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virtutem amplectitur ipsam, præmią și tollas.” Mrs. Yearsley was allowed no merit, unless she took a ticket from H. More; and Mrs. Cowley, Mr. Bere, and some others, must have their literary property, as well as their good name, filched from them, for no other reason than because they would not stoop to burn incense to her, nor besmear her talents with "oil of fool."

She, however, tells us that

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Ungoverned sensibility is apt to give a wrong direc❝tion to its anxieties; and its affection often falls short of "the true end of friendship. If the object of its regard "happen to be sick, what enquiries! what prescriptions! "Yet is this sensibility equally alive to the immortal inte"rests of the sufferer? Is it not silent and at ease when it " contemplates the dearest friend persisting in opinions "essentially dangerous; in practices unquestionably wrong? "What a want of real sensibility, to feel for the pain, but "not for the danger of those we love? "of sensibility the Bible teaches ! • "thy brother in thine heart, but thou shalt in any wise "rebuke him, and shalt not suffer sin upon him." But let sensibility" figure to itself the bare possibility that the "familiar friend is going down to the gates of death, unrepenting, unprepared, and yet unwarned!"

Now see what sort Thou shalt not hate

Let me here observe, what my, as well as my author's reader, must have long ago perceived, that this lady is sure to make a transition from every subject to a religious application. Of this I do not disapprove; but to have his religion always on his tongue, and to " spiritualize" every subject, looks somewhat suspicious. It serves here to put me in mind of 2001. a year, Mrs. Cowley, Mrs. Yearsley, bible plays and tragedies, the poem of

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Sabrina, Mr. Jay's communion and quarrel," pri❝vate accusations," " he is a Socinian;"" he is a

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Jacobin." But that I may for once discharge my duty, let me here exhort Mrs. H. More to be late and early at the throne of grace, and let her ask pardon of the individuals she has so irreparably injured, and implore forgiveness from God. Let her come candidly before the public, which she has abused, and make her apology for the strife she has artfully and wickedly fomented, and the divisions she perpetuates, by means, as mean and disgraceful, as they are sinful. Few sinners have more heinous sins to repent of than the list above enumerated; they are in their own nature of a very black dye, and they are much aggravated by her attainments, and great profession of superior sanctity; and as I am in duty bound, I will not cease to pray that God may open her eyes, it is "the accepted time and day of salvation." As instances of mistaken sensibility are quoted, observations made by open-hearted, indiscreet girls: such as

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"That warm friends must make warm enemies ;"—that "the generous love and hate with all their hearts ;"-that "a reformed rake makes the best husband;"--that "there " is no medium in marriage, but that it is a state of exqui"site happiness or exquisite misery."

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Against these injudicious and hastily received aphorisms of indiscreet young girls (for Mrs More herself took care to have more discretion than to believe these maxims) she warns her readers, and illustrates the success of these evil sayings on

young women, by the manner in which comedies in general end. Here the lady was at home; for as she wished to monopolize the education of the public to herself, it was necessary all women should be deterred from entering into the holy of holies, from going behind the scenes, attending the representation or reading of dramatic works, but herself. For all but herself, holy priestess, are in danger of being defiled thereby...

But, however the author may act or think, I will prove my readiness to give her credit whenever I think she deserves it. I therefore transcribe the following short paragraph, p. 138, vol. 8, which, whatever the heart may be, discovers observation and judgment.

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"When feeling stimulates only to self-indulgence; when "the more exquisite affections of sympathy and pity evaporate in sentiment, instead of flowing out in active charity, and affording assistance, protection, or consolation "to every species of distress within its reach; it is an evi"dence that the feeling is of a spurious kind; and instead "of being nourished as an amiable tenderness, it should be "subdued as a fond and base self-love."

In p. 141, we meet the following passage, to which the public is indebted for that admirable poem, from the pen of a man of real genius, Peter

Pindar's Nil Admirari.

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The poets again, who to do them justice, are always ready "to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done, *have contributed their full share towards confirming these "feminine follies: they have strengthened by adulatory "maxims, sung in seducing strains, those faults which "their talents and their influence should have been employed "in correcting.

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She very justly made a charge against the poets without naming herself, as she was sensible she was a minor in the art; for her mischief is all in prose. She certainly has her share in corrupting the people, religiously and morally. She has made herself of some consequence in being noticed by Peter.

Page 149. The alteration in the fashion of visits en masse is ridiculed and lamented, on account of the total suppression of conversation which it occasions; and an opportunity is laid hold of to tell us that she was acquainted with and enjoyed the friendship of the late Bishop Horne, who particularly deplored the loss sustained in the mutual reciprocation of ideas, and the communion of kindred sympathies. Little instruction is here received by the observations of our author; for her sentences, like the objects she pursues, are frivolous, and the ideas, if they be at all comprehensible, are transient and nugatory. On the opportunities she has had of observing life and manners in her visits to London, and she professes herself studious of human character, she expresses herself with flippant wit and unsuccessful humour. A mixture of awkward humour, of wit that escapes before it is embodied with language, and of a mystical, unamiably described religion, characterize her strictures, not only on every moral subject, but on female education. A parallel is attempted between those ladies who ruin their husbands by play, and the few, the rare aves, who, by giving

themselves up to study, shew an indifference towards their husbands, and neglect their children and household. The vanity and pedantry of a literary woman is remarked; and we are told, that she who is vain of her reading, would be foolishly vain of something else if she had read nothing. Considering Mrs. More's low origin, her real literary character as a "Miss Moon," who has borrowed from "kind lads," or stolen from Mrs. Cowley and Mrs. Yearsley, the disposition here censured, arrogant pride, is in no woman more disgusting than in herself. Affecting a superiority to Mrs. Cowley, to whom in no respect she was equal, and to Mrs. Yearsley, to whom she was superior, not in birth or genius, but only in the accidental circumstance of her father's teaching a charity school, from which she derived the advantage of a better education, she extends her presumption to the church, and exhibits her superciliousness to Mr. Bere, in the Blagdon dispute, whose father is known to have served his Majesty in the navy. But of this more hereafter.

Not to enumerate the public pleasures and amusements, the round of which she herself has patroled, there is no great policy, or any very high degree of religious purity, in a total renunciation of them. If she had declaimed against the perpetual pursuit, or the eternal continuity of them by individuals, all wise men would unite with her; but, I conceive, few men, who have intellect sufficient to comprehend the nature of religion and of good government, would think it

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