] for a certain Mr.----, whom perhaps you knew at
Oxford.... He fell into sentiments with my Lady W., and was happy to
catch her at platonic love; but as she seldom stops there, the poor man
will be frightened out of his senses when she shall break the matter to
him, for he never dreamt that her purposes were so naught. Lady Mary is
so far gone that to get him from the mouth of her antagonist, she
literally took him out to dance country dances at a formal ball, where
there was no measure kept in laughing at her.... She played at Pharaoh
two or three times at Princess Craon's, where she cheats horse and foot.
She is really entertaining: I have been reading her works, which she
lends out in manuscript; but they are too womanish: I like few of her
performances."

[Footnote 10: Lady Pomfret.]
[Footnote 11: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.]
[Footnote 12: Lady Walpole.]

Lady Mary was, of course, entirely ignorant of Horace Walpole's feelings
about her, of which naturally he showed no sign in social intercourse
with her. "I saw him often both at Florence and Genoa, and you may
believe I know him," she told her daughter. "I was well acquainted with
Mr. Walpole at Florence, and indeed he was particularly civil to me,"
she wrote on another occasion. "I have great encouragement to ask favour
of him, if I did not know that few people have so good memories to
remember so many years backwards as have passed since I have seen him.
If he has treated the character of Queen Elizabeth with disrespect [in
_A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England_], all the women
should tear him to pieces, for abusing the glory of their sex. Neither
is it just to put her in the list of authors, having never published
anything, though we have Mr. Camden's authority that she wrote many
valuable pieces, chiefly Greek translations. I wish all monarchs would
bestow their leisure hours on such studies: perhaps they would not be
very useful to mankind; but it may be asserted, for a certain truth,
their own minds could be more improved than by the amusements of
quadrille or Cavagnole."

Lady Mary need not have feared that Walpole had forgotten her; he bore
her much in mind to his dying day, and found never a kind thing to say
about her. It may be presumed that his animosity arose from the fact
that Lady Mary had championed Molly Skerritt against his mother, when
Miss Skerritt was living openly as the mistress of Sir Robert Walpole.
Yet, though he wrote