Note 281 — Chapter II · LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 (continued 4)

Miss Emily M. Symonds says of the author of the Anecdotes: "Lady Louisa Stuart inherited her grandmother's tastes for literary pursuits. That this taste was discouraged by her family is a real calamity, as all will agree who are familiar with the Selections from her Manuscripts (Essays and Verses), and the Letters to Miss Clinton. Her sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll, is a biographical gem, and her youthful letters read as if they had been written by one of Jane Austen's most charming heroines. Her satire is so sweet-tempered that it is evident she likes her victims none the less for her laughter, while her common-sense philosophy, with its sub-acid flavour of gentle cynicism may be studied with advantage even in these enlightened days. A glimpse of Lady Mary's daughter and granddaughter may be obtained from the Diary of Miss Burney, who met the two ladies at Mrs. Delany's in 1787. Lady Bute, she records, with an exterior the most forbidding to strangers, has powers of conversation the most entertaining and lively where she is intimate. She is full of anecdote, delights in strokes of general satire, yet with mere love of comic, not insidious ridicule. She spares not for giving her opinions, and laughs at fools as well as follies, with the shrewdest derision. Lady Louisa Stuart, her youngest daughter, has parts equal to those of her mother, with a deportment and appearance infinitely more pleasing; yet she is far from handsome, but proves how well beauty may be occasionally missed, when understanding and vivacity unite to fill up her place.... They seem both to inherit an ample portion of the wit of their mother and grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, though I believe them both to have escaped all inheritance of her faults. On the occasion of another and later meeting Miss Burney writes: 'Lady Bute and Lady Louisa were both in such high spirits themselves, that they kept up all the conversation between them with such a vivacity, an acuteness, and an observation on men and manners so clear and so sagacious, that it would be difficult to pass an evening of greater entertainment.'" (Symonds, Emily Morse: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times, p. 537.)