SOURCE: Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. “Elizabeth Montagu: The Making of a Female Critic.” In The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 177-206. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

[In the following essay, Myers explores Montagu's life as it relates to the Bluestockings, including her relationship with the other members of the social circle and her efforts in literary criticism.]

In the late 1740s and early 1750s Elizabeth Montagu experienced ill health, the deaths of close relatives, the collapse of her sister's marriage, and an increasing awareness of the incompatibility underlying her relations with her husband. But these sorrows and concerns did not daunt her. Again and again she made the effort to manage her interests and her relationships with her friends and with her husband in such a way as to maintain a sense of control over her life.

The solution to some of the problems of health often seemed to be a summer spent at Tunbridge Wells. Tunbridge Wells was one of the eighteenth-century watering-places to which people came to seek health by drinking the waters, and to find amusement by becoming acquainted with their fellow visitors. Tunbridge Wells was small and rural; there were some general entertainments, but much time was taken up with walks, visits to local scenic spots and stately homes, picnics in the open air, and meals in the various houses which made up the rented residences of the place. Sometimes there were lectures in the Great Rooms (Barton, chap. 12).

Tunbridge Wells was visited by people from a wide range of backgrounds—from booksellers, actors, scholars, clergymen and their wives to bishops, politicians, statesmen, and members of the aristocracy and their wives. Unlike Bath, which had numerous social activities that tended to be forced on the visitors, the social life at Tunbridge Wells seemed to arise from the nature of the visitors in a particular season. Sometimes people rented houses together and formed an inner circle. In 1752 the Wests and the Montagus rented the Stone House; in later years the Wests and William Pitt shared a house together. Thus within the rural village small circles might form as people became acquainted with each other; Elizabeth Montagu developed many of her friendships from initial acquaintanceships at Tunbridge Wells. She first met Frances Boscawen and Elizabeth Vesey there.

Unfortunately, Mr Montagu did not care for Tunbridge Wells, and although she made arrangements for him to come on several visits, he came reluctantly, stayed only a few days, and after a few years admitted he did not like the place. His wife conceded that Tunbridge was not really the place for serious scholars like her husband and his mathematician friends. But, she argued, it was frequented by men of reading, whose society she preferred to that of more frivolous people (MO 2255). It was some of these men whom she made her friends, and who encouraged her to pursue her intellectual interests. The ‘men of reading’ with whom she developed lasting friendships included Gilbert West and Sir George Lyttelton, later Lord Lyttelton. The test of congeniality was in essence not only that they enjoyed each other's company at Tunbridge Wells, but also exchanged letters, saw each other in London, or occasionally visited each other at one or another country house. Thus, we first find the word ‘bluestocking’ being used by Samuel Torriano, a spa friend whom West mentions having met in 1750. Torriano used the term in 1756 when he wrote to Elizabeth Montagu from London about Benjamin Stillingfleet, another friend, who was then visiting at Sandleford. …

The friendship with Gilbert West was most significant in encouraging Mrs Montagu to think seriously of religion. The deaths of her mother and of two of her brothers, as well as the earlier death of her own son, had shaken her sense of security. Further, she had discovered that her husband was not a believer in Christianity. In those days Elizabeth Montagu felt the need to turn to her religion for assurances of God's purpose here and in the life hereafter. West himself had questioned Christianity. But by 1747 he had come round to an acceptance of religion, and published his Observations of the Resurrection. West had been educated at Oxford, and originally intended for the clergy. Samuel Johnson remarked on West's piety in the Life he wrote to accompany West's poems. According to Johnson, West read prayers to his family every day and to his servants on Sunday evening. Serious conversations with West on the subject of religion seem to have helped Elizabeth Montagu to strengthen her religious faith.

Several times West and his wife Catherine came to Tunbridge Wells in company with William Pitt. The amusements of the group of friends included visiting local sights such as Penshurst, picnicking in the country, or meeting for meals and conversation. Mrs Montagu's group read aloud as one form of entertainment. Their reputation for literature was so high that they were called the ‘Muses’ of Tunbridge Wells.

Elizabeth Montagu made her friendship with Gilbert West a family friendship. She was on cordial terms with Mrs West, and took an interest in their only child, a son Richard. Mrs Montagu invited the couple to use her house in London when the need arose. She herself spent periods of time in a cottage at Hayes near Wickham, where the Wests lived. The area was close enough to London for her to spend time there while in residence in London.

Gilbert West and Elizabeth Montagu also conversed about literature, in person and by letter. West encouraged her to use their correspondence to express her interests and ideas on a variety of subjects. In a letter of his from Wickham (MO 6642, 29 Nov. 1752) West assured her that he much admired her taste and judgement and encouraged her in her reading: Nathaniel Hooke's Roman History and Archibald Bower's History of the Popes. In 1753 she lent West Hooke's copy of the Works of Catherine Cockburn. Later Hooke wanted it back, but she told him that West still had the work, and she didn't know when he would part with it. She explained to West that Hooke was much pleased ‘that his favourite author found favor in your sight’ and she herself felt that West was ‘so much a friend to the fair sex’ that he would rejoice in Cockburn's argumentative triumphs (MO 6703).

On 14 November 1754 she wrote an analysis of the ‘impieties’ of Lord Bolingbroke, and of her dissatisfaction with the answers to Bolingbroke of William Warburton. West thought so highly of her letter that he showed it to Archbishop Thomas Herring, whom he was visiting. The Archbishop asked for a copy of the paragraph and promised not to divulge the name of the author (MO 6721; 6667).¹

On 18 November 1755 Montagu wrote to West about Voltaire's ‘chinese tragedy’, L'Orphelin de la Chine. At this time she expressed the views on Voltaire versus Shakespeare which were to become the subject of her book:

I read it without any concern, when I compare this indifference with the interest, the admiration, the surprize with which I read what the saucy frenchman calls the farces monstreuses of Shakespeare I could burn him & his Tragedy. Foolish coxcomb, rules can no more make a poet than receipts a cook, there must be taste, there must be skill. Oh that we were as sure that our fleets & armies could drive the french out of America as that our Poets & Tragedians can drive them out of Parnassus. I hate to see these tame creatures taught to pace by art, attack fancys sweetest child.

(MO 6733)

Her correspondence with West stimulated Mrs Montagu's critical faculties, although it had a stiffening effect on her prose. West's sentences were complex, with many dependent clauses; in her letters to him she tried to write with greater formality than she usually employed. In the passage she expressed a strong irritation with Voltaire's treatment of Shakespeare. Her aggravation eventually prompted her to write in freer and more idiomatic language than she used later in her Essay. The passage shows that her response to Shakespeare was personal; she stated her own view of him as dramatist long before she could have read Kames's Elements of Criticism (1761) or Johnson's Preface to his edition of Shakespeare (1765).

The death of the Wests' only child in January 1755 saddened the parents; writing from Tunbridge Wells on 9 July 1755, West spoke of the pain he felt when he remembered the past; ‘adieu then, ye happy seasons of 1750—51—52—& 53’ (MO 6672). He himself had had a long struggle with gout, and at times had been confined to an invalid's chair. After long seeking for preferment, he had finally been made paymaster to Chelsea Hospital with the help of William Pitt. But he did not benefit from this office long, for he died on 27 March 1756.

George Lyttelton, another scholar, poet, and an active politician, was a good friend of both West and William Pitt and inevitably Mrs Montagu was brought into contact with him. Young Elizabeth Robinson had seen him at Lady North's in London in 1740 when the guests came in Court dress prepared for a Royal birthday. She wrote to her sister that the women's clothes were very striking in fabric and workmanship. ‘The men were not fine; Mr. Lyttelton, according to Polonius's instruction; his dress rich, not gaudy; costly, but not exprest in fancy.’ (Montagu, Letters (1810), i. 126.) But that judgement was that of a youthful observer. Now Elizabeth Montagu renewed her acquaintance with Lyttelton, and it became an important friendship. He was a man with literary interests who had published some well-known poems (notably the Monody on the death of his first wife, Lucy). He knew the classics. Like West he had become more religious-minded as he grew older; in 1747 he published his On the Conversion of St. Paul, which he addressed to West. His Persian Letters were thought to show some satiric ability; his later Dialogues of the Dead to show taste and scholarship (Rao, 331-3).

In 1752 Lyttelton and his second wife were at Tunbridge Wells and Mrs Montagu complained that Mrs Lyttelton was distant and unsociable. In fact, the Lytteltons separated soon afterwards; Elizabeth Montagu became one of the friends who provided Lyttelton with a continuing relationship after the breakdown of his marriage.

Lyttelton's letters to Mrs Montagu breathed a spirit of admiration for her beauty and her intellect, considered as far beyond that of other women. Such a technique permitted men to reconcile their praise of a particular gifted woman with their sense of the incapacities of most women. In the postscript to a letter written by Archibald Bower to Elizabeth Montagu, Lyttelton raised the question:

How are we to Maintain the Dignity of our Sex, and our Superiority over the Ladies, if they excell us in Eloquence as much as in Charms? We told you the Ocean resembled a Looking Glass: You consider it as a Mirrour that represents Omnipotence. Is This the Stile of a Woman? Shew me in Homer, in Pindar, in Milton, a nobler Idea, a bolder Expression. Longinus would have given it as an Instance of the truest and highest Sublime. Do you think then I will write Postscripts to you as I would to a Woman? There is as much Difference between your Genius and that of your Sex as between a murmuring Stream and the Ocean.

(MO 639)

Eighteenth-century correspondence abounds in exaggerated flattery; West addressed Mrs Montagu as his ‘dearest and most amiable Cousin’. But Lyttelton seems to have reached unusual heights in these efforts. Following the example of Archibald Bower, the historian with whom Mrs Montagu was corresponding in Italian, Lyttelton addressed her as ‘Madonna’. In No. 49 of his Persian Letters (1735) Lyttelton had advocated education for English women similar to that of men. He argued that it was important that their minds and hearts both be trained so that they could play their part in society well. But, in actuality, when he found a woman with intellectual interests, he responded with the kind of surprise which indicates, as his postscript also shows, that he thought very little of the capacities of most women.

There may have been a sense also that the sort of friendship he wished to have with Mrs Montagu was an uncommon one. His flattery of her intellect would indicate that this was not a worldly man-woman flirtation involving what the eighteenth century called ‘gallantry’, but a friendship based on intellectual values. Mrs Montagu herself must have taken his flattery with a grain of salt, because she always had the sense that talents were dangerous for women to have. In complimenting Lyttelton himself on the fact that he brought up his daughter for domestic life, she said:

Extraordinary talents may make a Woman admired, but they will never make her happy. Talents put a man above the World, & in a condition to be feared and worshipped, a Woman that possesses them must be always courting the World, and asking pardon, as it were, for uncommon excellence.

(MO 1403, 21 Oct. [1760])

She, of course, was consistently drawn to the idea of female abilities, but she also feared the hostile reactions of the world.

When Lyttelton was dismissed from his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer he went back to working on the history of Henry II which had been his scholarly project for some time. A letter by Mrs Montagu written on 24 July 1759 shows the extravagant flattery in which she also could engage in encouraging him in his work. She suggested that history was preferable to fable, and that the tree which ‘shaded Lord Lyttelton while he wrote his History’ would be honoured by posterity. By contrast, since Chaucer's and Sidney's oaks grew in the light soil of fancy and fable, they flourished only a little while and then faded. Works that spring from fancy do not live on because they are affected by changes in taste and style, whereas ‘the historical plants have their root in the Terra firma of truth & wisdom, & are for ever preserved with veneration’ (MO 1386).

Mrs Montagu had, in fact, a strong interest in history because it brought her into contact with significant human affairs. She had confided to West that while in the country she read the accounts of people

whom superior parts & noble ambition led from the silent path of life, to its busiest & most turbulent scenes; if I can get some of their experience without any of their dangers, & a little of their knowledge witht any of their passions, I may keep my tranquillity without falling into that stupidity & insensibility which I think still more unworthy of the human mind than vain sollicitude, & idle perturbation.

(MO 6704, 13 Oct. [1753])

She wanted knowledge and experience of the world—but at a distance.

Lyttelton's work on his history of Henry II became a strong link in their friendship. It figures in what seems to have been the only account we know of which raised a question about the propriety of Elizabeth Montagu's behaviour. Horace Walpole, who could be counted on to relay every bit of scurrilous gossip, repeated an incident in which a young servant supposedly expressed scepticism about what Lord Lyttelton and Mrs Montagu were doing when they closed the door and retired to ‘write history’. But the humour of the anecdote was in the respectability of the people involved, compared to the suspicions and naïveté of the servant (Walpole, ix. 255).

As with West, Elizabeth Montagu's letters to Lyttelton provided her with opportunities for philosophical musings, descriptions of nature, and discussions of literature. One of the subjects of their correspondence was the Greek drama. In 1760, while at Tunbridge Wells, Montagu was reading Thomas Francklin's translation of the tragedies of Sophocles. She said that Oedipus at Coloneus in particular affected her extremely, but that the intensity of her response was diminished by the presence of the chorus. ‘But after all, I envy the Athenians an entertainment, so noble in itself, so affecting to their State, so glorious to their Country, and honourable to their founder Theseus’ (MO 1397, 7 Aug. 1760). She wished the play had ended with Oedipus' tragical and mystical death rather than with his daughter's lamentations. The circumstances of Oedipus' death ‘leave the mind in a very peculiar situation: and I think I would defy the tragick muse to do anything greater.’ Lyttelton responded with enthusiasm to Mrs Montagu's criticism and told her that he had read her comments to a friend, Sir James Macdonald, ‘who declared at once that you were a Critic as much superiour to Brumoy, as he is to most others’ (MO 1287, 14 Aug. 1760). In another letter praising her criticism, Lyttelton quoted a phrase from Horace in the original and suggested that she not lose the letter, because people would discover the secret that she knew Latin; in fact, considering the excellence of her criticism of Sophocles, they might begin to suspect that she also knew Greek, ‘for no body will believe that without being a Mistress of the Original Language you could so perfectly judge of that author’ (MO 1289). But Mrs Montagu responded that she deeply regretted that she could not read the plays in Greek (MO 1398).

In the course of the correspondence, the friends also discussed Oedipus tyrannus, Philoctotes, and Ajax. In a letter from Newcastle, she wrote at length on Lyttelton's favourite Sophoclean tragedy, Philoctotes. Mrs Montagu added that although she admired Athenian drama very much she had still not lost her esteem for Shakespeare. Her comment, ‘he alone, like the Dervise in the arabian tales, can throw his soul into the body of another man; feel all his sentiments, perform his functions, & fill his place’ (MO 1402, 10 [Oct.] 1760), reappeared in a slightly altered form in her Essay on Shakespear (37).

The letters continued to deal with literary questions in the mid-1760s, after Mrs Montagu had begun her serious study of Shakespeare and the drama. In July 1765 she was reading Euripides in Italian (MO 1438). On 24 September 1765 Lyttelton was urging her to continue her studies (MO 1335). In MO 1452 (c. 1766) she reported to Lyttelton that she was reading Corneille and finding him most difficult of all to deal with. As a lover of nature she did not enjoy the unnatural.

Above all, Lyttelton encouraged her to publish, and provided her with an opportunity for publication. In 1760 when he published his Dialogues of the Dead he included in the volume three essays by another hand. These essays were Mrs Montagu's efforts at writing in the classical tradition of short dialogues on literary and moral themes. Later, when she was at Sandleford in May 1764, Lyttelton urged her to write something else for publication.

We will not be satisfied with a fine Letter to Ld. Bath or Sr. J. Macdonald, which you can write while Mrs. Jenny is combing your Hair: we will have something to be printed, something to be published, something to shew the whole World what a Woman we have among us!

(MO 1321, 21 May 1764)

She replied to this urging that she had a dread of ink. He responded that ‘The Epidemical Distemper of this Nation at present is the Love of Ink: even the Ladies daub their fingers with it much more than they should; it is very hard that you alone, who can use it so well, should be afraid to use it!’ (MO 1322, 2 June 1764).

In the course of their friendship Lord Lyttelton clearly performed the function of a mentor. As we have seen, he discussed her ideas with her and encouraged her to further study. Mrs Montagu was drawn to the primitive imagery of the Ossian poems but when she debated the question of their authenticity with Lyttelton, Mrs Montagu said that his arguments had staggered her belief in the poems (MO 1404). In a letter of 13 October 1765, after her work on the Essay was under way, he warned her that she must consider Shakespeare's faults as well as his ‘beauties’ and also be just ‘to those excellencies in other dramatic Writers, which are of a different kind from his, but yet admirable in their kind’ (MO 1336). He compared plays to orderly versus disorderly gardens and city streets to explain his view of the difference between what he considered the disorder of Hamlet and the order of a play by Racine or Voltaire. She did not like the constraints of the rules of unity, and argued these points with him. In spite of his habitual flattery, his responses were often informative and honest. He was also careful not to hurt her feelings. He criticized the style of her letters but praised her essays; he told her that her witty sayings came too thick in the letters but were clear and controlled in her essays. Above all, he encouraged her to continue, and made it seem a reasonable action for her to publish.

During these years Elizabeth Montagu had begun to focus on study as a way of employing her energies during the gradual deterioration of her marriage, although she also found an absorbing interest in helping with the management of her husband's lands and coal-mines, finally doing much of the management herself. During the early years Mrs Montagu still felt grateful to her husband for having married her with a ‘mean dowry’ and she felt that she gained self-esteem by reflection from his reputation as a trustworthy and reliable man of business (MO 2255, [9 July?1752] to Edward Montagu). But as time went on Mr Montagu seems to have withdrawn into his own interests—mathematics, business, and politics. In the summer of 1755, Montagu wrote to Gilbert West that her husband was ‘studiously disposed’ at Sandleford and that she was alone for seven or eight hours at a time (MO 6723). But she had Virgil and Milton for companions. The Montagus had occasional visitors—family and friends—at Sandleford, but it was too far from London for casual visits, and Mr Montagu seemed to enjoy his long, fairly solitary stays there. She was determined to be a dutiful wife, however, and to begin with made the effort to be flexible, although she grumbled sometimes in her letters to friends about having to accede to his schedule. One way to make her periods of enforced solitude profitable was serious study. Elizabeth Montagu, like Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Carter, enjoyed the letters of Madame de Sévigné, who had found in country life a space for reading and reflection. Mrs Montagu began to order her life on this contrast—the city for sociability and friendships, the country for reading, study, and letter-writing.

Reading and study were interests Elizabeth could also share with her sister. Sarah Scott's separation from her husband had brought with it financial problems. In later life she had the benefit of several legacies.² But, especially during the first years after her separation, Sarah was interested in earning money. She began with romances and French translations. She asked her sister to send her French novels so that she could prepare translations before the novels became well known. She explained that she would like to earn £40 a year, but insisted on anonymity regarding her work (MO 5238, (?Jan. 1754)). By 1758 she had published a novel, several translations, and a series of romantic tales.

The letters of the sisters discuss their reading and Sarah Scott's publishing efforts. Mrs Scott herself made a distinction between authors who write for profit and authors who write for fame. A visitor had mentioned that Mrs Montagu was supposed to be engaged in a literary work. Sarah Scott encouraged her to do such work. Mrs Scott thought that now that most authors wrote for bread, or at least for butter for their bread, that those who were not

hurried by necessity should write for the honour of the age, for certainly those who become Authors for the sake of profit can never produce what even their talents might afford, since their aim will make them hurry to an end, therefore it belongs to those who are rich in purse & parts to shew that there are Genius's as well as Writers in the Nation.

(MO 5287, 28 Nov. [1761])

In fact, Sarah Scott spoke of her own significant novel, Millenium Hall (1762), which described the orderly, pious life led by a group of women, a life similar to that which Sarah and Lady Barbara had been leading themselves, in strictly pecuniary terms. She explained to her sister that she did not get much for the novel, but as it only took a month to write, it brought in a guinea a day, which she thought good (MO 5300, (31 Jan. 1763)). Sarah seems to have been hampered in her development by her lack of respect for her own work because she was writing for money.

The collapse of her sister's marriage had brought home to Mrs Montagu the powerlessness of women and, as we saw in Chapter 5, she took it upon herself to struggle with their father to try to get money for Sarah. But early in the controversy Mrs Scott had said she was willing to leave her father in possession of her fortune to achieve peace in the family (MO 5223). In the later years of her life, Sarah Scott chose to live at Catton near Norwich, far from London and Sandleford. It was evidently still necessary for Elizabeth Montagu to help her sister financially, for she wrote to Sarah, ‘Talk not of being a burden on my purse while you lighten my heart’ (Bodleian Library, MS Autogr b 10, no. 1059, 21 Aug. 1791, Newbury).

Sarah Scott's marriage had failed; it was only to her sister that Elizabeth Montagu could express her disappointments in her own marriage. She had an increasing sense of ‘imprisonment’. She wondered why marriage should always require two people to think alike. It seemed monstrous to her that people should marry and then expect to retain a close affection over a long period of time. As I have shown in Chapter 5, she dealt with her emotional frustrations by venting her anger in her letters to her sister; she also carried on an independent social life, kept up with new publications, and read and studied during the summers.

By 1758, when Mrs Montagu met Elizabeth Carter, she was ready to admire, and to try to emulate, a serious scholar. Earlier, during one visit at Tunbridge Wells, she had expressed admiration for an educated woman she met there; this woman was learned in the classics, had ‘a great deal of wit, vivacity, politeness’, spoke French very well, had moved in French society, and had been a friend of Pope, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Bath, ‘& all the most famous Wits and Politicians …’. Furthermore, ‘what is uncommon in our Sex, [she] is free from Conceit, pedantry, or vanity of any sort’ (MO 5724, 3 Sept. [?1752], to Sarah Scott). Now Elizabeth Montagu was very pleased with Elizabeth Carter's intellectual abilities, her religious convictions, and her modesty. She wrote to her sister:

I suppose you can have Miss Carters Epictetus at Mr Leake's, if not I will send it you. The introduction appears to me a piece of perfect good writing, the doctrine, the style, the order is admirable. The preference given to the Gospel morality above the philosophers is done with the greatest justice & an animated zeal, Parts & learning are never better employ'd than in setting forth their inability to discover the means of salvation which it has pleased almighty wisdom to hide from ye Wise & reveal to babes & sucklings. Epictetus's discourses & ye Enchiridion are allow d by all ye learned to be admirably translated, there is so much absurdity in ye Stoical doctrines one cannot read their works with intire pleasure but Epictetus is reckened one of ye best of them & I believe Miss Carter has done him ample justice. … Miss Carter is to dine with me to morrow, she is a most amiable modest gentle creature not herissé de Grec nor blown up with self opinion.

(MO 5768, 3 May [1758])

The ways in which Elizabeth Montagu went about developing her friendship with Elizabeth Carter are revealed in the letters the women began to exchange after their meeting.³

How did an affluent woman with intellectual interests cement her relationship with a shy, independent scholar of modest means? First of all, Elizabeth Montagu simply asked for Elizabeth Carter's friendship. Then, gradual intimacy was developed by open discussion by Mrs Montagu of her financial situation, and of her feelings, with recurrent compliments to Miss Carter on her values, and much discussion of books.

There had evidently been an overture of some sort the preceding year to which Miss Carter had been distant, and Mrs Montagu admitted

I can perfectly understand why you was afraid of me last year, & I will tell you, for you wont tell me perhaps you have not told yourself; you had heard I set up for a wit, & people of real merit & sense hate to converse with witlings as Rich Merchant-ships dread to engage with Privateers; they may receive damage & can get nothing but dry blows. … If you will give affection for affection ‘tout simple’ I shall get it from you, & even if you wont part with it without other good qualities I hope to get them of you, if you will continue to me the happiness & advantage of your conversation.

(MO 3019, 6 [July 1758, London]

Of course, Mrs Montagu was the one who made the overtures. Miss Carter's humility was such that she would feel no surprise or make any effort to change the situation if Mrs Montagu dropped her. But Mrs Montagu kept up the correspondence (although sometimes some months elapsed between letters), expressing concern about Elizabeth Carter's health, complimenting her on her intellectual abilities, and holding her up as a pattern of morality.

Elizabeth Montagu openly discussed her own wealth. Early in the friendship she complained about the harassment involved in the increase in property Mr Montagu had recently inherited from his cousin. At that time Elizabeth Carter could assure her that use of her wealth for humane and charitable purposes would compensate her for her difficulties.

Unhappiness caused by the loss of family members was shared early in the friendship. Writing on 13 July 1758 Elizabeth Carter spoke of the sorrow occasioned by the death of her brother's wife at the age of twenty-three (Letters (1817), i. 5-7). In replying, Mrs Montagu asserted that she was positive that Miss Carter's ‘Christian fortitude’ would soften her sorrow; but while her grief could not be blamed, Mrs Montagu urged her not to conceal it in order to spare others.

The following year Elizabeth Carter shared with her friend her sorrow at the death of her stepmother, who had always given her love and affection, and had never been from home. To this sadness Elizabeth Montagu could also respond, explaining that she too had regretted her own mother's death, which happened too soon after the children were grown for Mrs Robinson to enjoy any respite from family cares.

In the autumn of 1758 Elizabeth Montagu gave her friend a graphic account of her own horrifying experience—an accident in which her maids, attempting to deal with a fainting fit, dropped ‘eau de luce’ into her left eye and nostril and into her mouth. Since this remedy was a combination of sal ammoniac and quicklime, she was badly injured, and almost suffocated; it took several weeks of medical care and nursing before she began to recover (MO 3022, 20 Oct. 1758, [Carville]).

One of the pleasures of this friendship was the opportunities to exchange ideas about books the women were reading. Here they seem to have been sharing their efforts at continuing self-education; the writers discuss the works in which they are interested in a direct and personal way. Early in the friendship Mrs Montagu began to reread Antonio de Solis's History of the Conquest of Mexico in a French translation, because Miss Carter was reading it (probably in Spanish); Elizabeth Carter was outspoken in her disdain for the so-called advantages Europeans were supposed to have brought to other parts of the world. Her comments elicited from Mrs Montagu an exercise in criticism—she analysed the historian's work and wondered about the models he might have been following (MO 3021). Mrs Montagu regarded Miss Carter as a mentor as well as a friend. Miss Carter had hoped that she might visit her at Deal, and Mrs Montagu looked forward to such a possibility. ‘You would give ballast to an imagination that carries too much Sail, & your judgment like a skilfull Pilot wd direct its course’ (MO 3022).

In the first winter season after the friendship had begun, Mrs Montagu hoped for her friend's company in London. At first Elizabeth Carter resisted coming. (She was now over forty, and Mrs Montagu began to address her as ‘Mrs’—a common form of address for older single women.) Mrs Carter felt that she could not enjoy London without a lodging, and at present she could not afford one; ‘my spirit of liberty is strangely untractable and wild; I must have something like a home; somewhere to rest an aching head without giving any body any trouble; and some hours more absolutely at my own disposal than can be had in any other situation’ (Letters (1817), i. 19-20). This independent stance in fact set the pattern for the friendship. That first winter Mrs Carter did manage to come to London, primarily because Catherine Talbot was ill. Mrs Montagu had suggested that Mrs Carter take a lodging near Hill Street; in reply Mrs Carter asked Mrs Montagu to have her housekeeper ‘inquire for some sober quiet family where I may have one neat decent room besides a sleeping room …’. Mrs Montagu had evidently offered to provide Mrs Carter with dinners, but her friend replied that when she dined by herself, ‘I revel in cake and tea, a kind of independent luxury in which one needs very little apparatus, and no attendants; and is mighty consistent with loitering over a book’ (i. 23-4). The lodging found was with Mrs Norman on Clarges Street, which Elizabeth Carter used regularly during the season for many years. For that first season, however, Mrs Montagu had to relinquish her new friend to the Talbots, whom Mrs Carter joined for the long stay at Bristol. But before that time she must frequently have walked from her lodging the few blocks to Mrs Montagu's home on Hill Street at Berkeley Square to be with her, for Mrs Montagu remarked that they had spent every day of the month Mrs Carter was in London together. When Mrs Carter and the Talbots were on their way back from Bristol, she left the Talbots to return home by themselves and visited Mrs Montagu at Sandleford.

Authorship entered the picture about this time, for Mrs Montagu was writing her three dialogues which Lyttelton published anonymously in his Dialogues of the Dead (1760). Her authorship was supposed to be a secret, and her friend Edmund Burke was writing them over so that the handwriting of the manuscript would not be recognizable. She expected some amusement in hearing people criticize the unknown writer's work, but she also assured Mrs Carter that she was attempting to do ‘that little good it was in my power to aim at’. In fact, Mrs Montagu was rather proud of her little essays, ‘A Dialogue between Cadmus and Hercules’, one between ‘Mercury and a Modern Fine Lady’, and one between ‘Plutarch, Charon and a Modern Bookseller’. Mrs Carter refuted criticism of Mrs Montagu's work. There had evidently been complaints that, in the dialogue between Cadmus and Hercules, Cadmus had sounded like a pedant, but Mrs Carter believed that he spoke with ‘all the elegance of polite literature’. Furthermore, she argued that it was not true that Mrs Modish was not amusing; Mrs Modish's definition of the bon ton was ‘perfectly original’ (i. 83-4). Elizabeth Carter fortified her friend on the value of her work.

In her reply Mrs Montagu announced her interest in pursuing authorship:

I have just received my Dear Mrs Carters letter, & am very happy in her approbation of ye dialogues. With her encouragement I do not know but at last I may become an author in form. It enlarges ye sphere of action, & lengthens ye short period of human life. To become universal & lasting is an ambition which none but great genius's should indulge; but to be read by a few, & for a few years, may be aspired to. We see in Nature some birds are destined to range the vast regions of ye air, others to fly & hop near the ground, & pick up the worms. I shall think myself happy if I can do any thing towards clearing society of their lowest & meanest follies. The dialogues, I mean the three worst, have had a more favorable reception than I expected.

(MO 3034)

This curious metaphor of worm-eating birds suggests the diffidence at the heart of Mrs Montagu's literary ambitions.

In 1760, after the friendship with Mrs Carter was reasonably well established, Mrs Montagu also formed a friendship with William Pulteney, Lord Bath, but this was a friendship with deeper emotional overtones. Her relationship with Lord Bath, a close, seemingly platonic relationship with a much older man, was as far as she dared to go in establishing an emotional tie in opposition to her husband.

Mrs Montagu had once remarked that she would enjoy knowing a great statesman in his hours of retirement from the world. Bath was the answer to that wish. A politician and office-holder of long experience, and a sharp political writer, Bath, now in his eighties, took a detached view of society and its foibles. He enjoyed Mrs Montagu's wit and vivacity. He took the stance that he was no longer interested in (perhaps no longer capable of) physical relationships—his letters with their romantic trifling suggest a pseudo-courtship, which neither party was expected to take seriously. But there was a real emotional tie. They liked to see each other, and saw each other every day in London, as business, duties, and health allowed, or wrote notes and letters.

The pleasant compatibility of their spirits produced a great deal of correspondence and a trip to the German watering-place called Spa, for which Mrs Montagu and Lord Bath formed a large party which included Mr Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, for this friendship with Bath was conducted with great care on both sides so as not to damage the domestic reputation of the Montagus. There were times when Bath did not visit Mrs Montagu because her husband was not in town. But evidently she could be a dinner guest in his London home without concern. When a visit to Sandleford by Bath was projected, it had to be done when Mr Montagu was also in residence. When Bath's only son died in Portugal in 1763, Bath retired to his country residence to mourn. Mrs Montagu was anxious to visit him to try to console him; she went accompanied by Elizabeth Carter and stayed two days, but left early. Although both Lord Bath and Mrs Montagu claimed not to feel nervous about the opinion of the world, the visit was carried on with some circumspection.

This close friendship lasted from 1760 to 1764, when Bath died after a short illness. Although Mrs Montagu knew that her friend was of advanced age, she was not prepared for this loss and expressed great grief. She went to Sandleford to mourn, while her husband remained in London. Elizabeth Carter finally made a special trip to be with her in the summer at Sandleford to console her.

In such a time of grief, one of Mrs Montagu's resources was to turn to study. Her sister had been writing and publishing during these years, and Millenium Hall, the work for which she has retained a place in literary history, was published in 1762. Mrs Montagu had continued the interest in Shakespeare which she had had since youth, and about which she had written to Lyttelton in great detail. She was also interested in drama as a form and in its function in society. Mrs Montagu's own interest, the example of her sister's productivity, Lord Lyttelton's and Mrs Carter's urging now encouraged her to undertake a serious study of Shakespeare's plays with a view to publishing a critique of them. She began to read and reread Greek drama (in English, French, and sometimes in Italian translations), the dramas of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, and works of Latin and French criticism. She read Horace's ‘Art of Poetry’, the works of Boileau, Le Bossu's Traité du poème épique (1675), Abbe Du Bos's Réflexions critiques sur la poesie et sur la peinture (1719), and Father Brumoy's Le Théâtre des grecs (1730). She had read Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writing of Pope soon after it was published. She also read several times, as she herself later told the author, Elements of Criticism, by Henry Home, Lord Kames, who used many examples from Shakespeare to illustrate his critical theories. When Samuel Johnson brought out his edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1765, she was rather intimidated, and wondered if she should continue. But by then she was strongly committed, and she decided that there was still room for her to provide some meaningful comment. She felt that Johnson had not dealt as fully with the dramatic form of the plays as he might have; she also felt that there were certain areas where she might have something to contribute.

The next few years were devoted to serious study and writing. When Lady Barbara died in Bath, Sarah Scott moved to a country place, Hitcham (Suffolk). In planning a visit there Mrs Montagu revealed her continuing interest in working on Shakespeare, and her uneasiness about having it known. She explained to her sister that she was planning to continue her work on Shakespeare during the visit, but she would do the work in her bedroom ‘because shd I sit with my Shakespear & Brumoy in Publick,⁴ I may appear in the light of Miss Biddy Syphion to any visitors not so used to see ye pen as ye needle in the hands of a Woman’ (MO 5878, [8 ?Mar. 1768]). In referring to ‘Miss Biddy Syphion’ Mrs Montagu seems to be playing with the name of the heroine of Frances Sheridan's novel, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761). She is probably thinking of the scene in which Miss Bidulph's suitor discovers her reading Horace in the drawing-room. He is surprised and makes her blush as he chides her with neglecting to finish the embroidery of a rose which is in a frame in front of her (Sheridan, Memoirs, i. 170-1).⁵

Mrs Montagu worked on her project slowly, sometimes in the country, sometimes in London, sometimes at Newcastle, when she was there to help her husband manage the coal-mines. In the autumn of 1764, when her commitment to the project had essentially begun, her correspondence with Elizabeth Carter dealt with Plato and the critical issues aroused by his views on tragic poetry. Mrs Carter provided an abridgement of Plato's views, and suggested, probably as a jest, that her friend learn Greek in order to understand his ideas more clearly in the original. Another possibility would be to get a French translation by one of the Daciers. As a Platonist, Mrs Carter defended Plato's concepts of ideal perfection and explained why the tragic poet was excluded from a well-governed commonwealth. Mrs Montagu offered arguments against Plato's views in her letters, which Mrs Carter then attempted to refute. Mrs Carter explained that Plato wished human beings to moderate rather than heighten their passions, but Mrs Montagu did not agree with the relevance of such an attempt in tragedy. In fact, Mrs Montagu thought that the sympathy aroused by tragedy was a response to the distress of the situation rather than to the passion which occasioned it. ‘Do King Lears misfortunes dispose one to give all one has to ones next heirs to subsist on their bounty?’ However, she thought that in love tragedies the sympathy does go back to the original passion (Carter, Letters (1817), 9, 17, 25 Oct. 1764; MO 3132, [10 Oct. 1764]; MO 3133, 23 Oct. 1764).

In the winter of 1765 Mrs Montagu was still working on Shakespeare between social engagements. It was at this time that she used the term ‘bluestocking philosophers’ for her male friends … when she explained to Mrs Carter on 24 December 1765 that ‘I expect to have a party of our bluestocking philosophers on Friday’ (MO 3165). On 31 December she wrote,

I can now & then steal an evening for my favorite Shakespear, whose merits open as I consider him, & I think I have made Lord Lyttelton taste him more than he did [Lyttelton defended the formal structure of the French dramatists in his letters]. It is amazing to me how Johnson could read him with ye attention it required to write notes & yet understand his general merit so little.

She explained that she had just finished her criticism of ‘the first and second parts of Henry ye 2nd’ (an error for Henry IV); Lord Lyttelton thought she had done well, which gave her encouragement to proceed,

but I believe you will laugh to see such an ignorant animal talking continually of Sophocles & Euripides, who never spoke to me but by an Interpreter, but as I think I can enter into the scope & manner of their Dramas by such assistance, I believe it may be allow'd, tho to say ye truth I am almost ashamed of pretending to judge of them, yet as I greatly admire Sophocles, & all the World admires Euripides, I cannot help shewing how the french differ from them. My stomach loaths ye french plays to such a degree I know not how to read them, & I yawn most prodigiously over them.

(MO 3166)

In the summer of 1766 Mrs Montagu made a tour of Scotland, accompanied by Dr John Gregory and his son and eldest daughter. She enjoyed the social life of the old town in Edinburgh, and responded with romantic enthusiasm to the Highland scenery. She met Lord Kames and began the friendship with him which was later kept up in letters. Back at Denton Hall in Northumberland, she continued to work on Shakespeare. She had Johnson's edition with her. She discussed with Elizabeth Carter the harsh criticism which Johnson had met with in his edition. Although she detested the ‘ribbaldry’ with which he was treated, she felt he had not really pointed out the

peculiar excellencies of Shakespeare as a Dramatick poet, this point I shall labour as I think he therein excells every one. I have been very busy in writing upon the tragedy of Macbeth, which opens a large field for criticism, as I have there taken notice how he employs his supernatural Beings who, by the by, other Poets have not made at all supernatural. I have compared the Manes of Darius with the Ghost of Hamlet, & have, asking yr pardon, spoken a little irreverently of Minerva in the Ajax of Sophocles. How larned must yr friend appear when she so familiarly criticises Aschylus & Sophocles. You give me ardor for my work when you encourage me.

(MO 3176, 19 July 1766)

Mrs Montagu's progress on her Essay seems to have been delayed by the illness of her husband. In the summer of 1768 she was spending most of her time in attempts to amuse him. She had sent Mrs Carter her account of Fable and Allegory, and asked for Mrs Carter's vigorous criticism. Mrs Montagu discussed with Mrs Carter her views of Euripides. Mrs Montagu believed that ‘Euripides understood the human heart, & knew it was to be touched by a certain simplicity which the ignorant presumption of lower genius is apt to disdain.’ She thought it was ‘pleasant enough in Voltaire to make such exclamations against Shakespeare for being low & grossier, where Euripides, a polite writer, in the politest Æra of the Politest people in the World, is in some respects more so.’ She finished lightly in a postscript: ‘Pray communicate all yr remarks on Euripides that I may steal them the confession is honest whatever ye act may be’ (MO 3220, 16 July 1768). Mrs Carter reassured Mrs Montagu about the validity of her view that Voltaire was wrong in his judgement of Shakespeare. Mrs Carter thought it unfair or absurd of Voltaire to blame Shakespeare for ‘any faults arising merely from the manner of the times in which he lived’. She argued, ‘The human heart is pretty much the same in all ages, as well as the occurrences of life, which produce its feelings; but manners perpetually vary’ (Carter, Letters (1817), i. 392-3, 19 July 1768). This view of Mrs Carter, that Shakespeare's work rose out of a largely ignorant and barbaric age, was a common one in this period (Vickers, v. 3-4).

As she went on with her work, Mrs Montagu sent portions of it for Mrs Carter to read. In August 1767 she thanked Elizabeth Carter for her annotations, some, but not all, of which she agreed with (MO 3203, [13 Aug. 1767]). On 1 September 1768 she wrote from Sandleford, ‘I thank you most kindly for ye corrections, all of which I perfectly approve’ (MO 3225). Mrs Montagu consulted the original ‘bluestocking’—Benjamin Stillingfleet—and also sent her work to Dr John Gregory for criticism. By October 1768 she was thinking of printing and wanted Mrs Carter to read her work before she sent it to the press (MO 3229, 24 Oct. [1768]). In December 1768 she was waiting to consult Mr Stillingfleet, and then she would go to press (MO 5909-10). But at the last minute she decided to alter the arrangements of a part of her work, and had to seize any moment she could to do the revision. In December she was also arranging to have a manuscript by Sarah Scott brought to Cadell (MO 5915). Stillingfleet had offered to correct the press for her (MO 5103, 26 July 1767). But he was delayed by floods (MO 5910, [1 Dec. 1768], to Sarah Scott). She wrote to her sister later, ‘Mr. Stillingfleet is just arrived & I warrant Shakespear groans in his Tomb to think of more nonsense going to be printed about him’ (MO 5916, [Dec. 1768]). Her work was finally published in May 1769 as An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, Compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, with Some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire. The title-page indicated that the book had been printed for J. Dodsley, Baker and Leigh, J. Walter, T. Cadell, and J. Wilkie. Mrs Montagu probably contributed to the production costs.

This anonymous publication about Shakespeare came out very appropriately a few months before the Jubilee in honour of Shakespeare produced by David Garrick in Stratford on 6, 7, and 8 September 1769, and during a time when much was being written and published about Shakespeare. The friends who knew the work was hers wrote to congratulate her. Those who did not know it was hers naturally thought the author was a man. Mrs Montagu was especially pleased by the report that the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds had wagered that the Essay had been written by Joseph Warton, author of Essay on the Genius and Writing of Pope. Mrs Vesey sent Mrs Montagu some of her characteristically disjointed letters in which she recounted the guesswork that had gone on in attempts to determine who had written the Essay (MO 6287; 6288). Mrs Montagu clearly enjoyed reporting that the author had been referred to as ‘a clever fellow’ (MO 5129, [2 June 1769], to Benjamin Stillingfleet).

As her authorship became known, there were some who took the view that she was stepping out of her proper sphere. The Dowager Countess Gower wrote to Mrs Delany that ‘M^rs. Montagu has comenc'd author in vindication of Shakespear, who wants none, therefore her performance must be deem'd a work of supererogation; some comend it. I'll have y^t, because I can throw it away wⁿ I am tired’ (Delany, 2nd ser., i. 236-7).

Mrs Montagu expressed some fear of the reviewers, but the early review in the Critical Review (May, 1769) was favourable; it provided extracts, and praised the treatment of dramatic poetry. The reviewer, who has been identified as William Guthrie (Vickers, v. xiii-xiv), quoted Mrs Montagu's comparison of Sophocles on filial disobedience with that of Shakespeare in King Lear, and concluded, ‘the age has scarcely produced a more fair, judicious, and classical performance of its kind, than this Essay’ (355). Although the Monthly Review (Aug. 1769) complained that the style was sometimes affected, and the use of language sometimes incorrect, it stated that the faults ‘bear no proportion to the general excellence of the work’ (142). This review was by John Hawkesworth (Nangle, 20; 98).

Writing in September to her husband, Mrs Montagu pointed out that

the Monthly Review is ye only periodical paper which has not treated my essay with indulgence, but I think they will not do the work much harm, for much of their cavilling is unintelligible. They say the language of ye Essay is affected, & in many places corrupt, & triumph over a sentence falsely printed. They write with peevishness & ill manners even to great Shakespear himself, so how can his poor little Critick hope to escape. My work has undoubtedly many defects & deficiences, but if it keeps its ground till these carping Pedants write a better Criticism it may flourish long. It is whisperd in Town that I am the Author of ye Essay, & perhaps with these Reviewers ye work has not met with more candid treatment for being a Ladys.

(MO 2719, [10 and 11 Sept. 1769])

In fact, by December 1769 Mrs Carter was advising Mrs Montagu to admit to the authorship of the Essay. Elizabeth Carter had not found bias in the treatment the anonymous work had received.

It gives me great pleasure that it was at first a secret, as it helped you to that unprejudiced applause of the work, which it might have been difficult to separate from a regard to the author. But now I think one may lawfully speak out.

(Letters (1817), ii. 61)

However, during Mrs Montagu's lifetime the reputation of the work did suffer—mainly from the alleged downgradings by Samuel Johnson reported by Boswell. In his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, published in 1785, Boswell reported that Johnson had said that ‘neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale, could get through it’ (Life ((1891), v. 279). This report then caused a quarrel between Boswell and Mrs Piozzi, who in her Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786) denied the assertion, and claimed she had always commended the work. In a long note to the third edition of the Tour to the Hebrides (1786) Boswell repeated his insistence on Johnson's unfavourable opinion of Mrs Montagu's book and pointed out that Mrs Piozzi had read the Tour in manuscript before it was printed (Life (1891), v. 279 n. 1). In the Life of Johnson (1791) Boswell repeated the charge in a somewhat different form. He represented Johnson as saying that the work did Mrs Montagu honour, but would do nobody else honour. Johnson acknowledged that he had not read it all; he had looked at some of it but found ‘packthread’, not embroidery. He asserted further that ‘there is no real criticism in it: none shewing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human heart’ (Life (1891), ii. 101). Boswell himself, however, in a note to the Life remarked that he admired the Essay as a piece of secondary or comparative criticism, and thought that it was ‘clearly and elegantly expressed’, and actually did vindicate Shakespeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire ((1891), ii. 101 n. 3). Boswell also raised the issue of prejudice, only to deny it. He pointed out that since Johnson did not know who had written the Essay when he first disliked it, Johnson could not be accused of being prejudiced, or feeling ‘any proud jealousy of a woman intruding herself into the chair of criticism’ (1891), ii. 102). But the frequent returns to the issue of Mrs Montagu and her work seem to suggest some underlying, perhaps unconscious ‘jealousy’.

In later years Johnsonian scholars have taken their cues from Boswell. George Birkbeck Hill, editor of Boswell's Life of Johnson, said, ‘that this dull essay, which would not do credit to a clever school-girl of seventeen should have a fame, of which the echoes have not yet quite died out, can only be fully explained by Mrs. Montagu's great wealth and position in society’ ((1891), ii. 101 n. 3). Thomas Lounsbury, in his work on Shakespeare and Voltaire, repeated this view: ‘the number of editions and the way the work was spoken of by men of great and of little ability’ show how social position and reputation can gain success for a book (290). In questioning the reasons for the success of the work, Lounsbury also took occasion to echo the assertion that her knowledge and powers were ‘hardly more respectable than those of a highly intelligent school-girl’ (301). The way the tag about school-girls persisted suggests a special irritant—that there was some prejudice about a woman intruding herself into the chair of criticism.

Other scholars have not been so scathing. René Huchon, in Mrs. Montagu and her Friends, published in 1907, showed that Mrs Montagu's criticism of Voltaire's treatment of Shakespeare was astute and justified. Huchon pointed out that Mrs Montagu's greater knowledge of French than Voltaire's of English also enabled her to indict his translation of Julius Caesar (138 ff.). Robert W. Babcock, in The Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatry, 1766-1799, published in 1931, stressed that Mrs Montagu was one of the significant contributors to Shakespeare criticism during this period. She carried on the defence of Shakespeare against the critics who insisted on the unities. She stressed the flexibility of English blank verse and the beauties of particular passages in Shakespeare. In some ways her views reflect a continuation of older attitudes, but in presenting Shakespeare as a genius of primitive powers, and in stressing his power to create characters Mrs Montagu was participating in the creation of a new view of Shakespeare. Babcock pointed out that Mrs Montagu offered more arguments against Voltaire than any other critic of her time. In many of the portions of his analysis of late eighteenth-century Shakespearean criticism, Babcock found something pertinent to which to refer in Mrs Montagu's Essay; he concluded that contemporary approval of her was not entirely ‘misdirected’ and that the Essay should be rescued from the ‘castigations of modern critics’ (108-9).

In Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Dramatic Theory: The Intellectual Context of the Preface to Shakespeare (1973), R. D. Stock saw Mrs Montagu as in the forefront of changing criticism of the drama. The interest in mid-century criticism, both English and French, was changing from an interest in what the drama represents to the sentiments which it arouses (42). In praising Shakespeare's characters for their individuality, Mrs Montagu is one of the new school. She is interested in realistic characters who can win our sympathy.

In her long and remarkable defense of Shakespeare against Voltaire, published four years after Johnson's Preface (but dismissed very contemptuously by Johnson himself) the newer theories of dramatic character are conspicuous; and they are skilfully argued as well.

(45)

Finally, Brian Vickers, editor of Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage (1979), included selections from the Essay in his work. He pointed out that her Essay ‘was perfectly adapted to the taste of the age, and went through further editions in 1770, 1772, 1773, 1778, 1785, and 1810, with a French translation in 1777 and an Italian in 1828.’ He referred to Johnson's complaint that there was no true criticism in the book, but added that

it was praised by Boswell, Reynolds, and others, while Cowper admired its ‘good sense, sound judgement’, and wit; in the magazines and newspapers of the period it is treated with universal respect, and frequently plagiarized. Her introductory defence of Shakespeare against Voltaire owes much to Johnson, and many sections are commonplaces of the age; but the response to Macbeth is personal, and perceptive.

(v. 328)⁶

In fact, Mrs Montagu's authorship of a critical work on Shakespeare was a logical outcome of her literary and theatrical interests. She had read Shakespeare over the years, and attended performances by Quinn, Garrick, and other actors. She had kept up her knowledge of French critical writing, and read Rousseau's and Voltaire's works as they came out. She was an admirer of Macpherson's version of the poems of Ossian, as conveying a taste of the imagery of primitive times. She had delved as well as she could into Greek poetics and drama, always with a sense of regret that she could not read these writers in the original. As she felt that Johnson had covered much of the ground of Shakespearean scholarship, she chose to emphasize certain aspects of Shakespeare which especially interested her. She discussed the drama, Shakespeare as a dramatist, the special genre of the historical plays, and Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Some of her criticism was comparative, as she wished to compare Greek drama with Shakespeare's and some French drama with his. She compared Julius Caesar with Corneille's Cinna.

Elizabeth Montagu had a special interest in the drama as something akin to a religious institution, which conveyed to audiences an understanding of themselves, their actions, and their gods. She recognized that when religion dies, the audience no longer believes in the same way. Shakespeare's theatre was not a religious institution, but in Shakespeare a sense of national identity supplied something of a similar purpose. Mrs Montagu saw the history plays as arising out of that awareness, and of supplying some self-knowledge. In a similar way, by his use of preternatural beings, Shakespeare was tapping a native source of popular superstitions, the Celtic traditions. She also recognized that Shakespeare's drama dealt with walks of life which the learned did not know about. The knowledge of ‘connoisseurs’ is formed in the library, not in the streets, camp, or village. Shakespeare's dramas deal with life outside the library and give an air of reality to everything.

She thus argued her preference for the active, vibrant plays of Shakespeare over the formal, measured drama of the French, and expressed her anger at Voltaire, who had denigrated Shakespeare's work over a period of years, and whose dismissal of the tragedies as monstrous farces had originally stung her.

Shakespeare had for Mrs Montagu a particular appeal. She lived in the world. She knew the venality of much of the politics of her time. She knew the venality of many marriages, and the adulteries which often accompanied these marriages. She was aware of the poverty of the people who lived in her country neighbourhood; in her time in the North she had come to know the hardships of the coal-miners of her district. The emotions evoked by the experiences which she had had were given expression when she read or saw Shakespeare's plays. The histories told her of the complex and confused course of human political affairs, the tragedies of the ways in which men and women struggle against their characters and fates. Mrs Montagu was a person of some sensitivity, idealism, and emotional capacity. To the actual realities of the life of her time she was not blind, nor to some of her own less worthy characteristics. But she felt that she was obliged to keep a close rein on her emotions, in fact to repress them. At one time she wrote, probably to Mrs Carter, of a person who alternately neglected and showed concern for her. In response to the discovery of faults in others, she had taught her heart to be numb; she felt, she said, as if she were gradually turning into a marble statue (MO 3096, [?1762]). Shakespeare offered her an outlet for her emotions. It is not surprising, therefore, that she found the restrained and declamatory style of the French drama unpleasant. The complex portraits of life which Shakespeare created permitted her to escape imaginatively from the repressions which she felt obliged to sustain.

Furthermore, in her production of the Essay there was a sense of moral duty or obligation. She always considered her husband a disinterested man, a just and upright politician. (In fact, his cousin, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, for whose family borough of Huntington Mr Montagu held a seat in Parliament from 1734-68, complained that Mr Montagu, ‘though a very honest man … will always be an opposer of all Administrations’ (Sedgwick, ii. 266-7). We can surmise that Mr Montagu saw himself as an independent patriot, and Mrs Montagu seems to have shared some of his attitude in matters where literature and patriotism touched. Her attack on Voltaire evidently stemmed from this need to right a wrong being done to England's greatest dramatist.

Mrs Montagu had not entered the arena of authorship without trepidation. She had spent several years working on the Essay and had consulted a number of people. Probably her greatest error was to ask too much advice. Her divisions of her work are logical and easy to follow. But the discussions themselves within the sections are disjointed. She seems to have worked very hard to write individual formal sentences. But on the whole her prose lacks internal transitions and is therefore difficult to read. Thus the Essay's greatest fault is the lack of a strong, controlling prose style. Here timidity may have been the underlying cause, or a misguided effort to polish separate sentences. But in spite of her trepidations, both as a woman entering the public arena of literary criticism which was tacitly forbidden to her, and as a woman ignorant of Greek (in fact some critics specifically held this against her), she accepted the challenge of the project, carried it out, and fulfilled in so doing some of her own emotional and intellectual needs.

Buoyed up by the praises of her Essay, Mrs Montagu thought of doing something of a more serious nature. She was evidently debating doing a critique of Voltaire on moral grounds, but abandoned the idea. Later she wrote to Elizabeth Carter of her interest in doing a work on Queen Elizabeth I and contrasting her with Catherine de Medici (MO 3444, 24 Apr. 1778). In her letter of 28 April 1778 Elizabeth Carter encouraged her to give a ‘general and particular history’ of Elizabeth I and to rescue her from the nonsense later historians have talked about her. ‘They seem to think they have quite annihilated the superiority of her talents, by saying she was assisted by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances’ (Letters (1817), iii. 61).

But Mrs Montagu felt her incapacity to undertake such a work. In her earlier letter she had explained, ‘I have only had such a dream after supping upon Litterary Lambs Wool when some of ye Learned & ingenious Persons had flatterd me. The moment I awoke I perceived my incapacity, inability, insufficiency &c.’ (MO 3444). To Mrs Carter's complaint about the short shrift historians had given Elizabeth's talents, Mrs Montagu retorted with an outspoken comment about male chauvinism in scholarly matters:

As to what the Men say of Elizabeth's being assisted by a fortunate concurrence of circumstance, & by that means her Government was the best & her Reign ye happiest of any of our Princes, they mean no more than that as a Woman cannot be as Wise as a Man, it was not owing to her, but to incidents that she appears the Wisest of our Sovereigns. For the same reason, were I capable of doing justice to her character, & setting it in a true light, the Lords of the Creation wd only say, that I got a good goose quill, had good paper, & sat in a Bow window; by which means I had both ye morning & evening Sun to give me ye assistance of good light, so I leave their high Mightinesses to write about it, & about it.

(MO 3445, 30 Apr. [1778])

Elizabeth Montagu reaped much social benefit from her critical work, but she published no more.

Notes

1. MO 6721, 14 Nov. [1754], Elizabeth Montagu to Gilbert West, has the critique of Bolingbroke. MO 6667, in which West tells her he has shown the letter to the Archbishop, is dated 18 Nov. 1754, Croydon. But Mrs Montagu's reply to this news is incorrectly dated by HEH as MO 6707, 23 Nov. [1753], Hill Street.

2. When Lady Barbara died in 1765 she left Sarah a legacy of about £2,200 plus her half of the furnishings of the house (MO 2575, 31 [Aug.] 1765, Elizabeth Montagu to Edward Montagu). When her brother the sea captain had died in 1756, he had left Sarah a legacy of £1,500 which she was to receive at her father's death. At that time, 1778, she inherited £1,900; it may have been the sum of the legacy from her brother plus £400 remaining to her from the part of the dowry returned to her father (MO 6042).

3. A great many of Mrs Montagu's original letters are in the Huntington Library Collection. These letters can be read in conjunction with Montagu Pennington's edition of Elizabeth Carter's Letters … to Elizabeth Montagu (1817). The originals of Mrs Carter's letters have not been found. Although Pennington misplaced some passages and mistook some dates, the general interchange of letters can be followed and the course of the friendship can be clearly seen.

4. Father Peter Brumoy's Théâtre des grecs was originally published in a handsome quarto edition in 1730. He brought out another edition in six volumes duodecimo in 1763. Since Charlotte Lennox brought out her translation in 1759, she must have used the first edition as her text. I suspect that Elizabeth Montagu also worked with Brumoy's first edition. I have found no references by her to the Lennox translation.

5. Prof. Margaret Anne Doody discusses this scene in ‘Frances Sheridan: Morality and Annihilated Time’, 333.

6. In 1981 Marjorie Hanson provided an annotated text of the Essay in her Ph.D. thesis, ‘Elizabeth Montagu: A Biographical Sketch and a Critical Edition of her Writings’.

Bibliography

Manuscript Sources

Montagu, Elizabeth (Robinson), Correspondence (Henry E. Huntington Library, 6,923 pieces, designated MO).

———, Letter to her Sister (Bodleian Library, MS Autograph b 10, no. 1059).

Works Cited

Babcock, Robert Witbeck, The Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatry, 1766-1799: A Study in English Criticism of the Late Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1931).

Barton, Margaret, Tunbridge Wells (London: Faber and Faber, 1937).

Boswell, James, The Life of Samuel Johnson including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols. (New York: Harper, 1891).

Carter, Elizabeth, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu between the Years 1755 and 1800, ed. Montagu Pennington, 3 vols. (London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington, 1817).

Lounsbury, Thomas R., Shakespeare and Voltaire (New York: Scribner's, 1902).

[Lyttelton, George], Dialogues of the Dead (London: Printed for W. Sandby, 1760).

———Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan, 3rd edn. (London: Printed for J. Millan, 1735).

Montagu, Elizabeth, ‘Dialogue XXVI: Cadmus—Hercules’; ‘Dialogue XXVII: Mercury—And a Modern Fine Lady’; ‘Dialogue XXVIII: Plutarch—Charon—And a Modern Bookseller’, Dialogues of the Dead, by George Lyttelton (London: Printed for W. Sandby, 1760), 291-320.

[———], An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, Compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, with Some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire (London: Printed for J. Dodsley et al., 1769).

———The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, with Some of the Letters of her Correspondents, ed. Matthew Montagu, 4 vols., 3rd edn. (London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810-13).

Rao, Ananda U., A Minor Augustan, Being the Life and Works of George, Lord Lyttelton, 1709-1773 (Calcutta: The Book Co., 1934).

Scott, Sarah, A Description of Millenium Hall … by ‘A Gentleman on his Travels’, Introd. Jane Spencer (London: Virago, 1986; first pub. in Great Britain by J. Newbery, 1762).

Sheridan, Frances. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, Extracted from her Own Journal, and Now First Published, 3 vols. (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761).

Stock, R. D., Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Drama Theory (Lincoln, Nebr.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1973).

Vickers, Brian (ed.), Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 1765-1774, 5 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), vol. 5.

Walpole, Horace, Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, et al., 48 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1937-1983).