them of their pleasure on Sundays. In return I recommended him and the ladies present to read Law's Serious Call. I told them it was a book that their favourite, Mr. Gibbon, had highly praised."
She heard that in an illness he had exclaimed, "I am sorry I scolded poor Hannah More for being so religious, I hope she will forgive me." Soon after, he sent her Bishop Wilson's edition of the Bible, superbly bound in morocco, and with a flattering inscription. "Alas!" she wrote to her sister, "when I receive these undue compliments, I am ready to answer with my old friend Johnson, 'Sir, I am a miserable sinner.'"
A few persons volunteered assistance in the writing, one being Mason, the author of Caractacus, a tragedy of considerable merit, and the friend and biographer of Gray; but out of half a dozen ballads which he offered, four were rejected, "three because they had too much of politics, and one because it had too much of love." No one could write quite to the mark except Sally and Patty, who produced some of the best of the series. While in London, Hannah wrote the best of her ballads, called Turn the Carpet, a dialogue between two carpet-weavers, who are forming the pattern, as is well known, from the wrong side. One complains—
In spite of what the Scripture teaches,
In spite of all the parson preaches,
This world (indeed, I've thought so long)
Is ruled, methinks, extremely wrong.
