Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/166

154 against the book, and they were barbed with the irony of which the Canon of St. Paul's was a master.

To those more seriously disposed persons who barely tolerated fiction of any sort, Cœlebs, with its really able sketches of character, and epigrammatic turns, was genuinely entertaining and delightful. Mrs. More was continually receiving letters recommending it to her perusal, and those friends to whom she sent it, concealing the secret of its authorship, were greatly excited. Dr. Randolph writes: "Junius's letters nor Chatterton's poems hardly occasioned more anxious research or eager controversy in public than Cœlebs did, at least in a certain circle." He himself had come to the conclusion that the writer was a lady, and a spinster, because of a certain Mrs. Carlton, a model victim to an ill-starred marriage. He says: "This inimitable wife, who sets us all a-crying, does not scruple to converse with her religious female friends on the faults of her husband, and she fears having a female confidant in the house with her, lest she should talk of them always."

The first edition was sold out in a day or two, the second in a fortnight, eleven had appeared in nine months, and thirty before the close of the author's life, twenty-four years later.

As her earlier friends passed away, a younger generation took their places, chiefly belonging to those good and excellent allies of Wilberforce, who were known