Born, at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, 2 Feb. 1745. Precocious abilities in childhood. Adopted literary career. Visit to London, 1774; friendship with Garrick begun. Play, “The Inflexible Captive,” translated from Metastasio, performed at Exeter and Bath, 1775. Tragedy, “Percy,” produced at Covent Garden, 10 Dec. 1777. “The Fatal Falsehood,” Covent Garden, 6 May 1779. Gave up connection with stage after Garrick’s death. Settled at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, 1785. Started Sunday schools, with her sisters’ help, in her parish of Blagdon, 1789. Took part in “Blagdon Controversy,” 1800–02. Removed to Barley Wood, 1802; to Clifton, 1828. Died, at Clifton, 7 Sept. 1833. Buried at Wrington, Gloucestershire. Works: “The Search after Happiness,” 1773 (2nd edn. same year); “The Inflexible Captive,” 1774 (3rd edn. same year); “Sir Eldred of the Bower and the Bleeding Rock,” 1776; “Ode to Dragon” (anon.), 1777; “Essays on Various Subjects,” 1777; “Percy” (anon.), 1778; “Works … in prose and verse,” 1778; “The Fatal Falsehood,” 1779; “Sacred Dramas,” 1782; “Florio … and The Bas Bleu,” 1786; “Slavery,” 1788; “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great” (anon.), 1788; “Bishop Bonner’s Ghost” (anon.), 1789; “An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World” (anon.), 1791; “Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont,” 1793 (3rd edn. same year); “Village Politics” (under pseud. “Will Chip”), 1793; “Hints to all Ranks of People” (anon.), [1795]; Tracts signed “Z,” in “Cheap Repository Tracts,” 1795–98; “A Hymn of Praise” (anon.), [1796]; “Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education” (2 vols.), 1799 (3rd edn. same year); “Works (8 vols.), 1801; “Hints towards forming the character of a Young Princess” (anon.; 2 vols.), 1805; “Cœlebs in search of a Wife” (anon.), 1808; “Practical Piety” (2 vols.), 1811 (4th edn. same year); “Christian Morals” (2 vols.), 1813 (5th edn. same year); “Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St. Paul,” 1815 (3rd edn. same year); “Poems” (collected), 1816; “Works” (19 vols.), 1818–19; “Stories for the Middle Ranks of Society,” 1819; “Moral Sketches of prevailing Opinions and Manners,” 1819 (5th edn. same year); “Bible Rhymes on the Names of all the Books of the Old and New Testaments,” 1821; “The Spirit of Prayer,” 1825 (3rd edn. same year); “The Feast of Freedom,” 1827; “Poems” (collected), 1829; “Works” (11 vols.), 1830. She edited: “Poems” by Ann Yearsley, 1785. Collected Works: “Miscellaneous Works” (2 vols.), 1840. Life: by H. Thompson, 1838. Posthumous: “Letters … to Zackary Macaulay,” ed. by A. Roberts, 1860.

Personal

  I visited Hannah More, at Cowslip Green, on Monday last, and seldom have I lived a pleasanter day. She knew my opinions, and treated them with a flattering deference. Her manners are mild, her information considerable, and her taste correct. There are five sisters, and each of them would be remarked in a mixed company…. They pay for and direct the education of 1,000 poor children.

  When she chose, or when she was adequately excited, could really perform with effect and execution; and, at times, she executed bravuras, or passages of colloquial effect, which electrified all who heard. Mrs. H. More was the most opposite creature in the world. She was modest, feminine, and, by nature, retiring. Her manners, which were those of a well-bred woman, accustomed to good society, and therefore free from all bustle, hurry, and excitement, supported the natural expression of her mind. It was only by a most unnatural and transient effort that she ever attempted to shine. On the other hand, to the eye, she was a far more pleasing woman than the masculine De Staël…. Mrs. H. More was soft, delicate, and agreeable; and, in youth, must have been pretty. Her eyes only too bright for absolute repose of countenance; else hers would have been nearly quiescent. Her sisters were, if not more interesting, at least more entertaining; especially Mrs. Sally, who had exuberant spirits, mirth, and good nature: and Mrs. Patty, who was distinguished for humour, or at least drollery.

  It may be questioned whether any one in modern times has lived so long with less waste of existence, or written so much with less abuse of ability; whether wisdom has been better consecrated or religion better seconded, in this our day at least, by the pure and prudent application of popular talents.

  Though I think that Mrs. More’s very great notoriety was more the work of circumstances, and the popular turn of her mind, than owing to a strong original genius, I am far from thinking her an ordinary woman. She must have had great energy of character, and a spritely, versatile mind, which did not originate much, but which readily caught the spirit of the day, and reflected all phases of opinion in the pious and well-disposed portion of society in a clear and lively manner.

  I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed to review Hannah More’s Life or Works. If I did, it must have been in jest. She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I should choose to write a critique. She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire,—begging her pardon for comparing her to a bad woman, and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I therefore could not possibly write about her unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favor, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

  The cottage, except by the growth of the trees then planted, is little altered from its appearance in 1785, when Miss More first took possession of it. It is only one story high; the roof is thatch; a smooth lawn, with a few shrubs and trees, fronts the window of the drawing-room, which looks towards the south. A border of flowers runs nearly round the walls. Situate in the midst of the bright and fertile vale of Wrington, Cowslip Green commands a variety of exquisite views. On one side of the lawn rises the abrupt hill on which the noble mansion of Aldwick Court has since been erected. To the south spreads the rich and sylvan valley, bounded by the dark outline of the Mendips, with their warm-tinted herbage and dusky woods, casting out in bold relief the picturesque village of Blagdon, and the “Magick Garden” of Mendip Lodge with its noble terraces of “Shade above shade, a woody theatre of stateliest view;” while between them the cottage roofs and venerable tower of Burrington shelter in the leafy skirts of their bold and rocky coomb.

  I like neither her letters, nor her books, nor her character. She was that most disagreeable of all monsters, a blue-stocking—a monster that can only exist in a miserably false state of society, in which a woman with but a smattering of learning or philosophy is classed along with singing mice or card-playing pigs.

  Her form was small and slight, her features wrinkled with age; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her eyes, the clearest, the brightest, and the most searching I have ever seen. They were singularly dark—positively black they seemed as they looked forth among carefully-trained tresses of her own white hair; and absolutely sparkled while she spoke of those of whom she was the venerated link between the present and the long past. Her manner on entering the room, while conversing, and at our departure, was positively spritely; she tripped about from console to console, from window to window, to show us some gift that bore a name immortal, some cherished reminder of other days—almost of another world, certainly of another age; for they were memories of those whose deaths were registered before the present century had birth. She was clad, I well remember, in a rich dress of pea-green silk. It was an odd whim, and contrasted somewhat oddly with her patriarchal age and venerable countenance, yet was in harmony with the youth of her step and her increasing vivacity, as she laughed and chatted, chatted and laughed; her voice strong and clear as that of a girl.

  Free from vanity she scarcely was, even in her latter days, though she had forsaken, as she supposed, the vain and frivolous world; but she was singularly amiable, thoroughly guileless, and sincere; hence the number of her devoted friends. Her intellectual abilities were confessedly of a high order, her piety unaffected, and her benevolence conspicuous.

  Hannah More did get unendurably poky, narrow, and solemn in her last days, and not a little sanctimonious; and we naturally think of her as an aged spinster with black mitts, corkscrew curls, and a mob cap, always writing or presenting a tedious tract, forgetting her brilliant youth, when she was quite good enough, and lively, too.

  Strict and consistent as a moralist, she was never led into any extravagances or fanaticisms. Stern even as a disciplinarian, she did not proscribe healthy and natural amusements. Strong-minded,—if I may use a modern contemptuous phrase,—she never rebelled against the ordinances of nature or the laws dictated by inspiration. She was a model woman: beautiful, yet not vain; witty, yet never irreverent; independent, yet respectful to authority; exercising private judgment, yet admired by bishops; learned, without pedantry; hospitable, without extravagance; fond of the society of the great, yet spending her life among the poor; alive to the fascinations of society, yet consecrating all her energies of mind and body to the good of those with whom she was brought in contact; as capable of friendship as Paula, as religious as Madame Guyon, as charming in conversation as Récamier, as practical as Elizabeth, as broad and tolerant as Fénelon.

  On the 13th, the worn-out body was laid to rest beside those of her four sisters in the church-yard at Wrington. Her directions had been to avoid all pomp and display—only that suits of mourning were to be given to fifteen old men whom she had selected—but there were endless spontaneous tokens of respect. Every church in Bristol tolled its bell as the funeral passed through the streets. All the neighboring gentlemen met the procession a mile from the church, and fell into the rear; and for half a mile the road was crowded with country people mostly in mourning, and two hundred school-children, with a large number of clergy, preceded the coffin into church. Hannah More’s property was worth about thirty thousand pounds. Having no near relations, she left ten thousand pounds between various charities in London and at Bristol, with bequests to her clubs at Cheddar and Shipham. But her truly valuable legacy was not only the example of what one woman could be and could do, but a real influence on the tone of education in all classes of English women.

  He [Freeman] always looked back with interest to this early friendship with Hannah More, and was accustomed to say that she was a direct link between himself and Samuel Johnson, for he had been a pet of Hannah More, as she had been a favourite of the learned Doctor. He was also fond of referring to Lord Macaulay’s acquaintance with her when he was a boy, only observing that he himself had not, like Macaulay, offered her a glass of old spirits.

Cœlebs in Search of a Wife, 1808

  This book is written, or supposed to be written, (for we would speak timidly of the mysteries of superior beings), by the celebrated Mrs. Hannah Moore! We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion; but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human,—an uninspired production,—the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous levity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a large class of very respectable persons. It is the only method in which we can possibly make this work a proper object of criticism. We have the strongest possible doubts of the attributes usually ascribed to this authoress; and we think it more simple and manly to say so at once, than to admit nominally superlunary claims, which, in the progress of our remarks, we should virtually deny.

  Have you read “Celebs”? It has reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the drawback of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavored, it would have been something. I borrowed this “Celebs in Search of a Wife,” of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:—

  Mrs. Clifford tells me that Mrs. Hannah More was lately at Dawlish, and excited more curiosity there, and engrossed more attention, than any of the distinguished personages who were there, not excepting the Prince of Orange. The gentleman from whom she drew “Cœlebs” was there, but most of those who saw him did him the justice to declare that he was a much more agreeable man than Cœlebs. If you have any curiosity to know his name, I can tell you that—young Mr. Harford, of Blaise Castle.

  Her novel, “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” has a great deal of shrewdness and caustic wit about it. It was the book of its year, and was quoted everywhere. Notwithstanding many expenses and disadvantages, she cleared £2,000 by it in a single year. This sum was paid in the instalments of £500 a quarter, and the copyright remained in her own hands.

  She wrote a novel called “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.” Do you happen to have read it? I hardly know whether to advise it, or not; there is so much to read! But if you do, you will find most excellent English in it, and a great deal of very good preaching; and many hints about the social habits of that time—trustworthy even to the dinner hour and the lunch hour; and maxims good enough for a copy book, or a calendar; and you will find—what you will not find in all stories nowadays—a definite beginning and a definite end. I know what you may say, if you do read it. You would say that the sermons are too long, and that the hero is a prig; and that you would never marry him if he were worth twice his fortune, and were to offer himself ten times over. Well—perhaps not; but he had a deal of money. And that book of “Cœlebs”—whatever you may choose to say of it, had a tremendous success; it ran over Europe like wildfire; was translated into French, into German, into Dutch, into Polish, and I know not what language besides; and across the Atlantic—in those colonial days, when bookshops were not, as now, at every corner—over thirty thousand copies were sold.

General

  I am very much pleased to find that “Percy” meets with your approbation. It has been extremely successful, far beyond my expectation, and more so than any tragedy has been for many years. The profits were not so great as they would have been, had it been brought out when the town was full; yet they were such as I have no reason to complain of. The author’s nights, sale of the copy, etc., amounted to near six hundred pounds (this is entre nous); and as my friend Mr. Garrick has been so good as to lay it out for me on the best security, and at five per cent., it makes a decent little addition to my small income. Cadell gave £150—a very handsome price, with conditional promises. He confesses (a thing not usual) that it has had a very great sale, and that he shall get a good deal of money by it. The first impression was near four thousand, and the second is almost sold.

  Miss Moore has written a poem called “Le Bas Bleu;” which is in my opinion a very great performance. It wanders about in manuscript, and surely will soon find its way to Bath.

  She is a favourite writer with me, and has more nerve and energy, both in her thoughts and language, than half the he-rhymers in the kingdom.

  How unlike are these lines to the chymical preparations of our modern poetasters, cock and hen! who leave one with no images but of garlands of flowers and necklaces of coloured stones. Every stanza of “Bonner’s Ghost” furnishes you with a theme of ideas. I have read them twenty times, and every time they improve on me. How easy, how well kept up the irony! how sensible the satire! how delicate and genteel the compliments! I hold “Jekyll” and “Bonner’s Ghost” perfect compositions, in their different kinds—a great deal to say, when poetry has been so much exhausted.

  As a writer, how eminently artificial she was, notwithstanding some imaginary admiration which she always professed for simplicity, is evident from the very structure of her sentences; which are all turned as in a lathe, and are so entirely dependent for their effect upon antithesis, or direct contraposition in the words, even where there is little or none in the thoughts, that once a great poet, opening one of her works and reading a paragraph, made this remark to me,—“These feeble thinkers dare not trust a single thought to its native powers: so afraid are they of seeming dull, and so conscious of no innate right to challenge or support attention, that each particular sentence is polished into a sparkling and independent whole; so that, open the book where you will, all has an exterior brilliancy, and will bear being detached without any injury to its effect, having no sort of natural cohesion with the context, or dependency upon what goes before.”… With all these ineradicable disadvantages, Mrs. More’s works have their value. The very dilution of their thoughts recommends them, and adapts them to those who would shrink from severer or profounder speculations, and who seek, in all they read, to see their own ordinary sentiments reflected. Still, even thus, Mrs. H. More is not destined to any long existence.

  Miss Hannah More, a lady not out of harmony with these discords which mankind have been so long taking for their melancholy music…. It is the first time we ever read any of her verses; and she has fairly surprised us not only with some capital good sense, but with liberal and feeling sentiments! How could a heart, capable of uttering such things, get incrusted with Calvinism! and that, too, not out of fear and bad health, but in full possession, as it should seem, both of cheerfulness and sensibility!

  So low was the standard of poetical taste about the last quarter of the last century that Hannah More was regarded by a nation of admirers as a tenth muse…. We do not mean to deny her the possession of very considerable talent. She was the means of circulating through society much good sense in prose and verse very fairly written; her ideas also, on more than one great political question were sound and clear, but her knowledge was limited, and her reading very confined and much too sectarian.

  We venture to affirm that her books were more numerous, that they passed through more editions, that they were printed in more languages, and that they were read by more people, than those of any other authoress upon record.

  Not many months ago, at a book depot not many miles from Paternoster Row, an application was made for a tract of Mrs. Hannah More’s entitled “Will Chip; or Village Politics.” The answer returned was that “Will Chip and Hannah Moor were both out of print.”… To be “out of print” is little; but to be turned into the title of a tract, to be misspelt into “Hannah Moor,” and set down amongst the shavings with one’s own “Will Chip,” is a fate to reconcile the majority of us to oblivion. Yet since oblivion has not yet flowed over this good woman’s name, or has merely flowed over it to tarnish it with a little rust, it may be worth while, to spend a few moments in rubbing up the old lamp. If it cannot work wonders any more for us, or be lit up with its old light, it may be well to see how it looked and shone in the season when men were so willing to rejoice in its light—not religious or “evangelical” men only, but poets, wits, actors, men and women of the world.

  By writings and by her own personal example Hannah More drew the sympathy of England to the poverty and crime of the agricultural laborer.

  She forestalled nearly everything which has been written in our times pertaining to the life of woman, both at school and in society. And she evinced in her writings on this great subject an acuteness of observation, a good sense, a breadth and catholicity of judgment, a richness of experience, and a high moral tone which have never been surpassed.

  No one could wire-draw sentences and spin high-sounding platitudes full of long words and far-fetched similes, better than Hannah More.

  I freely admit that the celebrated Mrs. Hannah More is one of the most detestable writers that ever held a pen. She flounders like a huge conger-eel in an ocean of dingy morality. She may have been a wit in her youth, though I am not aware of any evidence of it—certainly her poem, “Bas Bleu,” is none—but for all the rest of her days, and they were many, she was an encyclopædia of all literary vices. You may search her nineteen volumes through without lighting upon one original thought, one happy phrase. Her religion lacks reality. Not a single expression of genuine piety, of heart-felt emotion, ever escapes her lips. She is never pathetic, never terrible. Her creed is powerless either to attract the well-disposed or make the guilty tremble. No naughty child ever read “The Fairchild Family” or “Stories from the Church Catechism” without quaking and quivering like a short-haired puppy after a ducking; but, then, Mrs. Sherwood was a woman of genius, whilst Mrs. Hannah More was a pompous failure. Still, she has a merit of her own, just enough to enable a middle-aged man to chew the cud of reflection as he hastily turns her endless pages. She is an explanatory author, helping you to understand how sundry people who were old when you were young came to be the folk they were, and to have the books upon their shelves they had.

  Her writings have the old-fashioned flavour of the eighteenth century; while they now represent the teaching of the evangelical school, which looked up to Newton and Cecil, and of which William Wilberforce and his friends were the recognised political and social leaders. Though now out of fashion, they show not only high moral and religious purpose, but strong sense, as well as considerable intellectual vivacity. If their author showed a little self-complacency, the wonder is that her strong sense kept her from being spoilt by the uniform flattery poured upon her by her contemporaries. Her services to education at a time of general indifference deserve the highest praise, though her decided desire to keep the poor in their place is now out of fashion.

  Hannah More’s style is almost always conventional, and generally careless, but “The Cheap Repository Tracts” are simple, forcible, and dramatic; and her faults of manner never entirely obscure her natural vigour and good sense. She is animated and fluent, possessing an extensive, though not a pure vocabulary, and some turn for epigram. Her heaviest works are sprinkled with admirable phrases, reflections, and descriptions, as happy as those which make many of her letters so delightful. She was a thoroughly cultivated and charming woman, who could hold her own in the best society of her day, at once observant, sympathetic, and tactful, with a capacity for unfailing enthusiasm.

  She was very unfortunately parted in respect of time, coming just before the days when it became possible for a lady to be decent in literature without being dull.