Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she used to relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. ‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘I was a great admirer of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and that was one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six hours a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading nothing but novels and romances.’ She perused, however, some fiction also; for she possessed, till her death, the whole library of Mrs. Lennox’s _Female Quixote_, a ponderous series of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in her fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of ‘the beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy Doris, Celadon the faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, forming two columns.’ Of Mr. Wortley’s character it is not difficult, from the materials before us, to decipher the features; he was a slow man, with a taste for quick companions. Swift’s diary to Stella mentions an evening spent over a bottle of old wine with Mr. Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was a rigid Whig, and Swift’s transition to Toryism soon broke short that friendship. But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. With Steele likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to have written some papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_; and the second volume of the former is certainly dedicated to him in affectionate and respectful terms. Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials to high ability, Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. Every letter received by him from his wife during five-and-twenty years of absence, was found, at his death, carefully endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a _synopsis_ of its contents. ‘He represented,’ we are told, ‘at various times, Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, and appears to have been a member of that class who win respectful attention by sober and business-like qualities; and his name is constantly found in the drier and more formal part of the politics of the time.’ He answered to the description given more recently of a similar person: ‘Is not,’ it was asked, ‘Sir John —— a very methodical person?’ ‘Certainly he is,’ was the reply, ‘he files his invitations to dinner.’ The Wortley papers, according to the description of those who have inspected them, seem to contain the accumulations of similar documents during many years. He hoarded money, however, to more purpose, for he died one of the richest commoners in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived from him.