As a general poet, Miss More was, at this period, the very height of the fashion. Horace Walpole thought himself honored in being permitted to print some of her pieces in the most lavish style of expense, at the press of Strawberry Hill. But fashions in literature are scarcely more lasting than those in dress. Her poems are now immersed in Lethe, except a few terse couplets, which have floated down to the present generation on the stream of oral citation, and are now often in the mouths of people who fancy that they belong to Swift or Gay. Many of her poems are, however, worthy of a better fate. They are distinguished by purity and elevation of sentiment, ease and strength of diction, and harmony of versification. In the last particular she received great praise from Johnson, who pronounced her to be "the best versificatrix in the English language." We will give a few extracts. The first is from "Sensibility," a poem in which she claims for that quality the place which Mrs. Grenville, in a then well-known ode, arrogated for "Indifference." "Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight! Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right! Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed! Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed! Thou hasty conscience! reason's blushing morn! Instinctive kindness e'er reflection's born! Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs The swift redress of unexamined wrongs; Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried, But always apt to choose the suffering side; To those who know thee not no words can paint, And those who know thee know all words are faint. She does not feel thy power who boasts thy flame, And rounds her every period with thy name. As words are but th' external marks to tell The fair ideas in the mind that dwell, And only are of things the outward sign, And not the things themselves they but define, So exclamations, tender tones, fond tears, And all the graceful drapery feeling wears,-- These are her garb, not her; they but express Her form, her semblance, her appropriate dress; And these fair marks,--reluctant I relate,-- These lovely symbols, may be counterfeit. There are who fill with brilliant plaints the page, If a poor linnet meet the gunner's rage; There are who for a dying fawn deplore, As if friend, parent, country, were no more; Who boast, quick rapture trembling in their eye, If from a spider's snare they snatch a fly; There are whose well-sung plaints each breast inflame, And break all hearts--but his from whence they came."