Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 9 by Various Authors
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then freely used as an extinguisher for anything novel, and was a "bugaboo" of whose terrors we can have in this day little conception. Hannah was accused of endeavoring to spread toleration, and a favorite charge against her was that she had partaken of "bread and wine in a meeting-house." In vain her sister Martha explained that she sinned in good company, for many "High-Church people did the same, and one gentleman and lady with ten thousand pounds a year, who have always the Church prayers performed morning and evening in their family." Although the bishop excused her, it was determined that Hannah was to be crushed by a review; but all was of no more avail than in the case of Miss Martineau, which has been recently recalled by her autobiography. Hannah survived it all, and stuck through thick and thin to her triumphant schools and her "strict behavior." A less harmful shaft was hurled by a Bristol wit on an occasion when her clothes took fire and she was saved by the stout quality of her gown:
Vulcan to scorch thy gown in vain essays: Apollo strives in vain to fire thy lays. Hannah! the cause is visible enough: Stuff is thy raiment, and thy writings--stuff.
[Illustration: BARLEY WOOD, HANNAH MORE'S RESIDENCE.]
A curious incident in Hannah More's life was her encounter with Ann Yearsley, the Bristol Milkwoman, of whom some account is given in Southey's Essay upon the Uneducated Poets. A gossiping writer briefly states the case as follows: "This poor woman, as is well known, sold milk, and, from going to water it each morning at the Pierian font, caught at length the poetic fervor. Mrs. Hannah More, whom she served with cream, was struck by the superior merit of her verses, and became her patroness. Mrs. More's name was enough to sell worse poetry, or even worse milk, than Ann Yearsley's. Milton had no such friend, and could not get twenty pounds for Paradise; but Ann Yearsley's book brought her some three hundred guineas. Hannah More, as she was the art