HANNAH MORE.
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.
HANNAH MORE.
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 133 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 134 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.