ngs and
sixpence is, indeed, no great sum, but nineteen octavo volumes are a
good many books. Yet Richardson is in nineteen volumes in Mangin's
edition, and Swift is in nineteen volumes in Scott's edition, and
glorious John Dryden lacks but a volume to make a third example. True
enough; yet it will, I think, be granted me that you must be very fond
of an author, male or female, if nineteen octavo volumes, all his or
hers, are not a little irritating and provocative of temper. Think of
the room they take! As for selling them, it is not so easy to sell
nineteen volumes of a stone-dead author, particularly if you live
three miles from a railway-station and do not keep a trap. Elia, the
gentle Elia, as it is the idiotic fashion to call a writer who could
handle his 'maulies' in a fray as well as Hazlitt himself, has told us
how he could never see well-bound books he did not care about, but he
longed to strip them so that he might warm his ragged veterans in
their spoils. My copy of _Hannah More_ was in full calf, but never
once did it occur to me--though I, too, have many a poor author with
hardly a shirt to his back shivering in the dark corners of the
library--to strip her of her warm clothing. And yet I had to do
something, and quickly too, for sorely needed was Miss More's shelf.
So I buried the nineteen volumes in the garden. 'Out of sight, out of
mind,' said I cheerfully, stamping them down.

This has hardly proved to be the case, for though Hannah More is
incapable of a literary resurrection, and no one of her nineteen
volumes has ever haunted my pillow, exclaiming,

'Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth,'

nevertheless, I have not been able to get quite rid of an uneasy
feeling that I was rude to her ten years ago in print--not, indeed, so
rude as was her revered friend Dr. Johnson 126 years ago to her face;
but then, I have not the courage to creep under the gabardine of our
great Moralist.

When, accordingly, I saw on the counters of the trade the daintiest of
volumes, hailing, too, from the United States, entitled _Hannah
More_,[A] and perceived that it was a short biography and appreciation
of the lady on my mind, I recognised that my penitential hour had at
last come. I took the little book home with me, and sat down to read,
determined to do justice and more than justice to the once celebrated
mistress of Cowslip Green and Barley Wood.

[Footnote A: _Hannah More_, by Marian Harland. Ne