Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 1 of 2: With a Sketch of Her Life
If however there is too seldom found in the writer of the book, all the humilita which the preface announces, he may be allowed to plead on humility, which is at least comparative. N this ground may I be ermrtted to declare, that at no period of my life didi ever feel such unfeigned difiidence at the ia divi ual appearance ol'even the slightest pamph et (the slendcrness of whose dimensions mi ht carry some excuse for the small preportion of profit or pleasure it convexed) as I now feel at sen ing. This, perhaps, too voluminous, collection into the world. This self istrust may natural] be accounted for, by re?ecting that this publication is deliberately made, not only at a time of li a when Iought best to know my own faults, and the faults of my writings but is made also at such a distance from the moment in which the several pieces were first struck out, that the mind has had time to cool from the hurry and heat of composition the djudgment has had leisure to 0 rate, and it is the effect of that Operation to rectify false notions an to correct rash conclusions. He critic, even of his own works, grows honest, if not acute, at the end of twenty years. The image, which he had fancied glowed so brightly when it came fresh from the furnace, time has quenched t the s irita which he thought fixed and essential, have evaporated; many of the ideas which be imposed not on y on his reader, but on himself, for originals, more readin and more observation compel him to restore to their owners. And having detected, from the perusai of abler works, either plaiuirisms in his own, of which he was not aware, or coincidences which will pass for plagiarisms; and lending with the new judgment of the critic the old indignation of the poet, who of us in this case is not angry with those who have said our good firings before us 2 We not only discover that what we thou ht we had invented we have only remem bered; but we find also that what we had believed to be per set is full of defects; in that which we had conceived to be pure gold we discover much tinsel. For the revision, as was Observed above, is made at a period when the eye is brought by a due remoteness into that just position winch gives a clear and distinct view of things; a remoteness which disperses the illusions of vision, ' scatters the mists of vanity, reduces Objects to their natural size, restores them to their exact shape, makes them a pear to the sight, such as they are in themselves, and such as perhaps they have long appeared to all) except the author.
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