'[editor's words] without literary pretensions, Mrs Marshall had a genuine love of reading, and when no other engagement intervened, it was one of her domestic regulations, that a book should be read aloud in the evening for general amusement; the office of reader commonly devolved on Miss Hamilton, who was thus led to remark that the best prose style was always that which could be longest read without exhausting the breath. These social studies were far from satisfying her avidity for information; and she constantly perused many books by stealth. Mrs Marshall, on discovering what had been her private occupation, expressed neither praise nor blame, but quietly advised her to avoid any display of superior knowledge by which she might be subjected to the imputation of pedantry. This admonition produced the desired effect, since, as she herself informs us, she once hid a volume of Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism under the cushion of a chair lest she should be detected in a study which prejudice and ignorance might pronounce unfeminine'.