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(1769) Mrs. Montagu appears as a literary critic. She felt offended at Voltaire's disparagement of the great English author and also at the Frenchman's haughty arrogance. The Essay was favourably criticised in the _Critical Review_, and Cowper praised it in a letter to Lady Hesketh in the following words:
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I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment.... The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it fully justify not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents or shall be paid hereafter. But Johnson spoke scornfully of it. He said he had
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but had to grant afterwards that it was conclusive against Voltaire. It procured Mrs. Montagu a great many friends in France, where such wit as hers was sure to find full appreciation. When, seven years later, she visited Paris, Voltaire wrote another furious article against Shakespeare, which was read at the Académie in her presence.
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I think Madam, said one of the members when the reading was over,
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Mrs. Montagu shrugged her shoulders.
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I, Sir! Not at all! I am not one of M. Voltaire's friends!
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were dedicated to Mrs. Montagu. She was plain and uninteresting, and when the romance of her life had taken an untimely ending, it is to be feared her conversation became too much like sermonizing to suit vivacious young ladies like Fanny Burney, who thought her assemblies
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. But whatever she wrote bears the stamp of sincerity. She was evidently deeply concerned about the moral welfare of the niece she addressed in her Letters--the example set by Mme de Sévigné and imitated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had found followers--and she honestly tried to reconcile what was noble and proper in her eyes with the demands of convention. Above all she tried to inculcate that sense of responsibility for our actions which she held to be the basis of true Christianity. All our strivings should have the same purpose; that of bringing us nearer to God. Her niece is told to render herself more useful and pleasing to her fellow-creatures (a concession to prevailing opinions),
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. This last addition completely subverts the meaning of what precedes. Without it, the sense would be:
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Please others and you will please your own vanity, which now becomes:
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Please others and try to make them happy, and you will please God.