The letters of Mrs. Montagu have been compared with those of her kinswoman by marriage, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to the disadvantage of the latter. Of the two, Lady Mary is the livelier and wittier on paper, but her writings are disfigured by a coarseness which, with the other’s taste, she might have avoided. Mrs. Montagu is seen at her best when addressing intimate friends. Her style is then easy and natural, and the good things that drop from her pen are worth picking up; but it is another affair when she writes to a stranger, especially one whom she intends to dazzle with her learning. She then drags in gods and goddesses to adorn her pages, uses metaphor to straining, and moralises at wearisome length. The Montagus, though living in perfect harmony, afforded each other little companionship. When at Sandleford, their favorite residence near Newbury, in Berkshire, Mr. Montagu was all day long shut up in his study. His wife was thrown on her own resources for amusement. With country neighbors often stupid, and oftener rough, she had nothing in common. It is just possible that she felt the winged fiend _Ennui_ hovering over her. Some remarks addressed to a correspondent on the necessity of occupation give that impression: “It is better to pass one’s life _à faire des riens, qu’ à rien faire_. Do but do something; the application to it will make it appear important, and the being the doer of it laudable, so that one is sure to be pleased one’s self. To please others is a task so difficult, one may never attain it, and perhaps not so necessary that one is obliged to attempt it.”