��Anecdotes by Hannah More.
��displeasure did him so much honour that I loved him the better for it. I alluded rather flippantly, I fear, to some witty passage in Tom Jones : he replied, c I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it : a confession which no modest lady should ever make T . I scarcely know a more corrupt work/ I thanked him for his correction ; assured him I thought full as ill of it now as he did, and had only read it at an age when I was more subject to be caught by the wit, than able to discern the mischief. Of Joseph Andrews I declared my decided abhorrence 2 . He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great talents which are ascribed to him, and broke Out into a noble panegyric on his competitor, Richardson ; who, he said, was as superior to him in talents as in virtue ; and whom he pronounced to be the greatest genius that had shed its lustre on this path of literature 3 . Memoirs, i. 168.
��1 Miss Burney at the age of seven teen recorded in her Diary : ' I am now going to charm myself for the third time, with poor Sterne's Sen timental Journey! Early Diary of F. Burney ', i. 45. At Streatham she recorded a conversation Johnson was .not present when ' Candide was produced, and Mrs. Thrale read aloud the part .concerning Poco curante ; and really the cap fitted so well that Mr. Seward could not attempt to dispute it.' Mme. D'Ar- blay's Diary, ed. 1 842, i. 226.
2 ' I never read Joseph Andrews/ said Johnson. Life, ii. 174.
3 Ib. ii. 48, 173 ; ante, i. 282. Smollett describes Richardson's
novels as ' a species of writing equally new and extraordinary, where, min gled with much superfluity, we find a sublime system of ethics, an amaz ing knowledge and command of human nature.' History of England, ed. 1800, v. 382.
Hannah More wrote in 1822: ' I have been really looking for time to read one or two of Walter Scott's
��novels. In my youth Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison were the reigning entertainment. Whatever objections may be made to them in certain respects, they contain more maxims of virtue, and sound moral principle than half the books called moral.' Memoirs, iv. 145.
- Richardson's conversation,' writes
Hawkins (p. 384), 'was of the preceptive kind, but it wanted the diversity of Johnson's, and had no intermixture of wit and humour. Richardson could never relate a pleasant story, and hardly relish one told by another : he was ever think ing of his own writings, and listening to the praises which, with an emulous profusion, his friends were inces santly bestowing on them ; he would scarce enter into free conversation with any one that he thought had not read Clarissa or Sir Charles Grandison, and at best, he could not be said to be a companionable man.' Neither was Hawkins 'a clubable man.' Life, i. 27, n.
4 That Richardson (with all his
The
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