The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 1

If in the records of classic story we are told, that the most superb and lasting monument that was ever consecrated to beauty, was that to which every lover carried a tribute then among the accumulated production of successive volumes, those which though they convey no new informa tion, yet illustrate on the whole some old truth; those which though they add nothing to the stores of genius or of science, yet if they help to establish and enforce a single principle of virtue, they may be accepted as an additional mite cast by the willing hand of afi'ectionate indigence into the treasury of Christian morals.

The great father of Roman eloquence has asserted, that though every man should pro himself the hi hest de recs in the scale of excellence yet he may stop with honour at the second or the third. Indeed tzhe utility of some books to some persons would be defeated by their very superiority. The writer may be above the reach of his reader; he may be too lolly to be pursu ed; he may be too profound to be fathomed; he may be too abstruse to be investrgated; for to produce delight there must be intelligence; there must be something of concert and congruity. There must be not merely that intelligibility which arises from the perspicuousness of the au thor but that also which depends on the capacity and perception of the reader. Between him who writes and hrm who reads, there must be a kind of coalition of interests, something of a partnership (however unequal the capital) in mental property; a sort of joint stock of tastes and ideas. The student must have been initiated into the same intellectual commerce with him whom he studies; for large bills are only negotiable among the mutually Opulent.

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