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 XVIIIe 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.
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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“The reader will find in Professor Nettleton a safe guide and a sound critic.”—London Spectator.
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“A practical handbook for those who wish to gain by the least possible expenditure of time and attention a clear idea of English drama.”—Providence Journal.
“The book is excellent.”—The Dial.
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The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne
By WILBUR L. CROSS
Illustrated, cloth, 8vo, $2.50
“Something more than a mere record of Laurence Sterne is embodied within the covers of Professor Cross’s volume. It forms a significant series of pictures of its time, and it sets before us the character of many famous men of a famous period in English literature.”—Boston Transcript.
“Indispensable to all thorough students of English literature.”—Boston Globe.
“An admirable biography of the distinguished English novelist, humorist, and clergyman, ... replete with information gleaned from widely different sources and written in a style that holds the reader’s interest throughout.”—Baltimore Sun.
“One feels that it will remain standard and indispensable. It has already supplanted all previous Lives of Sterne, and all future estimates must reckon with this book. It was years a-making, and it will take many years to make it obsolete.”—The Bookman.
“An excellent biography, accurate in content, unusually full in detail, well constructed, clear and pleasing in style.”—Chicago Record-Herald.
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A History of the Eighteenth Century
Literature (1660-1780)
By EDMUND GOSSE, M.A.
Clark Lecturer in English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Cloth, 12mo. $1.00
Contents:—Poetry after the Restoration; Drama after the Restoration; Prose after the Restoration; Pope; Swift and the Deists; Defoe and the Essayists; The Dawn of Naturalism in Poetry; The Novelists; Johnson and the Philosophers; The Poets of the Decadence; The Prose of the Decadence; Conclusion. Bibliography, Index.
Oswald Crawford, in London Academy:
“Mr. Gosse’s book is one for the student because of its fulness, its trustworthiness, and its thorough soundness of criticism.”
The Age of Johnson (1744-1798)
By T. SECCOMBE
Cloth, 16mo, $1.00
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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’.