Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/54

42 personal request for it, Hannah sent it, and was requited with an elegant compliment in Latin verse.

While at Oxford, Hannah mentioned as a favourite book, L'Histoire de Messieurs de Port Royal—the history of the Jansenist community—so familiar to everyone in these days. No one had ever heard of it except Dr. Horne, who admired it extremely. Two copies were sent for from Holland, where it was published, but it was out of print, and Miss More wrote to borrow, for the Kennicotts, Mrs. Boscawen's copy of what she calls "a book in which, it must be confessed, there is some Popish trumpery, and a little mystical rubbish."

She must have been carefully educated in a dread of mysticism, for the dislike of it in a person with so strong a feeling for poetry was remarkable. She had a veritable instinct for poetry, which made her stand up against Johnson himself when he contemned L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas. Neither of them, however, appreciated the sonnets, for it was to Hannah that Johnson made the well-known speech: "Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve beads out of cherry-stones."

The quiet summer and autumn enabled Hannah to do a good deal of work, and when she rejoined Mrs. Garrick for the winter, she carried with her a set of Sacred Dramas—reminiscences, perhaps, of Metastasio, though they have far less action than have his Biblical