Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/80

68 However, he falls in love with Sir Gilbert's daughter, gets disgusted with his former life, and returns to Celia, when— Such was the charm her sweetness gave, He thought her Wedgewood had been Sève— Sévres—we suppose. And finally he is cured: Reviews with scorn his former life, And for his rescue, thanks his wife.

The publication was much admired. Mrs. Boscawen, at a dinner party, heard "a chorus of panegyric." "Lady Mount Edgcumbe repeats line after line with so much rapture, it would do you good to hear her."

When the authoress went, as usual, to town in 1786, for her annual stay, Horace Walpole said "a thousand diverting things about Florio, and accused her of "having imposed on the world by a dedication full of falsehood." He was full of interest about the recent discovery of the Paston letters, but Hannah thought "they would be of no great literary merit," "and as for me, I have no great appetite for anything as merely being curious, unless it has other merits;" and when she gets the letters, she patriotically declares, "they have none of the elegance of Rowley" (i.e. Chatterton).

Here is a story picked up during this visit. Sir Joseph Yorke met the Duke of Chartres (Égalité) at the house of the Prince of Orange, during the