Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/129

 Rh we commend and encourage a child's unsteady footsteps. The generous Hayley welcomed with open arms these fair competitors for fame.

He ardently flattered Miss Seward, and for Miss Hannah More his enthusiasm knew no bounds.

"Spirit-moving" seems the last epithet in the world to apply to Miss More's strains; but there is no doubt that the public believed her to be as good a poet as a preacher, and that it supported her high estimate of her own powers. After a visit to another lambent flame, Mrs. Barbauld, she writes with irresistible gravity:

"Mrs. B. and I have found out that we feel as little envy and malice towards each other, as though we had neither of us attempted to 'build the lofty rhyme'; although she says this is what the envious and the malicious can never be brought to believe."