Neither Elizabeth Robinson nor Mrs. Montagu would be so commonplace as to say the moon shone, but “the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens.” She could readily detect and denounce this learned affectation, this sacrifice of the natural to the classical in others; and she said with truth of Hammond’s “Elegies,” “They please me much, but between you and me, they seem to me to have something of a foreign air. Had the poet read Scotch ballads oftener, and Ovid and Tibullus less, he had appeared a more natural writer and a more tender lover.” These terse sayings are well worth collecting. Here is one from a heap that will furnish a thousand “I own the conversation of a simpleton is a grievance, but there the disparity of a wise man and a fool often ends.” [Illustration: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu _Photogravure after an original miniature_] Here may be closed the illustrations of Mrs. Montagu’s life, drawn chiefly from her published letters. The following sketches of her own life, and of that by which she was surrounded, are taken from letters, with one or two exceptions, now for the first time printed. CHAPTER IV. The unpublished letters take up the glorious theme previous to the last incident named in the published correspondence. The earliest is from Mrs. Montagu’s sister, Mrs. Scott, to the wife of their brother, the Rev. W. Robinson, at Naples. The two sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah, loved each other with intense affection. The younger went long by the nickname of Pea, from her extraordinary likeness to her elder sister, who used, before Sarah’s unhappy marriage, to rally her on the obesity of her lovers and her cruelty in reducing them to consumptiveness and asses’ milk. _March 28, 1761._ Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Robinson, Naples.—“The Tories are in high spirits. The king has declared that, as they are possessed of the greatest part of the property of the kingdom, they ought to have a great share in the government, and accordingly many are taken into place. The king was asked what orders he would have given to the dockmen against the approaching election. His Majesty answered, ‘No orders at all.’ He would have them left to themselves. Lord Granville said, ‘That was leaving them to be directed by the First Lord of the Admiralty’ (Lord Anson). The king replied, ‘That was true; he had not considered that; they must, therefore, be told to vote for the Tories, to be sure.’ The late Speaker and the Parliament took a most tender farewell of each other. They thanked and he thanked, and then they re-thanked, and in short, never were people so thankful on both sides; and then they recommended him to the king, to do more than thank him; but he refused any reward. Only, his son, it is said, will have a pension of £2,000 per annum—a good, agreeable compliment, and yet what no one will disapprove.”