Letter 286 To Miss Hannah More.
Strawberry Hill, Nov. 13, 1784. (page 360)
Thank you a thousand times, dear Madam, for your obliging letter and the new Bristol stones you have sent me, which would pass on a more skilful lapidary than I am for having been brillianted by a professed artist, if you had not told me that they came shining -out of a native mine, and had no foreign diamond-dust to polish them. Indeed, can one doubt any longer that Bristol Is as rich and warm a soil as India? I am convinced it has been so of late years, though I question its having been so luxuriant in Alderman Canning's days; and I have MORE reasons for thinking so, than from the marvels' of Chatterton.—But I will drop metaphors, lest some nabob should take me au pi`e de la lettre, fit out an expedition, plunder your city, and massacre you for weighing too many carats.
Seriously, Madam, I am surprised-and chiefly at the kind of genius of this unhappy female.(537) Her ear, as you remark, is perfect but that, being a gift of nature, amazes me less. Her expressions are more exalted than poetic; and discover taste, as you say, rather than discover flights of fancy and wild ideas, as one should expect. I should therefore advise her quitting blank verse, which wants the highest colouring, to distinguish it from prose; whereas her taste, and probably good sense, might give sufficient beauty to her rhymes. Her not being learned is another reason against her writing in blank verse. Milton employed all his reading, nay, all his geographic knowledge, to enrich his language, and succeeded. They who have imitated him in that particular, have been mere monkeys; and they who neglected it, flat and poor.
Were I not persuaded by the samples you have sent me, Madam, that this woman has talents, I should not advise encouraging her propensity, lest it should divert her from the care of her family, and, after the novelty is over, leave her worse than she was. When the late Queen patronized Stephen Duck,(538) who was only a wonder at first, and had not genius enough to support the character he had promised, twenty artisans and labourers turned poets, and starved.(539) Your poetess can scarce be more miserable than she is, and even the reputation of being an authoress may procure her customers: but as poetry is one of your least excellencies, Madam (your virtues will forgive 'me), I am sure you will not only give her counsels for her works, but for her conduct; and your gentleness will blend them so judiciously, that she will mind the friend as well as the mistress. She must remember that she is a Lactilla, not a Pastora; and is to tend real cows, not Arcadian sheep.
What! if I should go a step farther, dear Madam, and take the liberty of reproving you for putting into this poor woman's hands such a frantic thing as The Castle of Otranto? It was fit for nothing but the age in which it was written: an age in which much was known; that -required only to be amused, nor cared whether its amusements were conformable to truth and the models of good sense; that could not be spoiled; was in no danger of being too credulous and rather wanted to be brought back to imagination, than to be led astray by it:-but you will have made a hurly-burly in this poor woman's head, which it cannot develop and digest.
I will not reprove, without suggesting something in my turn. Give her Dryden's Cock and Fox, the standard of good sense, poetry, nature, and ease. I would recommend others of his tales: but her imagination is already too gloomy, and should be enlivened; for which reason I do not name Mr. Gray's Eton Ode and Churchyard.' Prior's Solomon (for I doubt his Alma, though far superior, is too learned for her limited reading,) would be very proper. In truth, I think the cast of the age (I mean in its compositions) is too sombre. The flimsy giantry of Ossian has introduced mountainous horrors. The exhibitions at Somerset-house are crowded with Brobdignag ghosts. Read and explain to her a charming poetic familiarity called the Blue-stocking Club. If she has not your other pieces, might I take the liberty, Madam, of begging you to buy them for her, and let me be in your debt? And that your lessons may win their way more easily, even though her heart be good, will you add a guinea or two, as you see proper? And though I do not love to be named, yet, if it would encourage a subscription, I should have no scruple. It will be best to begin moderately! for, if she should take Hippocrene for Pactolus, we may hasten her ruin, not contribute to her fortune.
On recollection, you had better call me Mr. Anybody, than name my name, which I fear is in bad odour at Bristol, on poor Chatterton's account; and it may be thought that I am atoning his ghost: though, if his friends would show my letters to him, you would find that I was as tender to him as to your milkwoman: but that they have never done, among other instances of their injustice. However, I beg you to say nothing on that subject, as I have declared I would not.
I have seen our excellent friend in Clarges-street: she complains as usual of her deafness; but I assure you it is at least not worse, nor is her weakness. Indeed I think both her and Mr. Vesey better than last winter. When will you blue-stocking yourself and come amongst us? Consider how many of us are veterans; and, though we do not trudge on foot according to the institution, we may be out at heels-and the heel, you know, Madam, has never been privileged.
(537) Mrs. Yearsley, the milkwoman of Bristol, whose talent was discovered by Miss Hannah More, who solicited for her the protection of Mrs. Montagu, in a prefatory letter prefixed to her Poems, published in quarto, in the year 1785.-E.
(538) Some of Stephen Duck the thresher's verses having been shown to Queen Caroline she settled twelve shillings a-week upon him, and appointed him keeper of her select library at Richmond.(539) He afterwards took orders, and obtained the living of Byfleet, in Surrey; but growing melancholy, in 1750, he threw himself into the river, near Reading, and was drowned. Swift wrote upon him the following epigram—