Donne, John, relations with the Countess of Bedford, 86-87.
Drayton, Michael, 85.
Dryden, John, 92, 96.
England, French attitude to, 11 ff.
_Englishman in Paris_, Foote’s comedy, 42 _n._
epigram, Garrick’s on Goldsmith, 116;
Johnson’s on Barnard, 116;
popularity of, in salons, 26, 115-117, 229;
Young’s on Chesterfield, 116.
Este, Beatrice d’, 17.
feminism, in seventeenth century, 98-99.
_femmes savantes_, 28, 35, 78, 83, 98 _n._, 105.
Ferguson, Adam, 191.
Fielding, Sarah, 257.
Fontenelle, Bernard de, 45.
Foote, Samuel, quoted, 42 _n._
Frederick, Duke of Urbino, 18 ff.
friendship, in salons, 26 ff., 210.
Garrick, David, 123, 139 _n._;
declamation, 106;
verses, 121.
Gay, John, 100.
Geoffrin, Mme., career and salon, 47-50;
charity, 73;
described by Walpole, 58;
maxims, 113;
praised by Mlle. de Lespinasse, 73 ff.;
referred to, 25;
relations with Marmontel, 27;
—— with Walpole, 58 ff.;
type of her century, 34, 36;
wit, 29, 48 _n._
Gibbon, Edward, career in salons, 74-80, 211;
_Decline and Fall_, popularity of, in salons, 76;
influence of salon upon, 79;
Mme. du Deffand’s opinion of, 74-75, 77;
Mme. Necker’s opinion of, 75;
quoted, 11;
relations with Mme. Necker, 77-79;
Walpole’s opinion of, 76 _n._
Goldsmith, Oliver, account of Parisian salon, 42;
not a frequenter of the London salon, 211;
quoted, 32, 103 _n._, 105, 113;
visits Mrs. Vesey, 147 _n._
Gonzaga, Elizabeth, of Urbino, 17 ff.; 27, 84.
gossip, 223, 245, 248-49;
_see also_ scandal.
government, theories of, 11.
Gray, Thomas, 144;
at Mrs. Vesey’s, 147.
Greville, Lady, 153.
Guibert, Comte de, 67.
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 88.
Herries, Lady, 153.
Hervey, Lady, 135.
Hesketh, Lady, 197-98.
Hogarth, William, depiction of the levee, 103.
Holbach, Baron d’, his salon, 70, 75.
Holcroft, Thomas, quoted, 112, 170 _n._
Hoole, Rev. Samuel, quoted, 108 ff., 178.
Hume, Alexander, career in Parisian salons, 50-55;
death, 55;
influence of the salon on, 55;
quarrel with Rousseau, 53 ff.;
quoted, 5.
Huntington, Countess of, 87.
intrigue, flourishes in salons, 89, 95.
Isabella, of Mantua, 17.
Italy, courts of, _see_ courts.
Johnson, Samuel, conversation, 231 ff.;
correspondence, 252;
described by Hoole, 109-10;
dogmatism, 230;
levee, 104;
manner in conversation, 224;
quarrel with Mrs. Montagu, 199-202;
quoted, 5, 6, 7, 9, 100, 101, 231 ff.;
salons, visits, 210-11;
serenity, 223;
style in conversation and in writing compared, 229;
versatility, 226.
Jonson, Ben, 85.
Kauffmann, Angelica, 134.
Kyd, Thomas, 84.
Lambert, Mme. de, 44.
landscape, love of, among bluestockings, 148, 176.
laughter, unpopular in salons, 57.
Lely, Sir Peter, 97 _n._
Lennox, Charlotte, 257.
Lespinasse, Julie de, career and salon, 71 ff.;
relations with Burke, 68;
—— with d’Alembert, 25;
—— with Sterne, 71-72;
_Sentimental Journey_, imitates, 72 ff.;
type of romanticism, 34.
letter-writing, 236 ff.
levee, 102-05.
London, a literary centre, 5, 6.
Lorenzo the Magnificent, 18.
Lucan, Lady, 135, 153.
Lyttelton, Lord, _Dialogues of the Dead_, 167;
Johnson’s life of, 196 ff.;
poetry, 157;
praises Beattie, 190;
relations with Mrs. Montagu, 139-140, 157.
Macaulay, Mrs. Catherine, 10, 135.
Macaulay, Lord, 225, 259, 267, 268.
Manley, Mrs. Mary, 98, 100.
Mann, Sir Horace, Walpole’s letters to, 242 _n._
manners, literature of, 3.
Marmontel, Jean, 52.
Mascarille, 102.
Mathias, T. J., 170.
maxims, _see_ sentiments.
Mazarin, Cardinal, 96.
Mazarin, Duchess of, 96-98.
men of letters, state of, in eighteenth century, 32.
Miller, Lady, career and salon, 117-122;
poems, 120.
Molière, J. B. P., comedies referred to, 26 _n._, 28, 29, 102, 107.
Monckton, Miss, 153.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 100-01, 237, 252.
Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, achievements, 141;
assemblies, 138;
breakfasts, 105;
conceit, 202-03;
_Dialogues of the Dead_, 167-69, 200;
_Essays on Shakespeare_, 169-72, 278;
‘female Mæcenas,’ 189;
‘femme savante,’ a, 140, 171-72;
influence in literary world, 202;
learning, 140, 198;
loyalty, 195;
patron of the arts, 189-208;
quarrel with Johnson, 196, 199-202;
‘Queen of the Blues,’ 133;
relations with Barry, 199;
—— with Beattie, 189-95;
—— with Cowper, 197-99;
—— with Lyttelton, 167, 200;
—— with Mme. du Deffand, 136-37;
—— with Mrs. Yearsley, 204 ff.;
—— with Potter, 195;
—— with Sterne, 202;
salon, originates in London, 124.
More, Hannah, 180-88;
_Bas Bleu_, 23, 123-25;
_Bleeding Rock_, 181;
description of an assembly, 106 _n._;
_Essays_, 156, 187;
_Fatal Falsehood_, 185-86;
_Florio_, 157, 187;
_Inflexible Captive_, 181;
influence of bluestockings on, 180, 188;
_Ode on the Marquess of Worcester_, 155;
_Ode to Mrs. Boscawen_, 154 ff.;
_Percy_, 154, 183-85;
piety, 186-88;
relations with Garrick, 181;
—— with Mrs. Boscawen, 181 ff.;
—— with Mrs. Yearsley, 204 ff.;
—— with Walpole, 187;
romanticism, 182;
_Sensibility_, 156;
_Sir Eldred_, 181-83;
‘Stella,’ 206;
_Thoughts on the Manners of the Great_, 188.
Necker, Mme., career and salon, 77-80;
quoted, 7, 14, 38, 63 _n._;
relations with Gibbon, 77 ff.;
—— with Hume, 27;
—— with Mrs. Montagu, 136.
Newcastle, Duchess of, 90 _n._
Opie, John, portrait of Miss More, 157.
Ord, Mrs. Anne, relations with Miss Burney, 159-60;
salon, 124, 158-159.
‘Orinda,’ _see_ Phillips, Mrs. Katherine.
Ossian, 176.
Otway, Thomas, 96.
Paoli, General, 147 _n._
Paris, attraction for Englishmen, 15, 36, 38.
patronage, 30, 84, 189 ff.
Pembroke, Countess of, 84.
Pepys, Sir William, 123.
Percy, Bishop, _Reliques_, 182.
Phillips, Mrs. Katherine, 91-94.
Piozzi, Mme., _see_ Thrale, Mrs. Hester.
Pix, Mary, 98.
Platonic love, 88, 91, 93.
Polignac, Mme. de, 131.
Portland, Duchess of, 131, 162, 205, 207.
Potter, Robert, attacks Johnson’s _Lives_, 196, 270;
meets Johnson, 196;
relations with Mrs. Montagu, 195-97.
_précieuses galantes_, 88.
_précieuses ridicules_, 29.
Prior, Matthew, relations with Mme. de Tencin, 44 ff.
pseudonyms, classical, 89, 91, 95, 206.
Pye, Henry, poem to Mrs. Boscawen, 156 _n._
Queensbury, Duchess of, 100.
Rambouillet, Hôtel de, 22 ff.;
Marquise de, 22 ff., 102 _n._
Raynal, Abbé, 144, 150-51.
Restoration, influence of, on the salon, 89-90.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, indebtedness to Johnson’s conversation, 235.
Richardson, Samuel, his Daughters, 100;
fame in France, 14.
Rousseau, J. J., 9, 40, 54, 59, 176.
Rowe, Nicholas, relations with Mrs. Phillips, 92 _n._
_ruelle_, 102 _n._
Rutland, Lady, 87.
Saint Évremond, Charles de, 96-98.
salon, characteristics, 24 ff.;
conservatism, 210 ff.;
conversation in, 25, 125;
cosmopolitanism of, 43;
decline of, 209;
democratic tone, 25;
failure of, in England, 213;
first English, 83;
ideal of, 152;
influence on authors, 39;
literary academy, a, 31;
origin of, 16 ff.;
original works read aloud, 26, 67, 72 _n._;
patronage, 30, 84, 189 ff.;
radicalism of, 37;
room, 24;
woman’s place in, 16, 33 ff.
scandal, prevalence of, in salons, 111.
scepticism, in salons, 10, 37, 42, 52, 150.
Schwellenberg, Mrs., 260, 264.
Scudéry, Mlle. de, 26, 95.
sentiments, popular in salons, 113-15.
Sévigné, Mme. de, influence of, in England, 237 ff.
Seward, Anna, 121.
Shakespeare, William, Mrs. Montagu’s Essay on, 169-72;
salon spirit in his comedies, 22, 85.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, _Rivals_, 115;
_School for Scandal_, quoted, 103, 104, 107, 112, 115.
Sheridan, Thomas, 106.
Spenser, Edmund, 84.
Sterne, Laurence, describes salons, 37;
influence of salons upon, 74;
relations with Mrs. Montagu, 202;
—— with Mrs. Vesey, 148 ff.;
_Sentimental Journey_, quoted, 37, 69;
imitated by Mlle. de Lespinasse, 72 ff.
Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 123, 128-30.
Stuart, Lady Louisa, 126, 139.
Suckling, Sir John, 89.
Swift, Jonathan, 100.
Taylor, Jeremy, relations with Mrs. Phillips, 92-94.
Tencin, Mme. de, career and salon, 43-47, 102;
type of her century, 34.
Tessier, Le, 106.
Thrale, Hester, _Anecdotes of Johnson_, 164;
——, reception of, 276;
character, 165;
not properly a bluestocking, 124;
relations with Johnson, 163-64;
—— with Miss Burney, 163-64.
Tighe, Edward, 106.
Trotter, Catherine, 98.
Twickenham Park, salon at, 85.
Vaughan, Henry, 94.
Vesey, Agmondesham, 115, 203.
Vesey, Mrs. Elizabeth, agnosticism, 150;
bluestocking, use of the word, 130;
entertains the Literary Club, 33 _n._, 147;
relations with Sterne, 148 ff.;
romanticism, 147, 151;
salon, 141-52;
——, one of the originators, in London, 124.
Vivonne, Cathérine de, _see_ Rambouillet, Marquise de.
Voiture, Vincent, 25.
Voltaire, François, denounced by bluestockings, 109, 151;
opinion of, in salons, 37;
opinion, his, of the English, 12.
Walpole, Horace, correspondence, art of, 236 ff.;
gossip, love of, 249-50;
influence of salons on, 39, 65-66;
interest in Mrs. Yearsley, 206;
letter to Rousseau, 54, 59;
opinion of Gibbon, 76 _n._;
—— of Hume, 51;
—— of the salon, 56 ff.;
popularity in Paris, 59;
quoted, 10, 36, 39, 42, 44 _n._, 52, 58, 62 _n._, 66 _n._, 68, 76
_n._, 132, 236 ff.;
relations with Mme. du Deffand, 63-65;
—— with Mme. Geoffrin, 57;
salons, career in, 56-66;
uses the word bluestocking, 132.
Walsingham, Mrs., 124, 153, 157.
Woodhouse, the poetical shoemaker, 205.
Wroth, Lady, 87.
Yearsley, Mrs. Ann, the poetical milk-woman, career and poems, 204-08.
Young, Edward, 100, 156 _n._, 157.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Hume, Boswell, Burke, and Johnson are quoted in turn. The first
reference is to Edinburgh, the rest to London.
[2] Boswell’s _Life_, Hill’s edition, 2. 75.
[3] Boswell’s _Life_ 3. 253.
[4] _Ib._, 4. 167.
[5] _Ib._, 3. 247.
[6] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 338; 28 May 1777.
[7] Boswell’s _Life_ 2. 328-29.
[8] _Ib._, 2. 340.
[9] Boswell’s _Life_ 1. 447.
[10] _Letters_ 6. 301.
[11] In his _Memoirs_.
[12] See Churton Collins’ _Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in
England_, London 1908.
[13] _Essai sur la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands, sur la
Réputation, sur les Mécènes, et sur les Récompenses Littéraires._ In
his _Mélanges de Littérature et de Philosophie_ (1753) 2. 119.
[14] _Ib._ 2. 121. Cf. Helvétius to Hume (_Letters to Hume_; 28 June
1767). ‘L’attraction de la terre Britannique agit puissament sur moi.’
[15] See his _Memoirs_.
[16] _Œuvres_ (1819-25) 43. 320; 14 November 1764. The whole passage
is worth quoting: ‘Mille gens, messieurs, s’élèvent et déclament
contre l’anglomanie: j’ignore ce qu’ils entendent par ce mot. S’ils
veulent parler de la fureur de travestir en modes ridicules quelques
usages utiles, de transformer un deshabillé commode en un vêtement
malpropre, de saisir, jusqu’à des jeux nationaux, pour y mettre des
grimaces à la place de la gravité, ils pourraient avoir raison; mais
si, par hasard, ces déclamateurs prétendaient nous faire un crime du
désir d’étudier, d’observer, de philosopher, comme les Anglais, ils
auraient certainement bien tort: car, en supposant que ce désir soit
déraisonable, ou même dangereux, il faudrait avoir beaucoup d’humeur
pour nous l’attribuer et ne pas convenir que nous sommes à cet égard
à l’abri de tout reproche.’
[17] Its first published title was _L’Orphéline Léguée_. See also
Walpole’s _Letters_ 6. 360.
[18] _Correspondance_, ed. Lescure, 1. 497; 14 August 1768.
[19] _Mélanges_ 2. 240.
[20] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 178.
[21] The ideal of a group of ladies and gentlemen who seek in
literature the pleasantest of entertainment is of course encountered
in Italian literature long before this time. The singular vitality of
the scheme adopted by Boccaccio for the framework of the _Decameron_
is proved by the numerous imitations of it. The Petrarchists, as well
as Boccaccio, found favour in the eyes of the court-ladies.
[22] _The Book of the Courtier_, from the Italian of Count Baldassare
Castiglione, done into English by Sir Thomas Hoby. Edited by
Professor Raleigh. London, 1900. See pp. 29 ff.
[23] Spirit.
[24] Figures, allegories.
[25] ‘Arguments,’ discussions, such as the one that follows on the
nature of the true courtier.
[26] The following anecdote of a warrior who affirmed that the
entertainments of the Court were beneath him, may be cited as
a specimen: ‘The Gentlewoman demaundyng him, What is then your
profession? He aunswered with a frowning looke: To fight. Then saide
the Gentlewoman: Seing you are not nowe at the warre nor in place to
fight, I woulde thinke it beste for you to bee well besmered and set
up in an armorie with other implementes of warre till time wer that
you should be occupied, least you waxe more rustier than you are.’ p.
49.
[27] See below, p. 124.
[28] _Historical Memoirs_ 1. 14. Chesterfield, who knew the salons
at first hand, writes to his son, 24 December 1750, ‘Le bon goût
commença seulement à se faire jour, sous le règne, je ne dis pas de
Louis Treize, mais du Cardinal de Richelieu, et fut encore épuré
sous celui de Louis Quatorze.... Vers la fin du règne du Cardinal de
Richelieu, et au commencement de celui de Louis Quatorze, l’Hôtel de
Rambouillet était le Temple du Goût, mais d’un goût pas encore tout à
fait épuré.’ _Letters_, ed. Bradshaw, 1. 382.
[29] ‘Arthénice’ is an anagram of her name, Cathérine. It is said to
have been discovered by Malherbe.
[30] This, too, is Italian. Cf. Burckhardt, _Renaissance in Italy_,
tr. Middlemore, p. 359: ‘Social intercourse in its highest and most
perfect form now ignored all distinctions of caste, and was based
simply on the existence of an educated class.’
[31] Thus Mascarille in _Les Précieuses Ridicules_: ‘Vous verrez
courir de ma façon, dans les belles ruelles de Paris, deux cents
chansons, autant de sonnets, quatre cents épigrammes, et plus de
mille madrigaux, sans compter les énigmes et les portraits.’
[32] Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature
Française_ 4. 105.
[33] She sneered at _précieuses_. _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 417.
[34] _Essai sur les Gens de Lettres, etc._, _op. cit._ 2. 136. Cf.
Goldsmith, _Citizen of the World_, 84: ‘A writer of real merit now
may ... talk even to princes with all the conscious superiority of
wisdom.’
[35] ‘Collé regrettera toujours les cafés littéraires et ne se
consolera pas de les voir déserter pour les salons.’ Petit de
Julleville, _Histoire de la Littérature Française_, 6. 388. It was
a significant moment in the history of the Literary Club in London
when, about 1780, it fell into the habit of dining at Mrs. Vesey’s
before its more exclusive sessions at the tavern.
[36] ‘Comme son siècle, Madame du Deffand, dans son extrême
viellesse, retrouva le don d’aimer et la douceur des larmes.’ Lanson,
_Choix de Lettres_, quoted by Mrs. Toynbee in _Lettres à Walpole_ 1.
lx.
[37] ‘Elle symbolise l’évolution qui, à l’époque où elle vécut, s’est
opérée dans l’âme de ses contemporains, lorsque de raisonneur le
siècle s’est fait passionné, de libertin sentimental.’ Ségur, _Julie
de Lespinasse_, p. 15.
[38] _Letters_ 6. 393.
[39] _Ib._ 6. 367; 2 December 1765.
[40] _Ib._ 9. 252; [? September] 1775.
[41] _Sentimental Journey._
[42] _Letters_ 6. 352; 19 November 1765. Cf. Madame du Deffand to
Walpole (_Letters_ 1. 385; 30 January 1768): ‘Vous n’aimez pas les
impiétés, vous êtes, ce me semble, un peu dévot.’
[43] Letter to Gibbon, 30 September 1776; in Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous
Works_ 2. 178.
[44] This function is admirably expressed by Professor Brunel in
his account of Madame de Tencin (Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de
la Littérature Française_ 6. 403) ‘[Elle les ramenait] sans cesse
au ton léger qui convient, même en un sujet grave. Tel est bien le
rôle d’une femme au milieu de ces têtes pensantes. Elle se tient
audessus et au dehors du débat, qu’elle envisage au seul point de vue
d’agrément, et dont elle règle la marche, toujours souriante, sans le
laisser languir ni s’aigrir.’
[45] _Letters_ 6. 414; 3 February 1766.
[46] Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_ 3. 47.
[47] Madame Necker speaks of the ‘art perfectionné de l’exagération,’
in the letter to Gibbon cited above.
[48] Thus Marmontel: ‘Leurs entretiens étaient une école pour moi
non moins utile qu’agréable et, autant qu’il m’était possible, je
profitais de leurs leçons.’
[49] English visitors in Paris are satirized in two comedies by
Samuel Foote, _The Englishman in Paris_ (1753) and _The Englishman
returned from Paris_ (1757). In the former the leading character,
Buck, is offered an introduction to ‘Madame de Rambouillet’; in the
latter he comes home completely Frenchified.
[50] _Letters_ 6. 332; 19 October 1765.
[51] _Memoirs of M. de Voltaire._ During Goldsmith’s sojourn on the
Continent, Diderot and Fontenelle were still visitors at Madame
Geoffrin’s.
[52] In Petit de Julleville’s _Histoire de la Littérature Française_,
_op. cit._, 6. 404, Walpole, who must have had her character from
Madame du Deffand, tells Mason that she was ‘a most horrid woman’
who ‘had great parts and so little principle that she was supposed
to have murdered and robbed one of her lovers, a scrape out of
which Lord Harrington and another of them saved her. She had levees
from eight in the morning till night, from the lowest tools to the
highest.’ _Letters_ 10. 28; 13 March 1777.
[53] _Works_ of Bolingbroke 7. 169; letter to Hanmer, December 1712
(?).
[54] _Ib._, 7. 87; 17 October 1712. Prior to Bolingbroke.
[55] _Lettres Historiques de Bolingbroke_ (Paris 1808), 2. 431; 3
June 1715.
[56] _Dictionary of National Biography_, ‘Saint John.’
[57] See the ribald verses commencing, ‘Tencin, vous avez de
l’esprit,’ printed in _Lettres de Bolingbroke_, _op. cit._, 2. 433 n.
The second stanza begins, ‘Bolingbroke, es-tu possédé?’
[58] _Letters_, edited by Bradshaw, 1. 383; 24 December 1750.
[59] See his letter to Madame de Tencin, introducing Mrs. Cleland, in
_Letters_, as above, 2. 771; 20 August 1742.
[60] _Letters_, _op. cit._, 1. 383.
[61] See Professor P. M. Masson’s excellent monograph, _Madame de
Tencin_ (Paris 1909), pp. 278-80. The appendix contains Madame de
Tencin’s letters.
[62] Cf. Montesquieu, _Lettres_; 12 March 1750 (in _Œuvres_, Paris
1879): ‘Dîtes à milord Chesterfield que rien ne me flatte tant que
son approbation,’ and the rest.
[63] Madame Necker, who had studied Madame Geoffrin’s methods,
remarks (_Nouveaux Mélanges_ 1. 100): ‘Le piquant de l’esprit de
Madame Geoffrin consistait toujours à rendre des idées ingénieuses
par des images triviales, et pour ainsi dire, de ménage; son esprit
était toujours enté sur un ton bourgeois.’ The following may serve
as specimens (cf. above, p. 29): ‘Madame —— a frappé à la porte de
toutes les vertus sans entrer chez aucune.’ ‘Quand nos amis sont
borgnes, il faut les regarder de profil.’
[64] Letter in _Éloges de Madame Geoffrin_, ed. M. Morellet, p. 110.
[65] _Éloges_, _op. cit._, p. 105.
[66] _Letters to Hume_, pp. 288-89.
[67] _Letters_ 6. 298; 20 September 1765.
[68] _Correspondance Littéraire_, Paris 1829, 5. 4: ‘Il est lourd, il
n’a ni chaleur, ni grâce, ni agrément dans l’esprit.’
[69] _Lettres à Walpole_ 1, _passim_.
[70] Burton’s _Life of Hume_ 2. 168 _n._
[71] _Letters_ 6, _passim_. Cf. Grimm, _op. cit._, 5. 3-4.
[72] Burton’s _Hume_ 2. 173; 9 November 1673.
[73] An Englishman in Paris wrote to the Earl Marshall of Scotland,
‘L’on regarde le bonheur de l’y voir comme un des plus doux fruits de
la paix.’ _Letters to Hume_, p. 63; 4 January 1764.
[74] Burton’s _Hume_ 2. 181.
[75] Du Deffand’s _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 591.
[76] _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 232; 5 March 1767, _et passim_.
[77] See Burton’s _Life of Hume_; _Letters addressed to Hume_ (1849);
_Private Correspondence of Hume_ (1820); _Letters_, ed. T. Murray
(1841); and _Exposé succinct de la Contestation ... entre M. Hume et
M. Rousseau_ (1766). The simplest narratives for the general reader
are in Ségur’s _Julie de Lespinasse_, chapter 7, and in Collins’s
_Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England_, pp. 182 ff.
[78] See Garat, _Mémoires Historiques_ 2. 158.
[79] See _Letters_ 6. 396; 12 January 1766, for the complete letter.
A second letter, in the character of Émile, is printed in Madame du
Deffand’s _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 3 _n._ Madame du Deffand persuaded
Walpole not to let it become public.
[80] See above, p. 54 _n._, and volume one of her _Lettres à
Walpole_, _passim_.
[81] Burton’s _Life of Hume_ 2. 513.
[82] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 253.
[83] In October (?) 1776, Mrs. Montagu wrote to Beattie: ‘As I passed
a good deal of my time with the Litterati at Paris, you may imagine
I heard much of the manner of Mr. Hume’s taking leave of the world.
“Les Philosophes” (as they call themselves) were pleased that he
supported the infidel character with so much constancy.’ M. Forbes’s
_Beattie and his Friends_ 130.
[84] _Letters_ 6. 309; 3 October 1765.
[85] _Ib._, 6. 332.
[86] _Ib._, 6. 358.
[87] See _Letters_ 6. 332: ‘Good folks, they have no time to
laugh.’ ‘M. de Fontenelle,’ asked Madame Geoffrin one day, ‘Vous
n’avez jamais ri?’ ‘Non,’ he replied, ‘je n’ai jamais fait ah, ah,
ah.’ Necker, _Nouveaux Mélanges_ 1. 165. Chesterfield’s hatred of
laughter, that ‘shocking distortion of the face,’ is well-known; he
boasted that he had never been seen to laugh.
[88] _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 577; 24 May 1769.
[89] _Letters_ 6. 404; 25 January 1766.
[90] Ten years later Madame du Deffand gave him a more startling
illustration of French motherliness. See _Letters_ 9. 236.
[91] Cf. Professor Brunel in Petit de Julleville’s _Histoire_ 6. 410:
‘C’est en effet la “raison” qu’on reconnaît à Madame Geoffrin pour
mérite éminent.’
[92] _Letters_ 6. 395; 11 January 1766.
[93] _Ib._, 6. 396.
[94] _Ib._, 6. 404; 25 January 1766.
[95] Montesquieu wrote her (15 June 1751): ‘Je sens qu’il n’y a pas
de lectures qui puissent remplacer un quart d’heure de ces soupers
qui faisaient mes délices.’ _Œuvres_ (1879), 7. 377.
[96] _Letters_ 9. 59; 28 September 1774.
[97] _Ib._, 6. 356; Walpole had met this Duke in Paris.
[98] Montesquieu, _Œuvres_ (1879), 7. 400; 13 September 1752. ‘Ce qui
doît nous consoler, c’est que ceux qui voient clair ne sont pour celà
lumineux.’
[99] This description of herself ‘dans le coin d’un couvent’ she sent
to Madame de Boufflers:
Dans son tonneau
On voit une vieille sibylle
Dans son tonneau.
Qui n’a sur les os que la peau,
Qui jamais ne jeûna Vigile,
Qui rarement lit l’Évangile
Dans son tonneau.
—From G. Maugras, _La Marquise de Boufflers_, p. 101.
[100] ‘Madame du Deffand ... is delicious; that is, as often as I
can get her fifty years back, but she is as eager about what happens
every day as I am about the last century.’ Walpole, _Letters_ 6. 367;
2 December 1765.
[101] D’Alembert called her ‘The Viper,’ and told Hume that she hated
everybody, especially great men. _Letters to Hume_, p. 201.
[102] ‘Ceux par qui on n’a pas craindre d’être assassiné, mais qui
laisseraient faire les assassins.’ Montesquieu, _Œuvres_ (1879) 7.
379.
[103] Necker, _Nouveaux Mélanges_ 1. 79: ‘Madame du Défan [sic]
accusait tous les penseurs d’affectation.’
[104] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 319, _et passim_.
[105] _Ib._ 3. 77.
[106] _Ib._ 2. 373; cf. 3. 203. ‘Toute espèce de lecture m’ennuie.’
[107] Edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, London, 1912. There are 838
letters.
[108] _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 167; 14 November 1766.
[109] _Letters_ 9. 249; 8 September 1775.
[110] ‘If possible she is more worth visiting than ever; and so far
am I from being ashamed of coming hither at my age, that I look on
myself as wiser than one of the Magi, when I travel to adore this
star in the East. The star and I went to the Opera last night, and
when we came from Madame de la Vallière’s, at one in the morning, it
wanted to drive about the town, because it was too early to _set_....
You nurse a little girl of four years old, and I rake with an old
woman of fourscore!’ _Letters_ 9. 256; to Selwyn, 16 September 1775.
[111] _Lettres à Walpole_ 2. 476.
[112] _Ib._ 2. 484.
[113] _Ib._ 2. 479; ‘Il y a des gens ici qui l’appellent _Junius_.’
[114] J. Morley, _Burke_, p. 67.
[115] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 589, in criticism of his _Speech on the
Independence of Parliament_, 11 February 1780.
[116] _Ib._ 2. 479; 481.
[117] ‘Je lui donne une compagnie que j’ai tâché de lui assortir;
un M. du Buc, qui est aussi un grand esprit, le Comte de Broglio,
l’Évêque de Mirepoix, Madame de Cambis, les Caraman, etc.’ _Lettres à
Walpole_ 2. 479; 24 February 1773.
[118] Printed in 1778.
[119] By J. A. H. de Guibert, Paris 1773.
[120] See _Lettres à Walpole_ 2. 488. He had spoken of it to Walpole,
and evidently preferred it to La Harpe’s tragedy—which did not please
Madame du Deffand. The tragedy, which was widely known from the
author’s reading of it in the salons, was acted in 1775.
[121] See Bisset, _Life of Burke_ (1798), p. 158. Morley thinks it
was in Mlle. de Lespinasse’s salon that Burke met Diderot.
[122] _Letters_ 8. 252; 11 March 1773.
[123] Diderot.
[124] Morellet.
[125] Professor Cross, however, considers them fairly reliable. _Life
of Sterne_, p. 287.
[126] D. Garat, _Mémoires Historiques sur le XVIII^e Siècle_ 2. 136.
[127] 31 January 1762.
[128] _Letters_ 6. 370; 2 December 1765.
[129] Cf. Cross, _Life of Sterne_, p. 282.
[130] The rise of Julie de Lespinasse (1732-1776) to a position
of first importance in Parisian society is a thrilling story. See
Ségur, _Julie de Lespinasse_. The account of her break with Madame
du Deffand whose ‘companion’ she had been, is referred to above, p.
61. Walpole (_Letters_ 9. 59) calls her ‘a pretended bel esprit,’ and
begs Conway not to allow himself to be taken to her salon, frequented
by Englishmen, lest he offend Madame du Deffand.
[131] Necker, _Mélanges_ 2. 287.
[132] _Letters_ to the Count de Guibert (1809) 2. 233.
[133] See _Lettres de Mlle. de Lespinasse ... suivies de deux
chapitres dans le genre du Voyage sentimental de Sterne, par le même
Auteur_. Paris 1809; 3. 261.
[134] The authenticity of these stories is vouched for by the first
editor of Mlle. de Lespinasse’s _Letters_ (1809), _op. cit._ 1. xiv,
and by the author of the ‘Portrait’ in _Éloges de Madame Geoffrin_
(1812), p. 47. Mlle. de Lespinasse read the chapters aloud in Madame
Geoffrin’s salon.
[135] His father had sent him to Lausanne at the age of sixteen. His
first literary venture, his _Essai sur l’Étude de la Littérature_,
was in French.
[136] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 342; 8 June 1777.
[137] Gibbon, _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 247; 21 April 1781.
[138] _Lettres à Walpole_, 3. 367; 21 September 1777.
[139] _Private Letters_, ed. Prothero, 1. 29; 12 February 1763. Cf.
_Memoirs_, ed. Hill, p. 153.
[140] Walpole’s account of him in dispute is less flattering. ‘He
coloured; all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp
angles; he screwed up his button-mouth and [rapped] his snuff-box....
I well knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person,
but thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably.’ _Letters_
11. 376; 27 January 1781. Gibbon avoided disputes with Johnson, and
Boswell (_Life_ 2. 348) assumed that he feared ‘a competition of
abilities.’
[141] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 343, 351, and 376.
[142] _Private Lettres_ 1. 312; 16 June 1777.
[143] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 336.
[144] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 178; 30 September 1776.
[145] _Miscellaneous Works_ 1. 312; 16 June 1777.
[146] She wrote him in January 1777: ‘Votre entretien, Monsieur,
a toujours été un grand plaisir de ma vie, car vous réunissez
l’intérêt pour les petites choses, l’enthousiasme pour les grandes,
l’abondance des idées, à l’attention pour celles des autres, et
une légère causticité, âme de la conversation, à l’indulgence du
moment, la sûreté du caractère et le courage de l’amitié.’ Gibbon,
_Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 193. Madame du Deffand applied to Gibbon’s
conversation a phrase of Fontenelle’s, ‘forte de choses.’ _Lettres à
Walpole_ 3. 338; 27 May 1777.
[147] ‘C’est le ton de nos beaux esprits: il n’y a que des ornements,
de la parure, du clinquant, et point du fond ... il a, si je ne me
trompe, une grande ambition de célébrité; il brigue à force ouverte
la faveur de tous nos beaux esprits.’ _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 357; 10
August 1777.
[148] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 247; 21 April 1781.
[149] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 214; 12 November 1777.
[150] Nicholas Breton’s _Pilgrimage to Paradise_, quoted by Miss
Young.
[151] These and the like illustrations are drawn from Miss Frances
Young’s _Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke_, London 1912.
[152] Epigram 94.
[153] _Life and Letters of John Donne_ 1. 212. Her ‘refining’
influence on Donne’s mind and judgment is particularly noted in his
second _Letter to the Countess of Bedford_.
[154] Professor Grierson attributes to her the poem beginning,
‘Death, be not proud, thy hand gave not this blow.’
See his edition of Donne’s poems, 2. cxliv.
[155] _Twicknam Garden._
[156] Gosse 2. 79; 1651.
[157] This subject is pleasantly discussed by Professor Fletcher
in his _Religion of Beauty in Woman_, ‘Précieuses at the Court
of Charles I,’ but his discussion shows how inimical was the new
movement to anything like a true patronage of letters.
[158] Thus there is no suggestion of the salon about such a figure as
the Duchess of Newcastle.
[159] _Seventeenth Century Studies_, p. 208.
[160] To ‘Berenice,’ in _Familiar Letters_, London 1697; 1. 147; 30
December 1658.
[161] _On the Death of Mrs. Katherine Philips._ In his _Ode on
Orinda’s Poems_ the lady’s descent is traced from Boadicea. Rowe,
in his _Epistle to Daphnis_, declares that she soared as high as
Corneille ‘and equalled all his fame.’ Dryden compares her with Mrs.
Killigrew. Cowley may perhaps have owed more than the rest to her.
The following reference to him in her letters seems to show that she
had been of real service to him: ‘I am very glad of Mr. Cowley’s
success, and will concern myself so much as to thank your ladyship
for your endeavour in it.’ (To Berenice, _Familiar Letters_ 1. 143;
25 June [1758?].)
[162] _Discourse_, p. 38.
[163] _Works_ of Saint Évremond, English translation, 2d edition,
London 1728; 2. 247.
[164] _Ib._ 2. 299.
[165] Her beauty was celebrated by Waller in _The Triple Combat_.
Lely painted her portrait.
[166] See Dr. Upham’s ‘English Femmes Savantes at the End of the
Seventeenth Century,’ in the _Journal of English and Germanic
Philology_, April 1913. This is a fairly exhaustive treatment of the
subject, and reveals a development of ‘feminism’ in England parallel
in some respects with that in France. As the movement, however,
reveals no attempt to centre literary activity in salons, the article
must be regarded as treating a different aspect of the general
subject from the one here dealt with.
[167] So Madame du Deffand told Walpole. Walpole’s _Letters_ 10. 28.
[168] Guests were not necessarily received in the sleeping-room.
The adjoining dressing-room was often utilized for the purpose. See
Colman’s _Man of Business_ (1774), opening of Act 2. The levee should
be compared with Mme. de Rambouillet’s more intimate receptions,
where a seat near the bedside, in the _ruelle_ or lane between bed
and wall, was the place of honour, as being nearest to the hostess
while she reclined in state.
Morning informality became so popular in Paris that ladies and
gentlemen of quality appeared at lectures, ‘même en robe de chambre’
(Roberts’ _Memoirs of Hannah More_ 2. 17). Cf. Goldsmith (_Citizen of
the World_, Letter 77), ‘the modern manner of some of our nobility
receiving company in their morning gowns.’
[169] As early as the days of the _Spectator_, Addison deplored the
custom, introduced by travelled ladies, of ‘receiving gentlemen in
their bed-rooms.’
[170] Probably, as Hill notes, Mme. de Boufflers; cf. above, p. 53.
[171] Boswell’s _Life_ 2. 118; cf. 3. 207.
[172] Boswell’s _Life_ 5. 395; here the word levee is probably
loosely employed for a morning conversazione.
[173] _Citizen of the World_, Letter 104.
[174] Cf. Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_ 2. 318.
[175] _Diary of Mme. D’Arblay_ 5. 80-81.
[176] _Letters_ (1770) 1. 7; 8 April 1750.
[177] _Letters_ 8. 437.
[178] Roberts’ _Memoirs of More_ 1. 395.
[179] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 6. 229; 7 September 1784.
[180] Diary for 10 May 1773; M. Forbes’ _Life of Beattie_, p. 75.
[181] Hannah More’s piquant description of an assembly is worth
quoting in full:
‘On Monday I was at a very great assembly at the Bishop of Saint
Asaph’s. Conceive to yourself one hundred and fifty or two hundred
people met together, dressed in the extremity of the fashion; painted
as red as bacchanals; poisoning the air with perfumes; treading on
each other’s gowns; making the crowd they blame; not one in ten able
to get a chair; protesting they are engaged to ten other places; and
lamenting the fatigue they are not obliged to endure; ten or a dozen
card-tables, crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesiastics,
and yellow admirals; and you have an idea of an assembly.’ Roberts’
_Memoirs of More_ 1. 242; cf. _ib._ 1. 311.
[182] Other contemporary descriptions of the salon will be
found elsewhere in this volume. Still others—in general more
fragmentary—may be consulted in Frances Brooke’s _Excursion_ 1. 142,
Roberts’ _Memoirs of More_ 2. 22-23; 1. 92-93; 174; 317.
[183] Horace Walpole’s experiences in the English salons at Turin and
Florence may be consulted in the first volume of his _Letters_. ‘Only
figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history,
Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics; all, except the
second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all’ 1. 82; 31
July 1740.
[184] This was an important matter with some of the bluestockings, as
the following quotation from Hannah More may show: ‘I never knew a
great party turn out so pleasantly as the other night at the Pepys’s.
There was all the pride of London—every wit and every wit-ess ... but
the spirit of the evening was kept up on the strength of a little
lemonade till past eleven, without cards, scandal, or politics.’
Roberts’ _Memoirs of More_ 1. 208.
Johnson’s opposition to anything of the sort is shown by his remark
on ‘an evening society for conversation’: ‘There is nothing served
about there, neither tea, nor coffee, nor lemonade, nor anything
whatever, and depend upon it, Sir, a man does not love to go to a
place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in.’ Boswell’s
_Life_ 4. 90.
He urged Mrs. Thrale to provide her guests with ‘a profusion of the
best sweetmeats.’
[185] How true this is to the spirit of conversation is shown by
a somewhat scandalous discussion of Miss Hannah More which passed
between Mrs. Cholmondeley and Miss Burney: Mrs. Cholmondeley: ‘I
don’t like her at all; that is, I detest her! She does nothing but
flatter and fawn; and then she thinks ill of nobody. Don’t you hate a
person who thinks ill of nobody?’ _Diary of Mme. D’Arblay_ 1. 188.
[186] 1787. Act 3, scene 2.
[187] See her first conversation with Marlow, Act II. She herself
calls it sentimental, in reference to these platitudes.
[188] _Mélanges_ 3. 243.
[189] _Ib._ 266.
[190] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 4. 236; 30 August 1769.
[191] _Diary of Mme. D’Arblay_ 2. 351.
[192] The tails of macaronis’ wigs were notoriously long.
[193] Spence’s _Anecdotes_ 378.
[194] Boswell’s _Life_ 4. 195. A specimen of what this sort of thing
may be is seen in this epigram of Marmontel’s, upon picking up a
lady’s pen:
Églé, cette plume est de celles
Qu’à vos pieds déposa l’Amour,
Quand ce Dieu, fixé sans retour,
Vous laissa lui couper les ailes.
Necker, _Nouveaux Mélanges_ 1. 30.
[195] ‘Institutress’ is Mrs. Miller’s unpretending designation of
herself. The quotation is from the preface to a volume entitled,
_Poetical Amusements at a Villa near Bath_, Bath 1775.
[196] Walpole’s _Letters_ 9. 134; 15 January 1775.
[197] See the preface to the volume for 1777.
[198] 1776; 1777; 1781.
[199] In 1781; a fifth volume had been announced for 1782.
[200] London 1777.
[201] Bath 1776.
[202] Bath 1776.
[203] She calls herself a bluestocking in 1780. _Diary_ 1. 403.
[204] _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_ 2. 262.
[205] See below, p. 140.
[206] See above, p. 105.
[207] Cf. the whole passage. Home’s _Lady Louisa Stuart_, pp. 159-60.
[208] An Italian equivalent for bluestocking is unknown to Tomaseo
and Bellini. In a pamphlet, entitled _Pursuits of Literature_,
printed in 1797, T. J. Mathias gives the term _calza azzurra_ as
though from Ariosto, quoting,
Fortunata la Calza azzurra e d’ oro
Si grate a Febo e al santo Aonio coro.
The first line quoted, however, is not by Ariosto at all, but by
Mathias himself. Cf. _Orlando Furioso_, ed. Papini, canto 46, st. 3.
[209] 1. 379 ff.
[210] Larousse, _Grande Encyclopédie_.
[211] Mills’s explanation of the word was adopted (without
acknowledgment) by Dr. Brewer in his _Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable_, and has therefore had considerable currency. It has been
recently repeated, notably in the _Quarterly Review_ for January
1903, in an article entitled ‘The Queen of the Bluestockings,’ by an
anonymous writer, and in Mrs. Gaussen’s _A Later Pepys_.
[212] _King Henry IV, Part I_, Act 2, scene iv.
[213] Home’s _Lady Louisa Stuart_, p. 156; cf. the _Diary of Madame
D’Arblay_ 4. 65.
[214] The following quotation from Mrs. Montagu’s _Letters_ (4.
117) has been cited (notably in the _New English Dictionary_ and
in Hill’s edition of Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_) as showing that
the term _bluestocking_ was in use as early as March 8, 1757, on
which day Mrs. Montagu writes: ‘I assure you our philosopher (Mr.
Stillingfleet) is so much a man of pleasure, he has left off his
old friends and his blue stockings, and is at operas and other gay
assemblies every night.’ Personally I do not think that this can
be regarded as an occurrence of the word _bluestocking_ at all. I
incline to think that Mrs. Montagu means no more than she literally
says, that Mr. Stillingfleet has left off the homely garb for which
he was noted. But, in any case, it is interesting as a reference to
the fame of his stockings, and tends to support Boswell’s explanation
of the term.
[215] _Life_ 4. 108.
[216] 1. 210 _n._; cf. a similar account by Pennington (who
remembered the salons) in his _Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs.
Montagu_.
[217] _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_ 2. 262-63. No explanation of the term
_bluestocking_ is given in the _Diary_.
[218] _Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu_ 3. 202; 22
September 1783. The occurrence is referred to by Hannah More in
the ‘Advertisement’ prefixed to _Bas Bleu_ (1786). The story was
apparently reported to the blues by Lady Dartrey. See Pepys’s letter
to Hannah More, in _A Later Pepys_ 2. 235; 13 August 1783.
[219] Gaussen’s _A Later Pepys_ 1. 42.
[220] Those who care to study the playful development of the word may
consult the sprightly article, ‘Bas bleu,’ in the earlier edition of
Larousse’s _Dictionary_.
[221] _Letters_ 13. 217; 13 November 1784.
[222] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 5. 50; 27 December 1791.
[223] Much earlier certainly than the date (1790) given in the
_New English Dictionary_, ‘In the evening we had a very strong
reinforcement of blues,’ wrote Hannah More in March 1783 (Roberts’
_Memoirs of More_ 1. 275); ‘There was everything delectable in the
blue way,’ writes the same author in 1784 in reference to Mrs. Ord’s
_conversazione_ (_Ib._ 1. 317).
[224] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 236; 9 December 1783.
[225] _Ib._ 4. 66; 1 August 1788.
[226] Cf. Fanny Burney, ‘He had no small reverence for us
blue-stockings.’ _Diary_ 1. 403; June 1780.
[227] _A Series of Letters_ 4. 218.
[228]
Montaigu, tes dons précieux
M’assurent de ta bienveillance,
Les miens, peu dignes de tes yeux,
Te prouvent mon obéissance.
Ainsi partout on voit les Dieux
Recevoir des chants ennuyeux
Pour les biens que leur main dispense.
Tes bienfaits me sont plus flatteurs
Que les trésors de la fortune,
Toujours aveugle en ses faveurs,
Elle prodigue les honneurs
À ceux dont la voix l’importune;
Mais tes regards doux et perçants
Du vrai mérite ont la balance;
Je juge aussi par tes présents
Qu’ils out souvent de l’indulgence.
Du Bocage, _Lettres sur l’Angleterre_,
p. 50; 25 May 1750.
[229] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 2. 179; 30 September 1776.
[230] _Lettres à Walpole_ 3. 243, 256.
[231] _Ib._ 3. 383.
[232] Forbes’s _Life of Beattie_ 1. 389; 3 September 1775.
[233] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 5. 165.
[234] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 1. 460.
[235] _Letters_ 2. 149; 1 May 1780.
[236] _A Later Pepys_ 1. 404.
[237] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 4. 204-205.
[238] Home’s _Lady Louisa Stuart_, p. 158.
[239] The letter is undated, but, as it refers to the death of Lord
Bath, it must be later than 1764. Burke is strangely criticised
for ‘an intemperate vivacity of genius’; the common charge is made
against Garrick that he is himself only on the stage, ‘and an actor
everywhere else.’ Johnson is not mentioned. The palm is given to Lord
Chatham among living wits. Lyttelton’s _Letters_ (1780), pp. 122 ff.
[240] _Letters_ 11. 366 and 368; 9 and 14 January 1781.
[241] Roberts, _Memoirs of More_ 1. 298.
[242] Carter, _Series of Letters_ 4. 141.
[243] _Letters on Several Subjects_ 2. 166.
[244] _Letters_ 14. 5.
[245] _Diary_ 1. 253.
[246] She was so called by Mrs. Delany as early as 1751.
(_Correspondence_ 3. 21), who adds, ‘The spirits of the air protect
her.’
[247] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 242.
[248] _Ib._ 1. 330.
[249] _Ib._ 1. 311.
[250] Mrs. Carter writes her (_Series of Letters_ 4. 27), ‘I
prevented you from carrying me to every place you had ever heard of
in England or Wales.’
[251] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 335, 2. 355; cf. 2. 109.
[252] _Series of Letters_ 4. 120.
[253] _Ib._ 4. 137.
[254] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 3. 40.
[255] _Ib._ 5. 523.
[256] Hannah More writes: ‘Tuesday I was at Mrs. Vesey’s assembly
which was too full to be very pleasant. She dearly loves company; and
as she is connected with almost everything that is great in the good
sense of the word, she is always sure to have too much.’ Roberts’s
_Memoirs_ 1. 278; 29 March 1783.
[257] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 214; 19 June 1783.
[258] _Letters_ 11. 170.
[259] ‘Madam, I have read his book, and I have nothing to say to
him.’ _Series of Letters_ 3. 228 _note_; _Johnsonian Miscellanies_ 2.
12 _note_.
[260] _Series of Letters_ 3. 255; 21 May 1765.
[261] ‘She seemed rather desirous to assemble persons of celebrity
and talents under her roof or at her table than assumed or pretended
to form one of the number herself.’ Wraxall’s _Historical Memoirs_ 1.
103. ‘Without attempting to shine herself she had the happy secret
of bringing forward talents of every kind, and of diffusing over
the society the gentleness of her own character.’ Forbes’s _Life of
Beattie_ 1. 209 _n._
[262] _Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 271 and _A Series
of Letters_ 3. 292.
[263] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 234.
[264] Her letters, with the exception of a lively but rather
incoherent note to Hannah More, have not been published. Lord
Lyttelton wrote to Garrick: ‘You will be charmed (as I am) with
the lively colouring and fine touches in the epistolary style of
our sylph, joined to the most perfect ease. Mrs. Montagu’s letters
are superior to her in nothing but force and compass of thought.’
Garrick, _Correspondence_ 1. 440; 12 October 1771.
[265] _Series of Letters_ 4. 6.
[266] _Ib._ 4. 83.
[267] _Ib._ 4. 354.
[268] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 335.
[269] _Diary_ 1. 253-54.
[270] _Letters_ 9. 152; 24 January 1775: ‘The Cophthi were an
Egyptian race, of whom nobody knows anything but the learned; and
thence I gave Mrs. Montagu’s academies the name of Coptic.’
[271] Johnson, Walpole, Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds, Boswell, Garrick,
Sterne, General Potemkin, General Paoli, General Oglethorpe, half
a dozen bishops, and all the blues were at various times among her
guests. Of one of her entertainments, Hannah More wrote: ‘She had
collected her party from the Baltic to the Po, for there was a
Russian nobleman, an Italian virtuoso, and General Paoli.’ Roberts’s
_Memoirs of More_ 1. 212.
[272] _Series of Letters_ 3. 323.
[273] _Ib._ 3. 255.
[274] Her prosaic sister-in-law, whom friends called ‘Body,’ as they
called Vesey ‘Mind.’
[275] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 358.
[276] See Melville’s _Life and Letters of Sterne_ 2. 67 ff.
[277] _Life of Mrs. Delany_ 5. 307. Gibbon wrote of Raynal (_Letters_
2. 75; 30 September 1783): ‘His conversation which might be very
agreeable, is intolerably loud, peremptory, and insolent; and you
could imagine that he alone was the Monarch and legislator of the
World.’ Walpole, who met him at Baron d’Holbach’s, was so bored by
his questions that he pretended to be deaf. ‘After dinner he found I
was not, and never forgave me.’ Three years later, however, he dined
with Walpole at Strawberry Hill: ‘The Abbé Raynal not only looked at
nothing himself, but kept talking to the Ambassador the whole time,
and would not let him see anything neither. There never was such an
impertinent and tiresome old gossip. He said to one of the Frenchmen,
we ought to come abroad to make us love our own country. This was
before Mr. Churchill, who replied very properly, “Yes we had some
Esquimaux here lately, and they liked nothing because they could get
no train-oil for breakfast.”’ _Letters_ 9. 92; 12 November 1774, and
10. 62; 15 June 1777.
[278] _Posthumous Works_ 1. 174. ‘In the hour and half I was in his
company, he uttered as much as would have made him an agreeable
companion for a week, had he allotted time for answers.’
[279] _Series of Letters_ 4. 113; cf. 3. 228 and 4. 108. It would
appear that Mrs. Montagu feared that Mrs. Vesey was about to adopt
certain of Rousseau’s ‘absurdities.’ Cf. _Letters of Mrs. Carter to
Mrs. Montagu_ 3. 241; 24 June 1785.
[280] Hartley writes to W. W. Pepys (20 August 1800), ‘Mrs. Vesey’s
... was indeed the most agreeable house for conversation.’ Gaussen’s
_A Later Pepys_ 2. 154.
[281] Frances Glanville Boscawen (1719?-1805) was the wife of the
Hon. Edward Boscawen, Admiral (d. 1761), and mother of Viscount
Falmouth and the Duchess of Beaufort.
[282] 3. 331.
[283] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 182; 93.
[284] She did, however, give some assistance to Johnson in the _Lives
of the Poets_. ‘I have claims,’ she writes to Miss More (Roberts’s
_Memoirs of More_ 1. 191), ‘upon Dr. Johnson, but as he never knows
me when he meets me, they are all stifled in the cradle; for he must
know who I am before he can remember that I got him Mr. Spence’s
manuscripts.’ These papers were of great use to Johnson, as he
himself remarks (_Lives_ 1. xxvii, ed. Hill). Boswell regrets (_Life_
4. 63) that Johnson did not make a more handsome acknowledgment; but
Boswell seems to have been unaware of Mrs. Boscawen’s connection with
the whole transaction. Mrs. Boscawen cannot be serious in what she
writes of Johnson’s ignorance of her. A conversation with Johnson, in
which she took part, is described in the _Life_ (4. 98).
[285] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 129.
[286] _Ib._ 1. 179.
[287] _Ib._ 1. 192.
[288] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 190.
[289] Mrs. Boscawen was the subject of more than one literary tribute
before this. Young’s dreary ode, _Resignation_, was addressed to her,
on the death of Admiral Boscawen; Mrs. Montagu had taken the widow to
the ancient poet for consolation. In this poem she is bidden to ‘go
forth a moral Amazon, armed with undaunted thought.’ Perhaps the last
of these poetical tributes was a sonnet (from which a selection is
here printed for the first time), by Pye when poet laureate. Writing
of her villa at Richmond, once the home of Thomson, the poet Pye says:
Still Fancy’s Train your verdant Paths shall trace,
Tho’ closed her fav’rite Votary’s dulcet lay;
Each wonted Haunt their footsteps still shall grace,
Still Genius thro’ your green Retreats shall stray;
For, from the Scene BOSCAWEN loves to grace,
Th’ Attendant Muse shall ne’er be long away.
Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 27578.
[290] Mrs. Boscawen chose Opie to paint the portrait, though the
subject, she writes (Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 2. 35), ‘is worthy
of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s superior skill; but I can command Opie, and
make him alter, or even refaire if we do not like it.’ In her reply,
Miss More stated that nothing could overcome her natural repugnance
to having her portrait taken, but Mrs. Boscawen’s wishes which are
to her ‘such indisputable commands.’ The portrait, which was hung in
Mrs. Boscawen’s dining-room, became so popular that both Walpole and
Mrs. Walsingham wished copies of it.
[291] Anne Dillingham Ord (d. 1808) was the widow of William Ord (d.
1766), who had been High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1747. She is
often spoken of as ‘Mrs. Ord of Queen Anne Street.’
[292] Notably Doran, _Lady of the Last Century_, p. 264, and the _New
English Dictionary_, under ‘Bluestocking.’
[293] _Letters_ 2. 146; cf. 149.
[294] Hannah More and Fanny Burney, _e.g._ Rev. Montagu Pennington
(Carter’s _Letters to Montagu_ 3. 199 _n._) speaks of her as one
‘of whom too much good can hardly be said, and of whom the editor
believes it would be impossible to say any ill.’
[295] _Early Diary of Frances Burney_ 2. 138.
[296] See p. 139.
[297] Not invariably, however, for Hannah More once found such a
crowd that she thought herself well off to be ‘wedged in with Mr.
Smelt, Langton, Ramsay, and Johnson.’ Roberts’s _Memoirs_ 1. 174;
1780.
[298] _Ib._ 1. 274; 7 March 1783.
[299] _Ib._ 1. 317; 1784.
[300] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 378.
[301] She once mustered the whole tribe of blues that Fanny might
show her old friends that a sojourn at Court had not made her forget
them. On this occasion the gathering was exceptionally brilliant, and
included Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs.
Garrick, Reynolds, Langton, and Horace Walpole. At this assembly Miss
Burney says that she shall be ‘proud to show everybody the just first
place she [Mrs. Ord] holds with me, among all that set.’ _Diary of
Madame D’Arblay_ 3. 357 (3 January 1788).
[302] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 5. 33; 1791.
[303] _Ib._ 5. 68.
[304] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 5. 12 _n._
[305] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 285 and 1. 92.
[306] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 4. 283; 1770.
[307] _Ib._ 4. 489; 30 December 1772.
[308] _Ib._ 5. 374.
[309] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 364.
[310] A newspaper announced that ‘Miss Burney, the sprightly writer
of the elegant novel _Evelina_, is now domesticated with Mrs. Thrale,
in the same manner that Miss More is with Mrs. Garrick, and Mrs.
Carter with Mrs. Montagu.’ _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 1. 492; May
1781.
[311] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 2. 100.
[312] The phrase is from _Bas Bleu_.
[313] See Lounsbury’s _Shakespeare and Voltaire_, New York, 1902.
[314] See Walpole’s _Letters_ 11. 67.
[315] See Lounsbury, _op. cit._
[316] _Life_ 2. 88. As late as 1787, she was thus described in the
Epilogue to Thomas Holcroft’s play, _Seduction_:
Say, shall not we, with conscious pride proclaim
A female critic raised—ev’n Shakespear’s Fame!
Towards the end of the century the fame of the book declined. Mrs.
Montagu was anonymously attacked by Mathias in his _Pursuits of
Literature_ (1794). In speaking of commentators on Shakespeare he
says (p. 37):
Nor can I pass LYCISCA MONTAGU,
Her yelp though feeble, and her sandals _blue_.
[317] _Mrs. Montagu and her Friends_, chapter 2.
[318] _Essay_, p. 19.
[319] _Ib._ p. 18.
[320] _Ib._ p. 150.
[321] _Essay_, p. 161.
[322] _Ib._ p. 153.
[323] _Ib._ p. 156.
[324] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 3. 251 and 224.
[325] Higginson.
[326] ‘The Temple Classics’ and ‘Everyman’s Library.’
[327] _Life_ 1. 123.
[328] _Johnsonian Miscellanies_ 2. 11.
[329] Numbers 44 and 100. They were reprinted in the editions of her
collected poems.
[330] Young praised her in his poem _Resignation_ (Part 2). Like Eve,
Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Montagu have ‘caused a fall—A fall of fame in
man.’ He institutes a comparison with Addison. But Lord Lyttelton
is even bolder: Carter’s singing reminds him at times of the angels
singing over Bethlehem and at times of Sappho,
‘Greece shall no more
Of Lesbian Sappho boast.... For the sacred head
Of Britain’s poetess the Virtues twine
A nobler wreath.’
—_On reading Miss Carter’s Poems in Manuscript._ Mr. Smelt told
Fanny Burney that he considered Mrs. Carter’s _Ode_ the best in the
language. _Diary_ 4. 222.
[331] _Poems on Several Subjects_, 3d edition, 1776, p. 94, ‘To Mrs.
Vesey.’
[332] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 3. 224.
[333] _Ib._ 3. 180.
[334] _Ib._ 2. 292.
[335] _Series of Letters_ 3. 288.
[336] _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 1. 313.
[337] _Ib._ 3. 276.
[338] _Ib._ 3. 110.
[339] _Series of Letters_ 4. 112.
[340] Dedication to the _Letters_.
[341] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 5. 93; 14 January 1775.
[342] _Ib._ 5. 55, 309.
[343] _Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone_ 1. 163.
[344] Her letters to Pepys, printed by Mrs. Gaussen, in _A Later
Pepys_, are not so interesting. There is a charming note to Fanny
Burney in the _Diary_ 5. 50.
[345] Roberts’s _Memoirs of Hannah More_ 1. 47.
[346] _Ib._ 1. 60.
[347] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 63.
[348] _Ib._ 1. 64.
[349] See above, pp. 147 ff.; 175.
[350] Notably the _Inflexible Captive_, based on the story of Regulus.
[351] Act III.
[352] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 140.
[353] _Ib._ See above, p. 155.
[354] Roberts 1. 130.
[355] _Letters_ 10. 166-67; 11 December 1777.
[356] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 1. 148 (1778).
[357] The ‘sacred’ dramas, _Moses in the Bulrushes_, _David and
Goliath_, _Belshazzar_, and _Daniel_, escaped the contamination of
the stage.
[358] Roberts 2. 153.
[359] _Ib._ 1. 191.
[360] Roberts 2. 111.
[361] _Ib._ 2. 415.
[362] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 62.
[363] See ‘_Advice to the Herald_.’
[364] Forbes’s _Life of Beattie_ 1. 195; letter to Gregory, 13 March
1771.
[365] _Ib._
[366] M. Forbes’s _Beattie and his Friends_, p. 66.
[367] _Ib._ p. 68.
[368] Forbes’s _Life of Beattie_ 1. 255; May 1773.
[369] _Ib._ 1. 260. Extract from Beattie’s Diary; 21 May 1773.
[370] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 4. 516; 13 June 1773.
[371] M. Forbes, _op. cit._ 78. In this matter Johnson’s view
happened to coincide with hers (_ib._ p. 90).
[372] _Ib._ p. 75.
[373] _Ib._ pp. 95-6.
[374] _Essays_, Edinburgh 1776.
[375] M. Forbes, p. 120.
[376] Beattie, always nervous about his Scotticisms, was flutteringly
pleased, and some time later repaid her with this astounding piece of
flattery: ‘My models of English are Addison and those who write like
Addison, particularly yourself, Madam, and Lord Lyttelton. We may be
allowed to imitate what we cannot hope to equal.’ Forbes’s _Life_ 2.
115; 30 January 1783.
[377] Forbes’s _Life_ 2. 132 and M. Forbes, _op. cit._ p. 110.
[378] Arbuthnot. Forbes’s _Life_ 1. 203 and _n._
[379] He wrote that he had ‘been making some progress in a little
work of which you saw a sketch at Sandelford, and which you did me
the honour to read and approve of. It was your approbation and that
of the Bishop of Chester and Sir William Forbes that determined me to
revise, correct, and enlarge it, with a view to publication.’ Forbes
2. 164.
[380] See Forbes’s _Beattie_ 2. 41.
[381] _Literary Anecdotes of E. H. Barker_, London 1852.
[382] _Inquiry into some Passages in Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the
Poets, particularly his Observations on Lyric Poetry and the Odes of
Gray._ London 1783.
[383] _Letters_ 13. 5.
[384] Cowper’s _Letters_, edited by Thomas Wright, 3. 267.
[385] Cowper’s _Letters_, edited by Thomas Wright, 3. 306; 21 August
1788; cf. 3. 266; 267; 277.
[386] In March he wrote to Mrs. Throckmorton, ‘The two first books
of my _Iliad_ have been submitted to the inspection and scrutiny of
a great critic of your sex, at the instance of my cousin, as you may
suppose. The lady is mistress of more tongues than a few (it is to be
hoped she is single) and particularly she is mistress of the Greek.’
_Letters_ 3. 444; 21 March 1790. The book was published in July 1791.
[387] _Letters_ 3. 439; 8 March 1790.
[388] See the accompanying illustration.
[389] Barry’s _Series of Engravings in the ... Society of Arts_,
London 1808.
[390] Walpole’s _Letters_ 4. 319; 8 November 1759.
[391] _Ib._ 11. 410; 3 March 1781.
[392] In his edition of the _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_.
[393] See Melville’s _Life of Sterne_ 1. 289 ff. and Climenson’s
_Letters of Mrs. Montagu_ 2. 270 ff.
[394] _Correspondence of David Garrick_ 2. 189; 3 November 1776.
[395] _Diary_ 1. 126.
[396] _Correspondence of David Garrick_ 1. 388 ff.
[397] _A Later Pepys_ 2. 283.
[398] _Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone_ 1. 151.
[399] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 363; 1784.
[400] _Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_ 6. 209; 22 January 1784.
[401] _Letters_ 13. 214; 13 November 1784.
[402] _Letters_ 13. 432; 22 December 1786.
[403] Wraxall’s _Historical Memoirs_ 1. 115.
[404] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 2. 225; April 1790.
[405] Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ 1. 163; journal for May 1763.
[406] _Private Letters of Gibbon_ 1. 31; 25 March 1763.
[407] See above, p. 123. As early as 1769, Mrs. Carter had long
regretted that he had left ‘the tranquil pleasures of select society
for the turbulent schemes of ambition.’ _Letters to Mrs. Montagu_ 2.
23.
[408] Miss Burney was well aware of the difference here noted. In
talking with Wyndham of Johnson’s life at Streatham, she gave ‘a
little history of his way of life there,—his good humour, his sport,
his kindness, his sociability, and all the many excellent qualities
that, in the world at large, were by so many means obscured.’ _Diary_
3. 477.
[409] ‘Cette littérature devait briller des le dix-septième siècle,
puisque dès lors se forme et se propage en France l’esprit de
société.... Avant cet âge, en France du moins, les salons n’existent
pas.’ P. de Julleville’s _Histoire de la Littérature Française_ 5.
600.
[410] _Letters_, ed. Bradshaw, 1. 55.
[411] _Memoirs of Sir James Mackintosh_ 2. 172.
[412] _Diary of Madame D’Arblay_ 2. 266.
[413] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 2. 26; cf. Walpole’s _Letters_ 14.
65 _et passim_.
[414] _Letters_ 7. 9-10.
[415] _Ib._ 5. 87.
[416] _Ib._ 6. 356.
[417] Madame Necker asserted that he was ‘as like Madame de Sévigné
as two peas.’ _Letters_ 10. 80. Horace Mann had noticed the
similarity many years before. _Ib._ 2. 410.
[418] _Letters_ 7. 137; 13 October 1767.
[419] Boswell’s _Life_ 4. 102.
[420] _Letters_ 8. 427; 23 February 1774.
[421] These letters he prepared for the press after they had been
returned to him by Mann. In August 1784 he wrote: ‘I have been
counting how many letters I have written to you since I landed in
England in 1741: they amount—astonishing!—to above eight hundred; and
we have not met in three-and-forty years! A correspondence of near
half a century is, I suppose, not to be paralleled in the annals of
the post office!’ _Letters_ 13. 182.
[422] In sending to Mason the letters which Gray had written to him,
Walpole wrote: ‘I need not say that there are several things you will
find it necessary to omit.... It is much better to give them [the
public] nothing, than what they do not comprehend and which they
consequently misunderstand, because they will think they comprehend,
and which, therefore, must mistake. I do not know whether it is not
best that good writings should appear very late, for they who by
being nearest in time are nearest to understanding them, are also
nearest to misapprehending.’ _Letters_ 8. 202; 19 September 1772.
[423] _Letters_ 8. 376; 8 December 1773.
[424] _Letters_ 9. 308; 21 December 1775.
[425] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 51; cf. 1. 235.
[426] _Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 591; 4 July 1769.
[427] _Letters_, ed. Thomas, 2. 257; 20 July 1754.
[428] ‘J’aurais bien du plaisir de pouvoir lire vos lettres avec
quelqu’un qui en sentirait le mérite et avec qui j’en pourrais rire.’
_Lettres à Walpole_ 1. 9; 21 April 1766.
[429] _Letters_ 7. 195; 15 June 1768.
[430] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 253; 1782.
[431] 4. 288.
[432] _Diary_ 3. 181.
[433] _Diary_ 4. 471 ff.; 4 June 1791.
[434] _Diary_, 19 November 1783.
[435] _Life_ 3. 155.
[436] Forbes’s _Life of Beattie_ 2. 175; 15 November 1785.
[437] _Letters_ 8. 443; 17 April 1774.
[438] May 1786.
[439] _Bozzy and Piozzi_, or the British Biographers, A Town Eclogue,
1786.
[440] This caricature is too unseemly to admit of reproduction here.
[441] _Letters_ 13. 379; 30 April 1786.
[442] _Remarks on the Journal of a Tour ..._ in a Letter to James
Boswell, Esq. By ‘Verax.’ 1785.
[443] Cf. Walpole’s remarks about the _Life_, _Letters_ 14. 438; 26
May 1791.
[444] _Diary_ 3. 219; 26 February 1787.
[445] _Life of Beattie_ 2. 182; 9 January 1786.
[446] Roberts’s _Memoirs of More_ 1. 403; 1785.
[447] Forbes’s _Life of Beattie_ 2. 178.
[448] It has been reserved for Mr. Percy Fitzgerald to revive the old
charges against Boswell and to discover new ones, which he has set
forth with a virulence that would be inexcusable in any one who had
not a preposterous theory to defend.
[449] _A Later Pepys_ 2. 260; 24 October 1785.
[450] _Journal_, p. 307.
[451] _Ib._ p. 383.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 14: ‘A philospher like’ replaced by ‘A philosopher like’.
Pg 92: ‘elegy, nor burlesque’ replaced by ‘elegy, not burlesque’.
Pg 153: ‘the inmediate object’ replaced by ‘the immediate object’.
Pg 169: ‘Genius of Shakespear’ replaced by ‘Genius of Shakespeare’.
Pg 173: ‘of geniune critical’ replaced by ‘of genuine critical’.
Pg 209: ‘and more agreable’ replaced by ‘and more agreeable’.
Pg 210: ‘agreable societies’ replaced by ‘agreeable societies’.
Pg 217: ‘then to get’ replaced by ‘than to get’.
Pg 222: ‘upon a widow seat’ replaced by ‘upon a window seat’.
Pg 264: ‘Schwellenburg, who’ replaced by ‘Schwellenberg, who’.
Pg 288: ‘Mrs. Catharine’ replaced by ‘Mrs. Catherine’.