THE main sources for the life of Hannah More are the four volumes
of the Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More,
including some pages of her Diary, edited by William Roberts,
Esq., and published in 1834, and Miss More's own works published
between 1773 and 1825. Roberts Memoirs were subjected, during
and after his lifetime, to severe and not unmerited criticism. Few
persons could have been less well equipped to write Miss More's
memoirs or to edit her letters. He possessed neither literary grace
nor constructive gifts. He was not always informed, and as com-
parison of some of the published letters with their originals shows,
he corrected Miss More's letters and diary when in his judgement
they required emendation. Far more questionable was his un-
fortunate omission of that part of her letter to the Bishop of Bath
and Wells, during the Blagdon Controversy, in which she ad-
mitted her participation in Holy Communion at the Presbyterian
Meeting House in Bath--an omission presumably intended by
Roberts to safeguard her reputation, but which, instead, impugned
Hannah More's most striking characteristic, her honesty.

Contemporary letters make clear that some at least of Miss
More's contemporaries regarded Roberts as an unsuitable choice
as her biographer and were unwilling to lend him letters of Miss
More in their possession. ' Hannah More', said Miss Marianne Thornton
in her Recollections, with characteristic vigour,

calls Sir Thomas Acland in one of her notes 'the recreant Knight of Devon-
shire', which Roberts, thinking uncivil, I suppose, altered to 'the excellent and
estimable Sir Thomas Acland', two words which that playful woman never
used in her life. Somewhere she began a letter to me, 'When I think of you I am
gladerer and gladerer', which he, thinking it bad English, has done into 'I am
very glad'. Now if such an oaf as that will write a book at least he should be
honest.

'Had it been possible for any literator, with Mrs More's corres-

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