Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/145

 Rh a story like this;—the lady's modesty, Sir William's tact, or the revelation it affords of infinite leisure. When we remember the relentless copiousness of Madame de Staël's books, we wonder if the amiable annotator lived long enough to finish his task.

In matters of morality, however, the female pen was held to be a bulwark of Great Britain. The ambition to prove that—albeit a woman—one may be on terms of literary intimacy with the seven deadly sins ("Je ne suis qu'un pauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne crois pas en Dieu plus que les autres") had not yet dawned upon the feminine horizon. The literary lady accepted with enthusiasm the limitations of her sex, and turned them to practical account; she laid with them the foundations of her fame. Mrs. Montagu, an astute woman of the world, recognized in what we should now call an enfeebling propriety her most valuable asset. It sanctified her attack upon Voltaire, it enabled her to snub Dr. Johnson, and it made her, in the opinion of her friends, the natural and worthy opponent of Lord Chesterfield. She was entreated to come to the rescue