“My scorn has oft the dart repell’d Which guileful beauty threw; But goodness heard, and grace beheld, Must every heart subdue.” HENRY THOMPSON: ‘Life of Hannah More.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Life with the Garricks in London.] It is not possible for anything on earth to be more agreeable to my taste than my present manner of living. I am so much at my ease; have a great many hours at my own disposal, to read my own books and see my own friends; and, whenever I please, may join the most polished and delightful society in the world. Our breakfasts are little literary societies; there is generally company at meals, as they think it saves time, by avoiding the necessity of seeing people at other seasons. Mr. Garrick sets the highest value upon his time of any body I ever knew. From dinner to tea we laugh, chat, and talk nonsense; the rest of his time is generally devoted to study. * * * * * [Sidenote: Admiration for Garrick.] To the most eloquent expression of the eye, to the handwriting of the passions on his features, to a sensibility which tears to pieces the hearts of his auditors, to powers so unparalleled, he adds a judgment of the most exquisite accuracy, the fruit of long experience and close observation, by which he preserves every gradation and transition of the passions, keeping all under the control of a just dependence and natural consistency.... It was a fiction as delightful as fancy, and as touching as truth. A few nights before I saw him in _Abel Drugger_; and had I not seen him in both, I should have thought it as possible for Milton to have written ‘Hudibras,’ and Butler ‘Paradise Lost,’ as for one man to have played _Hamlet_ and _Drugger_ with such excellence. I’ll tell you the most ridiculous circumstance in the world. After dinner Garrick took up the Monthly Review (civil gentlemen, by the way, these monthly reviewers) and read ‘Sir Eldred’ with all his pathos and all his graces. I think I never was so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superlatively, that I cried like a child. Only think what a scandalous thing, to cry at the reading of one’s own poetry! I could have beaten myself; for it looked as if I thought it very moving, which I can truly say is far from being the case. But the beauty of the jest lies in this: Mrs. Garrick twinkled as well as I, and made as many apologies for crying at her husband’s reading as I did for crying at my own verses. _She_ got out of the scrape by pretending she was touched at the story and I by saying the same thing of the reading. It furnished us with a great laugh at the catastrophe, when it would really have been decent to have been a little sorrowful. HANNAH MORE: _Letters to her sisters, London_, 1776, in ‘Memoirs,’ by W. Roberts. * * * * * [Sidenote: Garrick’s pride in her.]