I will not attempt any criticism on those numerous poems.  They are not much read and valued in our time.  They are all after the style of Johnson and Pope;—­the measured and artificial style of the eighteenth century, in imitation of the ancient classics and of French poetry, in which the wearisome rhyme is the chief peculiarity,—­smooth, polished, elaborate, but pretty much after the same pattern, and easily imitated by school-girls.  The taste of this age—­created by Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, and others—­is very different.  But the poems of Hannah More were undoubtedly admired by her generation, and gave her great eclat and considerable pecuniary emolument.  And yet her real fame does not rest on those artificial poems, respectable as they were one hundred years ago, but on her writings as a moralist and educator.

During this period of her life—­from 1775 to 1785—­she chiefly resided with her sisters in Bristol, but made long visits to London, and to the houses of famous or titled personages.  In a worldly point of view these years were the most brilliant, but not most useful, period of her life.  At first she was intoxicated by the magnificent attentions she received, and had an intense enjoyment of cultivated society.  It was in these years she formed the most ardent friendships of her life.  Of all her friends, she seems to have been most attached to Garrick,—­the idol of society, a general favorite wherever he chose to go, a man of irreproachable morals and charming conversational powers; at whose house and table no actor or actress was ever known to be invited, except in one solitary instance; from which it would appear that he was more desirous of the attentions of the great than of the sympathy and admiration of the people of his own profession.  It is not common for actors to be gifted with great conversational powers, any more than for artists, as a general thing, to be well-read people, especially in history.  Hannah More was exceedingly intimate with both Garrick and his wife; and his death, in 1779, saddened and softened his great worshipper.  After his death she never was present at any theatrical amusement.  She would not go to the theatre to witness the acting of her own dramas; not even to see Mrs. Siddons, when she appeared as so brilliant a star.  In fact, after Garrick’s death Miss More partially abandoned fashionable society, having acquired a disgust of its heartless frivolities and seductive vices.

With the death of Garrick a new era opened in the life of Hannah More, although for the succeeding five years she still was a frequent visitor in the houses of those she esteemed, both literary lions and people of rank.  It would seem, during this period, that Dr. Johnson was her warmest friend, whom she ever respected for his lofty moral nature, and before whom she bowed down in humble worship as an intellectual dictator.  He called her his child.  Sometimes he was severe on her, when she differed from him in