“‘Sense’ I was going to add, in the words of Pope, till I recollected that pence had a more appropriate meaning, and was as good a rhyme.  This apostrophe broke from me on coming from the opera, the first I ever did, the last I trust I ever shall go to.  For what purpose has the Lord of the universe made His creature man with a comprehensive mind?  Why make him a little lower than the angels?  Why give him the faculty of thinking, the powers of wit and memory; and, to crown all, an immortal and never-dying spirit?  Why all this wondrous waste, this prodigality of bounty, if the mere animal senses of sight and hearing (by which he is not distinguished from the brutes that perish) would have answered the end as well? and yet I find the same people are seen at the opera every night—­an amusement written in a language the greater part of them do not understand, and performed by such a set of beings!...  Conscience had done its office before; nay was busy at the time; and if it did not dash the cup of pleasure to the ground, infused at least a tincture of wormwood into it.  I did think of the alarming call, ’What doest thou here, Elijah?’ and I thought of it to-night at the opera.”

The attractions of wealth and fame had not blinded her to the need of seeking satisfaction from a higher source.  “For my own part, the more I see of the ‘honoured, famed, and great,’ the more I see of the littleness, the unsatisfactoriness of all created good; and that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the immortal principle within.”

She was much troubled by the extravagances of fashion in dress and adornments; and, although conforming to some extent to prevailing modes in order to avoid singularity, which she abhorred, she always dressed neatly and decorously, and never, through the whole of her life, wore an article of jewellery simply for ornament.

The following extract from a letter written by one of Hannah’s sisters shows the cordial relationships with Dr. Johnson, and his interest in the five sisters.  “Tuesday evening we drank tea at Sir Joshua’s with Dr. Johnson.  Hannah is certainly a great favourite.  She was placed next him, and they had the entire conversation to themselves.  They were both in remarkably high spirits; it was certainly her lucky night!  I never heard her say so many good things.  The old genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant.  You would have imagined you had been at some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter.  They, indeed, tried which could ‘pepper the highest,’ and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest reasoner.”

III.

CHARACTERISTICS, FRIENDSHIPS, AND EARLY LITERARY WORK.