to show that he did not sink into English, but that he rose into it with complete spontaneity and unfailing judgment in all his more delicate, dignified and charming work, and that it is to his mastery of a most delicate, dignified and charming English that he mainly owes the unique place he occupies among poets.

And here, in strict reasonableness, I should bring this article to an end, but I wish to take advantage of my present opportunities to offer a word or two with regard to a characteristic of Burns's genius which has never seemed to me to have received its proper award from any of his critics. There are few people who are so deeply cleft as the Scotch. They are miserly in the extreme, and they are in the extreme open-handed and generous. They are douce and sober in the extreme and wildly hilarious in the extreme. They include the most tolerant and the most intolerant of men and women. Bigots of piety and economy of the most repelling type, harum-scarum jollificators of the most inviting, the unco' guid and the unco' careless, flourish amongst them side by side. Burns is the man who most piercingly and inclusively knows them all, and though there are not many who would dispute his knowledge, there are still fewer who have noticed how complete it is. "Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut" is not commonly regarded as an analysis of national character, yet I make bold to regard it as one of the keenest and subtlest pieces of work ever done in that direction. The drunken chorus which goes with that most rollicking of all songs of the over-convivial school is a playful but no less trenchant in

The Contemporary Review.

1 The observant inebriate is concerned with the moon in the fourth stanza of “Dr. Hornbook."

The rising moon began to glow'r,
The distant Cumnock Hills out owre:

dictment of the Caledonian Conscience.

We are na fou, we're nae that fou,
Just a wee drappie in our e'e.

We are not drunk. Flattest of falsehoods. We are most particularly drunk -Willie the brewer, and Rab and Allan the tasters; and the Caledonian Cameronian conscience is going to have a word with us. Very good. We will admit the impeachment, but with caution, as befits our nationality. "We're nae that fou." But even this qualified denial of a too-patent fact will not serve a conscience of the Caledonian Cameronian kind, and we are forced to that further admission of just the wee drappie in our e'e. An Englishman would never have thought of it, nor an Irishman, nor a Frenchman, nor any man of any other nationality on earth. Do I suppose, I imagine myself being asked, that Burns deliberately thought this out? Not for a moment. But it was with him as it has been with all natural singers: his genius carried him further than he actually knew paused to fancy. That he knew what he had done when he had done it, and that this was his own reading of the lines I have no faintest doubt whatever.

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ment of a personality can never become out of date. Lady Mary's "Letters" belong to a bygone world, but she herself will never cease to be u real woman to us; in fact, a modern of the moderns.

Critics, while they do abundant justice to the "masculinity" of Lady Mary's good sense, fail sometimes to appreciate the femininity of her temperament. She was that not altogether unheard-of character, an inconsistent woman; and when Nature wishes to form a finished specimen of that type, it must be admitted that she does her work well. Lady Mary was also eccentric to a marked degree, and the fact should not be overlooked that in the case of her sister, Lady Mar, this family trait took the form of downright madness. Spence, who met Mr. Wortley Montagu's wife in Rome during her exile, gives us the impression that this gifted, restless being made on an observant contemporary: "She is," he says, "one of the most shining characters in the world, but shines like a comet; she is all irregularity, and always wandering; the most wise, the most imprudent; loveliest, most disagreeable; best natured, cruellest woman in the world; all things by turns, and nothing long."

In

In this case the old cry of variable semper is not without justification. She was changeable with the changeableness of all those who have no central pivot upon which to turn their life's affections and life's work. Like many members of the adaptable sex, Lady Mary took her cue from her surroundings with marvellous quickness. Turkey she was all for Greek antiquities and the customs of the Turks. In London her head ran on nothing but scandal and amours. In her Italian exile she vaunted seclusion and retirement, and adopted the mild hobbies common among many who lead a solitary life. We recognize at least half

a dozen Lady Marys under one skin. There was the fighting Lady Mary, who protected her stricken sister from a treacherous and perhaps cruel husband and his infamous brother. There was the zealous reformer, who introduced the practice of inoculation in spite of the obstructions of an unintelligent medical profession. There was the Lady Mary who studied Latin in solitude, who at fifteen desired to enter a convent, who at twenty translated the austere Epictetus, who was valued by Mary Astell and Mr. Wortley; and there was the frivolous Society woman of the "Town Eclogues" and the letters to Lady Mar; the Lady Mary, of whom "gallant" stories were related, who in her letter to her sister declared frankly that "there are but three pretty men in England, and they are all in love with me at this present writing."

In short, there was in this great lady something of the intellectual recluse, something of the philanthropist and something-not to put too fine an edge upon the matter-of the common flirt. Miss Hannah More, according to that admirable and moral work entitled "Cœlebs in Search of a Wife," held that consistency was the true touchstone of excellence in the female character. But then Miss More appears to have understood the artistic temperament as little as Mr. Wortley Montagu.

Born in the year following the "glorious Revolution" of 1688, Mary, eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, received but little systematic educational training. Lord Kingston was proud enough of her lovely face, proud enough to propose her name as a toast to the Kit-Cat Club before she was eight years old, but for all we know he never valued his daughter's unusual mental powers a jot, even if he suspected their existence. He held, of course, with the average parent of

those days, that the whole duty of woman was to marry without question the husband of her father's choice, and he was long in forgiving his daughter because on this particular her views differed from his. Save on those occasions when it suited him to play the family tyrant he was far too fine a gentleman to concern himself particularly with the welfare of his motherless girls. He probably imag ined, in common with the rest of the world-if, indeed, he deigned to consider the subject at all-that his daughter was poring over romances in the library, when in truth for five or six hours daily the diligent young scholar was grappling with dictionary and grammar in her anxiety to master the Latin tongue. For in the long days of girlhood, when sorrow and joy chase one another across our mood as quickly as rain follows sunshine in spring weather, Mary Pierrepont had for companions her books and her dreams. Among the former, in addition to the Latin classics, were French romances, ponderous tomes of Scudéri and Calprenède, "Englished by persons of honor." And among the latter, which naturally all centred round her own small person, was that of founding and entering a convent. "It was," she wrote to her daughter in old age. "a favorite scheme of mine, when I was fifteen; and had I then been mistress of an independent fortune, I would certainly have executed it, and elected myself lady-abbess. There would you and your ten children have been lost forever."

There can be little doubt that this girlish plan was inspired by the writings of Mary Astell, that first and well-nigh forgotten champion of what are popularly known as "Woman's Rights," whose "Serious Proposal to Ladies by a Lover of her Sex" created such a stir in 1694. This proposal adVocated the advantage of retirement

to а nunnery, conducted on strict Church of England principles; where daily service was to be performed "after the Cathedral manner, in the most affecting and elevating way," but where the mental training-and on this point the would-be foundress was exceedingly strong-was to be as important as the moral and religious. The scheme attracted the notice of a certain great lady, probably the Princess Anne, who promised £10,000 towards the fund necessary for its realization. But Bishop Burnet, gaining the ear of the great lady, whispered "Popery," at which black word her benevolent intentions, like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpet, fell to the ground, and the project was perforce abandoned.

The writings of Mary Astell are full of criticism on the ordinary education -if the thing may be dignified by so high-sounding a name and the frivolous employments of her sex. Personal observation, no doubt, suggested similar ideas to her younger contemporary. It was the age of the apotheosis of feminine silliness. Addison and Pope, the two most representative literary men of the time, although they veil their contempt under a playful irony, clearly show us that they considered a female head, whether pretty or otherwise, the emptiest thing in the world. But like the great majority of their contemporaries they were content to have it so. In her letter to Bishop Burnet, which accompanied her translation of the Enchiridion of Epictetus, Lady Mary speaks bitterly of the prejudices which in her day shut out women from participation in intellectual training, and refers to the contempt and hostility which greeted every attempt of theirs to break these barriers down. "My sex," she says, "is usually forbid studies of this nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere, that we are sooner par

doned any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or good sense. We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are every way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree criminal to improve our reason, or fancy we have any. We are taught to place all our art in adorning our outward forms, and permitted without reproach to carry that custom even to extravagancy, while our minds are entirely neglected, and by disuse of reflections filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so long established and industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses, as if it were a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render them the most useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is hardly a character in the world more despicable, or more liable to universal ridicule, than that of a learned woman; those words imply, according to the received sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain and conceited creature."

But although Lady Mary owed to this friend, to whom she denounces in such strong language the frivolity of contemporary womanhood, some suggestions for her Epictetus, the honor of training so apt a pupil lies with a younger scholar. No doubt her devotion to the classics grew in ardor from the date of her first acquaintance with Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu. This gentleman, the grandson of Lord Sandwich, was certainly as accomplished and blameless and-to judge by his portraits as handsome a young Whig as ever guided the footsteps of a young and enthusiastic girl along the thorny path of learning. At their earli

est meeting, Lady Mary, then only fourteen years old, let fall a shrewd piece of criticism on a play to the delight and surprise of at least one member of her audience. He was led, either on that or some other occasion, to make inquiry into her Latin studies, and his first present, characteristically enough, took the form of a beautifullybound volume of Quintus Curtius, accompanied by some exceedingly complimentary verses in the style of the period.

There is no young girl but would be flattered at the notion of having for guide, philosopher, and friend a man several years her senior, well known in the world, and on terms of intimacy with all the foremost men of letters of the day. For Mr. Wortley, it appears, could boast of the friendship of Steele and Addison, and the acquaintance of Swift, Garth, and Congreve. What wonder was it if the delighted Lady Mary assiduously cultivated the friendship of her director's sister, Anne Wortley, to whom she wrote careful letters, clearly not intended for Mistress Anne's sole gratification, and from whom she received admirable replies, which, though copied in the handwriting of that admirable lady, were in truth the composition of her brother? By these means Mr. Wortley was enabled not only to check his pupil's errors in Latin, but also to warn her against moral defects, such as inconstancy; and to call attention to specific actions arising from the defect aforesaid, or in precise language to protest against the encouragement given to another admir

er.

Knowing what we do of Lady Mary's disposition, it would be rash to assert that Mr. Wortley's suspicions were groundless, though the young lady rebutted the charge with vigor. "To be capable," she says indignantly, "of preferring the despicable wretch you mention to Mr. Wortley, is as ridicu