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 MONTAGU

MONTAIGNE

1798. In 1806 he was appointed a Com missioner in Bankruptcy, and he secured very material reforms in the bankruptcy court. He became K.C. in 1835, and from 1836 to 1846 he was Accountant-General in Bankruptcy. The liberal ideas of the time appealed to Montagu, and he worked in various reform movements, notably in a society, which he founded, for abolishing the death penalty. He edited the works of Bacon (16 vols., 1825-37), and wrote a number of volumes on law and philo sophy. Harriet Martineau says in her Autobiography (i, 402) : &quot; Before his death he distinctly declared in a message to me his approbation of the avowal which his friend Mr. Atkinson and I had made of opinions like his own.&quot; These opinions (in Letters on the Laws of Man s Social Nature and Development, 1851) were Agnos tic. D. Nov. 27, 1851.

MONTAGU, Edward, first Earl of Sandwich, admiral. B. July 27, 1625. He fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and was a friend of Crom well. In 1654 he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, and two years later he was made conjoint- general at sea with Blake. Montagu accepted King Charles II, and he was created Knight of the Garter, Viscount Hinchinbroke, Earl of Sandwich, and Master of Trinity House. He continued in command of the Fleet, and died in action on his ship. Pepys, the Diarist, a pious Christian, was the Earl s secretary, and he tells us that he was &quot;very indif ferent in all matters of religion &quot; (Diary, Oct. 7, 1660). The phrase is a very temperate expression of the Earl s views and actions, as Pepys constantly describes them. &quot; I found him to be a perfect sceptic,&quot; he says elsewhere (Oct. 22, 1660). He gives us a piquant picture of the Admiral laboriously composing an anthem for the King s Chapel, and cursing volubly as he composed it. D. May 28, 1672.

MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley,

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writer. B. May, 1689. She was so bright a child that her father, the Earl of King ston, had her elected to the Kit-Kat Club before she was eight years old. Her intel lectual promise fully developed, and in her twentieth year she translated Epictetus from the Latin. In 1712 she married Edward Wortley Montagu, grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich, and he seems to have been not less liberal than his grand father and his wife. Lady Mary s house was one of the most brilliant centres of London wit and culture. Pope (until she had a famous quarrel with him), Lord Hervey, and other Deists met there. She was one of the most cultivated and capable women of the century, and is still well known as a letter-writer. Her correspon dence is full of Eationalistic passages. &quot; Priests can lie, and the mob believe, all over the world,&quot; she says (Letters, 1906 ed., p. 88). Writing to a sceptical French abbe (p. 108), she says that, like him, she &quot; condemns the quackery of all the Churches.&quot; She had a &quot; firm belief in the Author of Nature &quot; and a disdain of &quot; creeds and theological whimsies.&quot; D. Aug. 21, 1762.

MONTAIGNE, Michel Eyquem de,

French essayist. B. Feb. 28, 1533. He studied so assiduously under his father that he spoke Latin fluently, and had a fair knowledge of Greek, at the age of six. His school-course, at the College de Guyenne, was completed at the age of thirteen, and he took up the study of law. In 1555 he succeeded his father as coun cillor of the Bordeaux court, and, after his resignation in 1570, he began to write the essays which have given him an immortal name. Montaigne had previously published only a translation of Eaymond of Sebonde s Theologie naturelle (1569), and Charles X made him a Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael and a gentleman of his court. The first two volumes of his Essays were published in 1580, and he then quitted France for Germany and Italy, in disgust at the religious war and its atrocities. At 522