HER LETTERS TO MR. WORTLEY. 559 somebody else the next. Neither would happen. I can esteem, I can be a friend; but I don't know whether I can love. Expect all that is complaisant and easy, but never what is fond, in me. "If you can resolve to live with a companion that will have all the deference due to your superiority of good sense, and that your proposals can be agreeable to those on whom I depend, I have nothing to say against them. "As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your account; but a retirement in the country is not so disagreeable to me, as I know a few months would make it tiresome to you. Where people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary of one another. If I had all the personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for happiness. You would be soon tired with seeing every day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the defects; which would increase in proportion as the novelty lessened, which is always a great charm. I should have the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know a love may be revived, which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity, has extinguished: But there is no returning from a dégoût given by satiety."- Vol. i. pp. 212–214. "I begin to be tired of my humility; I have carried my complaisances to you farther than I ought. You make new scruples: you have a great deal of fancy! and your distrusts, being all of your own making, are more immoveable than if there were some real ground for them. Our aunts and grandmothers always tell us, that men are a sort of animals, that if ever they are constant, 'tis only where they are ill-used. 'Twas a kind of paradox I could never believe; but experience has taught me the truth of it. You are the first I ever had a correspondence with; and, I thank God, I have done with it for all my life. You needed not to have told me you are not what you have been; one must be stupid not to find a difference in your letters. You seem, in one part of your last, to excuse yourself from having done me any injury in point of fortune. Do I accuse you of any? "I have not spirits to dispute any longer with you. You say you are not yet determined. Let me determine for you, and save you the trouble of writing again. Adieu for ever; make no answer. I wish, among the variety of acquaintance, you may find some one to please you and can't help the vanity of thinking, should you try them all, you won't find one that will be so sincere in their treatment, though a thousand more deserving, and every one happier."-Vol. i. pp. 219-221. These are certainly very uncommon productions for a young lady of twenty; and indicate a strength and elevation of character, that does not always appear in her gayer and more ostentatious performances. Mr. Wortley was convinced and re-assured by them; and they were 560 LADY MARY'S LETTERS TO HER HUSBAND. lume contains her letters to him for the two following years. There is not much tenderness in these letters; nor very much interest indeed of any kind. Mr. Wortley appears to have been rather indolent and unambitious; and Lady Mary takes it upon her, with all delicacy and judicious management however, to stir him up to some degree of activity and exertion. There is a good deal of election-news and small politics in these epistles. The best of them, we think, is the following exhortation to impudence. "I am glad you think of serving your friends. I hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. I need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; every thing we see, and every thing we hear, puts us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to restore liberty to your country, or limit the_encroachments of the prerogative, by reducing yourself to a garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a poverty with you; But as the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good; riches being another word for power; towards the obtaining of which, the first necessary qualification is Impudence, and (as Demosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the second is impudence, and the third, still, impudence! No modest man ever did, or ever will make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The ministry, in short, is like a play at court; There's a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost; people who knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, is shoved about by every body, his clothes torn, almost squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before him, that don't make so good a figure as himself. "If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon an opinion of your merit, which, if it is a mistake, I would not be undeceived. It is my interest to believe (as I do) that you deserve every thing, and are capable of every thing; but nobody else will believe it, if they see you get nothing."-Vol. i. pp. 250-252. The second volume, and a part of the third, are occupied with those charming letters, written during Mr. Wortley's embassy to Constantinople, upon which the literary reputation of Lady Mary has hitherto been exclusively founded. It would not become us to say any thing of productions which have so long engaged the admiration of the public. The grace and vivacity, the ease and conciseness, of the narrative and the description HISTORY OF HER TURKISH LETTERS. 561 which they contain, still remain unrivalled, we think, by any epistolary compositions in our language; and are but slightly shaded by a sprinkling of obsolete tittletattle, or womanish vanity and affectation. The authenticity of these letters, though at one time disputed, has not lately been called in question; but the secret history of their first publication has never, we believe, been laid before the public. The editor of this collection, from the original papers, gives the following account of it. "In the later periods of Lady Mary's life, she employed her leisure in collecting copies of the letters she had written during Mr. Wortley's embassy, and had transcribed them herself, in two small volumes in quarto. They were, without doubt, sometimes shown to her literary friends. Upon her return to England for the last time, in 1761, she gave these books to a Mr. Sowden, a clergyman of Rotterdam, and wrote the subjoined memorandum on the cover of them: These two volumes are given to the Reverend Benjamin Sowden, minister at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he thinks proper. This is the will and design of M. Wortley Montagu, December 11. 1761.' "After her death, the late Earl of Bute commissioned a gentleman to procure them, and to offer Mr. Sowden a considerable remuneration, which he accepted. Much to the surprise of that nobleman and Lady Bute, the manuscripts were scarcely safe in England, when three volumes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters were published by Beckett; and it has since appeared, that a Mr. Cleland was the editor. The same gentleman, who had negotiated before, was again despatched to Holland; and could gain no further intelligence from Mr. Sowden, than that a short time before he parted with the MSS. two English gentlemen called on him to see the Letters, and obtained their request. They had previously contrived that Mr. Sowden should be called away during their perusal; and he found on his return that they had disappeared with the books. Their residence was unknown to him; but on the next day they brought back the precious deposit, with many apologies. It may be fairly presumed, that the intervening night was consumed in copying these letters by several amanuenses." -Vol. i. pp. 29-32. A fourth volume of Lady Mary's Letters, published in the same form in 1767, appears now to have been a fabrication of Cleland's; as no corresponding MSS. have been found among her Ladyship's papers, or in the hands of her correspondents. To the accuracy of her local descriptions, and the justness of her representations of oriental manners, Mr. Dallaway, who followed her footsteps at the distance of eighty years, and resided for several months in the very 562 LADY MARY W. MONTAGU. palace which she had occupied at Pera, bears a decided and respectable testimony; and, in vindication of her veracity in describing the interior of the seraglio, into which no Christian is now permitted to enter, he observes, that the reigning Sultan of the day, Achmed the Third, was notoriously very regardless of the injunctions of the Koran, and that her Ladyship's visits were paid while the court was in a retirement that enabled him to dispense with many ceremonies. We do not observe any difference between these letters in the present edition, and in the common copies, except that the names of Lady Mary's correspondents are now given at full length, and short notices of their families subjoined, upon their first introduction. At page 89. of the third volume, there are also two short letters, or rather notes, from the Countess of Pembroke, that have not hitherto been made public; and Mr. Pope's letter, describing the death of the two rural lovers by lightning, is here given at full length; while the former editions only contained her Ladyship's answer,-in which we have always thought that her desire to be smart and witty, has intruded itself a little ungracefully into the place of a more amiable feeling. The next series of letters consists of those written to her sister the Countess of Mar, from 1723 to 1727. These letters have at least as much vivacity, wit, and sarcasm, as any that have been already published; and though they contain little but the anecdotes and scandal of the time, will long continue to be read and admired for the brilliancy and facility of the composition. Though Lady Mary is excessively entertaining in this correspondence, we cannot say, however, that she is either very amiable, or very interesting. There is rather a negation of good affection, we think, throughout; and a certain cold-hearted levity, that borders sometimes upon misanthropy, and sometimes on indecency. The style of the following extracts, however, we are afraid has been for some time a dead language. "I made a sort of resolution, at the beginning of my letter, not to trouble you with the mention of what passes here, since you receive it HER LETTERS TO LADY MAR. 563 with so much coldness. But I find it is impossible to forbear telling you the metamorphoses of some of your aquaintance, which appear as wondrous to me as any in Ovid. Would any one believe that Lady H*** ***** ss is a beauty, and in love? and that Mrs. Anastasia Robinson is at the same time a prude and a kept mistress? The first of these ladies is tenderly attached to the polite Mr. M***, and sunk in all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding she wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism, and he has an arm that he cannot move. I wish I could tell you the particulars of this amour; which seems to me as curious as that between two oysters, and as well worth the serious attention of the naturalists. The second heroine has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord Peterborough for her champion, who has signalized both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two sexes on so great an account, besides half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By the Providence of Heaven, and the wise care of his Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, things are now tolerably accommodated; and the fair lady rides through the town in the shining berlin of her hero, not to reckon the more solid advantages of 1007. a month, which 'tis said he allows her. I will send you a letter by the Count Caylus, whom, if you do not know already, you will thank me for introducing to you. He is a Frenchman, and no fop; which, besides the curiosity of it, is one of the prettiest things in the world.”—Vol. iii. pp. 120122. I "I write to you at this time piping-hot from the birth-night; my brain warmed with all the agreeable ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, brisk tunes, and lively dances can raise there. It is to be hoped that my letter will entertain you; at least you will certainly have the freshest account of all pasages on that glorious day. First, you must know that I led up the ball, which you'll stare at: but what is more, believe in my consience I made one of the best figures there: For, to say truth, people are grown so extravagantly ugly, that we old beauties are forced to come out on show-days, to keep the court in countenance. I saw Mrs. Murray there, through whose hands this epistle will be conveyed; I do not not know whether she will make the same compliment to you that I do. Mrs. West was with her, who is a great prude, having but two lovers at a time; I think those are Lord Haddington and Mr. Lindsay; the one for use, the other for show. "The world improves in one virtue to a violent degree-I mean plain dealing. Hypocrisy being, as the Scripture declares, a damnable sin, I hope our publicans and sinners will be saved by the open profession of the contrary virtue. I was told by a very good author, who is deep in the secret, that at this very minute there is a bill cooking up at a hunting seat in Norfolk, to have not taken out of the commandments, and clapped into the creed, the ensuing session of Parliament. To speak plainly, I am very sorry for the forlorn state |