CHAPTER X
Mrs. Montagu as a Patron of the Arts
Above all things Mrs. Montagu longed to send her reputation down to posterity as an acknowledged patron of letters. She wished to attach to herself, after the manner of the French literary ladies, some poet, essayist, or scholar, whose work she might inspire and supervise, and whose reward was to be the association of her name with his. Hannah More, recognizing this ambition, calls her ‘the female Mæcenas of Hill Street,’[362] and Dr. Burney asserts that she ‘makes each rising art her care.’[363] The poet for whom she had been waiting appeared in the summer of 1766, in the person of James Beattie, a young professor of moral philosophy at Aberdeen, who was, at the time, unknown in England.
Beattie was by nature shy, nervous, self-conscious, and uncertain of his powers—a type familiar in the academic world. He was for ever finding his poems unworthy of him, suppressing them, altering and correcting them, and threatening never to complete them. For such a person a patron might do much. Mrs. Montagu at once expressed herself to Dr. Gregory (a common friend resident in Aberdeen) as highly pleased with Beattie’s poetry. But it was not until she saw the first canto of the Minstrel, early in 1771, that her judgment was fully convinced. She now set to work with as much industry as charity to advance her chosen poet in the world of letters. She sent a copy of the new poem to Lord Chatham,[364] recommended it to the attention of Percy (the inspiration of whose essay on the minstrels had been acknowledged by Beattie in his preface), and encouraged her protégé by quoting to him the praises of Lord Lyttelton. She offered suggestions respecting the advertisement of the poem, and wrote to a bookseller of her acquaintance that he must recommend the poem ‘to all people of taste.’ Such were the powers of the female patron in this new age.
Mrs. Montagu also interested herself in another work of Beattie’s, a book now quite forgotten but then just entering upon a brilliant career of popularity. This was no other than an Essay on Truth, which had been published in 1770, and had almost immediately passed into a second edition. Mrs. Montagu very flatteringly describes the vain efforts of the English public to come at this volume. She has herself recommended it ‘to many of our Bishops and others; but all have complained this whole winter that the booksellers deny having either the first or second edition. I dare say many hundreds would have been sold if people could have got them.’[365] It is quite obvious that the academic young poet needs the practical assistance of the bluestocking, friend of ‘Bishops and others.’ He therefore came up to London in the autumn of this year, and then first made the acquaintance of the woman whom he ever after gratefully acknowledged as his patron. And thus the Defender of Truth and the Defender of Shakespeare met together—to their mutual advantage. Mrs. Montagu’s mind was already teeming with projects for the advancement of her favourite. In the spring of the next year, upon hearing that Adam Ferguson of Edinburgh University was to go abroad, she conceived the plan of having Beattie transferred to his chair, and succeeded in interesting the Archbishop of York in the matter, only to learn that the professor had every intention of returning to his work after his temporary absence.[366] Nevertheless she was the means of introducing Beattie to the Archbishop and to his brother, Lord Kinnoul,[367] who became warm friends of the new poet. In the following year she instructed Beattie in the best means of bringing his case to the attention of the King,[368] assuring him that if the government did nothing for him, she would herself ‘claim the honour of rendering his situation in life more comfortable.’[369] But the government did not disappoint her. Beattie was presented to the King at his levee, received the incense of his praise, and, later, a pension of two hundred pounds, and a degree of Doctor of Laws from Oxford. Mrs. Montagu shared in the general praise. ‘Do you not honour Mrs. Montagu,’ wrote Hester Chapone to Mrs. Delany, ‘for the pains she has taken to introduce this excellent champion of Christianity into the notice of the great world and to obtain for him some other regard than that of barren fame?’[370]
Her efforts on his behalf had but begun. Abandoning a plan that he should enter the Church of England—partly no doubt because of Beattie’s own lukewarmness—she thinks he may perhaps do more service to religion as a layman than as a priest,[371] and she now urges the publication, by subscription, of a quarto volume of Essays. In this way, she thought, eight hundred or a thousand pounds might be gained.[372] Patron and protégé together drew up a form of ‘subscription-paper,’ and, since Beattie shrank from any advertisement in newspapers, Mrs. Montagu agreed, with the assistance of a few friends, to circulate the document herself.[373] She did her work well. In the list of subscribers to the book[374] she contrived to include not only every prominent bluestocking, but Reynolds, Garrick, Johnson, a host of peers, her friends the Bishops, the two Archbishops, and the libraries of Oxford. She was the recognized sponsor of the volume, and when the publication of it was delayed, it was part of her office to circulate an explanatory card of Beattie’s.[375] When it finally appeared she was delighted with it in its every aspect, but professed to find it rather insolent in a native of Aberdeen to outdo the English in style.[376]
Meanwhile the second canto of the Minstrel had been sent to her for criticism, and was, if we are to believe Beattie, published at her request.[377] Four years later a volume of select poems was submitted to her with the request that she suppress those of which she did not approve; and when at last Beattie put forth the Minstrel in its final form, he requested permission to dedicate the first canto to her by putting her name into the last stanza in a space which had been left blank from the first:
Here pause, my gothic lyre, a little while,
The leisure hour is all that thou canst claim.
But on this verse if Montagu should smile,
New strains ere long shall animate thy frame.