SECTION I.—HANNAH MORE.
“Great as her fame has been, I never considered it equal to her merit. Such a fine and complete combination of talent and goodness, and of zeal and discretion, I never witnessed. All her resources, influences, and opportunities, were simply and invariably made to subserve one purpose, in which she aimed to live, not to herself, but to Him who died for us and rose again.”—
William Jay.
LITERATURE.
Every piece of composition takes up, and must take up, as its basis, some element or assumption of fact,—states, affirms, or denies something; but unless it be animated by imagination, it is not literature. The power of seeing and expressing the æsthetic element in nature and life is that which entitles a composition to be regarded as a literary product. It is this element which inspires, vitalises, and gives immortality to a production, whether it be an address to a mountain daisy, or a history of the world. Science may become obsolete through the progress of discovery, polemics may become irrelevant through the progress of society, but literature is ever new, and never old; it is enduring as the great features of nature which are imaged in it, and the manifold aspects of human life from which it derives its chief value and fascination. The dominion of popular writing is being increased at a most marvellous rate. Literature is now crowned as the very chiefest monarch of these times. On many topics we differ, but editors, authors, critics, and all the disseminators of literature, are unanimous as to the necessity of the diffusion of knowledge. What a mine of intellectual wealth has that admirable art, the art of printing, now laid open to all! A lifetime would not exhaust those treasures of delight supplied by English genius alone. Not only have we men gifted with the highest attributes of mind, writing entertaining, instructive, suggestive, Christian, and progressive books; but women in every department of literature have taken up, not by courtesy, but by right, a full and conspicuous place. Not a few of these authoresses heard “that Divine and nightly-whispering voice, which speaks to mighty minds of predestinated garlands, starry and unwithering,” and have already received their reward.
BIOGRAPHY.
Hannah More has been long conspicuous among the lights of the world. She was the youngest but one of five sisters, and was born on the 2nd of February, 1745, at Stapleton, near Bristol. Jacob More and Mary Grace educated all their daughters with a view to their future occupation as schoolmistresses. They had all strong minds, sagacious intellects, and superior capabilities for the acquisition of knowledge; but Hannah seems to have combined in herself the chief excellencies of all their characters. Her mental precocity was extraordinary. When about three years old, her mother found that in listening to the lessons taught her elder sisters, she had learned them for herself. She wrote rhymes at the age of four, and before that period repeated her catechism in the church in a manner which excited the admiration of the clergyman, who had so recently received her at the font. Her nurse had formerly lived in the family of Dryden, and little Hannah took great delight in hearing stories about the great poet. Before she had completed her eighth year, her thirst for knowledge became so conspicuous, that her father, despite his horror at female pedantry, had begun to instruct her in Grecian and Roman history, classics and mathematics. Under the tuition of her elder sister Mary, she commenced the study of French. We are not aware that she ever visited Paris, but some French officers were frequently guests at her father’s table, and these gentlemen always fixed upon Hannah as their interpreter. Hence that free and elegant use of the language for which she was afterwards distinguished.
The superior talents, sound principles, and excellent conduct of the Misses More attracted notice and found patrons; and whilst still in their youth, they found themselves established at the head of a school, which long continued to be more flourishing than any other in the west of England. Miss Hannah sedulously availed herself of the instructions of masters in the Italian and Spanish languages. For her knowledge of the physical sciences, she was largely indebted to the self-taught philosopher, James Ferguson; and it is probable that her admirable elocutionary powers were the result of lessons received from Mr. Sheridan. In 1764, Sir James Stonehouse, who had been many years a physician in large practice at Northampton, took holy orders, and came to reside at Bristol, in the same street with the Miss Mores. Sir James discerned Miss Hannah’s gifts, fostered her genius, directed her theological studies, and remained through life her firm friend.
In 1767, she accepted the addresses of Edward Turner, Esq., of Belmont, a man of large fortune, good character, and liberal education, but of a gloomy and capricious temper, and almost double her own age. She resigned her partnership in the school, and spared no expense in fitting herself out to be his wife. Three times in the course of six years the wedding-day was fixed, and as often postponed by her affianced husband. Miss Hannah More’s health and spirits failed; she could see no rational prospect of happiness with a man who could so trifle with her feelings, and at last found resolution to terminate the anxious and painful treaty. His mind, however, was ill at ease till he was allowed to settle upon her an annuity of £200, having offered three times that sum. At his death he also bequeathed her £1000. Her hand was again solicited, but refused. Possibly her experience prompted her sisters to spend their days in single blessedness.
One of the most important events in the life of Miss Hannah More, was her first visit to London, in 1773. At that time, neither the habits of people deemed religious, nor the scruples of her own mind, interdicted her from visiting the theatre, and listening to Shakespeare speaking in the person of that consummate actor, David Garrick. The character in which she first saw him was Lear, and having written her opinion of that wonderful impersonation to a mutual friend, who showed it to him, the scenic hero called upon her at her lodgings in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He was delighted with his new acquaintance, and took a pride and pleasure in introducing her to the splendid circle in which he moved. In six weeks she became intimate with the rank and talent of the time. One of the two sprightly sisters who accompanied her to London, graphically describes her first interview with the great moralist of the eighteenth century. Miss Reynolds telling the doctor of the rapturous exclamations of the sisters on the road, and Johnson shaking his scientific head at Miss Hannah, and calling her “a silly thing!” she seating herself in the lexicographer’s great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his genius, and he laughing heartily, and assuring her that it was a chair in which he never sat. Miss Hannah More’s quickness of repartee, aptness of quotation, and kindliness of heart, won the favour of the leaders of society. But in the glittering saloons of fashion, when senators and peers paid her homage, she stood quiet and self-possessed. In 1775, while the first rich bloom still rested on the fruits of her London experience, she remarks: “The more I see of the honoured, famed, and great, the more I see of the bitterness, the unsatisfactoriness, of all created good, and that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the immortal principle within.” None could more thoroughly weigh popular acclaim, and more firmly pronounce it the hosannas of a drivelling generation than this young school-mistress.