HANNAH MORE. ANNAH MORE was born in | Roberts, "was continually prompting her to ask for stories about the poet Dryden.". At the age of eight, the child had developed an eager thirst for learning, which her father was abun dantly able to gratify out of the stock of his professional acquisitions. His stock of books was scanty, the greater part of them having been lost in his removal from his birth-place in Norfolkshire to Stapleton; but he supplied the deficiency from his memory, taking his daughter upon his knee and narrating to her stories of the Greeks and Romans, "reciting to her the speeches of his favorite heroes, first in their origi nal language to gratify her ear with the sound, and afterwards translating them into English; particularly dwelling on the parallels and wise sayings of Plutarch; and these recollections made her often afterward remark, that the conversation of an enlightened parent or preceptor, constituted one of the best parts of education." 1745, at the village of Stapleton, Gloucestershire, England, where her father, Jacob More, a man of a learned education, was then in charge of a charity school. He was of a respectable family and had been intended for the church, but was led by want of means to the inferior occupation of a country schoolmaster. He was a tory and high-churchman, though other members of the family were Presbyterians. He married a farmer's daughter, like himself a person of sound intellect. There were five daughers the issue of this marriage, of whom Hannah was the youngest but one. She exhibited in her earliest childhood a remarkable quickness of apprehension, learning to read between her third and fourth year, and before she had reached the latter, recited her catechism in church to the admiration of the village rector. Her nurse, who is described as a pious old woman, had a distant flavor of literature about her, having lived in the family of the poet Dryden, and thus early the name and fame of "glorious John," became familiar to her infant charge. "The inquisitive mind of the little Hannah," says her biographer, In this, and in other particulars of the mental growth and literary progress of Hannah More, we are remind ed of the similar intellectual development of Maria Edgeworth. She also was mainly taught in her childhood by her father, and constantly inculcates in her admirable writings for the young, the advantage of this family oral instruction. Indeed, with important differences, there is a certain parallelism in the career of the two personages. Both entered the literary field early, were welcomed by the public at the start and continued to study and write under favorable circumstances, through an unusually prolonged term of life. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, was born twenty-two years later, but the two were on the earth together for sixty-six years, and, during the most stirring events of that period circling about the era of the French Revolution, were in their prime. Both were favorites of society, and saw much of the most cultivated people of their times. The object of both, as authors, was the improvement of their readers, and there was a great resemblance in the method of their labors in their plain, practical instructions on educational topics, though one drew more from every-day experience and illustrated the lesson with gaiety and humor, while the other, as we shall see, appealed constantly to the sanctions of religion and Christianity. In this respect, one, in fact, supplements the other. Add Hannah More to Maria Edgeworth, and you have a perfect whole. Hannah More gained from her father an early knowledge of Latin, which she afterwards improved and constantly maintained. She also gradually acquired an intimate acquaintance with French in reading and speaking. It was her parents' design that the chil dren should be qualified to conduct a lady's boarding school; and for this purpose the eldest sister was sent to a French school at Bristol. Returning at the end of each week to pass the Sunday at home, she communicated what she had learned to Hannah, who proved an apt pupil. This scheme of education succeeded so well, that about the year 1757, the eldest sisters opened the projected boarding school at Bristol, and prosecuted it from the beginning with success. Hannah, then at the age of twelve, was taken with them and continued her studies with the double incentive of the love of knowledge, and a maintenance for life involved in its immediate acquisition. Addison's "Spectator," the constant companion of the generation in which she was born, which has lit the way to so many youthful minds in the pursuit of letters and cheerful observation of the world, was the first book, we are told, which at this time engrossed her attention. The arrival of the elder Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley, who came to deliver his famous lectures on oratory at Bristol, proved an interesting point in Miss More's life. Sheridan had been on the boards at Drury Lane, a species of rival to Garrick, and had for years been connected with the theatre at Dublin. When he left the stage, he devoted himself to the cause of education. His lectures, we may suppose, retained the best part of his theatrical declamation. They made a great impression on the mind of Miss More, then in her sixteenth year. She addressed some verses to Sheridan, which led to his making her acquaintance. In all this, her mind was doubtless directed or as sisted in a tendency to dramatic composition which soon manifested itself, and, in no long time, resulted in her sharing the glories of the British stage. She was also benefited at this early period of her life by her acquaintance with Ferguson the astronomer, who delivered a course of popular lectures at Bristol; and still more by the instructions of a Mr. Peach, a linen-draper of the town, a man of cultivation in English literature, who had been the friend of Hume, and claimed the credit of removing from his History of England, more than two hundred Scotticisms. Encouraged by such associations as these, and inspired by the work of education in her sisters' school, with which she was connected, she, now in her seventeenth year, executed her first important literary work. It grew out of the recitations in the school, which she observed were often drawn from plays, the moral character of which would not bear too close an inspection. In a minor way, as Racine wrote his sacred dramas of "Esther " and "Athalie," at the request of Madame de Maintenon in her religious days, for performance before her young ladies at St. Cyr, so Miss Hannah More prepared her pastoral drama, "The Search After Happiness." It is in a number of scenes in ten syllable rhymed verse, interrupted by occasional lyric effusions. In accordance with its moral intent, we have in the drama four ladies severally discontented with the world meeting in a grove in search of the happiness which they had not found in fashion, a vain pursuit of science, the seductions of imagination or the Assert your birthright, and assume the skies.” The moral is a good one, the pictures of life in a certain general way, according to the fashion of the literature of the time, are piquant and animated; but we question whether young ladies of the present era are often employed in recitations from this elegant poem. Neither, on the other hand, do they declaim passages from the wicked plays it was intended to supersede. The argument of Miss More, as it is given in her prologue, is insufficient. It begs the whole question of dramatic power and interest. People do not necessarily become vicious by even the ardent impersonation of such passions as she would supersede by the utter ance of simple, moral and religious reflections, or Mrs. Siddons, who bore a most estimable character, would have become from her performance of Lady Macbeth, one of the most wicked persons of her sex. Miss More, in truth, concedes this by her lively pictures of the world in this very innocent pastoral drama, and when she herself came to write for the stage, she invoked the passions she here laments. From a very early period of her life, Miss More attached herself to persons of eminence and distinction in the society by which she was surrounded. As she could have gained little from the position in which she was placed, one of a group of several maiden la dies earning their living by school teaching, the attentions which she received must have been wholly owing to her happy disposition and literary acquirements. Besides Latin and French, she cultivated the Spanish and Italian tongues. From the latter she translated and adapted some of the dramatic works of Metastasio. Most of these were destroyed. One of them, based on the Opera of Regulus, she afterwards extended into a tragedy in five acts, entitled "The Inflexible Captain." It was about the time we are writing of, when she was at the age of twentytwo, that a Mr. Turner, a gentleman of wealth, living on a fine estate, and nearly double her own age, fascinated by her agreeable qualities, proposed to her in marriage and was accepted. The thing got so far that she quitted the school, and made some expensive preparations for her new mode of life. Mr. Turner, however, hesitated, and the marriage was broken off. He, however, settled an annuity upon her, to enable her to devote herself to her literary pursuits, and on his death left her a thousand pounds. We now reach a memorable point in Miss More's life, the year of her first introduction to London society. In the year 1774, when she was approaching the age of thirty, she visited the metropolis with two of her sisters, and was introduced to David Garrick, who had been enlisted in her favor by see ing a letter, shown to him by a com mon friend, in which she described her. emotions on witnessing his performance of Lear. The great actor was a very sociable and friendly man, highly appreciative of literary excellence, and doubtless thought not the less of it when it was displayed by an agreeable young lady in admiration of himself. The acquaintance soon ripened into an intimacy, which remained unbroken during his life. The theatre was then in the ascendant, and Miss More, spite of her recommendations of the simple moral drama in her pastoral play at Bristol, entered heartily into its delights. She was present at the performance of Sheridan's first dramatic production, the "Rivals," of which she says:-"On the whole I was tolerably entertained." She also witnesses a representation of General Burgoyne's "Maid of the Oaks." Garrick was for the time unable from ill health to appear upon the stage. "If he does not get well enough to act soon," writes the enthusiastic Hannah, "I shall break my heart." Miss More had a very useful friend in London in Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua, by whom also she was much admired. Garrick and Reynolds opened to her an entrance to the foremost literary society. The former introduced her to Mrs. Montagu, then in the ascendant with all her charms of wit and cleverness, the presiding deity of those Montagu House assemblies, which gave a new and lasting name to the female cultivators of litera ture, the "Blue Stockings." It ori ginated with Admiral Boscawen, whose touching in its expression by Miss wife was one of the most brilliant of 2.00 The |