Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/168

156 weeks, listening to him as he read prose by the ell, declaimed poetry by the hour, and discussed and compared his favourite heroes, ancient, modern, and fictitious under all points of view and every possible condition, coaxing him into the garden under pretence of a lesson on botany, sending him from his books to run round the grounds, or play at cooking in the kitchen, giving him Bible lessons which invariably ended in a theological argument, and following him with her advice and sympathy through his multifarious literary enterprises."

Childish squibs and parodies were produced under her encouragement, one called Childe Hugh and the Labourer, a pathetic ballad, seems to have been suggested by the battle of Blagdon, Childe Hugh alluding to Sir Abraham Elton's knightly defence of her cause against "the Abbot." It was meant as an imitation of Percy's Reliques, but, we are told, strongly suggests John Gilpin. The enjoyment with which the Stanleys are represented as listening to that poem as a birthday treat may well have been copied from that of this most amusing little guest. Hannah constantly corresponded with him, and, as his nephew and biographer says, to her "was due the commencement of what eventually became the most readable of libraries." When he was only six years old, she wrote, "Though you are a little boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man; but long before you are a man I hope