Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/51

Rh, which was, perhaps, the first on record. He certainly did not treat her as he did a lady whom Hannah mentions, who begged him to look over a tragedy she had composed. He told her she could discover the mistakes as well as he could.

"But, Sir," said she, "I have no time! I have so many irons in the fire."

"Then, Madam," growled the Doctor, "the best thing I can advise you to do is to put your tragedy in along with your irons."

The lady deserved a rebuff. Garrick, having some time before refused a drama of hers, she had revenged herself by inditing a novel full of spiteful personalities against him. Miss More was requested to meet this by a criticism in the Gentleman's Magazine. She did so effectively; but she found that the indulgence of sarcastic censure was so pleasant to her, that she resolved never to make use of a weapon so dangerous to the employer.

Johnson had just been with George III., who begged him to place Edmund Spenser among his Lives of the Poets, thereby showing more taste and knowledge than the booksellers, who had not accepted the author of The Faery Queen as a poet.

Hannah thus describes her life at Hampton in the early days of Mrs. Garrick's widowhood:—

"After breakfast I go to my own apartment for several hours, where I read, write, and work, very