This ungracious reception may have helped Mrs. Montagu in inciting Potter to attack Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, some years later; but, according to Walpole, the chief aim was ‘to revenge the attack on Lord Lyttelton.’ There is, I believe, no existing evidence for this gossip, apart from the pamphlet itself; but there seems to be no good reason for rejecting it. In this paper, which, it must be said, is a sufficiently dignified and worthy pamphlet as pamphlets go, Potter quotes Mrs. Montagu’s Essay on Shakspeare by way of demolishing Johnson’s criticism of The Bard, and the lady and Bishop Hurd are proclaimed ‘the two best Critics of this or any other age.’[382] Of this piece of nonsense Walpole has written the last word:
Were I Johnson, I had rather be criticized than flattered so fulsomely. There is nothing more foolish than the hyperboles of contemporaries on one another, who, like the nominal Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy at a coronation, have place given to them above all peers, and the next day shrink to simple knights.[383]
It is a pity that Potter could not have known that the utility of his translations, which have been reprinted again and again, would outlive the fame of his patron.
A classicist of much more importance than Potter did not disdain to court Mrs. Montagu. It was in June 1788, that William Cowper published in the Gentleman’s Magazine his pleasant verses On Mrs. Montagu’s Feather Hangings. He had himself not seen the room, but knew it from the descriptions of his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who was an aspirant to Mrs. Montagu’s ‘academy.’[384] The poet’s purpose in the presentation of this poetical tribute seems to have been missed by his editors; but it is clear that he was yielding to the pressure of Lady Hesketh and attempting to bring himself and his forthcoming translation of Homer to the attention of the bluestocking. The first move was a failure. Mrs. Montagu, it would seem, took no notice of the lines in the magazine, though they were set forth as ‘by the author of The Task,’ already a poem of national fame. In August, Cowper writes to Lady Hesketh:
To me, my dear, it seemeth that we shall never by any management make a deep impression on Mrs. Montagu. Persons who have been so long accustomed to praise become proof against it.[385]
Mrs. Montagu Johnson
