Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/36

24 sum to whatever Goldsmith (dead three years previously) had received for The Deserted Village.

Mrs. Montagu wrote:—

I admire the felicity of your muse in being able to do equal justice to the calm magnanimity of the Romans, and the spirit and fire of the Gothic character. If I were writing to anyone but yourself, I should indulge in making a thousand remarks on the beautiful simplicity of your tale.... Let me beg you, my dear Madam, still to allow your muse to adorn British places and British names. Wherever you lead the fairy dance, flowers will spring up, your rock will stand unimpaired by ages, as eminent as any in the Grecian Parnassus.

This excellent lady was as highly cultivated as any of her time, so that it is the more comical to find her admiring the simplicity of the taste and the correctness of the manners. The Romans were probably the Polydore and Ianthe of the Rock, who evinced their calm magnanimity by suicide and petrifaction, and the unfortunate Sir Eldred and his Bertha were the Goths. Johnson scorned the genuine article discovered by Dr. Percy, and parodied it with,—

I put my hat upon my head, And went into the Strand, And there I met another man, With his hat in his hand.

But he patronised Sir Eldred, even adding this stanza to Sir Eldred's wooing:—

My scorn has oft the dart repelled Which guileful beauty threw; But goodness heard, and grace beheld, Must every heart subdue.