we commend and encourage a child's unsteady footsteps. The generous Hayley welcomed with open arms these fair competitors for fame.
The bards of Britain with unjaundiced eyes
Will glory to behold such rivals rise.
He ardently flattered Miss Seward, and for Miss Hannah More his enthusiasm knew no bounds.
But with a magical control,
Thy spirit-moving strain
Dispels the languor of the soul,
Annihilating pain.
"Spirit-moving" seems the last epithet in the world to apply to Miss More's strains; but there is no doubt that the public believed her to be as good a poet as a preacher, and that it supported her high estimate of her own powers. After a visit to another lambent flame, Mrs. Barbauld, she writes with irresistible gravity:
"Mrs. B. and I have found out that we feel as little envy and malice towards each other, as though we had neither of us attempted to 'build the lofty rhyme'; although she says this is what the envious and the malicious can never be brought to believe."
