SOURCE: The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by Robert Halsband, Clarendon Press, 1967, p. 2-7.

In the following excerpt from a letter to her daughter, Lady Bute, Lady Montagu expresses her appreciation for Pompey the Little and draws parallels between the novel's characters and her contemporaries.

… Candles came, and my Eyes grown weary I took up the next Book meerly because I suppos'd from the Title it could not engage me long. It was Pompey the Little,² which has realy diverted me more than any of the others, and it was impossible to go to Bed till it was finish'd. It is a real and exact representation of Life as it is now acted in London, as it was in my time, and as it will be (I do not doubt) a Hundred years hence, with some little variation of Dress, and perhaps Government. I found...