might see Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and
tasteless of human beings, nay as a man who, on system, neglected and
persecuted all intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague
was thus represented by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in
essays, in letters, in dialogues, in ballads, that he would do nothing
for anybody without being paid either in money or in some vile services;
that he not only never rewarded merit, but hated it whenever he saw it;
that he practised the meanest arts for the purpose of depressing it;
that those whom he protected and enriched were not men of ability and
virtue, but wretches distinguished only by their sycophancy and their
low debaucheries. And this was said of the man who made the fortune of
Joseph Addison, and of Isaac Newton.

Nothing had done more to diminish the influence of Montague in the House
of Commons than a step which he had taken a few weeks before the meeting
of the Parliament. It would seem that the result of the general election
had made him uneasy, and that he had looked anxiously round him for some
harbour in which he might take refuge from the storms which seemed to
be gathering. While his thoughts were thus employed, he learned that the
Auditorship of the Exchequer had suddenly become vacant. The Auditorship
was held for life. The duties were formal and easy. The gains were
uncertain; for they rose and fell with the public expenditure; but
they could hardly, in time of peace, and under the most economical
administration, be less than four thousand pounds a year, and were
likely, in time of war, to be more than double of that sum. Montague
marked this great office for his own. He could not indeed take it, while
he continued to be in charge of the public purse. For it would have been
indecent, and perhaps illegal, that he should audit his own accounts.
He therefore selected his brother Christopher, whom he had lately made a
Commissioner of the Excise, to keep the place for him. There was, as may
easily be supposed, no want of powerful and noble competitors for such
a prize. Leeds had, more than twenty years before, obtained from Charles
the Second a patent granting the reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin,
it was said, pleaded a promise made by William. But Montague maintained,
and was, it seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles
and the promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the
right of appointing the