Born at York, Oct. 2, 1720: died at Montagu House, London, Aug. 25, 1800. An English author and social leader. On Aug. 5, 1742, she married Edward Montagu, grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich. After 1750 she held her salon in Hill street, Mayfair. The epithet “blue-stocking” was first applied to her assemblies. Among her visitors were Lord Lyttelton, Burke, Garrick, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her younger associates included Hannah More and Fanny Burney. In 1760 she contributed three dialogues to Lyttelton’s “Dialogues of the Dead.” She visited Paris after the peace of 1763. In 1769 she wrote an essay on the “Genius of Shakspere” in answer to Voltaire. In 1776 she built Montagu House, now No. 22 Portman Square, where she died. (This was not the Montagu House upon the site of which the British Museum was built.)

Personal

  The husband of Mrs. Montagu, of Shakespeareshire, is dead, and has left her an estate of seven thousand pounds a year in her own power. Will you come and be candidate for her hand? I conclude it will be given to a champion at some Olympic games; and were I she, I would sooner marry you than Pindar.

  Just returned from spending one of the most agreeable days of my life, with the female Mæcenas of Hill-street; she engaged me five or six days ago to dine with her, and had assembled half the wits of the age. The only fault that charming woman has, is, that she is fond of collecting too many of them together at one time. There were nineteen persons assembled at dinner, but after the repast, she has a method of dividing her guests, or rather letting them assort themselves, into little groups of five or six each. I spent my time in going from one to the other of these little societies, as I happened more or less to like the subjects they were discussing. Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Montagu’s sister, a very good writer, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Barbauld, and a man of letters, whose name I have forgotten, made up one of these little parties. When we had canvassed two or three subjects, I stole off and joined in with the next group, which was composed of Mrs. Montagu, Dr. Johnson, the Provost of Dublin, and two other ingenious men.

  Mrs. Montague wants to make up with me again. I dare say she does; but I will not be taken and left even at the pleasure of those who are much nearer and dearer to me than Mrs. Montague. We want no flash, no flattery. I never had more of either in my life, nor ever lived half so happily: Mrs. Montague wrote creeping letters when she wanted my help, or foolishly thought she did, and then turned her back upon me and sent her adherents to do the same.

  To me, on all occasions, ever since 1771, when I first became acquainted with her, she has been a faithful and affectionate friend especially in seasons of distress and difficulty. You will not wonder, then, that her death afflicts me. For some years past a failure in her eyes had made writing very painful to her; but for not less than twenty years she was my punctual correspondent. She was greatly attached to Montagu, who received his name from her, and not less interested in my other son, and in everything that related to my family. I need not tell you what an excellent writer she was: you must have seen her book on Shakespeare, as compared with the Greek and French dramatic writers. I have known several ladies eminent in literature, but she excelled them all; and in conversation she had more wit than any other person, male or female, whom I have ever known. These, however, were her slighter accomplishments: what was infinitely more to her honour, she was a sincere Christian, both in faith and in practice, and took every proper opportunity to show it; so that by her example and influence she did much good.

  At the same time of which I speak, the gens de lettres, or “Blue Stockings,” as they were commonly denominated, formed a very numerous, powerful, compact phalanx in the midst of London…. Mrs. Montague was then the Madame du Deffand of the English capital; and her house constituted the central point of union, for all those persons who already were known, or who emulated to become known by their talents and productions. Her supremacy … was indeed established on more solid foundations than those of intellect, and rested on more tangible materials than any with which Shakspeare himself could furnish her. Though she had not as yet begun to construct the splendid mansion in which she afterwards resided near Portman Square, but lived in an elegant house in Hill Street … Mrs. Montague was accustomed to open her house to a large company of both sexes, whom she frequently entertained at dinner. A service of plate, and a table plentifully covered, disposed her guests to admire the splendour of her fortune, not less than the lustre of her talents…. Mrs. Montague, in 1776, verged towards her sixtieth year. But her person, which was thin, spare, and in good preservation, gave her an appearance of less antiquity. From the infirmities often attendant on advanced life, she seemed to be almost wholly exempt. All the lines of her countenance bespoke intelligence, and her eyes, were accommodated to her cast of features, which had in them something satirical and severe, rather than amiable or inviting…. Destitute of taste in disposing the ornaments of her dress, she nevertheless studied or affected those aids, more than would seem to have become a woman possessing a philosophic mind, intent on higher pursuits than toilet. Even when approaching to four score, this female weakness still accompanied her; nor could she relinquish her diamond necklace and bows, which … formed on evenings the perpetual ornament of her emaciated person. I used to think that these glittering appendages of opulence, sometimes helped to dazzle the disputants, whom her arguments might not always convince…. Notwithstanding the defects that I have enumerated, she possessed a masculine understanding, enlightened, cultivated, and expanded by the acquaintance of men, as well as of books. Many of the most illustrious persons in rank, no less than in ability, under the reigns of George II. and III., had been her correspondents, friends, companions and admirers.

  She was equal to conversation on every subject; but she assumed that dogmatic and presumptuous tone which is well known as peculiar to learned English ladies, and even to young English tourists.

  Her conversational powers were of a truly superior order; strong, just, clear, and often eloquent. Her process in argument, notwithstanding an earnest solicitude for pre-eminence, was uniformly polite and candid. But her reputation for wit seemed always in her thoughts, marring their natural flow, and untutored expression. No sudden start of talent urged forth any precarious opinion; no vivacious new idea varied her logical course of ratiocination. Her smile though most generally benignant, was rarely gay; and her liveliest sallies had a something of anxiety rather than of hilarity—till their success was ascertained by applause. Her form was stately, and her manners were dignified. Her face retained strong remains of beauty throughout life; and though its native cast was evidently that of severity, its expression was softened off in discourse by an almost constant desire to please…. Taken for all in all, Mrs. Montagu was rare in her attainments; splendid in her conduct; open to the calls of charity; forward to precede those of indigent genius; and unchangeably just and firm in the application of her interest, her principles, and her fortune, to the encouragement of loyalty, and the support of virtue.

  Mrs. Montagu is one of the best specimens on record of that most comprehensive character—a woman of the world, for she was of the world, yet not corrupted by it. Her wit, displayed in the girlish effusions of a satire, rather the result of high spirits than of a sarcastic tone, improved as age advanced. Passionately fond of society, a lover of the great, she displayed, nevertheless, a perfect contentment when deprived of excitement by any accident; and, whilst she courted the great, she was courteous and bountiful to the small.

  Mrs. Montague’s parties were pleasant, no doubt, for she got together the people best worth knowing; and though she liked flattery, and loved to drape and pose herself as the chief Muse of a new British Parnassus, she was essentially a gentlewoman, full of kindness and benevolence, standing stoutly up for her friends, and always ready to help unknown and struggling people with her patronage, her advice, and her money. If she quarrelled with Johnson when in his “Lives of the Poets” he decried one of her idols, Lyttelton, she not the less kept up her annuity to poor blind Miss Williams. If her “Essay on Shakspere” is not very profound, it shows at least sounder appreciation of the great dramatist than the criticisms of Johnson, who abused it.

  But even in the days of her maidenhood, when she was glad in her youth and in her beauty, and conscious of her intellect, yet unconscious of the pleasures, duties, and trials before her, yet when she feared she might live idle and die vain, she said, “If ever I have an inscription over me, it shall be without a name, and only,—Here lies one whom having done no harm, no one should censure; and, having done no good, no one can commend; who, for past folly, only asks oblivion.” She lived, however, to do much good, to make great amends for small and venial follies, and by the magnificent usefulness, which little Burney has recorded, to merit such pains as it may cost a poor chronicler to rescue her name and deeds from the oblivion which she asked in the pleasant days of her bright youth and her subduing beauty.

  Other ladies—Mrs. Montagu’s friend the Duchess of Portland, Mrs. Ord, Mrs. Vesey, wife of Agmondesham Vesey, Mrs. Boscawen, wife of the admiral, and Mrs. Greville, wife of Fulke Greville—endeavoured to rival Mrs. Montagu’s entertainments; but for nearly fifty years she maintained a practically undisputed supremacy as hostess in the intellectual society of London, and to her assemblies was, apparently for the first time, applied the now accepted epithet of “blue-stocking.” Two explanations of the term have been suggested. According to the ordinary account, which was adopted by Sir William Forbes in his “Life of Beattie,” in 1806 (i. 210), full dress was not insisted on at Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies, and Benjamin Stillingfleet who regularly attended them, as well as the rival assemblies presided over by Mrs. Vesey or Mrs. Boscawen, habitually infringed social conventions by appearing in blue worsted instead of black silk stockings; consequently, Admiral Boscawen, a scoffer at his wife’s social ambitions, is stated to have applied the epithet “bluestockings” to all ladies’ conversaziones. On the other hand, Lady Crewe, daughter of Mrs. Greville, who was one of Mrs. Montagu’s rival hostesses, stated that the ladies themselves at Mrs. Montagu’s parties wore “blue-stockings as a distinction,” in imitation of a fashionable French visitor, Madame de Polignac.

Essay on the Genius of Shakespeare, 1769

  Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare, being mentioned,—REYNOLDS: “I think that essay does her honour.” JOHNSON: “Yes, sir, it does her honour; but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book.” GARRICK: “But, sir, surely it shows how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare,—which nobody else has done.” JOHNSON: “Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill. No, sir; there is no real criticism in it,—none showing the beauty of thought as formed on the workings of the human heart.”… One day at Sir Joshua’s table, when it was related that Mrs. Montague, in an excess of compliment to the author of a modern tragedy (Braganza?), had exclaimed, “I tremble for Shakspeare,” Johnson said, “When Shakspeare has got—[Jephson?] for his rival and Mrs. Montague for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed.”

  The most elegant and judicious piece of criticism which the present age has produced.

  I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment. I am now reading and have reached the middle of her essay on the genius of Shakspeare—a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence. The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the Bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them.

  Considering it as a piece of the secondary or comparative species of criticism; and not of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be “real criticism.” It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, and has done effectually what it professed to do; namely, vindicated Shakspeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations, Mrs. Montagu’s “Essay” was of service to Shakspeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise.

  Hurd and Lord Kames, especially the former, may be reckoned among the best of this class; Mrs. Montagu, perhaps, in her celebrated Essay, not very far from the bottom of the list.

  Mrs. Montague was the Minerva, for so she was complimented on this occasion, whose celestial spear was to transfix the audacious Gaul. Her “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek and French dramatic poets,” served for a popular answer to Voltaire. This accomplished lady, who had raised a literary coterie about her, which attracted such fashionable notice that its title has survived its institution, found in “the Blue-stocking Club” choral hymns and clouds of incense gathering about the altar in Portman Square! The volume is deemed “a wonderful performance,” by those echoes of contemporary pre-possessions, the compilers of dictionary-biography: even the poet Cowper placed Mrs. Montague “at the head of all that is called learned.”

Letters

  Mrs. Montagu’s [Letters] are lively and ingenious, but not natural.

  I think very highly of them. One of their chief merits is series juncturaque. Nothing can be more easy and natural than the manner in which the thoughts rise one out of the other, even where the thoughts may appear rather forced, nor is the expression ever hard or laboured. I see but little to object to in the thoughts themselves, but nothing can be more natural or graceful than the manner in which they are put together. The flow of her style is not less natural, because it is fully charged with shining particles, and sparkles as it flows.

  The merit of the pieces before us seems to us to consist mainly in the great gaiety and vivacity with which they are written. The wit, to be sure, is often childish, and generally strained and artificial; but still it both sparkles and abounds; and though we should admire it more if it were better selected, or even if there were less of it, we cannot witness this profuse display of spirits and ingenuity without receiving a strong impression of the talents and ambition of the writer. The faults of the letters, on the other hand, are more numerous. In the first place, they have, properly speaking, no subjects. They are all letters of mere idleness, friendship, and flattery. There are no events,—no reasonings,—no anecdotes of persons who are still remembered,—no literature, and scarcely any original or serious opinions…. There are great faults in the volumes before us; and that we do not exactly perceive the necessity of reading the bad letters before we are favoured with the good.

  I am now reading the third and fourth volumes of Mrs. Montague’s “Letters.” To me, who have lived through all the time she writes of, they are interesting,—independent of the wit and talent,—as recalling a number of persons and events once present to my mind: they are also, I think, very entertaining, though, as letters, somewhat studied.

  In her own generation Mrs. Montagu was without a superior in the art of letter writing.

General

  These letters do great credit both to her head and heart; they are written in an easy and perspicuous style; are filled with judicious and pertinent reflections upon the passing events and the great men of the times; and, with her “Essay on Shakspeare,” give her no mean rank among English authors. If not a profound critic, she was certainly an acute and ingenious one, possessing judgment and taste as well as learning; and if not of such versatile talents as her namesake, Lady Mary Wortley, she is an example of much higher moral purity both in her writings and character.