Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/41

Rh which each displays much virtue; but Percy refuses to restore a scarf which the lady had given him in happier days. A letter entreating him to give it up, falls into the hands of her husband, who, mad with jealousy, not only challenges Percy, but sends her a cup of poison to be taken in case of his own death. Inevitably this is reported to her, and she drinks the potion, but lives to hear that it was really Percy who was killed, just before her father had arrived on the scene to explain all; and while she dies, Douglas stabs himself! Her ravings were really touching, and must have been very effective, but neither Hannah nor her friends seem to have had the smallest scruple as to entertaining a Christian audience with suicide after the high Roman fashion—as indeed the tragic stage was in those days a conventional world, quite apart from any relation to the facts of history, manners, or real life, and with a code as well as customs of its own.

Written under the superintendence of one who perfectly gauged the taste of the contemporary public; and who, though retired, had an unlimited power of patronage, Percy had every advantage, and the actress Kitty Clive observed that "Garrick's nursing had enabled the bantling to go alone in a month." It had, however, real merit, quite sufficient to support that enthusiasm which contemporaries are apt to feel for the work of a female friend—just as Scott did when he placed Joanna Baillie on a level with Shakespeare.