studied Latin when only eight years of age.  Her father, it would seem, was a very sensible man, and sought to develop the peculiar talents which each of his daughters possessed, without the usual partiality of parents, who are apt to mistake inclination for genius.  Three of the girls had an aptitude for teaching, and opened a boarding-school in Bristol when the oldest was only twenty.  The school was a great success, and soon became fashionable, and ultimately famous.  To this school the early labors of Hannah More were devoted; and she soon attracted attention by her accomplishments, especially in the modern languages, in which she conversed with great accuracy and facility.  But her talents were more remarkable than her accomplishments; and eminent men sought her society and friendship, who in turn introduced her to their own circle of friends, by all of whom she was admired.  Thus she gradually came to know the celebrated Dean Tucker of Gloucester cathedral; Ferguson the astronomer, then lecturing at Bristol; the elder Sheridan, also giving lectures on oratory in the same city; Garrick, on the eve of his retirement from the stage; Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Mrs. Montagu, in whose salon the most distinguished men of the age assembled as the headquarters of fashionable society,—­Edmund Burke, then member for Bristol in the House of Commons; Gibbon; Alderman Cadell, the great publisher; Bishop Porteus; Rev. John Newton; and Sir James Stonehouse, an eminent physician.  With all these stars she was on intimate terms, visiting them at their houses, received by them all as more than an equal,—­for she was not only beautiful and witty, but had earned considerable reputation for her poetry.  Garrick particularly admired her as a woman of genius, and performed one of her plays ("Percy”) twenty successive nights at Drury Lane, writing himself both the prologue and the epilogue.  It must be borne in mind that when first admitted to the choicest society of London,—­at the houses not merely of literary men, but of great statesmen and nobles like Lord Camden, Lord Spencer, the Duke of Newcastle.  Lord Pembroke, Lord Granville, and others,—­she was teaching in a girls’ school at Bristol, and was a young lady under thirty years of age.

It was as a literary woman—­when literary women were not so numerous or ambitious as they now are—­that Hannah More had the entree into the best society under the patronage of the greatest writers of the age.  She was a literary lion before she was twenty-five.  She attracted the attention of Sheridan by her verses when she was scarcely eighteen.  Her “Search after Happiness” went through six editions before the year 1775.  Her tragedy of “Percy” was translated into French and German before she was thirty; and she realized from the sale of it L600.  “The Fatal Falsehood” was also much admired, but did not meet the same success, being cruelly attacked by envious rivals.  Her “Bas Bleu” was praised by Johnson in unmeasured terms.  It was for her poetry that she was best known from 1775 to 1785, the period when she lived in the fashionable and literary world, and which she adorned by her wit and brilliant conversation,—­not exactly a queen of society, since she did not set up a salon, but was only an honored visitor at the houses of the great; a brilliant and beautiful woman, whom everybody wished to know.