English Lands Letters and Kings Author:Donald G. Mitchell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: lines, and great imaginative range. But his was an imagination not chastened by a severe taste or held in check by the discretions of an elevated and cultured ju... more »dgment. Upon the whole, I have more respect for the memory of Dr. Watts, than for the memory of Dr. Young. Lady Wortley Montagu, It is a lady that I next introduce ; a very much admired lady in her day; and much admired by many even now. She was correspondent at one time of Dr. Young, as well as of Pope, Steele, and Swift (who was one of the few men she feared). She knew and greatly admired Congreve, had free entree to the palace in time of George I., could and did translate Epictetus before she was turned of twenty, and wrote letters to her daughter, Lady Bute, that were long held up to young ladies as patterns of epistolary work : of course it is Lady Mary Montagu, of whom I speak. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, b. 1690 (or 1689 ?); d. 1762. Works (8 vola.), edited by her great grandson, Lord Wharnoliffe : Later edition (1861), with life by Moy Thomas. 0 She was born at Thoresby Park, a little northward of Sherwood Forest in Nottingham; was the petted daughter of the Earl of Kingston, and he introduced her (as the story runs) when only eight years old to that famous Kit-Kat Club, which held its summer sessions out by Hamp- stead Heath; and the applause that greeted her beauty and sprightliness there, very likely fastened upon her that greed for public triumphs which clung to her all her life. She presided at her father's table, was taught in Greek, Latin, French, Italian; was full of accomplishments, and at twenty-one fell in with Mr. Montagu, similarly accomplished, whom she had a half mind to marry. Her father, however, had other views, against which the self-willed young lady rebelled ; she had, however, h...« less