“Lord Lyttelton’s History is not yet ready to appear; the work goes on slowly, as the writer is scrupulously exact in following truth. His delicacy in regard to characters, his candour in regard to opinions, his precision in facts, would entitle him to the best palm history can claim, if he had not added to these virtues of History (if I may call them so) the highest ornaments of style, and a most peculiar grace of order and method.... I shall send you a treatise on the ‘Sublime and Beautiful,’[243] by Mr. Burke, a friend of mine. I do not know that you will always subscribe to his system, but think you will find him an elegant and ingenious writer. He is far from the pert pedantry and assuming ignorance of modern witlings; but in conversation and writing an ingenious and ingenuous man, modest and delicate, and on great and serious subjects full of that respect and veneration which a good mind and a great one is sure to feel, while fools mock behind the altar, at which wise men kneel and pay mysterious reverence.”
[242] Lettre à d’Alembert (Sur les Spectacles), Amsterdam 1758; translated into English in 1759.
[243] First published in 1757.
KITTY FISHER
Soon after this letter, Mrs. Carter paid her first visit to Mrs. Montagu in Hill Street. Mrs. Carter had been much troubled by the severe illness of Miss Talbot, her bosom friend, and of Archbishop Secker, with whom the Talbots lived. Mrs. Montagu, writing to condole about this, mentions that Lord Waldegrave[244] was going to marry the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, and she continues—
“Miss Kitty Fisher modestly asked Earl Pembroke[245] to make her a Countess; his family love forms, so perhaps the fair one thought he would approve the legal form of cohabitation; but he hesitated, and so the agreement is made for life, a £1000 per annum, and a £1000 for present decorations.”
[244] 2nd Earl Waldegrave, married Maria, daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, on May 15, 1759. She survived him, and married in 1766 the Duke of Gloucester, brother to George III.
[245] Henry, 29th Earl of Pembroke, born 1734, died 1794.
Mr. Montagu had now returned to his wife, having bought another portion of the Denton estate from Mr. Archdeacon, his cousin. He made a codicil to his previous will of 1752, leaving his wife the whole property, as well as all he possessed besides. The codicil was witnessed by Ben Stillingfleet, William Archdeacon, and Samuel Torriano, on April 12, 1759.
