THE "Letters of Lady Mary Montagu," like many another
literary classic, are constantly quoted and seldom read. Every
man is well aware that the correspondence of distinguished
persons in the eighteenth century should be found on his
library shelves, and that her letters are an important part of this
priceless collection. Yet they have only once been reprinted
in a popular form, and their characteristics are familiar to the
student alone.

It happens, however, that--besides presenting a vivid picture
of manners in a picturesque age--they contain a unique series
of impressions from foreign courts seldom visited and nowhere
else so intimately described. Lady Mary was the wife of
a popular ambassador and, wielding the charm of a strong
personality, was enabled to see and hear many things of which
the ordinary traveller, or resident abroad, knew--and knows--
little or nothing. Originally written, for the most part, to her
sisters, her daughter, or to very intimate friends, her Letters are
unusually detailed and frank. She was a keen observer, not
superior to the love of gossip, with a quick eye for the telling
features of a story or a situation, and an easy, effective style.
It appears, in fact, that much of the correspondence as we now
have it was deliberately prepared for publication; and the
consciously ingenuous comparison of her own Letters with those
of Madame Sévigné must have been retained, if not originally
inspired, to disarm the critic: "The last pleasure that fell in
my way was Madame Sévigné's letters; very pretty they are,
but I assert, without the least vanity, that mine will be full as
entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore, to put
none of them to the use of waste-paper." The flattering verdict
was evidently accepted by her contemporaries, and has never
been reversed.

In her own days, Lady Mary's Letters were valued chiefly
for their revelations of Turkish life; and these, in fact, must

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