Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/24

 which gave to Hannah More the best part of her earthly prestige, and made her verdicts a little like Protestant Bulls. When she objected to "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake" for their lack of "practical precept," these sinless poems were withdrawn from Evangelical bookshelves. Her biographer, Mr. Thompson, thought it necessary to apologize for her correspondence with that agreeable worldling, Horace Walpole, and to assure us that "the fascinations of Walpole's false wit must have retired before the bright ascendant of her pure and prevailing superiority." As she waxed old, and affluent, and disputatious, it was deemed well to encourage a timid public with the reminder that her genius, though "great and commanding," was still "lovely and kind." And when she died, it was recorded that "a cultivated taste for moral scenery was one of her distinctions";—as though Nature herself attended a class of ethics before venturing to allure too freely the mistress of Barley Wood.

It is in the contemplation of such sunlight mediocrity that the hardship of being born too