Highlands, my good friend and physician still attending me. The first day’s journey was to Lord Buchan, brother to Mr. Charles Erskine, who was the intimate companion and friendly competitor of my poor brother Tom. Each of them was qualified for the highest honours of their profession, which they would have certainly attained, had it pleased God to have granted longer life. Lord Buchan had received great civilities at Horton when he was pursuing his law studies in England; so he came to visit me as soon as I got to Edinburgh, and, in the most friendly manner, pressed my passing some days at his house in Perthshire. I got there by an easy day’s journey, having also walked a long time about the castle of Stirling, which commands a very beautiful prospect.
“Lord Buchan’s place is very fine and in a very singular style. His house looks to the south, over a very rich valley, rendered more fertile as well as more beautiful by the meanderings of the river Forth. Behind his house rise great hills covered with wood, and over them stupendous rocks. The goats look down with an air of philosophic pride and gravity on folks in the valley. One in particular seemed to mecapable of addressing the famous beast of Gavaudan, if he had been there, with as much disdain as Diogenes did the great conqueror of the East. Here I passed two days very agreeably, and then his lordship and my doctor attended me to my old friend Lord Kinnoul’s. You may imagine my visit there gave me a great deal of pleasure besides what arose from seeing a fine place. I was delighted to find an old friend enjoying that heartfelt happiness which attends a life of virtue. Lord Kinnoul is continually employed in encouraging agriculture and manufactures, protecting the weak from injury, assisting the distressed, and animating the young people to whatever in their various stations is most fit and proper.... He appears more happy in this situation than when he was whirled about in the vortex of the Duke of Newcastle. The situation of a Scottish nobleman of fortune is enough to fill the ambition of a reasonable man, for they have power to do a great deal of good.
“From Dupplin we went to Lord Breadalbane’s, at Taymouth. Here unite the sublime and beautiful. The house is situated in a valley where the verdure is the finest imaginable; noble beeches adorn it, and beautiful cascades fall down the midst of it. Through this valley you are led to a vast lake. On one side of the lake there is a fine country; on the other, mountains lift their heads or hide them in the clouds. In some places ranges of rocks look like vast fortifyed cittadels. I passed two days in this fine place, where I was entertained with the greatest politeness and kindest attentions, Lord Breadalbane seeming to take the greatest pleasure in making everything easy, agreeable, and convenient.
“My next excursion was to Lord Kames’; and then I returned to Edinburgh. With Lord Kames and his lady I have had a correspondence ever since I was first in Scotland, so I was there received with cordial friendship. I must do the justice to the Scottish nation to say, they are the most politely hospitable of any people in the world. I had innumerable invitations of which I could not avail myself, having made as long a holiday from my business in Northumberland as I could afford.
“The newspapers will inform you of the death of Mr. George Grenville. I think he is a great loss to the publick; and tho’ in these days of ribbaldry and abuse he was often much calumniated, I believe time will vindicate his character as a publick man: as a private one, he was quite unblemished. I regret the loss to myself. I was always pleased and informed by his conversation. He had read a vast deal, and had an amazing memory. He had been versed in business from his youth; so that he had a very rich fund of conversation, and he was good-natured and very friendly.
“The King’s Speech has a warlike tone. But still we flatter ourselves that the French king’s aversion to war may prevent our being again engaged in one.... Lord Chatham was to have spoken in the House of Lords to-day, if poor Mr. Grenville’s death, which happened at seven this morning, had not hindered his appearing in publick....
“Mr. Montagu did not leave Denton till almost a week after I came away; and he was stop’d at Durham by waters being out; but I had the pleasure of hearing yesterday that he got safe to Darlington, wherehe was to pass a few days with a famous mathematician, but I expect him in town the end of this week. My nephew, Morris, has got great credit at Eton already.... My doctors order me to forbear writing, but this letter does not show my obedience to them.... The celebrated coterie will go on, in spite of all remonstrances, and there is to be an assembly thrice a week for the subscribers to the opera, so little impression do rumours of wars and apprehensions of the plague make in the fine world....
“I am in your debt for my pretty neice’s dancing-master, which I forgot when I had the pleasure of seeing you. I shall hope to supply her, as opportunity offers, with all the assistance of that sort which her happy genius will make of great use to her; but your constant care will supply many better things than those the artists teach, and I do not doubt of her making an amiable and valuable woman. With the most sincere regard, I am, dear madam, your very affectionate sister, and faithful friend, and humble servt., E. M.... I know you will be very glad to hear I left everything in such order in the north, that I shall not pay my devotions to ye pole-star again for some years.”
No two people had more delight in mutual conversation than Mrs. Montagu and Lord Kames. They were so agreed upon one subject,—the insincerity, ignorance, and meanness of Voltaire, as to make their conversation most lively when it turned upon the Frenchman who defiled the character of the most glorious of Frenchwomen, Joan of Arc,—who heaped abuse upon Shakespeare and on those who defended him,—and who hated and miscalled LordKames for having weighed his “Henriade” in the scales of criticism, and for having found it “wanting.” Over this reply of Voltaire to Lord Kames, that judge and philosopher, reading it aloud, laughed himself, and raised irrepressible laughter in the lady who listened to him. The reply is in one of Voltaire’s “Lettres à un Journaliste.” “Permit me to explain to you some whimsical singularities of ‘The Elements of Criticism,’ in three volumes, by Lord Makames (sic), a justice of peace in Scotland. That philosopher has a most profound knowledge of nature and art, and he uses the utmost efforts to make the rest of the world as wise as himself. He begins by proving that we have five senses; and that we are less struck by a gentle impression made on our eyes and ears, by colours and sounds, than by a knock on the head or a kick on the leg. Proceeding from that to the rules of time and space, M. Home concludes with mathematical precision, that time seems long to a lady who is about to be married, and short to a man who is going to be hanged. M. Home applies doctrines equally extraordinary to every department of art. It is a surprising effect of the progress of the human mind, that we should now receive from Scotland rules for our taste in all matters, from an epic poem down to a garden. Knowledge extends daily, and we must not despair of hereafter obtaining performances in poetry and oratory from the Orkney Islands. M. Home always lays down his opinions as a law, and extends his despotic sway far and wide. He is a judge who absorbs all appeals.”
The famous mathematician to whom Mrs. Montagu refers in the above letter was William Emerson,of whom Mr. Montagu is believed to have been the original patron. Mr. Montagu may, in some degree, have helped that poor and eccentric scholar, but the energies of the once idle Yorkshire dreamer were really developed by an injustice. He had married the niece of a clergyman, who basely cheated the bride out of her dowry of £500. Whereupon the proud and angry husband sent back the whole of his wife’s wardrobe, with the message that he would “scorn to be beholden to such a fellow for a rag!” When Mr. Montagu married Elizabeth Robinson, Emerson had just ready for the press the work which gave him a place in the highest rank of mathematicians—his “Doctrine of Fluxions.” The distinction neither affected his eccentricity nor softened his audacity. He was wont to sign his mathematical solutions with a name that might have made Minerva breathless—“Philofluentimechanelgegeomastrolonzo,” and he lived to shock Mrs. Edward Montagu by snapping his fingers at the Royal Society, and damning the fellows and their fellowships!
George Grenville and Burke are among the best samples of the men whom Mrs. Montagu appreciated, and who could thoroughly appreciate Mrs. Montagu. Burke has spoken in the highest terms of both. Of the statesman who, five years before his death, resigned all his offices, Burke said: “With a masculine understanding and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of the house, except in such things as in some way related to the businessthat was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, that his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in Parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution and in perfect practice in all its business.” Mrs. Montagu might justly be proud of the good opinion of a friend who could express such a judgment of another friend like Grenville, for whom she herself entertained the highest esteem.
Mrs. Montagu to Mrs. Robinson. “January 17, 1771.... I have kept very well all this frost, and what is more strange in a town lady, I have been very discreet. I have improved upon Lady Grace’s plan of doing very soberly. I have been serious, and solemn and retired, and have sat as quietly at my fireside as any antiquated dowager when her quadrille party was gone into the country. But I have said enough upon such an atom, and I will now talk of ye great persons and things of this world. The Duke of Bedford died of a fit of the asthma. He departed singing the 104th Psalm. This shows he had some piety, but I think his grace sang out of tune; so I am not an admirer of his singing.” (Walpole says he “had lost his sight, and almost his speech and limbs.”) “I like a Psalm-singing cobler in death as well as in life. A poor man who has maintained a wife and children by his labour, has kept the ten commandments, has observed the Sabbath, kept the laws of the community, and lived kindly with his neighbours, may sing his own requiemwith a comfortable and cheerful assurance. Of him to whom little is given, little shall be required. But the debtor and creditor of a long account is not so easily settled. Wealth, titles, power give a great influence in society. Have the poor been relieved, the weak protected, the industrious been encouraged, virtue countenanced, merit brought forth to view, the profligate discouraged, the commonwealth served equal to its great demands on a Duke of Bedford, the proprietor of a vast estate? I mean not to intimate that he was to dye in despair, for his Judge is merciful, but in his sight no man living shall be justified; so that, unless there is an uncommon merit or innocence of character, I see no reason for this kind of jollity. His grace has left enough to make the duchess’s jointure £6,000 a year. She is to keep up the houses at Bloomsbury and at Wooburn. Her grace, Mr. Palmer, and the Duchess of Marlborough are trustees for the young duke....
“As the late duke was sometimes headstrong, the court will have an advantage in having the duchess to deal with, as Lord Sandwich is her guide in politicks. The duke left Mr. Rigby £5,000, a sum for which he had Mr. Rigby’s bond. He has left a sum of fourscore pound a year to Miss Wrottesley; a year’s wages to servants. I hear not of other legacies. It is believed Lord Suffolk will not accept of any place....
“It is believed we shall have a Peace. The King of Prussia and the Emperor joined to get a peace for the Turks. These potentates design to keep the French in order and to defend Germany. The Emperor wishes to recover Lorraine and Alsace. So itis supposed the French will sit quiet even if the Spaniards should go to war with us. I am not afraid of the Dons, if not assisted by French vivacity. All our family is well, and thepère de famillebest of all.... Mr. M. is pure well.”
The following letter to Mrs. Robinson, the writer’s sister-in-law, whose father, Mr. Richardson, was a private gentleman of Kensington, contains a reference to the Kensington “ladies’-school” of the writer’s early time, and one to the Chelsea school, where she visited Mrs. William Robinson’s daughter in 1772. These references are valuable illustrations of the female scholastic life of the two periods. “I called on my pretty neice at Chelsea, who I had the pleasure of finding in perfect health, with a little addition of embonpoint extremely becoming. She received me very politely, and her governesses spoke much in her praise. Indeed, she is a very good subject for them, appearing to have much good-humour, docility, and everything I could wish.” The young Sarah Elizabeth’s extremely becoming embonpoint induced her sagacious aunt to look at her stays. “I found fault with her stays,” she writes, “which lift up her shoulders; and they say they had your leave to get others, but I could not understand why they had neglected to do it. I was pleased to find my neice perfectly clean and neat, tho’ I called on ye Saturday, which is usually only the eve of cleanliness. I remember at Mrs. Robartes’, at Kensington, the girls used to be so dirty, sometimes one could not salute them!”