Lady Mary Wortley Montague | Page 7

this, the little girl was allowed to run rather wild. Lord
Kingston was very much a man about town and a gallant, and was too
greatly occupied with his affairs and his parliamentary duties, which
took him often from home, to concern himself about her education. In
fact, before her mother's death, it would seem that Lady Mary spent
months at her grandmother's, Mrs. Elizabeth Pierrepont, at her house at
West Dean. When she was in her ninth year she returned to Holme
Pierrepont, where, as she later complained, she was left "to the care of
an old governess, who, though perfectly good and pious, wanted
capacity."
Lady Mary early had a taste for books, and enjoyed to the full the

library, where she no doubt read much that was good for her, and a
good deal that was not. She read everything that she could lay her
hands on, the old romances, poetry, and plays. One account has it that
she was taught Greek and Latin by her brother's tutor; but Sir Leslie
Stephen was doubtful about the Greek and inclined to the belief that
she taught herself Latin. Later, certainly, she taught herself Italian, and
quoted Tasso in her letters. In her studies she was encouraged by her
uncle, William Feilding, and also by Bishop Burnet, of whom she said
many years later: "I knew him in my very early youth, and his
condescension in directing a girl in her studies is an obligation I can
never forget." She had literary aspirations, and just after her
twenty-first birthday she submitted to Burnet, with the following letter,
a translation of "Encheiridion" of Epictetus from the Latin version. This
will be found in the collected works.
"July 20, 1710.
"My Lord,
"Your hours are so well employed, I hardly dare offer you this trifle to
look over; but then, so well am I acquainted with the sweetness of
temper which accompanies your learning, I dare ever assure myself of a
pardon. You have already forgiven me greater impertinencies, and
condescended yet further in giving me instructions and bestowing some
of your minutes in teaching me. This surprising humility has all the
effect it ought to have on my heart; I am sensible of the gratitude I owe
to so much goodness, and how much I am ever bound to be your
servant. Here is the work of one week of my solitude--by the many
faults in it your lordship will easily believe I spent no more time upon it;
it was hardly finished when I was obliged to begin my journey, and I
had not leisure to write it over again. You have it here without any
corrections, with all its blots and errors: I endeavoured at no beauty of
style, but to keep as literally as I could to the sense of the author. My
only intention in presenting it, is to ask your lordship whether I have
understood Epictetus? The fourth chapter, particularly, I am afraid I
have mistaken. Piety and greatness of soul set you above all
misfortunes that can happen to yourself, and the calumnies of false

tongues; but that same piety which renders what happens to yourself
indifferent to you, yet softens the natural compassion in your temper to
the greatest degree of tenderness for the interests of the Church, and the
liberty and welfare of your country: the steps that are now made
towards the destruction of both, the apparent danger we are in, the
manifest growth of injustice, oppression, and hypocrisy, cannot do
otherwise than give your lordship those hours of sorrow, which, did not
your fortitude of soul, and reflections from religion and philosophy,
shorten, would add to the national misfortunes, by injuring the health of
so great a supporter of our sinking liberties. I ought to ask pardon for
this digression; it is more proper for me in this place to say something
to excuse an address that looks so very presuming. My sex is usually
forbid studies of this nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper
sphere, we are sooner pardoned 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