This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her surroundings.  Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of Horace, “I have lived.”  “She never had a fool for an acquaintance,” says her biographer, “nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness.”  Her father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott’s friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had a large family.  His wife’s mother married secondly Middleton, the biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual development.  In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age.  During her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich, and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary’s husband.

Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant daughter of the duke of Kingston.  Her husband was in every way estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how thoroughly she appreciated his character.  They had only one child, who died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.

A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent, received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery property in the north of England.  This enabled his wife to entertain very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high connections, gave her a commanding place in society.  They took a large house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name of “blue-stockings.”  There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More, Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc.  Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper’s well-known lines and Macaulay’s passage:  “There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu.”  After her husband’s death a great deal of business devolved on her in the management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank.  She went down to Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and made acquaintance with her tenants.  She seems particularly to have appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronte.  Her principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener “Capability Brown.”