“Fairest and best! hail Montagu Minerva! Smile on my labours. Say that my rich freightage Amply deserved the Price and Pains it cost. So that the Muses thy companions dear, The Graces and the Virtues all approve My bold Emprise: And end at once and recompense my toil.” [315] James Stuart, born 1713, died 1788; author of “Antiquities of Athens.” [Page heading: VOLTAIRE’S TANCRED] Lord Bath writes March 4, 1761-- “MADAM, “I am sorry that I cannot wait on you this evening, being engaged to go to Lady Strafford’s,[316] and afterwards to Lady Darlington’s[317] to play at cards; but on Saturday I will have the honour to call on you and stay the evening with you, if you are not otherwise engaged, and your feverish disorder will allow you to come down stairs. I have sent for your amusement Voltaire’s Tancred, which has many fine lines in it, but the speeches are too long, as they generally are in French Plays. When I have the honour of waiting on you I will bring with me Emin’s letter. “I am, Madᵐᵉ, “Yours most truly, “B.” [316] Lady Strafford, Anne, second daughter of the 2nd Duke of Argyll. [317] Lady Darlington was a cousin of Lord Bath’s; her mother was a Pulteney. [Page heading: MACPHERSON’S “FINGAL”] To this Mrs. Montagu replies-- “MY LORD, “I return the Tragedy with many thanks. The character your Lordship gave of it kept up my hopes and my spirits through the long tedious speeches with which it opens, and upon the whole it appears to me to be one of the best of Voltaire’s Tragedies, as it is, what few of his are, interesting. Pompous declamation season’d with Moral reflections is surely far from the perfection of dramatick writing, tho’ in a nation too much polish’d and refin’d, it is prefer’d to the natural sallies of passion in our Shakespear, as fops love essences better than the flowers from whence they are extracted. I find in this Tragedy many petty larcenies from Corneille. The character of Aménaide is in part an imitation of the Sister of Horatius, but the Roman name supports the _fierté_ of her character, born in any other city I should call her a termagant, there I consider her as a She Roman, the female of the Lion. The fair Amenaide is too much an _esprit fort_ in regard to her duties to please me. She does not follow Virtue as by law establish’d, but despises forms and follows sentiment, a dangerous guide. Design’d by Nature to act but a second part, it is a woman’s duty to obey rules, she is not to make or redress them. I must confess that Aménaide is noble and heroick, and a proper mistress for a Knight Errant, whose motto is ‘l’amour et l’honneur.’ I have seen many poems form’d on the manners of Chivalry, but I never saw them before in Drama. They admit of the bombast in honour and love, which the French and Spanish Theater affect, and will furnish those brilliant sentiments they so much admire, but which indeed come