which her literary fame chiefly rests, and in which she displays the epistolary talents of a female Horace Walpole. They were not published until after her death, but manuscript copies of them were freely circulated in her lifetime, and were read with avidity. More important still, during her residence in Turkey Lady Mary had become cognizant of the practice and beneficial effects of inoculation for the small-pox, long resorted to in the East. The small-pox was a disease which had carried off her only brother, and which had nearly scarred herself for life. The mitigation of it promised by inoculation she introduced into England on her return from Turkey, and after a battle of several years, in which she was opposed by the faculty and the public—receiving, however the support of the clever princess of Wales, subsequently Queen Caroline—she triumphed, and thus paved the way for the adoption of Jenner's great discovery. Not long after her return she settled at Twickenham, in the neighbourhood of Pope, with whom, nevertheless, her intimacy was not great, or at least not long continued. Political causes might have something to do with this, for the comparatively neutral Pope of her early acquaintance turned out a trenchant anti-whig. Whatever was the cause, from a friend Pope became a foe. In his and Swift's miscellany the attack was begun, continued in the Dunciad, and considered to be consummated in the character drawn of Sappho in the first satire of the second book of the Imitations of Horace, and which, in spite of the author's disclaimers, the world connected with Lady Mary. She was not long in retaliating, it is supposed with the aid of Lord Hervey (q.v.), in verse, and the feud became one of the celebrated quarrels of English literary history. It had the effect, aggravated by Horace Walpole's spiteful pen, of damaging Lady Mary's character to an extent quite unwarranted by facts. In 1737, for reasons which will probably never be known, she left her husband, and spent most of her remaining years on the continent. They corresponded, however, and on terms which forbid the supposition that conjugal infidelity was the cause of their separation. Lady Mary's residence was chiefly at Lovero, in the Venetian States, where she corresponded with her friends at home, read, worked, gardened, and farmed, the chief drawback to her happiness being the profligacy and persecution of her son Edward. Her husband she never saw after her departure from England. She was at Venice when, in 1761, she received the news of the death of Mr. Wortley Montagu, and at the instance of her daughter, who had married the earl of Bute, the famous minister of George III., she returned to England. Metropolitan curiosity was keenly excited by her return, but she did not long survive to gratify it, dying in her seventy-fourth year in London, on the 21st of August, 1762. Of her letters she left two copies, one chiefly autograph, the other not. The autograph copy, during her last return to England, she presented to the Rev. Mr. Sowden, minister of Rotterdam; the other she placed in the hands of Mr. Molesworth. Both copies were purchased by Lady Bute after the death of Lady Mary; but an edition of them in three volumes, nevertheless, was published by the infamous Captain Cleland in 1763. This is not, it appears, a transcript, as was once supposed, of the Sowden copy. Cleland added a fourth volume in 1767, which the latest editor of Lady Mary's letters considers to be a forgery. Mr. Dallaway published in 1803 a collection of Lady Mary's works, "by permission, from her genuine papers," of which a second edition appeared in 1817. In 1836 Lord Wharncliffe, Lady Mary's great-grandson, published the Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with a most lively and interesting introduction of biographical anecdotes by her grand-daughter. Lady Louisa Stewart. Lord Wharncliffe's work readied a second edition in 1837, and a third in 1861. This last was enriched by additions and corrections derived from the original manuscripts, illustrative notes, and a new memoir, by Mr. W. Moy Thomas, who has elucidated, more or less satisfactorily. Lady Mary's quarrel with Pope, and has put lance in rest for the purity of her character as a woman and a wife. The chief poetical work of Lady Mary is her "Town Eclogues," 1716, which display considerable talent for satire of the Popian school. Mr. Thomas has republished her and Lord Hervey's retaliatory poem on Pope, excluded on account of its plain-spokenness, from previous similar editions.—F. E.
MONTAGUE, Richard. See Mountagu.
MONTAIGNE, Michel de, author of the celebrated "Essays," was born at the Château de Montaigne, as he himself tells us, "betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, the last of February, 1533." The chateau, which is still standing and corresponds exactly to the minute and well-known description of it in the "Essays," is situated in the valley of the Didoire and district of Perigord—Perigord forming in Montaigne's time one of the six divisions of the large province created by the English under the name of Guyenne. The family name was Eyquem; but from the circumstance that their dwelling-place crowned an eminence, they were called Eyquems of the Mountain, or simply Seigneurs de Montaigne; and Michel seems never to have used any but the latter surname. That Montaigne's father sold herrings, as Scaliger is reported to have said, appears, for aught that the most careful research has brought to light, to be nothing but a malicious he; though it is probable that the Eyquems had earned their rights as burgesses of Bordeaux by trade of some kind, a circumstance, however, which does not disprove the nobility of the family. Pierre Eyquem, whose third bin was Michel de Montaigne, served in his youth in the Italian wars. On his return, having brought with him a fondness for learning and a great admiration of learned men, he married and settled on the family estates. He was a man of a grave and vigorous complexion; in this respect the very opposite of his illustrious son, though like him in being much of a humorist—at least a humorist of that kind of which the cherishing and carrying out of crotchets and whimsies forms the most marked characteristic. One of his most fondly indulged humours or crotchets—caught probably from the scholars and professors who used frequently to call at the Château de Montaigne—related to education, a subject which was at that time widely discussed in France; and he determined to put it to the test in the instance of his little son Michel. He wanted to bring him up with humble and popular notions. His godfather and godmother were accordingly chosen from among the neighbouring peasantry; and he was afterwards sent to nurse to a poor woman belonging to one of the villages on his father's estates. Pierre thought that thus "he should be more holden to regard them who extended their arms to him, than those who turned their backs upon him." But in nothing was the education of Michel to be like that of other boys. He was wakened in the morning with music, lest the tender brain of childhood should be injured by a more sudden process. As soon, too, as he began to lisp he was set to learn his humanities; but this in a way as remarkable for its novelty as its suitableness to his childish capacity. A learned German was sent for beyond the Rhine, who, being utterly ignorant of French, was to act as his tutor and speak with him only in Latin. The whole household, moreover, from Madame his mother down to the turnspit, were forbidden to converse within hearing of the child in his native tongue. Whenever they found their small stock of Latin fail, they were then bound to silence. In this way, to the annoyance, no doubt, of every one but his father, passed the first six years of Michel's life. The experiment had lasted so long when the fervour of the experimenter began to abate; and instead of learning everything "in all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint," the young prodigy had henceforward to take his chance and lot among the ordinary ways of ordinary boys.
Towards the close of 1539 he was sent, while yet only six years old, to the college of Guyenne at Bordeaux—an institution which, though not long founded, enjoyed the best reputation of any in France. Here he remained about six years, receiving instruction, among others, from no less a person than George Buchanan. After leaving college he proceeded to the study of law; but where or in what manner we have not the slightest information left us. Almost all we know of the matter is contained in his own words, that when very young he was plunged over head and ears in law. As, however, his father was a man of great importance in the capital of Guyenne, and had held several of the highest municipal offices, it is probable that he designed his third son for the magistracy, and that Michel's legal studies looked forward to the red robe of conseiller. The fact is, at any rate, that in 1554 he succeeded his father as member of a cour des aides newly instituted by the king for the purpose of helping to replenish his coffers; and when that court was three years afterwards incorporated with the parliament of Bordeaux he became a member of the latter, and continued to wear the conseiller's robe for thirteen years.
Montaigne had before this visited Paris and been introduced at court, where he was in considerable favour. Henry II., we are told, relished his conversation and appointed him gentleman of the king's bedchamber. The gay capital, indeed, continued for several years to draw him occasionally from his home at
