quieted thee to bring thee up. And now, stout Elliott! brave Ebenezer! return to your rest, and may the flowers you loved in life perfume your grave! A POET'S EPITAPH. Stop, Mortal! Here thy brother lies, His books were rivers, woods, and skies, His teachers were the torn hearts' wail, The street, the factory, the jail, The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm, And honoured in a peasant's form But if he loved the rich who make Ill could he praise the rich who take A hand to do, a head to plan, A heart to feel and dare Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. T first flashed before the admiring eyes of her contemporaries, adorning with her beauty, and enlivening with her most rare wit, the very highest platform of English aristocratic society. In looking back through this long vista of years, thronged though it be with many graceful forms of the good and the gifted, that social luminary seems to suffer no eclipse. We see her, in conjunction with all the notabilities of her day, almost worshipped in foreign countries, and the object of universal interest in her own. We hear her conversing sagaciously with statesmen and philosophers; or addressing a bon mot, sparkling as the glances of her bright eye, to some admiring poet or wit of her train; or we readily conjure up that peculiar smile, at once playful and recklessly mischievous, with which she is detailing, in one of her matchless letters, some -new bit of scandal, or satire, or double-entendre, so racy, and sharp, and sparkling, that it must undoubtedly have too often dyed the cheeks of the alarmed yet amused correspondent. But whatever the circumstance, mood, attitude, or occupation, in it we are at once able to recognise her as she stands prominently out in the high relief of her singular individuality. And we are as little apt to confound her, in the intellectual beauty of her prime, with the Eastern houris of Constantinople, as we are with anybody else in the world, while we picture her in her old age and mysterious exile, expatiating with the keen epicurean relish which never deserts her among her violets and nightingales, her bees and her silkworms, her fifteen bowers, with different views, and dining-room of verdure; at the same time that she tells us she has not glanced into a looking-glass for eleven years, because the last look was not a pleasant one. It will not, therefore, be matter of wonder, that much should have been both spoken and written about so remarkable a personage. Several notices of her life have been long before the world. In 1803 Dr Dallaway published, from original documents, her correspondence, poems, and essays, prefaced by a memoir, in five volumes. In 1836 her great-grandson, the late Lord Wharncliffe, republished the works in a much more complete form, in three large octavo volumes, still prefixing Dr Dallaway's memoir, but with notes in explanation and correction, and supplying the interesting addition of an ample introduction in the form of biographical anecdotes, well known to be from the pen of Lady Louisa Stuart, the only surviving daughter of Lord and Lady Bute. This lady, though only five years old at the death of her celebrated grandmother, could remember having seen her; having had many conversations about her with Lady Bute; and having been shewn by her part of a journal kept by Lady Mary throughout her whole life, but which delicacy towards people still alive, and probably a prudent regard for her mother's reputation, induced the scrupulous Lady Bute to destroy before her death. Lady Mary was too satirical and formidable a person not to have made many and bitter enemies among her contemporaries. It is to be feared, moreover, that there are passages in her life ill calculated to stand the test of a very severe scrutiny. Lord Wharncliffe's work revived much discussion of her character by the periodical press of the day; and singularly candid and impartial as the biography was on all sides allowed to be, as a whole, some of the statements were controverted and cavilled at; while others were maliciously perverted, and held as admissions in corroboration of the most scandalous of the stories circulated against her. Without pretending to fathom the depths of all the vexed questions involving the reputation of Lady Mary, it is the purpose of this Paper to give, from the most authentic sources, as full a sketch of her life, writings, and character, as its limits will allow-drawing chiefly upon Lord Wharncliffe's book, and the notices to which it gave rise, for the materials of the memoir-and being guided in our estimate of her character by the indications of it that appear in her own works, and the testimony of numerous contemporary writers-making due allowance always for the boldness and freedom which universally characterised the modes of expression in her day. No one who has been endowed by the Creator with large faculties, whether they have been used for evil or for good, will be found, when properly viewed, to have lived altogether in vain. His outward manifestation may only arrest the eye, as a beacon to deter; or it may sound gratefully on the ear like a friendly cheer from the gained shore, reviving the sinking heart of the still tossed mariner; but of such a one it may be confidently affirmed, that he has fulfilled his destiny in the ever-progressing development of the species. It cannot, then, be either an uninteresting or an uninstructive task for our readers to glance briefly with us over the life and conversation of one who played so important a part in the great world-drama of her own day; who, besides leaving behind her in her writings many monuments of her genius, has a strong claim on the gra titude of posterity for having saved the lives of thousands by the introduction into England of the Turkish method of modifying the dreadful scourge of smallpox-shewing both moral and maternal courage in trying the experiment on her own son; of one, above all, who was so strong, and yet so weak; so flattered, and so reviled; so beloved, and so hated. Lady Mary Pierrepont, eldest daughter of Evelyn, first Duke of Kingston, by the Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William, Earl of Denbigh, was born at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire in the year 1690. She had two sisters by the same parents (for the duke had two more daughters by a second wife), and an only brother, who died of smallpox during his father's lifetime, and whose son became the second and last Duke of Kingston. The elder of her two sisters, Lady Frances-to whom some of her best letters were addressed-was married to John Erskine, Earl of Mar; and the other, Lady Evelyn, to John, Earl of Gower. It is interesting to note that, both by father's and mother's side, Lady Mary came of an active and energetic race. The Fieldings, as well as the Pierreponts, were deeply engaged in the civil war, and apparently from individual convictions-two brothers among the latter, and a father and son among the former, having chosen different sides. Lady Mary, in one of her letters, boasts of her great-grandfather having earned by his sagacity and prudence the surname of Wise William; and Leigh Hunt tells us these were not the highest qualities to which she might have laid claim by inheritance. Genius and wit had also manifested themselves in the family before her day-George Villiers, the witty Duke of Buckingham, having been her great-uncle; and Beaumont, the dramatist, also her relation, his mother being a Pierrepont of the same stock. Lady Mary, to her great misfortune, lost her mother at the early age of four years; and though she speaks highly of her grandmother, the CountessDowager of Denbigh and Desmond, as having had a superior understanding, and having retained it to an extraordinarily advanced age, that lady appears to have done but little towards supplying to her the important maternal duties. Indeed the want of a certain delicacy of mind and feminine selfrestraint, the usual results of careful training, caused in all probability much of the suffering which embittered her afterlife. Though Lady Kingston died so early, her husband continued a widower till all his children were grown up and married. Lady Mary gives us the character of both her parents in one sentence, when she says that Richardson, without knowing it, drew their portraits in Sir Thomas and Lady Grandison. But though probably too much a man of pleasure to disturb himself with any overanxious concern for the best interests of his children, a little incident which Lady Mary loved to recall, proves that she was, at least in her childhood, the object of Lord Kingston's pride and fondness. As the scene is at once characteristic of the times and of the dramatis personce, we shall give it entire in Lady Louisa Stuart's lively words, on whom, as Lord Wharncliffe justly remarks, 'a ray of Lady Mary's talent seems to have fallen: ' "Then As a leader of the fashionable world, and a strenuous Whig in party, he (Lord Kingston) belonged to the Kit-cat Club. One day, at a meeting to choose toasts for the year, a whim seized him to nominate her, then not eight years old, a candidate, alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on their list. The other members demurred, because the rules of the club forbade them to select a beauty whom they had never seen. you shall see her," cried he; and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders to have her finely dressed, and brought to him at the tavern, where she was received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her health drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon a drinking-glass. The company consisting of some of the most eminent men in England, she went from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of another; was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with caresses, and, what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensations-they amounted to ecstasy: never again throughout her whole future life did she pass so happy a day. Nor, indeed, could she; for the love of admiration, which this scene was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so fully gratified. There is always some alloying ingredient in the cup, some drawback upon the triumphs of grown people: her father carried on the frolic, and, we may conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her picture painted for the club-room, that she might be enrolled a regular toast.' True as it may be that the dawn of her genius opened auspiciously, there seems but little ground for Dr Dallaway's assertion, that Lady Mary's father had bestowed on her the best classical education. If it had been so, she would hardly, in afteryears, while so earnestly recommending a learned education for women, have spoken of her own as 'one of the worst in the world, being exactly the same as Clarissa Harlowe's.' Quick and ambitious as she was, she may have picked up 'small Latin and less Greek' by the side of her brother; but it could not be much, for Lady Bute expressly said that her mother understood little or no Greek; and we find Lady Mary herself writing to Mrs Anne Wortley in 1709, when she must have been nineteen years old, that she was then trying whether it was possible to learn Latin without a master. No doubt the good homespun governess of whom she often speaks would lay the necessary foundation, and a beautiful girl of good parts is sure of finding, as she grows up, plenty of instructors in what may be termed masculine knowledge. Lady Mary acknowledges her obligations to Bishop Burnet for 'condescending to direct the studies of a girl;' and we find her corresponding with him on the subject of a translation she had made, under his eye, of the Latin version of Epictetus. But while she strengthened her mind by such exercises, she did not neglect to indulge and amuse it by the study of every work of fancy or fiction that came in her way. She delighted in the romances of the old French school, and possessed, and left behind her, the entire library of Mrs Lennox's Female Quixote 'Cassandra," Alice,' &c.; on the blank leaf of a volume of which (the 'Astrea') she had written out, in' her fairest youthful hand,' the names and characteristic qualities of the chief personages, thus:-The beautiful Diana, the volatile Climene, the melancholy Doris, Celadon the faithful, Adamas the wise;' and so on, to the extent of two long columns. Her earliest-known poetic effusion, which is an epistle from Julia to Ovid, written at the age of twelve, is quite in accordance with these tastes; and though not equal to some of Pope's at the same age, shews a remarkable power of harmonious versification. At the age of fourteen, we find her lamenting, in a melodious couplet, that she has in vain sought truth either in town, court, or sanctuary; at fifteen, she is busy with the project of establishing a nunnery in England, of which she intends one day to be the lady abbess; and at twenty she translates the Enchiridion, and complains to her friend the bishop, in a sober and dignified strain, of the injustice and neglect shewn to women, supporting her views by a Latin quotation from Erasmus. But what probably aided more than any other advantage could have done in the development of Lady Mary's genius, was the secluded leisure of her life during these important early years. They were passed partly at Thoresby, partly at Acton near London; but at both places in a retire |