In 1769, the critical state of public affairs drew from Mrs. Montagu the following reflection: “I hope I shall see all my friends safe and well at my return to town; but, indeed, a wicked mob and a foolish ministry may produce strange events. It was better in old times, when the ministry was wicked and the mob foolish.... Ministers, however wicked, do not pull down houses, nor ignorant mobs pull down government. A mob that can read and a ministry that cannot think are sadly matched.” In truth, however, Mrs. Montagu was engaged during this year on a work which was not only praiseworthy for the motive which induced her to undertake it, but honourable to her for its execution, and it may almost be added, glorious to her personally in its results. In 1769 Mrs. Montagu published, anonymously, her “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare.” This work, once widely famous, may still be read with pleasure. It was written in reply to Voltaire’s grossly indecent attack on our national poet. Some previous allusion which he had made to Shakespeare, to show his own learning, had directed the notice of French readers to a new dramatic literature which soon won their admiration. Voltaire’s jealousy induced him to denounce what he had before extolled, and he did this in the spirit of the tiger and the monkey—the component elements, according to his own mendacious saying, of all Frenchmen. He had no deep knowledge of the subject he affected to criticise, and was not made of the stuff that could lead him to feel sympathy with the lofty sentiments, or to be stirred by the searching wit of the greatest of dramatic poets. Voltaire could no more appreciate Shakespeare than he could estimate the divine character of Joan of Arc. If Joan’s own countrymen betrayed her, Voltaire stands foremost among Frenchmen as the beastly polluter of her spotless reputation. Mrs. Montagu makes the following playful allusion to her authorship, in a letter to Lord Lyttelton, December, 1769: “I am sorry to tell you that a friend of yours is no longer a concealed scribbler. I had better have employed the town crier to proclaim me an author; but, being whispered, it has circulated with incredible swiftness. I hear Mr. Andrew Stone is very indulgent to my performance, which much flatters my vanity. Mr. Melmoth, at Bath, flatters me; but I am most flattered that a brother writer says the book would be very well if it had not too much wit. I thought there had been no wit at all in it; and I am as much pleased as M. Jourdain was when his preceptor told him he spoke prose. If my wit hurts anybody or anything, it is chance-medley—no premeditated malice; neither art nor part has my will therein. I don’t love wit: it is a poor, paltry thing, and fit only for a Merry Andrew.