From the gaieties of Tunbridge Mrs. Montagu went to the residence of a sage, Mr. Gilbert West. She found less pleasure among the sculpture and paintings of Wilton than under Gilbert West’s modest roof at Wickham, in whose master she saw “that miracle of the moral world, a Christian poet;” and in Mrs. West, something more than a tenth Muse or a fourth Grace. To conversations with West are attributed the deeper convictions of the truth of revealed religion which Mrs. Montagu entertained henceforward. She did not cease to be cheerful because on one point she was more serious. In a cottage which she hired near West’s house, she playfully offered to her lady visitors wholesome brown bread, sincerity, and red cow’s milk. With tastes that could find gratification wherever she might be, Mrs. Montagu was one of the happiest of women. Most happy, not when she was queen, or one of the queens, of society, but when she was among her books. She was an indefatigable reader. She reflected as deeply as she read carefully. The literature of the world was known to her, in the original text, or in translations, of which she would read three or four of the same work; and, if she had a preference, she would give an excellent reason for it. Her criticisms on the works she read are always admirable, whether she treats of a Thucydides in a French dress, of Cowley’s imperfections as an amatory poet, of Melmoth’s “Pliny’s Letters,” or of writers like Richardson, whose “Clarissa Harlowe” is analysed in one of the printed letters with a skill and insight that might be envied by the best writers of the times that have succeeded to her own. Fictitious and real personages, she dissects both with the hand of an operator who loves the work in which he excels. She is equally great when treating of the heroes of antiquity, or of the notorious Mrs. Pilkington, whose fie! fie! ways seem to warrant her slapping her with her fan; but whose talent, pleasant audacity, and suffering, soften Mrs. Montagu’s heart and lead her to gently kiss both cheeks of the erring Lætitia.