BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

OF

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

In the year 1690 was born at Thoresby, in Nottinghamshire, Lady Mary Pierrepont, eldest daughter of Evelyn, first Duke of Kingston, and Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William, Earl of Denbigh. She had two sisters, 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 sisters, Lady Frances-to whom many of Lady Mary's best letters were addressed-was married to John Erskine, Earl of Mar; and the younger, Lady Evelyn, to John, Earl of Gower.

Lady Mary came, both by father and mother's side, of an active and energetic race; and, in one of her letters, she boasts of her great-grandfather having earned, by his sagacity and prudence, the surname of Wise William. Genius and wit were also characteristics of her family-George Villiers, the witty Duke of Buckingham, having been her great-uncle; and Beaumont, the dramatist, also a relative, his mother being a Pierrepont.

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Lady Mary unfortunately lost her mother when only four years of age; and though she speaks highly of her grandmother, the Countess-dowager of Denbigh and Desmond, the want of the careful and tender training of a mother must have been much felt by Lady Mary, and in all probability occasioned that lack of feminine delicacy and self-restraint that might have saved her much suffering in after-life.

Though Lady Kingston died so early, her husband continued a widower till all his children were grown up and married. The following interesting incident, told by Lady Louisa Stuart, shews the pride and fondness of Lord Kingston for his eldest daughter when very young :—

'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. "Then 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.'

There seems little ground for Dr Dallaway's assertion, that Lady Mary's father had bestowed on her the best classical education; otherwise, in after-years, while so earnestly recommending a learned education. for women, she would not have spoken of her own as one of the worst in the world, being exactly the same as Clarissa Harlowe's.' Doubtless, the good homespun governess of whom she often speaks would lay the necessary foundation, and a beautiful, clever girl was sure of finding, as she grew up, many instructors in what may be termed masculine knowledge. She acknowledges her obligations to Bishop Burnet for 'condescending to direct the studies of a girl;' and corresponds with him on the subject of a translation she had made, under his own eye, of the Latin version of Epictetus. But while strengthening her mind with such exercises, she indulged and amused it by every work of fancy or fiction that came in her way. She delighted in the old French-school romances, and possessed and left at her death the entire library of Mrs Lennox's Female Quixote Cassandra,' 'Alice,' &c. ; on the 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,