LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) By LEWIS MELVILLE _WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY AUBREY HAMMOND, AND SIXTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_ To EDITH AND JOHN CABOURN PREFACE Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has her niche in the history of medicine as having introduced inoculation from the Near East into England; but her principal fame is as a letter-writer. Of her gifts as a correspondent she was proud, and with reason. It was in all sincerity that in June, 1726, she wrote to her sister, Lady Mar: "The last pleasures that fell in my way was Madame Sévigné's letters: very pretty they are, but I assert, without the least vanity, that mine will be full as entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore, to put none of them to the use of waste paper." And again, later in the year, she said half-humorously to the same correspondent: "I writ to you some time ago a long letter, which I perceive never came to your hands: very provoking; it was certainly a _chef d'oeuvre_ of a letter, and worthy any of the Sévigné's or Grignan's, crammed with news." That Lady Mary's belief in herself was well founded no one has disputed. Even Horace Walpole, who detested her and made attacks on her whenever possible, said that "in most of her letters the wit and style are superior to any letters I have ever read but Madame de Sévigné's." A very pleasant tribute from one who had a goodly conceit of himself as a letter-writer. Walpole, as a correspondent, was perhaps more sarcastic and more witty; Cowper undoubtedly more tender and more gentle; but Lady Mary had qualities all her own. She had powers of observation and the gift of description, which qualities are especially to be remarked in the letters she wrote when abroad with her husband on his Mission to the Porte. She had an ironic wit which gave point to the many society scandals she narrated, a happy knack of gossip, and a style so easy as to make reading a pleasure.