Miss More’s dramas, as well as her poems and essays, were intended to serve the cause of virtue, about which all bluestockings were seriously concerned. Even the plays are filled with a sort of portable morality in the shape of maxims:
The treacherous path that leads to guilty deeds
Is, to make vice familiar to the mind.
Miss More never escaped from the office of preceptress; the forming spirit of all her work is that of the Young Ladies’ Academy.
In the same year which saw the production of Percy, she put forth a volume entitled Essays on Several Subjects, principally intended for Young Ladies. The book is of the same sort as Mrs. Chapone’s Letters: it warns young women to be modest, to avoid envy, and guard against the ‘obliquities of fraud’ in lovers. Allowing for its hopelessly narrow view of life, it may be granted that the advice is sound enough. But the bluestockings never realize that good advice is the cheapest commodity in the world.
Florio, a tale somewhat inappropriately dedicated to Walpole, is a sort of parable in verse, designed to enforce such lessons as are conveyed in the Essays. The hero, once a slave to frivolous society, is converted by reading Johnson’s Idler and inspecting the beauties of Nature under the direction of his mistress.
With Florio we reach a period in Miss More’s literary career and the end of what may be called the bluestocking influence on her work. Her pietism, which had amused Garrick, was now becoming chronic. She declined to go and see Mrs. Siddons as Elwina, because it is wrong to attend the theatre. She deplored the singing, dancing, and feasting in which London indulged after King George’s recovery of his sanity.[358] She even objected to the phrase merry Christmas, as being bacchanalian rather than Christian.[359] Walpole, who was naturally distressed by all this, made a charming attack on Miss More’s Low Church faith in the Ten Commandments, and pointed out to her that she was guilty of the Puritanical heresy.[360] The truth is that Miss More’s sense of responsibility to society at large was weighing on her mind. In 1788 she published a serious call to a more solemn view of life in her Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, and definitely embarked upon her career as preceptress in public morality. Meanwhile she was drawing steadily away from her fashionable friends. At last she came to think any association with them almost wicked. On March 12, 1794, she wrote in her diary:
Dined with friends at Mrs. ——. What dost thou here, Elijah? Felt too much pleased at the pleasure expressed by so many accomplished friends on seeing me again. Keep me from contagion![361]
Whatever may have been the influence of the bluestockings upon others, there can be no doubt that for Hannah More it had been an excellent corrective. It had at least prevented her from comparing herself to Elijah.