MONTAGU
MONTAIGNE
1798. In 1806 he was appointed a Com
missioner in Bankruptcy, and he secured
very material reforms in the bankruptcy
court. He became K.C. in 1835, and from
1836 to 1846 he was Accountant-General
in Bankruptcy. The liberal ideas of the
time appealed to Montagu, and he worked
in various reform movements, notably in
a society, which he founded, for abolishing
the death penalty. He edited the works
of Bacon (16 vols., 1825-37), and wrote
a number of volumes on law and philo
sophy. Harriet Martineau says in her
Autobiography (i, 402) : " Before his death
he distinctly declared in a message to me
his approbation of the avowal which his
friend Mr. Atkinson and I had made of
opinions like his own." These opinions
(in Letters on the Laws of Man s Social
Nature and Development, 1851) were Agnos
tic. D. Nov. 27, 1851.
MONTAGU, Edward, first Earl of Sandwich, admiral. B. July 27, 1625. He fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, and was a friend of Crom well. In 1654 he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, and two years later he was made conjoint- general at sea with Blake. Montagu accepted King Charles II, and he was created Knight of the Garter, Viscount Hinchinbroke, Earl of Sandwich, and Master of Trinity House. He continued in command of the Fleet, and died in action on his ship. Pepys, the Diarist, a pious Christian, was the Earl s secretary, and he tells us that he was "very indif ferent in all matters of religion " (Diary, Oct. 7, 1660). The phrase is a very temperate expression of the Earl s views and actions, as Pepys constantly describes them. " I found him to be a perfect sceptic," he says elsewhere (Oct. 22, 1660). He gives us a piquant picture of the Admiral laboriously composing an anthem for the King s Chapel, and cursing volubly as he composed it. D. May 28, 1672.
MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley,
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writer. B. May, 1689. She was so bright
a child that her father, the Earl of King
ston, had her elected to the Kit-Kat Club
before she was eight years old. Her intel
lectual promise fully developed, and in her
twentieth year she translated Epictetus
from the Latin. In 1712 she married
Edward Wortley Montagu, grandson of the
first Earl of Sandwich, and he seems to
have been not less liberal than his grand
father and his wife. Lady Mary s house
was one of the most brilliant centres of
London wit and culture. Pope (until she
had a famous quarrel with him), Lord
Hervey, and other Deists met there. She
was one of the most cultivated and capable
women of the century, and is still well
known as a letter-writer. Her correspon
dence is full of Eationalistic passages.
" Priests can lie, and the mob believe, all
over the world," she says (Letters, 1906
ed., p. 88). Writing to a sceptical French
abbe (p. 108), she says that, like him,
she " condemns the quackery of all the
Churches." She had a " firm belief in
the Author of Nature " and a disdain of
" creeds and theological whimsies." D.
Aug. 21, 1762.
MONTAIGNE, Michel Eyquem de,
French essayist. B. Feb. 28, 1533. He studied so assiduously under his father that he spoke Latin fluently, and had a fair knowledge of Greek, at the age of six. His school-course, at the College de Guyenne, was completed at the age of thirteen, and he took up the study of law. In 1555 he succeeded his father as coun cillor of the Bordeaux court, and, after his resignation in 1570, he began to write the essays which have given him an immortal name. Montaigne had previously published only a translation of Eaymond of Sebonde s Theologie naturelle (1569), and Charles X made him a Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael and a gentleman of his court. The first two volumes of his Essays were published in 1580, and he then quitted France for Germany and Italy, in disgust at the religious war and its atrocities. At 522
