of the day (Boswell's "Life of
Johnson," ann. 1763).]

[Footnote 2: Lady Mary Wortley was a daughter of the Duke of Kingston
and wife of Mr. Wortley, our ambassador at Constantinople. She was the
most accomplished lady of the eighteenth century. Christian Europe is
indebted to her for the introduction of the practice of inoculation for
the smallpox, of which she heard during her residence in Turkey, and of
the efficacy of which she was so convinced that she caused her own
children to be inoculated; and, by publishing its success in their case,
she led to its general adoption. It saved innumerable lives in the
eighteenth century, and was, in fact, the parent of the vaccination
which has superseded it, and which is merely inoculation with matter
derived from another source, the cow. She was also an authoress of
considerable repute for lyric odes and _vers de societe_, &c., and,
above all, for her letters, most of which are to her daughter, Lady Bute
(as Mme. de Sevigne's are to her daughter, Mme. de Grignan), and which
are in no respect inferior to those of the French lady in sprightly wit,
while in the variety of their subjects they are far superior, as giving
the account of Turkish scenery and manners, and also of those of other
countries which her husband visited on various diplomatic missions,
while Mme. de Sevigne's are for the greater part confined to the gossip
of the coteries of Paris. Her works occupy five volumes; but what we
have is but a small part of what we might have had. D'Israeli points out
that "we have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or
malignant descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady
Mary Wortley Montague's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by
her daughters, who imagined that the family honours were lowered by the
addition of those of literature. Some of her best letters, recently
published, were found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified
her ladyship's daughter to have heard that her mother was the Sevigne of
Britain" ("Curiosities of Literature," i. 54); and, as will be seen in a
subsequent letter (No. 67), Walpole corroborates D'Israeli. Lady Mary
was at one time a friend and correspondent of Pope, who afterwards, for
some unknown reason, quarrelled with her, and made her the subject of
some of the most disgraceful libels that ever proceeded from even his
pen.]

[Footnote 3: She was mother of Lady Bute, wife of the Prime
Minister.--WALPOLE.]