Hannah More’s flattering reception in London society, and the lively impression which she so quickly created, will give rise to some astonishment in the minds of many readers.  She had not yet won reputation as an authoress; she did not possess the influence of wealth or of noble family; she was not remarkable for physical beauty; and she had none of the brazen ingenuity of patronage-hunters, by which admission is secured into the houses of distinguished people.  She came to London a stranger, a plain schoolmistress from Bristol, and yet in a marvellously short time she was one of the best known characters in the ranks of the wise and great.

The causes of her rapid rise to distinction are not far to seek.  Her wonderful talent for conversation at once proved an attraction to both men and women.  But she was not merely a fluent talker, never at a loss for a word, a phrase or a metaphor; had this been her crowning recommendation, Dr. Johnson’s long-standing friendship would never have been gained.  Her talk was always sensible—­the outcome of a well-furnished, retentive mind.  Her judgment was sound, her discrimination delicate, and her grasp of fundamental truths consistently firm.  She did not accommodate her opinions to meet the exigencies of different coteries, nor was she addicted to compromise.  She was equally at ease in discussing the merits of Rasselas with Dr. Johnson, the curiosities of art with Lord Orford, Roman history with Gibbon, and the state of the Church with Bishop Porteus.  Not that she pretended equality of learning with such men, but she had just sufficient knowledge of various subjects to provoke a conversation, and enough cleverness to sustain it by “drawing out” the scholar who might be seated at her side.  But this was not all.  Her conversation sparkled with wit and repartee.  “The mind laughed,” says her friend Zachary Macaulay, “not the muscles; the countenance sparkled, but it was with an ethereal flame:  everything was oxygen gas and intellectual champagne:  and the eye, which her sisters called ‘diamond,’ and which the painters complained they could not put upon canvas, often gave signal by its coruscation, as the same sort of eye did in her friend Mr. Wilberforce, that something was forthcoming which in a less amiable and religiously disciplined mind might have been very pretty satire, but which glanced off innoxiously in the shape of epigrammatic playfulness.”

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Her genial disposition and good temper disarmed difference of opinion of anything harsh or unpleasant, and formed another credential for the prominence she attained in society.  The absence of all artificiality in sentiment and manners, when contrasted with the straining after effect acquired by fashionably-bred ladies, also added to her attractions in the eyes of thoughtful men.

But whilst to these causes may be attributed her rapid rise into favour, it was undoubtedly owing to her unswerving and unassuming piety that she retained for so long the respect, confidence, and affection of varied orders of mind in London society.