Hannah More was the youngest but one of the five daughters of Jacob More, who, after receiving an education for the church, bounded his wishes by the possession of a school at Stapleton, England, upon obtaining which, he married the daughter of a respectable farmer; and to the soundness of her judgment in the culture and regulation of her children, the credit and success which attended them are, in a great degree, to be attributed.

Like other intelligent children, Hannah More displayed at an early age a desire for knowledge and a love of books. To supply the want of the latter, her father was accustomed to relate to his children, from memory, the most striking events of Grecian and Roman history, dwelling much on the parallels and wise sayings of Plutarch. He would also recite to them the speeches of his favorite heroes in the original languages, and then translate them into English. Hannah thus acquired a taste for the Latin classics, an acquaintance with which she carefully cultivated, in defiance of her father’s horror of blue stockingism, which was extreme, and which probably prevented his instructing her in Greek.

The bent of her mind displayed itself at an early age. Every scrap of paper, of which she could possess herself, was scribbled over with essays and poems, having some well-directed moral. Her little sister, with whom she slept, was the depositary of her nightly effusions; and, in her zeal lest they should be lost, she would sometimes steal down to procure a light, and commit them to paper. The greatest wish her imagination could frame, was that she might some day be rich enough to have a whole quire of paper; and, when this wish was gratified, she soon filled it with letters to depraved characters, of her own invention, urging them to abandon their errors, and letters in return, expressive of contrition and resolutions of amendment.

Her elder sisters, having been educated with that view, opened a boarding-school for young ladies at Bristol; and under their care the school education of Hannah was completed. While yet a pupil, she attracted the notice and enjoyed the friendship of many eminent men. She delighted to study the sciences with Ferguson, the astronomer; and such was his opinion of her taste and genius, that he submitted his compositions to her for the correction of errors in style. Of her conversational powers at this period an anecdote is related. A dangerous illness brought her under the care of Dr. Woodward, an eminent physician. On one of his visits, being led into conversation with his patient on literary subjects, he forgot the purpose of his coming; till, recollecting himself when half way down stairs, he cried out, “Bless me! I forgot to ask the girl how she was;” and returned to the room, exclaiming, “How are you to-day, my poor child?”

In her seventeenth year, she appeared before the public as an author. The class of books, now so common, called “Readers,” and “Speakers,” was then unknown. Young persons were in the habit of committing to memory the popular plays of the day, which were not always pure in their sentiments, or moral in their tendency. “To furnish a substitute,” as the youthful moralist tells us in her preface, “for the very improper custom of allowing plays, and those not of the purest kind, to be acted by young ladies in boarding-schools, and to afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful amusement, in the exercise of recitation,” she composed a drama, called the “Search after Happiness.” Her object was to convey instruction in a pleasing form, and the intention was well executed. The plot is of the simplest kind, and one not calculated to kindle the fervors of poetry. Four young ladies betake themselves to the retreat of a virtuous lady, who, with her two daughters, has renounced the world and fixed herself in a secluded spot to receive from her, as from an oracle, instructions which shall guide them in the way which leads to peace and contentment.

Among the pupils of the Misses More were two Misses Turner, who were in the habit of passing the vacations at the house of a bachelor cousin of the same name. They were permitted to bring some of their young friends with them, and took the two youngest of their governesses, Hannah and Patty More. “The consequence was natural. Hannah was clever and fascinating; Mr. T. was generous and sensible: he became attached, and made his offer, which was accepted. She gave up her interest in the school, and was at much expense in fitting herself out to be the wife of a man of fortune.” The day was fixed more than once for the wedding, and Mr. Turner each time postponed it. Her sisters and friends interfered, and broke off the engagement, and would not suffer her to listen to any of his subsequent proposals. To compensate her, as he said, for the robbery he had committed on her time, and to enable her to devote herself to literary pursuits, Mr. Turner settled upon her an annuity; and at his death, to show that he still retained his esteem, he left her a legacy. The distress and disturbance which this event occasioned her, led to a resolution, on her part, never again to incur a similar hazard a resolution the strength of which was tested by actual trial.

Among the favorite sports of Hannah’s childhood was the making a carriage of a chair, and playing at riding to London to visit bishops and booksellers a day-dream which became a reality in 1784. Of the circumstances which led to the journey we have no record. A few days after her arrival in London, she was, by a fortunate accident, brought to the notice of Garrick. A letter written by her to a mutual friend, describing the effect produced upon her mind by his representation of Lear, was shown to him, and excited in him a curiosity to see and converse with her. The desire was gratified; they were reciprocally pleased, and Miss More was soon domesticated with Mr. Garrick and his affectionate wife; and, for the next twenty years, she spent six months of each year under their hospitable roof. Through them she was at once received on terms of cordial kindness into their wide and splendid circle. She was welcomed as a sister spirit by the coterie which she has so elaborately eulogized in the “Bas Bleu.” She has often been heard to describe, very humorously, her raptures on her first introduction to a “live author,” and her sisters long remembered her strong desire to get a sight, from some hiding-place, of Dr. Johnson. She was now to meet him face to face. The first interview was at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s. She had been prepared by Sir Joshua for finding him in one of his sombre moods, but was surprised and delighted at his coming to meet her, as she entered the room, with good-humor on his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua’s on his hand; and still more at his accosting her with a verse from a morning hymn, which she had written at the desire of her early and firm friend, Dr. Stonehouse.

A few extracts from the sprightly letters of a sister who accompanied her, will furnish the best picture of the scenes in which Miss More now bore a part. “Hannah has been introduced to Burke the Sublime and Beautiful Burke! From a large party of literary persons assembled at Sir Joshua’s she received the most encouraging compliments; and the spirit with which she returned them was acknowledged by all present.” “The most amiable and obliging of women Miss Reynolds has taken us to Dr. Johnson’s very own house! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion? Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, ’she was a silly thing.’ When our visit was ended, he called for his hat to attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. I forgot to mention, that, not finding Johnson in his parlor when we came in, Hannah seated herself in a great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his genius: when he heard of it, he laughed heartily, and told her it was a chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself, when they stopped a night at the spot as they imagined where the weird sisters appeared to Macbeth; the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm that it deprived them of rest; however, they learned, the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country.”

Johnson was not always, however, in the humor to swallow the flattery which she lavished upon him; Mrs. Thrale records a surly enough rebuke which the doctor administered to her: “Consider, madam, what your flattery is worth before you choke me with it.” As he was complaining, upon another occasion, that he had been obliged to ask Miss Reynolds to give her a hint on the subject, somebody observed that she flattered Garrick also; “Ay,” said the doctor, “and she is right there; first, she has the world with her; and, secondly, Garrick rewards her. I can do nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a better market.” But in this flattery there was no want of sincerity and no disingenuousness. At the age of thirty-one she had brought to London the fresh, ecstatic enthusiasm of a country girl of seventeen; when, instead of having Johnson pointed out to her as he rolled along the pavement of Fleet Street, and gazing at Garrick from the side boxes, she found herself at once admitted to the inmost circle of the literary magnets it is not wonderful that her feelings should overflow in language and gesture rather too warm for the acclimated inhabitants of the temperate zone.

The same hyperbolical style is to be found in the letters intended only for the eyes of her sisters. “Mrs. Montagu is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady, I ever saw; she lives in the highest style of magnificence; her apartments and tables are in the most splendid taste; but what baubles are these when speaking of a Montagu! Her form for she has no body is delicate to fragility; her countenance the most animated in the world; she has the sprightly vivacity of sixteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor. Mrs. Carter has in her person a great deal of what the gentlemen mean when they speak of a ‘poetical lady:’ independently of her great talents and learning, I like her much: she has affability, kindness, and goodness; and I honor her heart more than her talents; but I do not like one of them better than Mrs. Boscawen; she is at once learned, polite, judicious, and humble.” At a party at which all these and other luminaries were collected, Dr. Johnson asked Miss More her opinion of the new tragedy of “Braganza.” “I was afraid,” says she, “to speak before them all, as I knew there was a diversity of opinion: however, as I thought it a less evil to dissent from a fellow-creature than to tell a falsity, I ventured to give my sentiments, and was satisfied with Johnson’s answering, ‘You are right, madam.’”

Stimulated by the approbation of such judges, Miss More turned to literature with redoubled energy; and from this period, the important part of her personal history may be read in that of a succession of works, all in their season popular; all commendable for moral tone; considerably above mediocrity in literary execution; and some of them worthy to survive their age.

After her return home, she one day laughingly said to her sisters, “I have been so fed with praise, that I think I will try what is my real value, by writing a slight poem, and offering it to Cadell.” Accordingly she wrote and sent him “Sir Eldred of the Bower,” a ballad in the style which Dr. Percy had rendered popular. Cadell offered her a price far exceeding her idea of its worth; adding that, if she would ascertain what Goldsmith received for the “Deserted Village,” he would make it up to the same sum. With the public the poem met with a success which its merits by no means justify. At a tea-visit in her own lodgings, where she had Johnson all to herself, and as she tells us he ought always to be had, for he did not care to speak in mixed companies, the new poem was discussed. The leviathan of letters, instead of expressing his contempt for compositions of this class, and treating her to a new stanza, like

“I put my hat upon my head,
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man
With his hat in his hand,”

indited the following, which she proudly engrafted on the original in the second edition, no doubt receiving the compliment as paid to the author, rather than to the heroine:

“My scorn has oft the dart repelled
Which guileful beauty threw;
But goodness heard, and grace beheld,
Must every heart subdue.”

In her early life, Miss More was subject to frequent attacks of illness, which she was wont to say were a great blessing to her, for they induced a habit of industry not natural to her, and taught her to make the most of her well days. She laughingly added, it had taught her to contrive employment for her sick ones; that from habit she had learned to suit her occupations to every gradation of the capacity she possessed. “I never,” said she, “afford a moment of a healthy day to cross a t or dot an i; so that I find the lowest stage of my understanding may be turned to some account, and save better days for better things. I have learned also to avoid procrastination, and that idleness which often attends unbroken health.” These habits of order and industry gave her much time for intellectual pursuits, even amidst the dissipations of the city.

At her first introduction to its brilliant society, Patty More seemed to have some apprehensions that her sister “Hannah’s head might not stand proof against all the adulation and kindness of the great folks.” But these effected no change in her deportment; her simplicity remained unsullied; home and the society of her sisters had lost for her none of its charms. Her good sense and firmness of character were subjected to a yet more severe trial upon the production of the tragedy of “Percy.” Nothing could exceed the zeal which Garrick displayed to insure its success. Miss More thus speaks of it in a letter to her sister: “It is impossible to tell you of all the kindness of the Garricks; he thinks of nothing, talks of nothing, writes of nothing, but ‘Percy.’ When he had finished his prologue and epilogue, he desired I would pay him. Dryden, he said, used to have five guineas apiece, but, as he was a richer man, he would be content if I would treat him with a handsome supper and a bottle of claret. We haggled sadly about the price; I insisting that I could only afford to give him a beef-steak and a pot of porter; and at about twelve, we sat down to some toast and honey, with which the temperate bard contented himself.” She adds in the same letter, “What dreadful news from America! Burgoyne’s surrender. We are a disgraced, undone nation. What a sad time to bring out a play in! when, if the country had the least spark of virtue remaining, not a creature would think of going to it.”

The success of “Percy” was prodigious; greater than that of any tragedy for years. She received for it about six hundred pounds, which, she tells us, “her friend Mr. Garrick invested for her on the best security, and at five per cent., and so it made a decent little addition to her small income.” Cadell paid one hundred and fifty pounds for the copy-right, and it proved a very successful speculation. The first edition, of four thousand copies, a very large one for those days, was sold off in a fortnight.

Though the patronage of Garrick and the popularity of the author contributed in no small degree to its success, yet the tragedy itself possesses intrinsic merits. The plot is simple. Bertha, the daughter of Lord Raby, is betrothed, in early youth, to Earl Percy. His family incur the displeasure of Lord Raby, and, during the young earl’s absence in the Holy Land, he compels his daughter to marry Earl Douglas, the hereditary enemy of the Percys. The proud spirit of Douglas is chafed to find that his own ardent love is met only with cold and respectful obedience. He suspects the preengagement of her affections, and his jealousy rouses him to fury, when Percy is found in the neighborhood of his castle. In the catastrophe, all the principal personages are involved in a common destruction. In the development of the plot the author displays considerable imagination, and much dramatic skill. The interest is well sustained; the didactic spirit sometimes breaks forth, as in the conclusion of the following extract, in which Lord Raby laments the sombre and melancholy spirit with which the jealousy of Douglas has infected his whole household:

“ Am I in Raby castle? Impossible! That was the seat of smiles; There cheerfulness and joy were household gods. But now suspicion and distrust preside, And discontent maintains a sullen sway. Where is the smile unfeigned, the jovial welcome, Which cheered the sad, beguiled the pilgrim’s pain, And made dependency forget its bonds? Where is the ancient, hospitable hall, Whose vaulted roof once rung with harmless mirth; Where every passing stranger was a guest, And every guest a friend? I fear me much, If once our nobles scorn their rural seats, Their rural greatness, and their vassals’ love, Freedom and English grandeur are no more.”

The following passage, in which Bertha seeks to exculpate herself for the breach of faith with which Percy, whom she meets by accident after his return, charges her, is full of pathos:

“I could withstand his fury; but his tears
Ah, they undid me! Percy, dost thou know
The cruel tyranny of tenderness?
Hast thou e’er felt a father’s warm embrace?
Hast thou e’er seen a father’s flowing tears,
And known that thou couldst wipe those tears away?
If thou hast felt, and hast resisted these,
Then thou may’st curse my weakness; but if not,
Thou canst not pity, for thou canst not judge.”

Encouraged by the success of “Percy,” and urged by Garrick, Miss More composed a second tragedy, called the “Fatal Falsehood.” The whole was completed, and four acts had been revised by Garrick, when death deprived her of that warm and disinterested friend. Miss More pays the following tribute to his memory: “I never can cease to remember with affection and gratitude so warm, steady, and disinterested a friend; I can most truly bear this testimony to his memory, that I never witnessed, in any family, more decorum, propriety, and regularity, than in his; where I never saw a card, or ever met except in one instance a person of his own profession at his table. All his pursuits and tastes were so decidedly intellectual, that it made the society and the conversation which was always to be found in his circle, interesting and delightful.”

The success of the “Fatal Falsehood” was great, but not equal to that of “Percy.” We must content ourselves with making one extract, in which she characterizes “Honor,” as it is technically called:

“Honor! O yes, I know him. ’Tis a phantom,
A shadowy figure, wanting bulk and life,
Who, having nothing solid in himself,
Wraps his thin form in Virtue’s plundered robe,
And steals her title. Honor! ’tis the fiend
Who feeds on orphans’ tears and widows’ groans,
And slakes his impious thirst in brothers’ blood.
Honor! why, ’tis the primal law of hell!
The grand device to people the dark realms
With noble spirits, who, but for this cursed honor,
Had been at peace on earth, or blessed in heaven.
With this false honor Christians have no commerce;
Religion disavows, and truth disowns it.”

One more tragedy, the “Inflexible Captive,” completes Miss More’s labors in this department of literature. She arrived at the conclusion that, by contributing plays, however pure, to the existing stage, she should be using her powers to heighten its general attraction as a place of amusement; and, considering the English theatre as, on the whole, the most profligate in the world, she resolved to abjure it and all its concerns forever an instance of self-love sacrificed to principle hardly to be paralleled. When her works were collected, the tragedies were allowed to take their place, in order, as the author tells us in a preface written in her happiest manner, that she might ground on such publication her sentiments upon the general tendency of the drama, and, by including in her view her own compositions, might involve herself in the general object of her own animadversions.

She makes no apology for the republication of her “Sacred Dramas,” though they may, perhaps, be regarded as falling within the range of some of her criticisms on the old Mysteries and Moralities pieces “in which events too solemn for exhibition, and subjects too awful for detail, are brought before the audience with a formal gravity more offensive than levity itself.”

As a general poet, Miss More was, at this period, the very height of the fashion. Horace Walpole thought himself honored in being permitted to print some of her pieces in the most lavish style of expense, at the press of Strawberry Hill. But fashions in literature are scarcely more lasting than those in dress. Her poems are now immersed in Lethe, except a few terse couplets, which have floated down to the present generation on the stream of oral citation, and are now often in the mouths of people who fancy that they belong to Swift or Gay. Many of her poems are, however, worthy of a better fate. They are distinguished by purity and elevation of sentiment, ease and strength of diction, and harmony of versification. In the last particular she received great praise from Johnson, who pronounced her to be “the best versificatrix in the English language.”

We will give a few extracts. The first is from “Sensibility,” a poem in which she claims for that quality the place which Mrs. Grenville, in a then well-known ode, arrogated for “Indifference.”

“Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight!
Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right!
Perception exquisite! fair virtue’s seed!
Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed!
Thou hasty conscience! reason’s blushing morn!
Instinctive kindness e’er reflection’s born!
Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs
The swift redress of unexamined wrongs;
Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried,
But always apt to choose the suffering side;
To those who know thee not no words can paint,
And those who know thee know all words are faint.
She does not feel thy power who boasts thy flame,
And rounds her every period with thy name.
As words are but th’ external marks to tell
The fair ideas in the mind that dwell,
And only are of things the outward sign,
And not the things themselves they but define,
So exclamations, tender tones, fond tears,
And all the graceful drapery feeling wears,
These are her garb, not her; they but express
Her form, her semblance, her appropriate dress;
And these fair marks, reluctant I relate,
These lovely symbols, may be counterfeit.
There are who fill with brilliant plaints the page,
If a poor linnet meet the gunner’s rage;
There are who for a dying fawn deplore,
As if friend, parent, country, were no more;
Who boast, quick rapture trembling in their eye,
If from a spider’s snare they snatch a fly;
There are whose well-sung plaints each breast inflame,
And break all hearts but his from whence they came.”

The “Bas Bleu” is a sprightly portraiture of what she considered to be the right constitution and character of social conversation. It is a vivacious image of that circle of gay and graceful conversers from whose appellation it takes its name. It was first circulated in manuscript, and we find Miss More apologizing to her sister for the shortness of a letter, on the ground that she had not a moment to spare, as she was copying the “Bas Bleu,” for the king, at his request. Dr. Johnson pronounced it to be “a very great performance.” To the author herself he expressed himself in yet stronger terms. She writes to her sister, “As to the ‘Bas Bleu,’ all the flattery I ever received from every body together would not make up his sum. He said but I seriously insist you do not tell any body, for I am ashamed of writing it even to you he said, ’there was no name in poetry that might not be glad to own it.’ You cannot imagine how I stared; all this from Johnson, that parsimonious praiser! I told him I was delighted at his approbation; he answered quite characteristically, ’And so you may, for I give you the opinion of a man who does not rate his judgment in these things very low, I can tell you.’” The following extract will give some idea of its merits:

“What lively pleasure to divine
The thought implied, the printed line!
To feel allusion’s artful force,
And trace the image to its source!
Quick Memory blends her scattered rays,
Till Fancy kindles at the blaze;
The works of ages start to view,
And ancient wit elicits new.
But wit and parts if thus we praise,
What nobler altars shall we raise?
Those sacrifices could we see
Which wit, O virtue! makes to thee,
At once the rising thought to dash,
To quench at once the bursting flash!
The shining mischief to subdue,
And lose the praise and pleasure too!
Though Venus’ self could you detect her
Imbuing with her richest nectar
The thought unchaste, to check that thought,
To spurn a fame so dearly bought,
This is high principle’s control,
This is true continence of soul.
Blush, heroes, at your cheap renown,
A vanquished realm, a plundered town
Your conquests were to gain a name
This conquest triumphs over fame.”

“Florio” is a metrical tale of a young man of good principles and right feelings, who, from deference to fashion, has indulged in vanities and follies bordering on depravity, which he lays aside in disgust when virtue and good sense, in alliance with female loveliness, have made apparent to him the absurdity and danger of his aberrations. In the following extract the reader will recognize some of the oft-quoted couplets of which we have spoken:

“Exhausted Florio, at the age
When youth should rush on glory’s stage,
When life should open fresh and new,
And ardent Hope her schemes pursue,
Of youthful gayety bereft,
Had scarce an unbroached pleasure left;
He found already, to his cost,
The shining gloss of life was lost,
And Pleasure was so coy a prude,
She fled the more, the more pursued;
Or, if o’ertaken and caressed,
He loathed and left her when possessed.
But Florio knew the world; that science
Sets sense and learning at defiance;
He thought the world to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the town.
In men this blunder still you find:
All think their little set mankind.
Though high renown the youth had gained,
No flagrant crimes his life had stained;
Though known among a certain set,
He did not like to be in debt;
He shuddered at the dicer’s box,
Nor thought it very heterodox
That tradesmen should be sometimes paid,
And bargains kept as well as made.
His growing credit, as a sinner,
Was, that he liked to spoil a dinner,
Made pleasure and made business wait,
And still by system came too late;
Yet ’twas a hopeful indication
On which to found a reputation:
Small habits, well pursued, betimes
May reach the dignity of crimes;
And who a juster claim preferred
Than one who always broke his word?”

The death of Garrick may be considered an era in the life of Miss More. His wit, his gayety, his intelligence, added to his admiration of her genius, and the warmth of his friendship for her, formed the strongest spell that held her in subjection to the fascinations of brilliant society and town life. The early feeling which prompted the infant wish for “a cottage too low for a clock” was still fresh in her bosom. The country, with its green pastures and still waters, still retained its charms for her. “I have naturally,” she writes, “but a small appetite for grandeur, which is always satisfied, even to indigestion, before I leave town; and I require a long abstinence to get any relish for it again.” After the death of her friend, she carried into execution the resolution she had long cherished, of passing a portion of her time in retirement in the country. With this view, she possessed herself of a little secluded spot, which had acquired the name of “Cowslip Green,” near Bristol.

Still, however, her sensibility to kindness would not let her withhold herself entirely from her London friends; her annual visits to Mrs. Garrick brought her back into contact with the world and its crowded resorts.

From her earliest acquaintance with society, she had seen with sorrow the levity of manners, the indifference to religion, and the total disregard of the Sabbath, which prevailed in its higher circles. Not content with holding herself uncontaminated, she felt it to be her duty to make an effort for a reformation, and with this end she published “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society.” To appreciate the value of the effort, we must remember that these “Thoughts” were not the animadversions of a recluse, but of one who was flattered, admired, and courted, by the very people whom she was about to reprove; that the step might probably exclude her from those circles in which she had hitherto been so caressed. But the happiness of her friends was dearer to her than their favor. That the probable consequences did not ensue, does not diminish her merit. This work and the one which speedily followed it, “An Essay on the Religion of the Fashionable World,” were popular beyond hope, and the wish of Bishop Porteus, “that it might be placed in the hands of every person of condition,” was almost realized. It is unnecessary to dwell on these works; they are too well known; they established her reputation as a great moral writer, possessing a masterly command of language, and devoting a keen wit and a lively fancy to the best and noblest of purposes. After giving one extract from the most vigorous of her poems, “Slavery,” written to aid the efforts which Clarkson and Wilberforce were making in behalf of the African slave, and in which she heartily sympathized, we will pass on to new scenes, in which Miss More’s benevolent spirit exhibits itself in a yet more active manner.

“O thou sad spirit, whose preposterous yoke
The great deliverer, death, at length has broke!
Released from misery, and escaped from care,
Go, meet that mercy man denies thee here.
And if some notions, vague and undefined,
Of future terrors, have assailed thy mind;
If such thy masters have presumed to teach
As terrors only they are prone to preach;
For, should they paint eternal mercy’s reign,
Where were the oppressor’s rod, the captive’s chain?
If, then, thy troubled soul has learned to dread
The dark unknown thy trembling footsteps tread,
On Him who made thee what thou art depend;
He who withholds the means accepts the end.
Thy mental night thy Savior will not blame;
He died for those who never heard his name.
Nor thine the reckoning dire of light abused,
Knowledge disgraced, and liberty misused:
On thee no awful judge incensed shall sit,
For parts perverted or dishonored wit.
When ignorance will be found the safest plea,
How many learned and wise shall envy thee!”

In withdrawing herself from general society, Miss More had cherished the hope of devoting herself to meditation and literary leisure. But there was no rest for her but in the consciousness of being useful. In the course of her rambles in the neighborhood of her residence, she was shocked to find the same vices, against which she had lifted up her voice in high places, existing in the peasant’s cottage, in a different form, but heightened by ignorance, both mental and spiritual. Though in a feeble state of health, she could not withhold herself from the attempt to effect a reformation.

In this she had no coadjutors but her sisters, who, having acquired a competency, had retired from school-keeping, and had, with her, a common home. Provision was made by law for the support of clergymen; but the vicar of Cheddar received his fifty pounds a year, and resided at Oxford; and the rector of Axbridge “was intoxicated about six times a week, and was very frequently prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly acquired by fighting.”

She commenced operations by seeking to establish a school at Cheddar. Some of the obstacles she encountered may be best related in her own words. “I was told we should meet with great opposition, if I did not try to propitiate the chief despot of the village, who is very rich and very brutal; so I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as himself. He begged I would not think of bringing any religion into the country; it made the poor lazy and useless. In vain I represented to him that they would be more industrious, as they were better principled; and that I had no selfish views in what I was doing. He gave me to understand that he knew the world too well to believe either the one or the other. I was almost discouraged from more visits; but I found that friends must be secured at all events; for, if these rich savages set their faces against us, I saw that nothing but hostilities would ensue: so I made eleven more of these agreeable visits; and, as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better success. Miss W. would have been shocked, had she seen the petty tyrants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I inquired of each if he could recommend me to a house, and said that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and which might lower the poor rates. If effect be the best proof of eloquence, then mine was good speech, for I gained in time the hearty concurrence of the whole people, and their promise to discourage or favor the poor as they were attentive or negligent in sending their children. Perhaps the hearts of some of these rich brutes may be touched; they are as ignorant as the beasts that perish, intoxicated every day before dinner, and plunged in such vices as make me begin to think London a virtuous place.” The vicarage house, which had not been occupied for a hundred years, was hired for a school-house; “the vicar,” she says, “who lives a long way off, is repairing the house for me; and, as he is but ninety-four years old, he insists on my taking a lease, and is as rigorous about the rent as if I were taking it for an assembly-room.”

The prejudices of the poor were more difficult to be overcome than those of the rich. Some thought that her design was to make money, by sending of their children for slaves; others, that, if she instructed them for seven years, she would acquire such a control as to be able to send them beyond seas. But she persisted, and her success was great beyond expectation. In a short time, she had at Cheddar near three hundred children, under the charge of a discreet matron, whom she hired for the purpose.

Encouraged by this success, she extended her field of operations, and established schools at several other villages. The nearest of these was six miles from her home; the labor and fatigue of superintending the whole was therefore very great. But she declined an assistant for reasons stated in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, who had offered to seek for one. “An ordinary person would be of no use; one of a superior cast, who might be able to enter into my views, and further them, would occasion an expense equal to the support of one or two more schools. It will be time enough to think of your scheme when I am quite laid by. This hot weather makes me suffer terribly; yet I have now and then a good day, and on Sunday was enabled to open the school. It was an affecting sight. Several of the grown-up lads had been tried at the last assizes; three were children of a person lately condemned to be hanged; many thieves; all ignorant, profane, and vicious, beyond belief. Of this banditti I have enlisted one hundred and seventy; and when the clergyman, a hard man, who is also a magistrate, saw these creatures kneeling round us, whom he had seldom seen but to commit or to punish in some way, he burst into tears.”

Her plan was not limited to intellectual and spiritual instruction. The children were taught to sew, to spin, and to knit. Nor were her labors confined to the advancement of the well-being of the young; she sought to introduce branches of manufacture, suitable to the strength and sex of the women, and she arranged with master manufacturers to buy the products of their labor. She sought to establish habits of economy by getting up associations, in which each contributed a portion of her earnings, on condition of receiving a support in case she should be disabled from labor. This was a work of difficulty. Though the subscription was only three half-pence per week, yet many could not raise even this: such were privately assisted. Other inducements, besides considerations of providence, must be held out to the improvident. “An anniversary feast of tea was held, at which some of the clergy and better sort of people were present. The patronesses waited on the women, who sat and enjoyed their dignity. The journal and state of affairs was read. A collateral advantage resulted from this. The women, who used to plead that they could not go to church because they had no clothes, now went. The necessity of going to church in procession on the anniversary, raised an honest ambition to get something decent to wear, and the churches on Sunday were filled with very clean-looking women.”

Similar machinery was brought into exercise to advance the cause of her schools. Two years after the first attempt, we find this apology for not sooner writing to a friend: “I have been too busy in preparing for a grand celebration, distinguished by the pompous name of Mendip Feast; the range of hills you remember in this country, on the top of which we yesterday gave a dinner of beef, and plum pudding, and cider, to our schools. There were not six hundred children, for I would not admit the new schools, telling them they must be good for a year or two, to be entitled to so great a thing as a dinner. Curiosity had drawn a great multitude, for a country so thinly peopled; one wondered whence five thousand people for that was the calculation could come. We all parted with the most perfect peace, having fed about nine hundred people for less than a fine dinner for twenty, costs.”

It would require a large volume to speak of all Miss More’s labors in behalf of erring and suffering humanity. At one time, we find her engaged, in the most harassing and embarrassing situations, spending days and nights with armed Bow Street officers in searching the vilest haunts for a young heiress, who had been trepanned away from school at the age of fourteen. The details of another of her attempts to alleviate suffering, exhibit so strikingly the genuine liberality of her heart and conduct, as to be worth relating. She was one day informed that a woman, who called every day for stuff to feed a pig, was, with her husband and children, perishing with hunger. She lost no time in endeavoring to rescue this miserable family, and soon discovered that the woman was possessed of more than ordinary talent. She produced several scraps of poetry, which evinced much genius. It occurred to Miss More that this talent might be made the means of exciting a general interest in her behalf, and raising a fund to set her up in some creditable way of earning a subsistence. She accordingly took a great deal of pains in instructing her in writing, spelling, and composition; and, while the object of her charity was preparing, under her inspection, a small collection of poems, she was employed in writing to all her friends of rank and fortune, bespeaking subscriptions. Mrs. Montagu cautioned her not to let her own generous nature deceive her as to the character and temper of her beneficiary. “It has sometimes happened to me,” she writes, “that, by an endeavor to encourage talents and cherish virtue, by driving from them the terrifying spectre of pale poverty, I have introduced a legion of little demons: vanity, luxury, idleness, and pride, have entered the cottage the moment poverty vanished. However, I am sure despair is never a good counsellor.”

For thirteen months, Miss More’s time was largely occupied in the woman’s service, and the result of her efforts was the realization of a sum exceeding three thousand dollars, which was invested for the woman’s benefit under the trusteeship of Mrs. Montagu and Miss More. The result is made known in a letter from the latter to the former. “I am come to the postscript, without having found courage to tell you, what I am sure you will hear with pain; at least it gives me infinite pain to write it. I mean the open and notorious ingratitude of our milk-woman. There is hardly a species of slander the poor, unhappy creature does not propagate against me, because I have called her a milk-woman, and because I have placed the money in the funds, instead of letting her spend it. I confess my weakness; it goes to my heart, not for my own sake, but for the sake of our common nature. So much for my inward feelings; as to my active resentment, I am trying to get a place for her husband, and am endeavoring to increase the sum I have raised for her. Do not let this harden your heart or mine against any future object. ‘Do good for its own sake’ is a beautiful maxim.” The milk-woman presently put her slanders into a printed shape; and Mrs. Montagu, on reading the libel, found one thing Miss More’s letter had not prepared her for. Here is her comment: “Mrs. Yeardsley’s conceit that you can envy her talents gives me comfort, for, as it convinces me she is mad, I build upon it a hope that she is not guilty in the All-seeing Eye.” The last allusion which Miss More herself makes to the behavior of “Lactilla” is on the occasion of a second publication of hers, in which the generous patroness was again, after a lapse of two years, maligned and insulted with a cool bitterness that may well be called diabolical, and is in these words, addressing Horace Walpole: “Do, dear sir, join me in sincere compassion, without one atom of resentment. If I wanted to punish an enemy, it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.” Mrs. Montagu and Miss More resisted with exemplary patience the woman’s violent importunities to be put in possession of the principal, as well as interest, of her little fortune, fearing that it would be consumed in those vices to which it was apparent she was addicted. At length, they gave over the trust to a respectable lawyer, who transferred it to a merchant of Bristol; and he was soon harassed into the relinquishment of the whole concern.

In the year 1792, affairs wore a very gloomy and threatening aspect in England. French revolutionary and atheistical principles seemed to be spreading wide their destructive influence. Indefatigable pains were taken, not only to agitate and mislead, but to corrupt and poison, the minds of the populace. At this crisis, letters poured in upon Miss More, from persons of eminence, earnestly calling upon her to produce some little tract which might serve to counteract these pernicious efforts. The intimate knowledge she had shown of human nature, and the lively and clear style of her writings, which made them attractive, pointed her out as the proper person for such an effort. Though she declined an open attempt to stem the mighty torrent, which she thought a work beyond her powers, she yet felt it to be her duty to try them in secret, and, in a few hours, composed the dialogue of “Village Politics, by Will Chip.” The more completely to keep the author unknown, it was sent to a new publisher. In a few days, every post from London brought her a present of this admirable little tract, with urgent entreaties that she would use every possible means of disseminating it, as the strongest antidote that could be administered to the prevailing poison. It flew with a rapidity almost incredible into the remotest parts of the kingdom. Government distributed many thousands. Numerous patriotic associations printed large editions; and in London only, many hundred thousands were distributed.

Internal evidence betrayed the secret of the authorship; and, when the truth came out, innumerable were the thanks and congratulations which bore cordial testimony to the merit of a performance, by which the tact and intelligence of a single female had turned the tide of misguided opinion. Many affirmed that it contributed essentially to prevent a revolution; so true was the touch, and so masterly the delineation, which brought out, in all its relief, the ludicrous and monstrous cheat, whereby appetite, selfishness, and animal force, were attempted to be imposed under the form of liberty, equality, and imprescriptible right.

The success of “Village Politics” encouraged Miss More to venture on a more extensive undertaking. The institution of Sunday schools, which had enabled multitudes to read, threatened to be a curse instead of a blessing; for, while no healthy food was furnished for their minds, the friends of infidelity and vice carried their exertions so far as to load asses with their pernicious pamphlets, and to get them dropped, not only in cottages and in the highways, but into mines and coal-pits. Sermons and catechisms were already furnished in abundance; but the enemy made use of the alluring vehicles of novels, tales, and songs, and she thought it right to meet them with their own weapons.

She therefore determined to produce three tracts every month, written in a lively manner, under the name of the “Cheap Repository.” The success surpassed her most sanguine expectations. Two millions were sold in the first year a circumstance, perhaps, new in the annals of printing. But this very success, she tells us, threatened to be her ruin; for, in order to supplant the trash, it was necessary to undersell it, thus incurring a certain loss. This, however, was met by a subscription on the part of the friends of good order and morals.

The exertion which it required to produce these tracts, to organize her plan, and to conduct a correspondence with the committees formed in various parts of the kingdom, materially undermined her health. She continued them, however, for three years. “It has been,” she writes, “no small support to me, that my plan met with the warm protection of so many excellent persons. They would have me believe that a very formidable riot among the colliers was prevented by my ballad of ’The Riot.’ The plan was settled; they were resolved to work no more; to attack the mills first, and afterwards the gentry. A gentleman gained their confidence, and a few hundreds were distributed, and sung with the effect, they say, mentioned above a fresh proof by what weak instruments evils are now and then prevented. The leading tract for the next month is the bad economy of the poor. You, my dear madam, will smile to see your friend figuring away in the new character of a cook furnishing receipts for cheap dishes. It is not, indeed; a very brilliant career; but I feel that the value of a thing lies so much more in its usefulness than its splendor, that I think I should derive more gratification from being able to lower the price of bread, than from having written the Iliad.”

That Miss More’s efforts in behalf of virtue should be opposed by those against whom they were aimed, will not surprise us. But she was attacked from a quarter whence she had a right to expect sympathy and support. The nature of the attack will be learned from a letter written some years afterwards: “I will say, in a few words, that two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambitious, formed the design of attracting notice and getting preferment by attacking some charity schools which, with no small labor, I have carried on in this country for near twenty years as seminaries of vice, sedition, and disaffection. At this distance of time, for it is now ended in their disgrace and shame, it will make you smile when I tell you a few of the charges brought against me, viz., that I hired two men to assassinate one of these clergymen; that I was actually taken up for seditious practices; that I was with Hadfield in his attack on the king’s life. At the same time they declared mark the consistency that I was in the pay of the government, and the grand instigator of the war, by my mischievous pamphlets. That wicked men should invent this, is not so strange as that they should have found magazines, reviews, and pamphleteers, to support them. My declared resolution never to defend myself certainly encouraged them to go on. How thankful am I that I kept that resolution! though the grief and astonishment excited by the combination against me nearly cost me my life.”

There is not space to go at large into an account of this persecution, which was continued for several years. The most inveterate of her enemies was the curate of her own parish, who was named Bere, and the most distressing result to herself was being obliged to discontinue the school at that place. But, whilst laboring so earnestly for the poor and the humble, Miss More was still mindful of the wants of the higher classes, and, in the midst of her anxiety and distress, which very seriously affected her health, she found time to compose the “Strictures on Female Education,” for their benefit. All her practical admonitions, and all her delineations of female excellence, were afterwards brought together in the character of Lucilla, in the novel of “Coelebs in Search of a Wife,” who is a true representative of feminine excellence within the legitimate range of allotted duties. She did not venture on publishing this work without much anxious hesitation. “I wrote it,” she says, “to amuse the languor of disease. I thought there were already good books enough in the world for good people, but that there was a large class of readers, whose wants had not been attended to the subscribers to the circulating library. A little to raise the tone of that mart of mischief, and to counteract its corruptions, I thought an object worth attempting.” It was published without her name, and though many at once recognized the style, she herself did not acknowledge it till it had passed through many editions. It excited such immediate and universal attention, that, in a few days after its first appearance, she received notice to prepare for a second edition; and shortly afterwards she was followed to Dawlish, whither she had gone to try the effect of repose and the sea air, in restoring her health, by the eleventh edition.

Her works at an early period were duly estimated in the United States, and of the “Coelebs” thirty editions had been issued before the author’s death. It is not a little creditable to the public taste, that a work so full of plain and practical truth should be so well received. In “Coelebs,” as well as in some of her smaller productions, Miss More evinces her power of invention, and gives proof that, had she chosen to employ fiction as the vehicle of instruction, her imagination would have afforded her abundant resources; but habit and the bias of her mind led her in another course: a certain substantiality of purpose, a serious devotion to decided and direct beneficence, an active and almost restless principle of philanthropy, were the great distinctions of her character.

When the education of the Princess Charlotte became a subject of serious attention and inquiry, the advice and assistance of Miss More were requested by the queen. Bishop Porteus strenuously advised that the education should be intrusted to her; but, when the latter required that the entire direction should be given to her charge, this was thought, by those in power, to be too great a confidence. They were willing to engage her in a subordinate capacity; but this she declined, and so the negotiation ended. Her ideas on the subject were given to the world under the title of “Hints for forming the Character of a Young Princess” a book which subsequently was a great favorite with her for whose benefit it was intended, and doubtless contributed to the formation of those virtues and principles which made her death so much lamented.

In the country Miss More had hoped to find retirement. But Barley Wood a place to which she had removed, about one mile from Cowslip Green was any thing but a hermitage. “Though,” she says, “I neither return visits nor give invitations, except when quite confined by sickness, I think I never saw more people, known and unknown, in my gayest days. I never had so many cares and duties imposed upon me as now in sickness and old age. I know not how to help it. If my guests are old, I see them out of respect, and in the hope of receiving some good; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from a distance, I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near home, my neighbors would be jealous of my seeing strangers, and excluding them.” Her epistolary labors were enormous. She laid it down as a rule never to refuse or delay answering any application for epistolary advice, enduring the incessant interruptions with indefatigable kindness.

In spite, however, of all the interruptions of company and of sickness; for, as she tells us, “From early infancy to late old age, her life was a successive scene of visitation and restoration,” she found time and strength to compose a series of works on “Morals,” the last of the three being produced in the seventy-fifth year of her age.

In 1828, Miss More was subjected to the severest trial, perhaps, of her life. After the death of her sister Martha, who had been the manager of the domestic economy of the sisterhood, affairs at Barley Wood got into sad confusion. Dishonest and dissolute servants wasted her substance. After trying in vain to correct the evil by mild remonstrance, she sank quietly under what seemed inevitable, and determined to take the infliction as a chastisement to which it was her duty to submit. At length, however, her friends interposed, and represented to her the danger of her appearing as the patroness of vice, and thereby lessening the influence of her writings. It was determined that her establishment should be broken up. At a bleak season of the year, on a cold and inclement day, after a long confinement to her chamber, she removed to Clifton. From her apartment she was attended by several of the principal gentlemen of the neighborhood, who had come to protect her from the approach of any thing that might discompose her. She descended the stairs with a placid countenance, and walked silently for a few minutes round the lower room, the walls of which were covered with the portraits of her old and dear friends, who had successively gone before her. As she was helped into the carriage, she cast one pensive, parting look upon her bowers, saying, “I am driven, like Eve, out of paradise; but not, like Eve, by angels.” From the shock of the discovery of the misconduct of her servants, Miss More never recovered. After her removal to Clifton, her health was in a very precarious state. To her friends and admirers it was painful to see her great and brilliant talents descending to the level of mere ordinary persons; but the good, the kind, the beneficent qualities of her mind suffered no diminution or abatement. So long as her intellectual faculties remained but moderately impaired, her wonted cheerfulness and playfulness of disposition did not forsake her; and no impatient or querulous expressions escaped her lips, even in moments of painful suffering. Thus free from the infirmities of temper, which often render old age unamiable and unhappy, she was also spared many of the bodily infirmities which often accompany length of years. To the very last her eye was not dim; she could read with ease, and without spectacles, the smallest print. Her bearing was almost unimpaired, and, until very near the close of her life, her features were not wrinkled or uncomely. Her death-bed was attended with few of the pains and infirmities which are almost inseparable from sinking nature. She looked serene, and her breathing was as gentle as that of an infant in sleep. Her pulse waxed fainter and fainter, and her spirit passed quietly away on the 7th of September, 1833.