Mrs. Chapone’s Letters consist almost entirely of advice; if she ever wanders from this it is to give instruction. She treats in turn of religion, the Bible, the affections, the temper, economy, politeness, geography, and history. It is all admirable, incontrovertible, wholesome, and heavy. It is like oatmeal—an old-fashioned food which should be consumed in quantities by the young, but for which they perversely seem to have no appetite. It will be remembered that when Lydia Languish received an untimely visit from Mrs. Malaprop, she wished to be found reading Mrs. Chapone; though her interests were more seriously engaged by works less uplifting. Of literary quality in these Letters one can hardly speak, for it is difficult to diffuse literary quality through two hundred pages of solid advice.
The contents of Mrs. Chapone’s second volume are hardly different. There are essays (‘Affectation and Simplicity’; ‘Conversation’), but they are in the same hortatory strain as the Letters. There are poems—fortunately few—several of which are addressed to Elizabeth Carter. They are, in general, like that lady’s poems, save that they reveal the influence of Collins rather than of Gray.
The most interesting things Mrs. Chapone wrote were her familiar letters.[344] They contain many interesting remarks on Richardson, and Johnson, both of whom were personally known to the author. They have an independence, an ease, and a vivacity that are quite lacking in the more solemn productions. The reader of them may find it in his heart to regret that Mrs. Chapone was so filled with a sense of the earnestness of life and of the importance of piety. A long indulgence in frivolity might have saved her.
Miss Hannah More had larger ambitions and more varied talents than the other bluestocking authors. She wrote poems lyrical, occasional, and narrative; she wrote dramas tragic, classical, and sacred; and she wrote essays and critiques of conduct. In all her earlier work she was assisted and inspired by the bluestockings. She was their chosen poet. She represented them in print as Mrs. Montagu represented them in the salon. She celebrated them all in verse, and dedicated in turn to Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Montagu, and Mrs. Vesey. It is with this earlier period of her career that we are exclusively concerned; the voluminous works which the lady produced after her separation from the bluestockings form no proper part of our inquiry.
Miss More’s relations with the bluestockings began in 1774, soon after her arrival in London. The exact date of her first visit to the metropolis is uncertain. Her biographer, Roberts, who seldom gives himself any concern with dates, says that this took place in ‘1773 or 4’; but inasmuch as Miss More dedicated her Inflexible Captive to Mrs. Boscawen as early as March 1, 1774, the former date would appear the more probable. Her introduction to the literati was due to Garrick, whose interest in Miss More had been roused by her description of his acting in Lear.[345] By 1775 Hannah More was a recognized member of the circle that surrounded Mrs. Montagu. Her poems, Bas Bleu and Sensibility, which have been noticed elsewhere in this book, were composed directly in their honour; but works of a more public appeal created no less enthusiasm among these ladies. Thus her ballad, Sir Eldred of the Bower, which appeared in 1775, was greeted by Mrs. Montagu in her most extravagant manner. She admired ‘the spirit and fire of the gothic character’ in the tale; the simplicity of the plot, the depiction of ancient manners (save the mark!), the primitive sentiments, and the characterization—all these challenged the critical approval of Mrs. Montagu. The tale of The Bleeding Rock, in the same volume, she esteemed no less highly. ‘Your Rock,’ she wrote, ‘will stand unimpaired by ages as eminent as any in the Grecian Parnassus.’[346] Such was the measure of bluestocking praise. But the poems had a sanction more important than this. They were read by a larger circle, Reynolds, Garrick, and Johnson; they became the ‘theme of conversation in all polite circles.’ Johnson could repeat all the best stanzas by heart.[347] He read both poems with the author, made some alterations in Sir Eldred, and even—as was his custom with poems submitted to his judgment—added certain lines to it.[348]
The poems belong to the Gothic school, and may well have been suggested by Percy’s Reliques; Johnson’s interest in them would be hard to understand were they not the production of a woman whom he playfully termed ‘the most powerful versificatrix’ in the language. But the bluestockings loved romance[349] and the primitive world to which they thought it introduced them. The fact that this world, as conceived by Hannah More, has no remote similarity to our own made it only the more conformable to bluestocking standards of the antique. In reading this lady’s poems and plays one is constantly reminded of those still-popular engravings of the eighteenth century, in which distressed virgins, in carefully studied poses, cast their melting eyes up to heaven. They live in bowers; refer to themselves in the third person, as the ‘sad Elwina’ and ‘the distressed Julia’; and when disappointed in love, or (to speak in their own idiom) when their flame is not reciprocated, immediately go mad, and after a painful scene before the footlights complete their career by sudden death. Their lovers are of sterner stuff. They seek wars in distant climes, disappear for long periods of time, and are reckoned dead, only to reappear just as some domestic tragedy is reaching its climax; they are for ever drawing their swords—frequently to plunge them into their own bosoms. Miss More made full use of the poetic license which governs this pasteboard world. Her characters are burdened with no human motives, and it is idle to seek for related cause and effect in their conduct. But morality flourishes. Thus in Sir Eldred we learn the dangers of jealousy:
The deadliest wounds with which we bleed
Our crimes alone inflict;