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Among the elegant tributes of admiration from men of genius and learning which our authoress was in the habit of receiving, it is impossible to pass over the following from the pen of that accomplished and excellent scholar Bishop Lowth; and our readers may be assured that they are rather more genuine than some Sermons that have been lately assigned to him. Miss More in return sent the Bishop some verses on Mother Bunch's tales:

HANNE MORE,

Virgini, piæ, eruditæ, eleganti, ingenio, facundia et sapientia pariter illustri.

Omnes Sulpiciam legant puellæ,
Omnes hanc pueri legant senesque,
Omnes hanc hilares et hanc severi,
Quæ palmam geminas tulit per artes
Et vinctæ pede vocis et solutæ.
Cujus qui pede legerit soluta
Nullam dixerit esse tersiorem.
Cujus Carmina qui bene æstimarit,
Nullam dixerit esse sanctiorem.

Huic adsunt Charites, faventque Musæ,
Dum sic pectora virginum tenella
Pulchris imbuit artibus, sequaces
Exemplo monitis, amore, nutu
Informans animos. Stiloque signat
Mox ventura quod Addisonianis

Possint secula comparare chartis."

It is with melancholy feelings that, as we advance in the narrative of Hannah More's life, we find our old and venerable companions falling ⚫ through the broken arches of the bridge of life,' and a novel race creeping out one by one into notice, like the early stars of evening, and rising when the great luminary has set. Instead of the names of Garrick and Burke, and Johnson and Gibbon, we have that' young gentleman Mr. Wilberforce,' and Dr. Kennicott, and Bp. Portens, and H. Walpole and Cowper's friend Mr. Newton, and the pleasantest of the peerage' Lord Stormont; and a most clever and superior correspondent, Sir W. Pepys, the Lælius of the Bas-bleus, whose letters form one of the gems of the book, and whose character is drawn in most attractive colours.* His clear, serene, unclouded old age, seems to have realized all that fine moral and imaginative picture which Tully has drawn. Not so the next portrait whom we must introduce to notice-the rattle at the end of the serpent's tail, is highly amusing. Being here, naturally reminds me to speak of Mrs. Macauley. I feel extremely scandalized at her conduct, and yet I did not esteem her. I knew her to be absurd, vain, and affected; but never could have suspected her of the indecent, and I am sorry to say profligate, turn which her late actions and letters have betrayed. The men do so rejoice and exult, that it is really provoking; yet have they no real cause for triumph, for this woman is far from being any criterion by which to judge of the whole sex. She was not feminine either in her writings, or her manners. She was only a good clever man. Did I ever tell you an answer her daughter once made me? Desirous from civility to take some notice of her, and finding she was reading Shakspeare, I asked her if she was not delighted with many parts of King John? 'I never read

Mr. Pepys's ignorance of the design of the papers on Pastorals by Pope, in the Guardian (see his Letter, vol. i. p. 301) is singular. It is not surprising that Heyne made the same mistake. See our review of Crabbe in the last Number.

the Kings, Ma'am,' was the truly characteristic reply. This is excellent, but we shall match the republican Miss, with a story of a royal Master. Mythology Bryant told me an amusing anecdote of one of the little Princes He had been that morning to Windsor to present his book. He was met in the antechamber by the youngest of them, who begged to look at it. When it was put into his hands, he held it upside down, and glancing his eyes for a moment over the pages, returned it with an air of important graciousness, pronouncing it-excellent!" Was this the Duke of Sussex, and did his great love of books arise from this auspicious commencement?' Our authoress's acquaintance consisted so much of the élite of wit and talent, that we find many pages thickly powdered with the falling sparkles of their conversational powers. We forget whether H. Walpole, who stored up George Selwyn's jokes in the same drawers, and with the same care, with his miniatures and other rarities, has preserved the following: Lord Pembroke came in laughing,-I asked what diverted him, he told me he had met George Selwyn, who found himself very much annoyed in the streets with chimney-sweeping boys; they were very clamorous, surrounded, daubed, and persecuted him; in short, would not let him go till they had forced money from him. At length he made them a low bow and cried, Gentlemen, I have often heard of the majesty of the people, I presume your highnesses are in court mourning.'"

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We should however be justly liable to censure, were we to pause here, contented with having represented Mrs. More as both enjoying and enlivening the circles of literature, and rising in favour and reputation with the most eminent persons of her age, by her manners and talents, as well as with the public by her works; a far higher meed of praise remains yet to be bestowed. The strong understanding of this estimable person was never misled, nor her solid principles of what was right ever loosened, by the affection and applause of the world that were ever at her feet, by the "lust of the eye and the pride of life." Even amidst the brightest and best scenes of enjoyment, and amid gratifications which none would consider as passing the bounds of prudence and propriety, her heart remained ever apart and communing within itself:

"The heart distrusting, ask'd if this be joy."

Soon after the period we have been considering, she withdrew herself gradually from the society of her former friends and benefactors, and devoted all the energies of her well-regulated and well-informed mind to the instruction and improvement of her fellow-creatures, by word and deed, addressing the wealthy and the great in a variety of eloquent and well-reasoned publications; instructing the poor and needy by exertions that never wearied, and supplying their temporal wants by a charity that increased in proportion as the demands upon it multiplied, while her chief, or rather sole relaxation was found in cultivating and adorning her garden which she had made, as she so expresses it, in a letter to a friend : I spend almost my whole time in my little garden, which mocks my scant manuring. From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,' I am employed in raising dejected pinks, and reforming disorderly honeysuckles." Though many persons will differ from her in some of her principles and tenets, and though some may object to the severity of her practical views, yet all must admire and love the unspotted purity of her mind, the affectionate warmth of her heart, and the active benevolence of her life. There can be no difference or dispute on these points. ; and we can only lament that we are obliged to leave scenes undescribed that would gladden

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the heart of the philanthropist; and to pass over unnoticed, long years nay decades of unwearied charity, meeting the claims of want under every variety of demand, amid the opposition of the selfish, and the calumnies of the malignant. She may well be said to have gone through "evil report," who was publicly denounced from the pulpit as a disaffected, vicious, seditious woman; who was with Hatfield in his attack on the King; who kept assassins in her pay-who fomented the desire of war— and lastly, who was concerned with Charlotte Cordoy in the murder of Murat!! Surely!" the force of folly could no further go," against one whose life had been spent in the attempt to reform profligate ignorance, to recall presumptuous apostacy, and to remove spiritual degradation.

We are not writing a history of H. More, which can best be read in her own works, and in the pages of her faithful biographer, else could we have enlarged with delight on the calm enjoyments, the tranquil occupations, and the high duties of her domestic life, which sisterly affection heightened, which piety sanctified, and conscience approved. How quiet, but how deep was the love which bound this little happy female family in its golden chain! How pure and how true it was, was not only seen in the unbroken pleasure of their lives, and in their tender respect for each other, but in the calmness and content with which they submitted to their separation in death. "Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon," as one by one they fell asleep in full maturity of age, with affections unimpaired, and hearts uninjured by the world. Their's was no worldly regret, no forlorn and unsupported grief; they sorrowed not like those who have no hope. It is said, we believe, that there is no solid and substantial joy but what must have been long foreseen and prepared. However that may be, whether true generally or not, we are sure that the gladness and hope and joy of the departing spirit, must have been prepared by a long surrender of itself, when that surrender was the most difficult task it could perform, and the most costly sacrifice it could make. If a speck, a single speck, was seen in the pure mirror of her fading mind, of whose departure from the living we are now speaking; if a cloud, a dimness, passed across the serene light of the long and golden evening of her days, let us feel and acknowledge that it is another memento, for ever wanted, to remind us that in the midst of strength we are in weakness, and that in a world of trial even our noblest exertions cannot be separated from the imperfect and frail machinery by which they are moved. She who never suffered the activity of her intellect to slumber, who woke at every call of duty, and listened for every tender whisper of conscience, whose moral and spiritual powers were alike in exercise and controul;-she was fated to feel, in common with some of the greatest minds, that her task was done before the night of life had descended, and for a few seasons she was left upon earth to afford a delightful though pensive gratification to the sympathies of her friends, in watching over her wants, who had lived to watch for all; in preserving from anxiety and danger that heart that never faltered nor failed; and in supplying, as far as they could, the place of those exhausted energies which had prematurely perished before the task of love had closed. We were in hopes to have found room to say something more peculiarly on the literary merits of Hannah More's works, but we must forbear. Her Poetical talents we do not estimate highly, though much extolled by Johnson; her Vers de Société are the best; her politics are very shallow, and her eulogies on

good king, the good queen, and the good bishop, will meet with no favour in these uncourtly and degenerate days; but her Prose works are distinguished for soundness of argument, justness of thought, solidity of reflection, and fullness of illustration. There is a moral eloquence that elevates them; an earnestness and force that comes upon us with the conviction of truth; this, together with the choice of the subjects, and that tone of general censure which never fails to please, made her as popular a moralist in ber day, as the Estimate had made Brown in the age preceding. Independently of the great merit of her writings, a lady setting up as the Imonitor of the age was sure to attract curiosity and admiration; but when Bishops patronized and Queens approved, the success was certain; as probably not a single person ever appropriated the censure that was so widely diffused. Her language is in general select, and her style harmonious; if it has defects, it is perhaps in a want of flexibility and variety. It more resembles Johnson's than Addison's, and indeed it was formed during the time when the Rambler and Adventurer were in the highest reputation; hence perhaps, we find that she uses learned and long words brought from the ancient languages, when a purer Saxon idiom* would have imparted more ease and elegance; but though sometimes incorrect,† her style is free from all affectation, all tawdry, and all tinsel; and is as far as possible from anything approaching to Miss Seward, or Miss Jane Porter, or even Milady Morgan herself:-her Letters are written with grace, vivacity, and politeness; and are rich beyond any book that has been lately published, in recollections of literature, and anecdotes of literary men. We are afraid, that with this work the volumes which could unfold to as the spirit of the Johnsonian age, are for ever closed; the flood of time has risen; the giants who were on earth in those days, are departed; and the latest foot-step printed on the sand, is that of Hannah More, whose avame will descend to posterity as one among the "devout and honourable women," of whom England we trust possesses "not a few."

With regard to the manner in which the book is edited, we have not much to say. Mrs. More's voluminous correspondence, and the fortunate preservation of her letters, has made her, her own biographer; and seldom even is there a necessity for supplying by narrative the intervals of her more interesting letters. Her editor's religious principles are in accordance with those of the person whose life he has published; but they are more positively declared, and more severely watched: his coarse, we fear we must also add, his almost brutal attack on the memory of the late Lord

If, when Mrs. More speaks of a Mr. B-, the poet of urns and obelisks,' visiting her, she means Mr. Lisle Bowles, we pronounce at once and decidedly that she must have been unable to estimate some of the most beautiful and refined and touching poetry in the English language. We hope some one else was meant than the honoured bard of Bremhill.

How could all Miss More's learned friends, critics, bishops, and lexicographers, let her use such a barbarism as- Eulogium'-which she does constantly, or the saturnine coolness of a geometrical calculation.' There are also some mistakes in points of learning in her works (but she confesses she had no pretensions to learning), but which are not worth pointing out, at least in this place. We find, from p. 406 of the first volume, that the anecdote of Glover the poet destroying Mr. West's bed of tulips in a furor Poeticus,' and which we think was first mentioned by Mr. Southey in print, is Miss More's property: the Laureate probably received it from her. There are some strange mistakes in this book (as vol. iii. p. 500) Parson's dialogue between Hagley, for Porson and Hayley; and Grenville's Ode to Indifference for

Greville's!!

*

Orford, we shrink from with disgust; and his parallel between Corinne and Colebs is one that would have been avoided by every person of taste and feeling of the sincerity of Mr. Roberts's opinions, of the warmth of his devotional feelings, and the rectitude of his moral judgment, no doubt can be entertained; we only wish that they had been tempered with that gentleness and meekness and indulgence, that added such a grace to the virtues of her whom he lamented and loved, whom for self-denial in conduct, for sacrifice of ease to duty, for active principles of virtue, and unspotted purity of heart, he has justly held up as a model to the Christian world; and who has herself pronounced that " gentleness is the fruit of piety."

DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE.

(Resumed from Vol. II. p. 233.)

1808. July 23. Went to the theatre in the evening, to see Miss Baillie's De Montford, which went off very heavily. One is at first amazed that what reads so well, should act so ill; the capital failing appears to be that the characters describe the passions and sentiments which they ought to exhibit. This will be pardoned in the perusal, but in representation becomes glaringly unnatural, and insufferably dull.

Aug. 5. Finished the historical department and chronicle of Annual Register, 1794. The eulogy on Burke's son in the chronicle, though something in Burke's manner, is evidently not from him. By whom is it written? I am surprised the afflicted father should not have poured out his soul upon this topic, in a work he had so long and zealously patronized.

Sept. 12. Finished Zouch's Life of Sir Philip Sydney, a feeble composition. Prentice dined with us, returning from White's funeral-not mentioned in his will; remarked that on these occasions there is the melancholy satisfaction of ascertaining in what real degree of esteem you have have been held by professed friends.

Sept. 14. Read Duppa's Life of Michael Angelo, a piece of biography ntterly unworthy of the subject. Roscoe has treated the same in a smaller compass, with far more spirit. Duppa, as Roscoe I think did before him, speculates on M. Angelo's being the remote cause of the Reformation, by occasioning the rebuilding of St. Peter's, and the consequent profuse sale of indulgences. Dappa, who is a great stickler for the beau ideal, states a distinctive character of M. Angelo and the antient sculptors; that the former made ideal beauty and aggregate form subservient to expression, the latter made expression and animated feelings subservient to form. One is delighted in finding in M. Angelo, a natural, erect and independent spirit, as simple and sublime as his genius, in this respect how different from our !

Oct. 28. Read the first seven of Paley's posthumous sermons; the first and third are on a subject, which Hume has treated with his usual penetration; the strange indifference of firm believers to their destiny in

This attack on Lord Orford by the Editor, is absolutely written in defiance of Miss More's having dedicated one of her works to him, in which she speaks of the agreeable information she had received from his writings; and adds,' that among the brilliant and lively things she heard from him, she never remembers to have heard an unkind or ungenerous one, and adds her feeble testimony to the temperate use he made of his wit, guided by politeness, and directed by humanity.' To what unseemly lengths will not bigotry and violence drive even persons of sense and breeding!

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