Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/58

46 While spiders, toads and earwigs sent ladies into hysterics, lap-dogs, birds, and the like were petted and lamented with exaggerated fervour. The Pilgrim Good Intent, a clever imitation of the Pilgrim's Progress, adapted to the days of false philosophy, shows in its travesty the Charity of the House Beautiful, personated by Sensibility weeping over a young ass, and in Hannah More's poem we find— There are who for a dying fawn deplore, As if friend, parent, country were no more. And again— He scorning life's low duties to attend, Writes odes on friendship while he cheats his friend.

With great good sense, Hannah proceeds to preach an excellent prose sermon on what true Sensibility means, and how mere feeling— Is not a gift peculiar to the good, 'Tis often but the virtue of the blood; And what would seem compassion's moral flow, Is but a circulation swift or slow. But to divert it to its proper course, There wisdom's power appears, there reason's force. If ill-directed, it pursue the wrong, It adds new strength to what before was strong; But if religious bias rule the soul, Then Sensibility exalts the whole.

This may not be exactly poetry, but it is very wholesome doctrine; and Bishop Lowth, among others, thought very highly of it.

Dr. Johnson was of the same mind. "He told me