Thus speaks the muse, and bends her brow severe : And crown thy youthful head with freshest bays, Those sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, O let the song to Britain's shores rebound, Where Freedom's once-loved voice is heard, alas! in vain." This animating expostulation conspiring with the events of the spirit-stirring times which now approached, had the effect of once more rousing her to exertion. In 1790, the rejection of a bill for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts called forth her eloquent and indignant address to the opposers of this repeal: her poetical epistle to Mr. Wilbeforce on the rejection of the bill for abolishing the Slave Trade was written in 1791. The next year produced her "Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Inquiry into the expediency and propriety of public or social Worship :" and her "Sins of Government Sins of the Nation, or a Discourse for the Fast," appeared in 1793. She also supplied some valuable contributions to Dr. Aikin's popular book for children, "Evenings at Home," the first volume of which appeared in 1792; but her share in this work has generally been supposed much greater than in fact it was; of the ninety-nine pieces of which it consisted, fourteen only are hers. * "By this time, the effervescence caused by the French revolution had nearly subsided; and Mrs. Barbauld, who could "They are the following:-The Young Mouse; The Wasp and Bee; Alfred, a drama; Animals and Countries; Canute's Reproof; The Masque of Nature; Things by their right Names; The Goose and Horse; On Manufactures; The Flying-fish; A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing; The Phoenix and Dove; The Manufacture of Paper; The Four Sisters. In a new edition will be added, Live Dolls." seldom excite herself to the labour of composition, except on the spur of occasion, gave nothing more to the public for a considerable number of years, with the exception of two critical essays; one prefixed to an ornamented edition of "Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination," the other to a similar one of the "Odes of Collins:" of which the first appeared in 1795, the second in 1797. Both are written with elegance, taste, and acuteness: but, on the whole, they are less marked with the peculiar features of her style than perhaps any other of her prose pieces. "No event worthy of mention occurred till 1802, when Mr. Barbauld accepted an invitation to become pastor of the congregation (formerly Dr. Price's) at Newington Green; and, quitting Hampstead, they took up their abode in the village of Stoke Newington. The sole motive for this removal, which separated them from a residence which they liked, and friends to whom they were cordially attached, was the mutual desire of Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld to pass the closing period of their lives in that near neighbourhood which admits of the daily and almost hourly intercourses of affection, a desire which was thus affectingly expressed by the former in an epistle addressed to his sister during her visit to Geneva in 1785. 'Yet one dear wish still struggles in my breast, Have wandered devious from each other's side ; O then, while yet some zest of life remains, When evening bids each busy task be o'er, Once let us meet again, to part no more!' The evening which was the object of these earnest aspirations had now arrived; and it proved a long, though by no means an unclouded one; -twenty years elapsed before the hand of death sundered this fraternal pair. * "A warm attachment to the authors of what has been called the Augustan age of English literature, on whom her own taste and style were formed, was observable in the conversation of Mrs. Barbauld, and often in her writings; and she gratified this sentiment by offering to the public, in 1804, a selection from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, to which she gave her name. This delightful piece may, perhaps, be regarded as the most successful of her efforts in literary criticism; and that it should be so is easily to be accounted for. There were many striking points of resemblance between her genius and that of Addison. As prose writers, both were remarkable for uniting wit of the light and sportive kind with vividness of fancy, and a style at once rich and lively, flowing and full of idiom: both of them rather avoided the pathetic: in both, the sentiments of rational and liberal devotion' were 'blended with the speculations of philosophy and the paintings of a fine imagination;' both were admirable for the splendour they diffused over a serious, the grace with which they touched a lighter subject.' The humorous delineation of manners and characters indeed, in which Addison so conspicuously shone, was never attempted by Mrs. Barbauld: in poetry, on the other hand, she surpassed him in all the qualities of which excellence in that style is composed. Certainly this great author could not elsewhere have found a critic so capable of entering, as it were, into the soul of his writings, culling their choicest beauties, and drawing them forth for the admiration of a world by which they had begun to be neglected. Steele, and the other contributors to these periodical papers, are also ably, though briefly, characterized by her; and such pieces of theirs are included in the selection as could fairly claim enduring remembrance. 6 "The essay opens with the observation, that it is equally true of books as of their authors, that one generation passeth *Three vols. 12mo, Johnson, 1804. away and another cometh.' The mutual influence exerted by books and manners on each other is then remarked; and the silent and gradual declension from what might be called the active life of an admired and popular book, to the honourable retirement of a classic, is lightly, but impressively, traced; closed by remarks on the mutations and improvements which have particularly affected the works in question. To young persons chiefly, the selection is offered, as containing the 'essence' of a celebrated set of works. An instructive account is added of each of these in particular, of the state of society at the time of their appearance, the objects at which they aimed, and their effects. This essay will not be found in the present volumes, because it was considered that to separate it from the selection which it was written to introduce, would be to defeat its very purpose. 66 During the same year (1804) Mrs. Barbauld was prevailed upon to undertake the task of examining and making a selection from the letters of Richardson, the novelist, and his correspondents, of which a vast collection had remained in the hands of his last surviving daughter; after whose death they were purchased of his grand-children. It must be confessed that, on the whole, these letters were less deserving of public attention than she had probably expected to find them; and very good judges have valued more than all the remaining contents of the six duodecimo volumes which they occupy, the elegant and interesting life of Richardson, and the finished reviewal of his works prefixed by the editor. "It is probable that Mrs. Barbauld consented to employ herself in these humbler offices of literature, chiefly as a solace under the pressure of anxieties and apprehensions of a peculiar and most distressing nature, which had been increasing in urgency during a long course of time, and which found their final completion on the 11th of November 1808, in the event by which she became a widow. She has touchingly alluded, in her poem of "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," to ' that sad death whence most affection bleeds, Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes.' And though the escape of a sufferer from the most melancholy of human maladies could not, in itself, be a subject of rational regret, her spirits were deeply wounded, both by the severe trials through which she had previously passed, and by the mournful void which always succeeds the removal of an object of long and deep, however painful, interest. An affecting dirge will be found among her poems, which records her feelings on this occasion. She also communicated to the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, a memoir of Mr. Barbauld; in which his character is thus delineated. "The scenes of life Mr. Barbauld passed through were common ones, but his character was not a common one. His reasoning powers were acute, and sharpened by exercise; for he was early accustomed to discussion, and argued with great clearness; with a degree of warmth indeed, but with the most perfect candour towards his opponent. He gave the most liberal latitude to free inquiry, and could bear to hear those truths attacked which he most steadfastly believed; the more because he steadfastly believed them; for he was delighted to submit to the test of argument those truths which he had no doubt, could, by argument, be defended. He had an uncommon flow of conversation on those points which had engaged his attention, and delivered himself with a warmth and animation which enlivened the driest subject. He was equally at home in French and English literature; and the exquisite sensibility of his mind, with the early culture his taste had received, rendered him an excellent judge of all those works which appeal to the heart and the imagination. His feelings were equally quick and vivid; his expressive countenance was the index of his mind, and of every instantaneous impression made upon it. Children, who are the best physiognomists, were always attracted to him, and he delighted to entertain them with lively narratives suited to their age, in which he had great invention. The virtues of his heart will be acknowledged by all who knew him. His benevolence was enlarged: it was the spontaneous propensity of his nature, |