Anecdotes by Hannah More.
��She was surprised at his coming to meet her as she entered the room, with good humour in his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua's in his hand * ; and still more, at his accosting her with a verse from a Morning Hymn which she had written at the desire of Sir James Stonehouse 2 . In the same pleasant humour he continued the whole of the evening 3 . An extract from the letters of one of her sprightly sisters, to the family at home, will afford the best picture of the intercourse and scenes in which Hannah was now beginning to bear a part. Memoirs, i. 48.
London, 1774.
'We have paid another visit to Miss Reynolds. She had sent to engage Dr. Percy (Percy's collection 4 now you know him,) quite a sprightly modern, instead of a rusty antique, as
��1 Sir Joshua, says Northcote, in troduced this macaw into several of his pictures. One of the house maids, whose portrait Northcote painted, was looked upon by the bird as his enemy. When he saw the likeness ' he quickly spread his wings, and in great fury ran to it, and stretched himself up to bite at the face.' He would do this whenever he saw the picture, and did it 'in the presence of Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, and Dr. Goldsmith.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 252.
2 A physician of Northampton, who settled in Bristol and entered the church. Memoirs of H. More, i. 30. ' My counsellor, physician and divine/ ehe calls him ; ' who first awakened me to some sense of re ligious things.' Ib. iii. 191.
3 Nevertheless, if we can trust Malone's story, it was on this even ing that he administered to her a most severe rebuke. ' She very soon began to pay her court to him in the most fulsome strain. " Spare me, I beseech you, dear Madam," was his reply. She still laid it on. " Pray, Madam, let us have no more
��of this," he rejoined. Not paying any attention to these warnings, she continued still her eulogy. At length, provoked by this indelicate and vain obtrusion of compliments, he ex claimed, "Dearest Lady, consider with yourself what your flattery is worth, before you bestow it so freely." ' Life, iv. 341 ; ante, i. 273.
That this rebuke was administered is beyond a doubt (see Life, iv. 341, n. 6) ; that it was administered this evening seems unlikely.
In 1780, describing an evening with him at Miss Reynold's, she says (post, p. 189): 'As usual, he laughed when I flattered him.' It was to Miss Reynolds that John son, two years earlier, said, ' I was obliged to speak, to let her [Miss More] know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.' Life, iii. 293.
Nearly forty years later, writing of Addison and Johnson, she said : ' I love and honour those two men in a very high degree, though the term love rather belongs to Addison, honour to Johnson.' Memoirs, iii. 340.
4 She refers to the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
2 I expected
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