"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was also greatly to blame in that quarrel, _not_ for having rejected, but for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task--though she should have remembered her own line, '_He comes too near, that comes to be denied._' I admire her so much--her beauty, her talents--that I should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name of _Mary_, that as Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog _Harvey_, I should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species 'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate _Epictetus_, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus. The lines, "'And when the long hours of the public are past, And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last, May every fond pleasure that moment endear.' Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd, He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud, Till,' &c. &c. There, Mr. Bowles!--what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too? Is not her '_champaigne and chicken_' worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza contains the '_purée_' of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:--I mean the _practical_ philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man. But after all, would not some of us have been as great fools as Pope? For my part, I wonder that, with his quick feelings, her coquetry, and his disappointment, he did no more,--instead of writing some lines, which are to be condemned if false, and regretted if true." * * * * * LETTER 424. TO MR. HOPPNER. "Ravenna, May 11. 1821. "If I had but known your notion about Switzerland before, I should have adopted it at once. As it is, I shall let the child remain in her convent, where she seems healthy and happy, for the present; but I shall feel much obliged if you will _enquire_, when you are in the cantons, about the usual and better modes of education there for females, and let me know the result of your opinions. It is some consolation that both Mr. and Mrs. Shelley have written to approve entirely my placing the child with the nuns for the present. I can refer to my whole conduct, as having neither spared care, kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say what they please, I must content myself with not deserving (in this instance) that they should speak ill.