The greatest praise which the essay received was awarded to it by Cowper many years after it was published. Writing on May 27, 1788, to Lady Hesketh, Cowper said: “I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judgment. I am now reading and have reached the middle of her essay on the genius of Shakespeare—a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence. “The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it fully justify, not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the Bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them.” While honour was being showered on the writer of the essay, ill health, from which she suffered long and frequently, marred her triumph. Writing to Mrs. W. Robinson, from Hill Street, November the 19th, 1770, she says: “... I fell ill on my journey to Denton, or rather, indeed, began the journey indisposed, and only aggravated my complaints by travelling. Sickness and bad weather deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the beauties of Derbyshire. However, I got a sight of the stately Palace of Lord Scarsdale, where the arts of antient Greece and the delicate pomp of modern ages unite to make a most magnificent habitation. It is the best worth seeing of any house, I suppose, in England. But I know how it is that one receives but moderate pleasure in the works of art. There is a littleness in every work of man. The operations of nature are vast and noble, and I found much greater pleasure in the contemplation of Lord Breadalbane’s mountains, rocks, and lakes than in all the efforts of human art at Lord Scarsdale’s.”