epistolary writers, such as Pope, Swift, Chesterfield, Dr. Johnson, Walpole, Gray, and other notable men, yet there was undoubtedly a pedantic formality, as well as a languid elegance, in most of their compositions. They also lacked the freedom, ease, and spontaneity of the letter writers of the nineteenth century. Among the epistolary writers of the eighteenth century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a prominent place. This eminent lady was in her day a well-known figure in society. Possessed of a handsome person, gifted also with sprightly wit and a considerable amount of literary talent, she was able to form an intimacy with nearly all the eminent literati of her time. Fielding described her as "the glory of her sex, and the wonder of ours." Unfortunately she offended the two greatest satirists of her time, Pope and Walpole, who used against her with merciless malice all the deadly weapons of verbal warfare. The cause of the bitter quarrel between Pope and Lady Mary will probably never be cleared up. Lady Mary's own version of the origin of the difference seems more probable than many of the small explanations which have been given by some critics. According to her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, her own statement was this, "That at some ill-chosen time, when she least expected what romances call a declaration, he made such passionate love to her, as, in spite of her utmost endeavours to be angry and look grave, provoked an immoderate fit of laughter, from which moment he became her implacable enemy." That he was at one time one of her devoted admirers, and even declared to her the violent passion is proved by his romantic and effusive l that professed sentiment of "first love" wards changed into contempt and hatre love too much hate in the like extreme,' wicked wasp of Twickenham" with his st pen dipped in scorn's fiery poison, blis tortured his victim with the sharpest ac his satire. Walpole, for some cause, when writing Mary changed his ordinary good hur delicate satire into the banalities of coarse tion. But Lady Mary was not one of the who could submit meekly to these m attacks, and she returned satire with satire, with scurrility, so that these contests de into vile personalities. They remind us of one of the Chinese methods of warfare, combatant's hurl malodorous missiles at th nents. No woman of her time was so mali misrepresented, and the charges brough her in Pope's satires and Walpole's letters upon examination, proved to be entirely fa for her inimitable letters she would ha known chiefly as one of the names endowed immortality of contempt in the Dunciad a satires, and her personality would have gotten. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, af fifth Duke of Kingston. Her father marr Fielding, a relative of the great novelist name. Lady Mary was born in 1689; she mother in 1692. From her earliest yea : Mary seems to have cherished an aversion for her own sex, for she writes when a girl, "I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex, and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gives me of never being married to any of them, that nothing hinders women from playing the fool, but not having it in their power." Lady Mary would have evidently qualified Mrs. Poyser's remark upon her own sex, "I'm not denyin' the women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match the men." When Lady Mary was about twenty years of age she had the confidence to write to Bishop Burnet, and submit for his criticism and correction a translation of Epictetus,' "the work of one week of my solitude." She again harps upon the inferiority of her own sex, and writes, "My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere, we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that, than the least pretentions to reading or good sense. We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects. are every way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree criminal to improve our reason, or fancy we have any. We are taught to place all our art in adorning our outward forms, and permitted, with no reproach, to carry that custom even to extravagancy; while our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. I do not doubt God and nature have thrown us into an inferior rank; we are a lower part of the creation. We owe obedience and submission to naturally as the leaves of a tree it had It is painful to think how near we are t of his journey. In June Keats set off from with his friend Charles Brown for a tour land. George Keats and his newly-mar went with them as far as Liverpool, from w they were to sail for America. They tra with knapsacks on their backs till Keats wa do his twenty miles or more a day witho venience. But when they got into remoter the Highlands a coarse fare, rough accom and perpetual drenchings of rain began to them both. Keats complains that they nothing to support them but eggs and oat that he is beginning to feel it. Towards th July he took a fatal walk of thirty-seven mil the island of Mull. Keats says, "The road the island is the most dreary you can t Between dreary mountains, or bog and river, with breeches turned up and our sto hand. About eight o'clock we arrived at herd's hut, into which we could scarcely ge smoke through a door lower than my sl We found our way into a little compartm the rafters and turf thatch blackened by sm earth floor full of hills and dales. We h white bread with us and made a good sup slept in our clothes and some blankets. O snored in another little bed about an arm's off." From the hardships of this walk he sore throat which afterwards never left h ended in consumption in which he died. At Inverness the doctor ordered him to go home immediately, and he arrived at Hampstead, as one of his friends tells us, "as brown and as shabby as you can imagine, scarcely any shoes left; his jacket all torn at the back, a fur cap, a great plaid, and his knapsack. I cannot tell what he looked like." On his return he found his brother Tom dying of consumption. He writes to George at the end of October, "I am not sorry you had not letters at Philadelphia. You could have no good news of Tom, and I have withheld on his account from beginning these many days. I cannot bring myself to tell the truth. He is no better, but much worse. However, it must be told. I knew my dear brother and sister would take an example from me, and bear up against any calamity for my sake, as I do for others. The tears will come into your eyes. Let them, and embrace each other." It is now generally agreed that consumption is infectious, and it is more than probable that Keats' anxious nursing of his brother made any recovery from his own illness impossible. His weakened body was now to be assailed by another passion. In Hampstead there is to be seen at this day a house called "Lawn Bank." In 1818 this consisted of two semi-detached houses called "Wentworth Place." One of them was occupied by Charles Brown and the other by Charles Dilke. After Tom's death Keats went to live with Brown, sharing the house and the expenses. Whilst Brown was away in Scotland he had let his house to a Mrs. Brawne, who had a daughter Fanny, just grown up, and two younger children. The Brawnes naturally |