Coelebs In Search of a Wife

by Hannah More

Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate you.

When they had finished their pious office, I inquired if the poor woman had no attendant. Ph[oe]be, who was generally the chief speaker, said, "she has a good daughter, who is out at work by day, but takes care of her mother at night; but she is never left alone, for she has a little grand-daughter who attends her in the mean time; but as she is obliged to go once a day to the Grove to fetch provisions, we generally contrive to send her while we are here, that Dame Alice may never be left alone."

While we were talking, I heard a little weary step, painfully climbing up the stairs, and looked round, expecting to see the grand-daughter; but it was little Kate Stanley, with a lap full of dried sticks, which she had been collecting for the poor woman's fire. The sharp points of the sticks had forced their way in many places through the white muslin frock, part of which, together with her bonnet, she had left in the hedge, which she had been robbing. At this loss she expressed not much concern, but lamented not a little that sticks were so scarce; that she feared the broth had been spoiled, from her being so long in picking them, but indeed she could not help it. I was pleased with these under allotments, these low degrees in the scale of charity.

I had gently laid my roses on the hat of Miss Stanley, as it lay on the Bible, and before we left the room, as I drew near the good old dame to slip a couple of guineas into her hand, I had the pleasure of seeing Lucilla, who thought herself unobserved, retire to the little window, and fasten the roses into the crown of her hat like a garland. When the grand-daughter returned loaded with the daily bounty from the Grove, we took our leave, followed by the prayers and blessings of the good woman.

As we passed by the rose-tree, the orchard, and the court, Ph[oe]be said to me, "A'n't you glad that poor people can have such pleasures?" I told her it doubled my gratification to witness the enjoyment, and to trace the hand which conferred it; for she had owned it was their work. "We have always," replied Ph[oe]be, "a particular satisfaction in observing a neat little flower-garden about a cottage, because it holds out a comfortable indication that the inhabitants are free from absolute want, before they think of these little embellishments."

"It looks, also," said Miss Stanley, "as if the woman, instead of spending her few leisure moments in gadding abroad, employed them in adorning her little habitation, in order to make it more attractive to her husband. And we know more than one instance in this village in which the man has been led to give up the public-house, by the innocent ambition of improving on her labors."

I asked her what first inspired her with such fondness for gardening, and how she had acquired so much skill and taste in this elegant art? She blushed and said she was afraid I should think her romantic, if she were to confess that she had caught both the taste and the passion, as far as she possessed either, from an early and intimate acquaintance with the Paradise Lost, of which she considered the beautiful descriptions of scenery and plantations as the best precepts for landscape gardening. "Milton," she said, "both excited the taste and supplied the rules. He taught the art and inspired the love of it." From the gardens of Paradise the transition was easy and natural. On my asking her opinion of this portrait, as drawn by Milton, she replied, "That she considered Eve, in her state of innocence, as the most beautiful model of the delicacy, propriety, grace, and elegance of the female character which any poet ever exhibited. Even after her fall," added she, "there is something wonderfully touching in her remorse, and affecting in her contrition."

"We are probably," replied I, "more deeply affected with the beautifully contrite expressions of repentance in our first parents, from being so deeply involved in the consequences of the offense which occasioned it."

"And yet," replied she, "I am a little affronted with the poet, that while, with a noble justness, he represents Adam's grief at his expulsion, as chiefly arising from his being banished from the presence of his Maker, the sorrows of Eve seem too much to arise from being banished from her flowers. The grief, though never grief was so beautifully eloquent, is rather too exquisite, her substantial ground for lamentation considered."

Seeing me going to speak, she stopped me with a smile, saying, "I see by your looks that you are going, with Mr. Addison, to vindicate the poet, and to call this a just appropriation of the sentiment to the sex; but surely the disproportion in the feeling here is rather too violent, though I own the loss of her flowers might have aggravated any common privation. There is, however, no female character in the whole compass of poetry in which I have ever taken so lively an interest, and no poem that ever took such powerful possession of my mind."