In 1769 Mrs. Montagu published, anonymously, her “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare.” This work, once widely famous, may still be read with pleasure. It was written in reply to Voltaire’s grossly indecent attack on our national poet. Some previous allusion which he had made to Shakespeare, to show his own learning, had directed the notice of French readers to a new dramatic literature which soon won their admiration. Voltaire’s jealousy induced him to denounce what he had before extolled, and he did this in the spirit of the tiger and the monkey—the component elements, according to his own mendacious saying, of all Frenchmen. He had no deep knowledge of the subject he affected to criticise, and was not made of the stuff that could lead him to feel sympathy with the lofty sentiments, or to be stirred by the searching wit of the greatest of dramatic poets. Voltaire could no more appreciate Shakespeare than he could estimate the divine character of Joan of Arc. If Joan’s own countrymen betrayed her, Voltaire stands foremost among Frenchmen as the beastly polluter of her spotless reputation.
Mrs. Montagu makes the following playful allusion to her authorship, in a letter to Lord Lyttelton, December, 1769: “I am sorry to tell you that a friend of yours is no longer a concealed scribbler. I had better have employed the town crier to proclaim me an author; but, being whispered, it has circulated with incredible swiftness. I hear Mr. Andrew Stone is very indulgent to my performance, which much flatters my vanity. Mr. Melmoth, at Bath, flatters me; but I am most flattered that a brother writer says the book would be very well if it had not too much wit. I thought there had been no wit at all in it; and I am as much pleased as M. Jourdain was when his preceptor told him he spoke prose. If my wit hurts anybody or anything, it is chance-medley—no premeditated malice; neither art nor part has my will therein. I don’t love wit: it is a poor, paltry thing, and fit only for a Merry Andrew.
“I look very innocent when I am attacked about the essay, and say, ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ I shall set about a new edition as soon as your lordship comes to town; for the first thousand is in great part sold, tho’ the booksellers have done me all the prejudice in their power.” The new edition was even more successful than the first.
Mrs. Montagu’s defence may appear a little too apologetic now; but it is marked by good taste, by evidences of deep thought, by flashes of wit, and by the grasp she has, firmly and gracefully, on her subject. She deals with dramatic poetry and the historical drama, examines the first and second parts of “Henry IV.,” treats of the preternatural beings of Shakespeare, and ends by a comparison of “Cinna” and “Julius Cæsar.” If any may differ with her in respect to Corneille, whose third act of “Cinna” is worthy of the great French dramatic poet, no reader will hesitate to praise the earnestness and delicacy with which this Lady of the Last Century has executed her noble task.
A French translation appeared in Paris in 1777—the year before Voltaire died. In England, six editions of the essay were published, the last in 1810. In 1827, it had the honour of being noticed with high praise, by M. Villemain, in his “Nouveaux Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires;” and in 1840, an edition in Italian was published in Florence.
Few English readers had read Voltaire so thoughtfully as Mrs. Montagu, and perhaps none reflected more on what they read than she did, or gave more graceful expression to consequent judgment. One side of Voltaire’s character she described (while the witty Frenchman was preparing his attack on Shakespeare) to Lord Kames.
“Voltaire sent a tragedy to Paris, which he said was composed in ten days. The players sent it back to him to correct. At threescore and ten one should not think his wit would outrun his judgment; but he seems to begin a second infancy in wit and philosophy,—a dangerous thing to one who has such an antipathy to leading-strings.” It was Voltaire’s self-praise that offended Mrs. Montagu as much as his offensive condescension to, and disparagement of, Shakespeare. When she was told that Voltaire had said boastingly: “C’est moi qui autrefois parlai le premier de ce Shakespeare. C’est moi qui le premier montrai aux Français quelques perles que j’avais trouvé dans son fumier.” “Ah!” replied Mrs. Montagu, with great readiness, “C’est un fumier qui a fertilisé une terre bien ingrate.” French fashionable circles, which loved wit and cared not a jot who suffered by it, received and repeated the saying of the accomplished English lady as if it had been ten times more brilliant than it was in reality.
Mrs. Montagu’s defence of Shakespeare was not too tenderly treated by her own friends. All the frankness of friendship was cheerfully given to it. The plain-spoken Dowager Countess Gower thus wrote soon after the appearance of the Vindication:
1769.—“Fortune has blest this forest with the geniuses of the age; Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Dunbar, etc., etc., and Lord Lyttelton are at Sunning Wells, and sport sentiment from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve. I molest ’em not; contenting myself in my rustic simplicity. ’Tis a stupidity that may be felt, I don’t doubt, but not by me. Mrs. Montagu has commenced author, in vindication of Shakespeare, who wants none; therefore her performance must be deemed a work of supererogation. Some commend it. I’ll have it, because I can throw it aside when I’m tired.” Johnson treated it with greater brutality. He had once compared Mrs. Montagu with Queen Elizabeth, and had recognized in the former the greater qualifications. Now, he denounced the essay when he had only looked into it. He had taken up an end of the web, and finding packthread, thought it useless, as he said, to go further in search of embroidery. Reynolds thought it did her honour, which Johnson allowed, but he spoiled the admission by asserting that it would do honour to no one else. Garrick said she had pointed out Voltaire’s blunders; to which Johnson replied, that it wasn’t worth while, and that there was no merit in the way of doing it. Subsequently, he declared: “Neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale could get through the book!”—a declaration which was unfounded, as far as Mrs. Thrale was concerned; for she protested that she had read it with pleasure. The great man, in short, talked nonsense, but dressed it in fine words. “There was no real criticism in it,” he said, “showing the beauty of thought, as formed in the workings of the human heart.” Mrs. Montagu did not feel called on to exhibit any such beauty or any such superstructure. She exposed the blundering arrogance of Voltaire, who first praised Shakespeare, for the annoyance of his own countrymen, and then, finding the French inclined to accept the praise, aspersed brutally the poet whom he had pillaged without mercy.
Johnson thought little of Garrick, probably because Garrick approved the object of Mrs. Montagu’s Shakespearian essay, and because the lady gave very high praise to Garrick as an actor. Johnson thought it was fit that she should say much, and that he should say nothing, in Garrick’s praise. Accomplished Bruin, however, said much to the great player’s disparagement. He maintained that Garrick had been overpaid for what he had done for Shakespeare. “Sir, he has not made Shakespeare better known. He cannot illustrate Shakespeare!” When Johnson afterward wrote to Mrs. Thrale, that speaking of “Shakespeare and Nature” rightly brought Mrs. Montagu into his mind, he is supposed to be inconsistent, when he was, it may be, only satirical. He certainly uttered a judgment on the essay, which is not to be gainsaid, when he maintained, according to Mr. Seward, that the work was “ad hominem, conclusive against Voltaire,” and that “she had done, sir, what she intended to do.”