Manager.—Why, he has come round too much; but I can't engage him.
Mrs. F.—Then, sir, let me tell you, you'll never do.
(Exeunt Mrs. F. Master F. and Miss F.)
Manager.—Why, that's what everybody tells me. Here, Tom! don't let me be annoyed by any one else. I find there's no small difficulty in exercising one's own discretion in these matters. I may do much to improve the race both of authors and actors, if I think and judge for myself; but to render my efforts of any avail, the public must do so too. And when will they begin to do it?
(Curtain falls.)
A CRITICAL GOSSIP WITH
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
The character of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is about as little known to the generality of readers as the source of the Nile, or the precise position of the North Pole. She has taken her place in public estimation as a forward, witty, voluptuous woman of fashion, who flirted, if she did not intrigue, with Pope; who was initiated into all the mysteries of a Turkish harem, and who chronicled those mysteries with no very delicate hand:—who affected friendships, lampooned her associates, and wrote verses of single-entendre; who married rashly, loved unwisely, and led a life of ultra-friendship and long unexplained divorce. Such is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu supposed to be! so prone is biography to perpetuate the fleeting scandals of the day, to distort mystery or obscurity into indecorum or baseness, and to darken and discolour the stream of time with the filth that is vulgarly and maliciously thrown into it at its source. The period appears to have arrived at which Lady Mary's character has obtained the power of purifying itself. With many faults, constitutional as well as acquired, there can be no doubt that she was a lady of surpassing powers of mind, of extreme wit, an easy command of her own as well as of the learned languages, a surprising knowledge of the world even in her youth, a vivid poetical imagination, a heart full of foibles, but fuller of love for her own circle, and that of her friends; and, above all, an abundance of common sense, which regulated her affections, her actions, her reflections, and her style, so as to render her the most accomplished lady of her own, or of the subsequent age. We do not think we can do justice to this fascinating creature in a better way than by lounging through the three volumes which Lord Wharncliffe's ancestral love, literary ability, and elegant taste, have given to the world. We may gossip with this work as we might with her who originated it, stroll with her in her favourite gardens, listen to her verses, catch her agreeable anecdotes, receive her valuable observations on human nature, as though she were actually before us in her splendid and eternal nightgown, or in her Turkish dress, (so sweet in Lord Harrington's charming miniature) or in her domino at Venice, or in her lute-string, or in her English court-dress. Our gossip, however,—save as to the remarks we may, to use the phrase of the dramatist, utter aside to that vast pit, the public,—will very much resemble that between Macbeth and the armed head, at which the witches give their admonitory caution. That caution will not be lost upon us—for it will nearly be,—
"Hear her speak, and say thou nought."
The introduction to this interesting work is from the editor, and it is written with a Walpole felicity in its points, though we would rather have had it more continuous than anecdotical. Our purpose we have professed to be, to gossip with Lady Mary, and we therefore shall make but two extracts from the introduction,—the one because it is perhaps leaning to the unfeeling; the other, because it is indisputably the truth of feeling. Madame de Sevigné did not deserve the phrase which we have marked in italics in the following passage, and indeed Lady Mary, in one of her letters, announces herself as a successful rival of this very agreeable French letter-writer,—an announcement which ought to have cautioned an editor against depreciating the powers of one whom the edited had chosen to select as a rival.