‘I must say I felt for Shakspeare the anxiety one does for a dead friend, who can no longer speak for himself.’[394]
In 1778 she could seriously offer Fanny Burney, already renowned as the author of Evelina, the gift of her ‘influence,’ adding, ‘We shall all be glad to assist in spreading the fame of Miss Burney.’[395]
She had the desire to direct and to manage which is characteristic of the experienced woman of fashion, who knows the value of her personal charm, rather than of the true literary critic, who is usually a person too wise to attempt to direct the stream of literature. But Mrs. Montagu was not content to let that stream flow as it would. She must bring comedies to the attention of Garrick[396] and suggest subjects to Hannah More[397] and Mrs. Carter;[398] she must guide Potter and encourage Beattie. In the pride of her power she even attempted the delicate task of influencing the elections to the Literary Club; and it would appear that, escaping the detection of Johnson, she succeeded in her aim, for her candidate, who was no other than Mr. Vesey, was chosen. But when she aspired to reverse the estimate of the greatest living critic and substitute the indulgent opinion of a personal friend, it is not surprising that Johnson should somewhat sharply have reminded her and her coterie of what their opinion was really worth. Few to-day will be found to regret that the lady’s view did not prevail.
At one point Mrs. Montagu’s relations with her protégés come dangerously near to farce comedy. Like all the bluestockings, she was one of the believers in the genius of Ann Yearsley, the poetical milk-woman of Bristol, who was regarded for a time as a female Chatterton. It was part of the work of bluestockings to discover genius. They had discovered Hannah More; they had discovered Beattie and Mrs. Chapone; if they had not discovered Fanny Burney they had at least ferreted her out of the obscurity in which she wished to remain. But none of their literary finds seemed to them so bright with promise as the marvellous woman who sold milk from door to door in the unpoetical town of Bristol. It was Miss More who found her, and who, with Mrs. Montagu, advertised her with an ardour which does more credit to the quickness of their sympathies than to the quickness of their wits.
In 1783 Miss More discovered that Ann Yearsley, the milk-woman who called daily at her house in Bristol for kitchen-refuse with which to feed her pig, was accustomed to employ her leisure moments in the composition of verses. She at once took the woman in charge, taught her spelling, and the simplest rules of rhetoric, and after a lapse of some months felt that her pupil had made such progress that she might safely submit her verses to bluestocking judgment. The enthusiasm with which Mrs. Montagu and her friends received them is significant at once of their eagerness to assist the development of poetry and of their unfitness for the task. Mrs. Montagu had not believed in Woodhouse, the poetical shoemaker, but a female Chatterton had more appeal. She wrote to Miss More,
‘Let me come to the wondrous story of the milk-woman. Indeed she is one of the nature’s miracles. What force of imagination! what harmony of numbers! In Pagan times one could have supposed Apollo had fallen in love with her rosy cheek, snatched her to the top of Mt. Parnassus, given her a glass of his best helicon, and ordered the nine muses to attend her call.’
This hypothesis being unsuitable to a Christian age, Mrs. Montagu suggests that the Scriptures, the Psalms, and the Book of Job in particular, may have taught the artless numbers to flow; whereupon she herself indulges in a flight:
Avaunt! grammarians; stand away! logicians; far, far away all heathen ethics and mythology, geometry and algebra, and make room for the Bible and Milton when a poet is to be made. The proud philosopher ends far short of what has been revealed to the simple in our religion. Wonder not, therefore, if our humble dame rises above Pindar or steps beyond Æschylus.[399]