Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/169

 literary salons of the London ladies attained their highest fame in the reign of the third George. A marked advance in the position of women was visible during the closing years of the eighteenth century. This was in the main due to the fact that parents had begun to think them capable of discharging other duties in life than those which were limited by household management, and that considerable improvements had consequently been made in their education. New ideas on their rights and their characters were in the air and Mary Wollstonecraft gave expression to them. Woman had shown that she could vie with man in the realms of fiction. She was beginning to excel in poetry and to gain applause in the description of travel or in the regions of critical essay.

The first and the best -known of these salons was that of Mrs. Montagu. A lady of great wealth and literary enthusiasm, her education had been guided by the knowledge and counsels of one of the chief classical scholars of England. She entertained the philosophers and fashionables of London for fifty years. Her home was at first in Hill Street, Mayfair, but afterwards she dwelt at Montagu House, the stately mansion at the north-west corner of Portman Square. Dr. Johnson was always a figure of suspicion at her gatherings and towards the close of his days the link which bound together her guests was undying hatred of the sage.

The parties of this great dame were rivalled by those of Mrs. Vesey, the wife of Johnson's Irish friend. She