# The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld/Volume 1/Memoir

MEMOIR.
Anna Lætitia Barbauld, a name long dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was born at the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on June 20th, 1743, the eldest child and only daughter of John Aikin, D.D. and Jane his wife, daughter of the Rev. John Jennings of Kibworth, and descended by her mother from the ancient family of Wingate, of Harlington in Bedfordshire.
That quickness of apprehension by which she was eminently distinguished, manifested itself from her earliest infancy. Her mother thus writes respecting her in a letter ​which is still preserved: "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who, at two years old, could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling, and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall."
​In the middle of the last century a strong prejudice still existed against imparting to females any tincture of classical learning; and the father of Miss Aikin, proud as he justly was of her uncommon capacity, long refused to gratify her earnest desire of being initiated in this kind of knowledge. At length, however, she in some degree overcame his scruples; and with his assistance she enabled herself to read the Latin authors with pleasure and advantage; nor did she rest satisfied without gaining some acquaintance with the Greek.
The obscure village of Kibworth was unable to afford her a single suitable companion of her own sex: her brother, the late Dr. Aikin, was more than three years her junior; and as her father was at this period the master of a school for boys, it might have been apprehended that conformity of pursuits, as well as age, would tend too nearly to assimilate her with the youth of ​the ruder sex by whom she found herself encompassed. But maternal vigilance effectually obviated this danger, by instilling into her a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve; and she was accustomed to ascribe an uneasy sense of constraint in mixed society, which she could never entirely shake off, to the strictness and seclusion in which it had thus become her fate to be educated. Her recollections of childhood and early youth were, in fact, not associated with much of the pleasure and gaiety usually attendant upon that period of life: but it must be regarded as a circumstance favourable, rather than otherwise, to the unfolding of her genius, to have been thus left to find, or make in solitude her own objects of interest and pursuit. The love of rural nature sunk deep into her heart; her vivid fancy exerted itself to colour, to animate, and to diversify all the objects which surrounded her: the few but choice authors of her father's ​library, which she read and re-read, had leisure to make their full impression,—to mould her sentiments and to form her taste; the spirit of devotion, early inculcated upon her as a duty, opened to her by degrees an exhaustless source of tender and sublime delight; and while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet.
Just at the period when longer seclusion might have proved seriously injurious to her spirits, an invitation given to her learned and exemplary father to undertake the office of classical tutor in a highly respectable dissenting academy at Warrington in Lancashire, was the fortunate means of transplanting her to a more varied and animating scene. This removal took place in 1758, when Miss Aikin had just attained the age of fifteen; and the fifteen succeeding years passed by her at Warrington comprehended probably the happiest, as well as the most brilliant portion of her existence. She was at this time possessed of ​great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest period of life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair, with the bloom of perfect health; her features were regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy.
A solitary education had not produced on her its most frequent ill effects, pride and self-importance: the reserve of her manners proceeded solely from bashfulness, for her temper inclined her strongly to friendship and to social pleasures; and her active imagination, which represented all objects tinged with hues "unborrowed of the sun," served as a charm against that disgust with common characters and daily incidents, which so frequently renders the conscious possessor of superior talents at once unamiable and unhappy. Nor was she now in want of congenial associates. Warrington academy included among its tutors names eminent both in science and ​in literature: with several of these, and especially with Dr. Priestley and Dr. Enfield and their families, she formed sincere and lasting friendships. The elder and more accomplished among the students composed an agreeable part of the same society; and its animation was increased by a mixture of young ladies, either residents in the town or occasional visitors, several of whom were equally distinguished for personal charms, for amiable manners, and cultivated minds. The rising institution, which flourished for several years in high reputation, diffused a classic air over all connected with it. Miss Aikin, as was natural, took a warm interest in its success; and no academic has ever celebrated his alma mater in nobler strains, or with a more filial affection, than she has manifested in that portion of her early and beautiful poem The Invitation, where her theme is this "nursery of men for future years."
​About the close of the year 1771, her brother, after several years of absence, returned to establish himself in his profession at Warrington; an event equally welcome to her feelings and propitious to her literary progress. In him she possessed a friend with discernment to recognise the stamp of genius in her productions and anticipate their fame, combined with zeal and courage sufficient to vanquish her reluctance to appear before the public in the character of an author. By his persuasion and assistance her Poems were selected, revised, and arranged for publication: and when all these preparations were completed, finding that she still hesitated and lingered,—like the parent bird who pushes off its young to their first flight, he procured the paper, and set the press to work on his own authority. The result more than justified his confidence of her success: four editions of the work (the first in 4to, the succeeding ones in 8vo,) were called for ​within the year of publication, 1773; compliments and congratulations poured in from all quarters; and even the periodical critics greeted her Muse with nearly unmixed applause.
She was not permitted to repose upon her laurels: her brother, who possessed all the activity and spirit of literary enterprise in which she was deficient, now urged her to collect her Prose Pieces, and to join him in forming a small volume, which appeared, also in the year 1773, under the title of "Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose, by J. and A. L. Aikin." These likewise met with much notice and admiration, and have been several times reprinted. The authors did not think proper to distinguish their respective contributions, and several of the pieces have in consequence been generally misappropriated. The fragment of Sir Bertrand in particular, though alien from the character of that brilliant and ​ airy imagination which was never conversant with terror, and rarely with pity, has been repeatedly ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, even in print.
Having thus laid the foundation of a lasting reputation in literature. Miss Aikin might have been expected to proceed with vigour in rearing the superstructure; and the world awaited with impatience the result of her further efforts. But an event, the most important of her life, was about to subject her to new influence, new duties, to alter her station, her course of life, and to modify even the bent of her mind. This event was her marriage, which took place in May 1774.
The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, whom she honoured with her hand, was descend ed from a family of French protestants. During the persecutions of Louis XIV., his grandfather, then a boy, was carried ​ on board a ship inclosed in a cask, and conveyed to England. Here he settled and had a son who became a clergyman of the Establishment, and on the marriage of one of the daughters of George II. to the elector of Hesse was appointed her chaplain, and attended her to Cassel. At / this place his son Rochemont was born and passed his childhood : on the breaking up of the household of the electress he spent a year at Paris, and then accompanied his father to England, who destined him for the church, but, somewhat unadvisedly, sent him for previous instruction to the dissenting seminary of Warrington. The principles which he here imbibed, impelled him to renounce all his expectations from the Establishment; though by such a renunciation, which threw him upon the world without a profession and without fortune, he raised obstacles which might well have appeared insuperable, to the completion of that union on which he had long rested ​ his fondest hopes of earthly felicity. Whilst the prospects of the young couple were still full of uncertainty, some distinguished persons, amongst whom was Mrs. Montague,—at once admirers of the genius of Miss Aikin and patrons of a more enlarged system of female education than was then prevalent,—were induced to propose to her to establish under their auspices what might almost have been called a College for young ladies. On a distant view, the idea had something noble and striking, but it was not calculated to bear a close examination: and it called forth from her the following remarks, well worthy of preservation, as a monument of her acuteness and good sense, and of the just and comprehensive ideas which, at a rather early age, and with slender opportunities of acquainting herself with the great world, she had been enabled to form of the habits and acquirements most important to females, and particularly to ​ those of rank and fashion. It is also interesting as an instance of the humility with which she estimated her own accomplishments.
"A kind of Literary Academy for ladies (for that is what you seem to propose), where they are to be taught in a regular systematic manner the various branches of science, appears to me better calculated to form such characters as the 'Precieuses' or the 'Femmes sçavantes' of Moliere, than good wives or agreeable companions. Young gentlemen, who are to display their knowledge to the world, should have every motive of emulation, should be formed into regular classes, should read and dispute together, should have all the honours and, if one may so say, the pomp of learning set before them, to call up their ardour:—it is their business, and they should apply to it as such. But young ladies, who ought only to have such a general tincture ​ of knowledge as to make them agreeable companions to a man of sense, and to enable them to find rational entertainment for a solitary hour, should gain these accomplishments in a more quiet and unobserved manner : subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the thefts of knowledge in our sex are only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed, punished with disgrace. The best way for women to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father, a brother or friend, in the way of family intercourse and easy conversation, and by such a course of reading as they may recommend. If you add to these an attendance upon those masters which are usually provided in schools, and perhaps such a set of lectures as Mr. Ferguson's, which it is not uncommon for ladies to attend, I think a woman will be in a way to acquire all the learning that can be of use to those who are not to teach or engage in any learned profession. Per​ haps you may think, that having myself stepped out of the bounds of female reserve in becoming an author, it is with an ill grace I offer these sentiments: but though this circumstance may destroy the grace, it does not the justice of the remark; and I am full well convinced that to have a too great fondness for books is little favour able to the happiness of a woman, especially one not in affluent circumstances. My situation has been peculiar, and would be no rule for others.
"I should likewise object to the age proposed. Their knowledge ought to be acquired at an earlier period,—geography, those languages it may be proper for them to learn, grammar, &c., are best learned from about nine to thirteen or fourteen, and will then interfere less with other duties. I should have little hopes of cultivating a love of knowledge in a young lady of fifteen, who came to me ignorant and un​taught; and if she has laid a foundation, she will be able to pursue her studies with out a master, or with such a one only as Rousseau gives his Sophie. It is too late then to begin to learn. The empire of the passions is coming on; a new world opens to the youthful eye; those attachments begin to be formed which influence the happiness of future life;—the care of a mother, and that alone, can give suitable attention to this important period. At this period they have many things to learn which books and systems never taught. The grace and ease of polished society, with the established modes of behaviour to every different class of people; the detail of domestic economy, to which they must be gradually introduced; the duties, the proprieties of behaviour which they must practise in their own family, in the families where they visit, to their friends, to their acquaintance:—lastly, their behaviour to the other half of their species, with whom ​ before they were hardly acquainted, and who then begin to court their notice; the choice of proper acquaintance of that sex, the art to converse with them with a happy mixture of easy politeness and graceful reserve, and to wear off by degrees something of the girlish bashfulness with out injuring virgin delicacy. These are the accomplishments which a young woman has to learn from fourteen or fifteen till she is married, or fit to be so; and surely these are not to be learned in a school. They must be learned partly at home, and partly by visits in genteel families: they cannot be taught where a number are together; they cannot be taught without the most intimate knowledge of a young lady's temper, connexions, and views in life ; nor without an authority and influence established upon all the former part of her life. For all these reasons, it is my full opinion that the best public education cannot at that period ​ be equally serviceable with—I had almost said—an indifferent private one.
"My next reason is, that I am not at all qualified for the task. I have seen a good deal of the manner of educating boys, and know pretty well what is expected in the care of them; but in a girls' boarding-school I should be quite a novice: I never was at one myself, have not even the advantage of younger sisters, which might have given me some notion of the management of girls; indeed, for the early part of my life I conversed little with my own sex. In the village where I was, there were none to converse with; and this, I am very sensible, has given me an awkwardness in many common things, which would make me most peculiarly unfit for the education of my own sex. But suppose I were tolerably qualified to instruct those of my own rank;—consider, that these must be of a class far ​ superior to those I have lived amongst and conversed with. Young ladies of that rank ought to have their education superintended by a woman perfectly well-bred, from whose manner they may catch that ease and gracefulness which can only be learned from the best company; and she should be able to direct them, and judge of their progress in every genteel accomplishment. I could not judge of their music, their dancing; and if I pretended to correct their air, they might be tempted to smile at my own; for I know myself remarkably deficient in gracefulness of person, in my air and manner, and in the easy graces of conversation. Indeed, whatever the kind partiality of my friends may think of me, there are few things I know well enough to teach them with any satisfaction, and many I never could learn myself. These deficiencies would soon be remarked when I was introduced to people of fashion; and were it possible that, notwithstanding, I should ​ meet with encouragement, I could never prosecute with any pleasure an undertaking to which I should know myself so unequal: I am sensible the common boarding-schools are upon a very bad plan, and believe I could project a better, but I could not execute it."
The arguments thus forcibly urged, appear to have convinced all parties concerned, that she was right in declining the proposal. Mr. Barbauld soon after accepted the charge of a dissenting congregation at Palgrave near Diss, and immediately before his marriage announced his intention of opening a boarding-school at the neighbouring village of Palgrave in Suffolk.
The rapid and uninterrupted success which crowned this undertaking was doubtless in great measure owing to the literary celebrity attached to the name of Mrs. Barbauld, and to her active participation ​ with her husband in the task of instruction. It fortunately happened, that two of the eight pupils with which Palgrave school commenced, were endowed with abilities worthy of the culture which such an instructress could alone bestow. One of these, William Taylor, Esq. of Norwich, known by his English Synonyms, his exquisite Iphigenia in Tauris from the German, his Leonora from Burger, and many other fruits of genius and extensive learning, has constantly acknowledged her, with pride and affection, for the "mother of his mind;" and in a biographical notice prefixed to The collective works of Frank Sayers, M.D. of the same city, author of the Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology, he has thus recorded the congenial sentiments of his friend. "Among the instructions bestowed at Palgrave, Dr. Sayers has repeatedly observed to me, that he most valued the lessons of English composition superintended by Mrs. Barbauld. On Wednesdays and ​ Saturdays the boys were called in separate classes to her apartment: she read a fable, a short story, or a moral essay, to them aloud, and then sent them back into the school-room to write it out on the slates in their own words. Each exercise was separately overlooked by her; the faults of grammar were obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every correction; so that the arts of enditing and of criticizing were in some degree learnt together. Many a lad from the great schools, who excels in Latin and Greek, cannot write properly a vernacular letter, for want of some such discipline."
The department of geography was also undertaken by Mrs. Barbauld; and she relieved the dryness of a study seldom rendered interesting to children, by so many lively strokes of description, and such lu​ minous and attractive views of the connexion of this branch of knowledge with the revolutions of empires, with national manners, and with the natural history of animals, that these impressive lectures were always remembered by her auditors less among their tasks than their pleasures.
​ In 1775 Mrs. Barbauld committed to the press a small volume entitled Devotional Pieces compiled from the Psalms of David, with Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, and on Sects and Establishments. As a selection it did not meet with great success; nor did the essay escape without some animadversion. It was afterwards separated from the Psalms and reprinted with the Miscellaneous Pieces, and will be further noticed in the sequel.
The union of Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld proved unfruitful, and they sought to fill the void, of which in the midst of their busy avocations they were still sensible, by the adoption of a son out of the family of Dr. Aikin. Several particulars relative to this subject will be found in the letters of Mrs. Barbauld to her brother:—it is sufficient here to mention, that they received the child when somewhat ​ under two years of age, and that his education became thenceforth a leading object of Mrs. Barbauld's attention. For the use of her little Charles she composed those Early Lessons which have justly gained for her the reverence and love of both parents and children ; a work which may safely be asserted to have formed an æra in the art of early instruction, and to stand yet unrivaled amid numberless imitations.
The solicitations of parents anxious to obtain for their sons what they regarded as the best tuition, now induced her to receive as her own peculiar pupils several little boys, to whom she condescended to teach the first rudiments of literature. Thomas Denman, Esq., now a distinguish ed member of the legal profession and of the House of Commons, was committed to her care before he had accomplished his fourth year. Sir William Cell, the zealous ​ explorer of the plain of Troy, was another of her almost infant scholars; and it was for the benefit of this younger class that her Hymns in Prose for Children were written, in which it was her peculiar object (to use her own words in the preface) "to impress devotional feelings as early as possible on the infant mind," "to impress them, by connecting religion with a variety of sensible objects, with all that he sees, all he hears, all that affects his young mind with wonder or delight; and thus, by deep, strong and permanent associations, to lay the best foundation for practical devotion in future life."
None of her works is a fairer monument than this, of the elevation of her soul and the brightness of her genius. While discarding the aid of verse, she everywhere bursts forth into poetry;—while stooping to the comprehension of infancy, she has produced a precious manual of devotion, ​ founded on the contemplation of nature, fitted to delight the taste and warm the piety of the most accomplished minds and finest spirits.
Meantime Palgrave school was progressively increasing in numbers and reputation, and several sons of noble families were sent to share in its advantages; of whom may be named, the late amiable and lamented Basil Lord Daer (a favourite pupil), and three of his brothers, including the last Earl of Selkirk; two sons of Lord Templetown, Lord More,Lord Aghrim, and the Honourable Augustus Phipps : these, who were parlour-boarders, enjoyed most of the benefit of the conversation and occasional instructions of Mrs. Barbauld; and all, it is believed, quitted the school with sentiments towards her of high respect and attachment.
A course of honourable and prosperous ​ exertion must always be productive of satisfaction to a well-constituted mind; and in this view Mrs. Barbauld might regard with complacency her situation at Palgrave. Its cares and its monotony were also relieved by vacations, which she and Mr. Barbauld usually passed either in agreeable visits to their friends in different parts of the country, or in the more animated delights of London society. As their connexions were extensive, they were now enabled to procure themselves a considerable share of that amusing and instructive variety of scenes and characters which forms the peculiar charm of the metropolis. At the splendid mansion of her early and constant admirer Mrs. Montague, Mrs. Barbauld beheld in perfection the imposing union of literature and fashion; under the humbler roof of her friend and publisher, the late worthy Joseph Johnson of St. Paul's Church-yard, she tasted, perhaps with higher relish, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul," ​ in a chosen knot of lettered equals. Her own connexions introduced her to leading characters among the dissenters and persons of opposition-politics;—those of Mr. Barbauld led her among courtiers and supporters of the establishment. Her own candid spirit, and courteous though retiring manners, with the varied graces of her conversation, recommended her alike to all.
The business of tuition, however, to those by whom it is faithfully and zealously exercised, must ever be fatiguing beyond almost any other occupation; and Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld found their health and spirits so much impaired by their exertions, that at the end of eleven years they determined upon quitting Palgrave, and allowing themselves an interval of complete relaxation before they should again embark in any scheme of active life. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1785 they embarked for Calais; and after extending ​ their travels as far as Geneva, returned to winter in the south of France. In the spring they again bent their course northwards, and after a leisurely survey of Paris returned to England in the month of June 1786. The remainder of that year they passed chiefly in London, undecided with respect to a future place of residence; but early in the following one, Mr. Barbauld having been elected their pastor by a small dissenting congregation at Hampstead, they fixed themselves in that agree able village, where for several years Mr. Barbauld received a few young gentlemen as his pupils, while Mrs. Barbauld gave daily instructions to a young lady whose mother took up her residence at Hampstead for the benefit of this tuition: some years after, she accepted another pupil on a similar plan.
Her brother, who placed no small part of his own pride in the efforts of her genius and the extension of her fame, observed ​with little complacency that her powers were wasted in supineness or in trivial occupations; and early in 1790 he apostrophized her in the following sonnet:
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. Wilberforce 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 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:—
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 Prelimi​nary 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 in deed, 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.
The essay opens with the observation, "that it is equally true of books as of their authors, that one generation passeth away and another cometh." The mutual influence exerted by books and manners on each other is then remarked; and the si​ lent 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.
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
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 in deed, 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, as well as the result of his religious system. He was temperate, almost to abstemiousness; yet without any tincture of ascetic rigour. A free, undaunted spirit, a winning simplicity, a tendency to enthusiasm, but of the gentle and liberal kind, formed the prominent lineaments of his character. The social affections were all ​ alive and active in him. His heart over flowed with kindness to all, the lowest that came within his sphere. There never was a human being who had less of the selfish and worldly feelings,—they hardly seemed to form a part of his nature. His was truly the charity which thinketh no ill. Great singleness of heart, and a candour very opposite to the suspicious temper of worldly sagacity, made him slow to impute un worthy motives to the actions of his fellowmen; yet his candour by no means sprung from indifference to moral rectitude, for when he could no longer resist conviction, his censure was decided and his indignation warm and warmly expressed. His standard of virtue was high, and he felt no propensities which disposed him to lower it. His religious sentiments were of the most pure and liberal cast; and his pulpit services, when the state of his spirits seconded the ardour of his mind, were characterized by the rare union of a fervent ​ spirit of devotion, with a pure, sublime philosophy, supported by arguments of metaphysical acuteness. He did not speak the language of any party, nor exactly coincide with the systems of any. He was a believer in the pre-existence of Christ, and, in a certain modified sense, in the atonement; thinking those doctrines most consonant to the tenour of scripture;....but he was too sensible of the difficulties which press upon every system, not to feel indulgence for all, and he was not zealous for any doctrine which did not affect the heart. Of the moral perfections of the Deity he had the purest and most exalted ideas; on these was chiefly founded his system of religion, and these together with his own benevolent nature led him to embrace so warmly, his favourite doctrine of the final salvation of all the human race, and indeed, the gradual rise and perfectibility of all created existence His latter days were oppressed by a morbid affection of ​ his spirits, in a great degree hereditary, which came gradually upon him, and closed the scene of his earthly usefulness; yet in the midst of the irritation it occasioned, the kindness of his nature broke forth, and some of his last acts were acts of benevolence."
Mrs. Barbauld had the fortitude to seek relief from dejection in literary occupation; and incapable as yet of any stronger effort, she consented to edit a collection of the British Novelists, which issued from the press in 1810. The Introductory Essay shows extent of reading combined with her usual powers of style; and the Biographical and Critical Notices prefixed to the works of each author are judiciously and grace fully executed.
In the following year she compiled for the use of young ladies an agreeable collection of verse and prose, in one volume ​ 12mo, entitled The Female Speaker. Having thus braced her mind, as it were, to the tone of original composition, she produced that beautiful offspring of her genius, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, the longest, and perhaps the most highly finished, of all her poems. The crisis at which this piece was produced, and concerning which it treats, was confessedly one of the most distressful within the memory of the present generation, and the author's own state of spirits deepened the gloom. She, like Cassandra, was the prophetess of woe: at the time, she was heard perhaps with less incredulity, but the event has happily discredited her vaticination in every point. That the solemn warning which she here attempted to hold forth to national pride and confidence, should cause her lines to be received by the public with less applause than their intrinsic merit might well have claimed, was perhaps in some degree to be expected; that it would expose its ​author—its venerable and female author—to contumely and insult, could only have been anticipated by those thoroughly acquainted with the instincts of the hired assassin of reputation shooting from his coward ambush. Can any one read the touching apostrophe,
Yet O my country, name beloved, revered!—
the proud and affectionate enumeration of the names which encircle the brow of Britain with the halo of immortal glory; of the spots consecrated by the footsteps of genius and virtue, where the future pilgrim from the West would kneel with beating heart; the splendid description of London with all its "pomp and circumstance" of greatness,—the complacent allusion to "angel charities," and "the book of life" held out "to distant lands,"—and doubt for a moment that this strain was dictated by the heart of a true patriot, a heart which feared because it fondly loved?
​This was the last of Mrs. Barbauld's separate publications. Who indeed, that knew and loved her, could have wished her to expose again that honoured head to the scorns of the unmanly, the malignant, and the base? Her fancy was still in all its brightness; her spirits might have been cheered and her energy revived, by the cordial and respectful greetings, the thanks and plaudits, with which it was once the generous and graceful practice of contemporary criticism to welcome the re-appearance of a well-deserving veteran in the field of letters. As it was, though still visited by
she for the most part confined to a few friends all participation in the strains which they inspired. She even laid aside the intention which she had entertained of preparing a new edition of her Poems, ​long out of print and often inquired for in vain;—well knowing that a day must come when the sting of Envy would be blunted, and her memory would have its fame.
No incident worthy of mention henceforth occurred to break the uniformity of her existence. She gave up all distant journeys; and confined at home to a narrow circle of connexions and acquaintance, she suffered life to slide away, as it were, at its own pace,
Nor shook the outhasting sands, nor bid them stay.
An asthmatic complaint, which was slowly undermining her excellent constitution, more and more indisposed her for any considerable exertion either of mind or body: but the arrival of a visitor had always the power to rouse her from a state of languor. Her powers of conversation suffered little declension to the last, al​though her memory of recent circumstances became somewhat impaired. Her disposition,—of which sensibility was not in earlier life the leading feature,—now mellowed into softness, pleasingly exhibited
Those tender tints that only Time can give.
Her manners, never tainted by pride, which, with the baser but congenial affection of envy, was a total stranger to her bosom,—were now remarkable for their extreme humility: she spoke of every one not merely with the candour and forbearance which she had long practised; but with interest, with kindness, with an indulgence which sometimes appeared but too comprehensive; she seemed reluctant to allow, or believe, that any of her fellow-creatures had a failing, while she gave them credit gratuitously for many virtues. This state of mind, which, with her native acuteness of discernment, it must apparently have ​cost her some struggles to attain, had at least the advantage of causing her easily to admit of such substitutes as occurred for those contemporary and truly congenial friendships which, in the course of nature, were now fast failing her. She lost her early and affectionate friend Mrs. Kenrick in 1819. In December 1822 her brother sunk under a long decline, which had served as a painful preparation to the final parting. A few months later she lost, in the excellent Mrs. John Taylor of Norwich, perhaps the most intimate and most highly valued of all her distant friends; to whose exalted and endearing character she bore the following well-merited testimony in a letter addressed to one of her daughters.
"Receive the assurance of my most affectionate sympathy in those feelings with which you must be now contemplating the loss of that dear woman, so long the object ​ of your respect and affection; nor indeed yours only, but of all who knew her. A prominent part of those feelings, however, must be, that the dear object of them is released from suffering, has finished her task, and entered upon her reward Never will she be forgotten by those who knew her ! Her strong sense, her feeling, her energy, her principle, her patriot feelings, her piety rational yet ardent, all these mark a character of no common sort. When to these high claims upon general regard are added those of relation or friend, the feeling must be such as no course of years can efface."
A gentle and scarcely perceptible decline was now sloping for herself the passage to the tomb: she felt and hailed its progress as a release from languor and infirmity, a passport to another and a higher state of being. Her friends, however, flattered themselves that they might ​ continue to enjoy her yet a little longer; and she had consented to remove under the roof of her adopted son, that his affectionate attentions and those of his family might be the solace of every remaining hour. But Providence had ordained it otherwise: she quitted indeed her own house, but whilst on a visit at the neighbouring one of her sister-in-law Mrs. Aikin, the constant and beloved friend of nearly her whole life, her bodily powers gave way almost suddenly ; and after lingering a few days, on the morning of March the 9th, 1825, she expired without a struggle, in the eighty-second year of her age.
To claim for this distinguished woman the praise of purity and elevation of mind may well appear superfluous. Her education and connexions, the course of her life, the whole tenour of her writings^ bear abundant testimony to this part of her character. It is a higher, or at least a rarer com​ mendation to add, that no one ever better loved "a sister's praise," even that of such sisters as might have been peculiarly regarded in the light of rivals. She was acquainted with almost all the principal female writers of her time; and there was not one of the number whom she failed frequently to mention in terms of admiration, esteem or affection, whether in conversation, in. letters to her friends, or in print. To humbler aspirants in the career of letters, who often applied to her for advice of assistance, she was invariably courteous, and in many instances essentially serviceable. The sight of youth and beauty was peculiarly gratifying to her fancy and her feelings ; and children and young persons, especially females, were accordingly large sharers in her benevolence: she loved their society, and would often invite them to pass weeks or months in her house, when she spared no pains to amuse and instruct them; and she seldom failed, ​ after they had quitted her, to recall herself from time to time to their recollection, by affectionate and playful letters, or welcome presents.
In the conjugal relation, her conduct was guided by the highest principles of love and duty. As a sister, the uninterrupted flow of her affection, manifested by numberless tokens of love,—not alone to her brother, but to every member of his family,—will ever be recalled by them with emotions of tenderness, respect, and gratitude. She passed through a long life without having dropped, it is believed, a single friendship, and without having drawn upon herself a single enmity which could properly be called personal.
We now proceed to offer some account of the contents of the present volumes, with a few remarks on the genius of their author. The small bulk of the writings of ​ Mrs. Barbauld, compared with the long course of years during which she exercised the pen, is a sufficient proof that she offered to the public none but the happiest inspirations of her Muse, and not even these till they had received all the polish of which she judged them susceptible. To a friend who had expressed his surprise at not finding inserted in her volume a poem which he had admired in manuscript, she well and characteristically replied; "I had rather it should be asked of twenty pieces why they are not here, than of one why it is." Her representatives have in the present instance followed, to the best of their judgement, a similar principle of selection. Out of a considerable number of pieces which appear from their dates to have been rejected by herself from her first publication, they have printed only two: that agreeable jeu d'esprit The Inventory of the Furniture of Dr. Priestley's Study, probably omitted in the first instance for reasons which no ​ longer exist; and the elegant Lines on The Deserted Village, which are given partly for the sake of connecting the name of their author as a contemporary with that of a poet who has been so long enrolled among the classics of his country. It may also be mentioned, that Goldsmith, whose envy is well known, bore involuntary testimony to the merit of these lines, by exhibiting no sentiment but mortification on hearing them read with applause in a London circle.
Of the pieces composed since the first publication of Mrs. Barbauld's Poems (which form the larger part of the present collection); the two longest, the Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce, and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, have already appeared in separate pamphlets; and the first of them is added to the last edition of the Poems: several of the smaller ones have also been inserted in periodical works. Corrected ​ copies of most of those now printed for the first time were found among her papers, evidently prepared for insertion in the enlarged volume which she long meditated, but never completed.
The Poems have been disposed, with some unimportant exceptions, in chronological order, as nearly as it could be ascertained. When the productions of a writer extend over so long a period as nearly sixty years, they become in some measure the record of an age, a document for the historian of literature and opinions; and they ought to be arranged with some view to this secondary object, by which their interest is enhanced. It is also agreeable to race the author's progress from youth to age, by changes of style, or the succession of different trains of thought. In the writings of Mrs. Barbauld, however, the character of the style varies little from the beginning to the end. It is nowhere to be ​ found in an unformed state; for so relentlessly did she destroy all her juvenile essays, that the editor is not aware of the existence of a single piece which can be ascertained to have been composed before the age of twenty: the printed ones are all, it is believed, of a considerably later date. Her earliest pieces too, as well as her more recent ones, exhibit in their imagery and allusions the fruits of extensive and varied reading. In youth, the power of her imagination was counterbalanced by the activity of her intellect, which exercised itself in rapid, but not unprofitable excursions over almost every field of knowledge. In age, when this activity abated, imagination appeared to exert over her an undiminished sway.
The quality which principally distinguishes the later productions of her Muse is pathos. In some tempers sensibility appears an instinct, while in others it is the ​ gradual result of principle and reflection, of the events and the experience of life. It was certainly so in that of Mrs. Barbauld.
​ The second volume of the present work contains a selection from the private correspondence of Mrs. Barbauld, her entire share of the Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose written by herself and her brother con jointly, her three pamphlets, and several occasional pieces, some of them now first given to the world, others reprinted from periodical works where they appeared anonymously.
It is equally true of the style of Mrs. Barbauld in prose as in verse, that it was never produced to the public till it had reached its perfect stature : the early volume of Miscellaneous Pieces contained specimens in various kinds which she never surpassed. In the allegory of the Hill of Science she tried her strength with Addison, and sustained no defeat. The Essay on Romances is a professed imitation of the style of Dr. Johnson ; and it was allowed by that celebrated rhetorician him​ self, to be the best that was ever attempted; because it reflected the colour of his thoughts, no less than the turn of his expressions. Here it appears as a foil to the "easy and inimitable graces" of her own natural manner. Of the Essay against In consistency in our expectations, the editor feels it superfluous to speak: it has long been acknowledged to stand at the head of its class.
Of a different character are her Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments. This piece betrays, it must be confessed, that propensity to tread on dangerous ground which some times appears an instinct of genius. It recommends a spirit of devotion which yet she is obliged to allow to be in some measure incompatible with an enlightened and philosophical theology. That part, however, which delineates the characteristics of sects and of establishments, and ​ balances their respective advantages and inconveniences, evinces great acuteness and a rare impartiality; and the whole must be admired as eloquence, if it cannot be altogether acquiesced in as reason.
Amongst her later pieces, two which first appeared in the Monthly Magazine, the Essay on Education, and that on Prejudice, which may be regarded as in some measure a sequel to it, have justly earned for her not merely applause, but gratitude. The first served to calm the apprehensions of many an anxious parent, who had risen from the examination of the numerous conflicting systems of education then fashionable, alarmed rather than edified, by pointing out, that the success of the great and familiar process of fitting a human creature to bear well his part in life, depended not for its success on elaborate schemes of artificial management, such as ​ few have leisure to attend to or power to execute; but, most of all, on circumstances which no parent can controul; and next, on examples such as discreet and virtuous parents in any situation of life are enabled to give, and give indeed unconsciously. The second essay encourages the parent to use without scruple the power of influencing the opinions of his child which God and nature have put into his hands, and not to believe on the word of certain speculatists, that it is either necessary or desirable to abstain from imbuing his offspring with what he conceives to be important and salutary truths, from the dread of instilling prejudices and crippling the efforts of his infant reason. In these excellent productions we are uncertain which most to admire, the sagacious and discriminating intellect, the practical good sense and acute observation of life which suggest the remarks, or the spirited and ​ expressive style which rouses attention, strikes the imagination, and carries them with conviction to the heart.
It appears from a letter of Mrs. Barbauld's, that she early read with great delight, though in an English translation, the Dialogues of Lucian. Perhaps we may remotely trace to the impression thus produced, the origin of her witty and ingenious Dialogue between Madame Cosmogunia and a philosophical Inquirer of the Eighteenth Century, as well as of her Dialogue in the Shades. The allegorical or enigmatical style, however, in which the first of these pieces is composed, seemed peculiarly adapted to her genius; and the skill and elegance with which she composed in this difficult manner is further attested by her Letter of John Bull, by the Four Sisters, (published in Evenings at Home,) by many entertaining Riddles, a few of which are now included among her Poems, and ​ by several little fancy pieces scattered among her familiar letters. Even her conversation was often enlivened with these graceful sports of wit and imagination.
Of the three Pamphlets now republished among her Prose Works, the editor has only to observe, that though composed on particular occasions, these pieces were not formed to pass away with those occasions: they treat of subjects permanently interesting to the champion of religious liberty, to the conscientious patriot, and to the Christian worshiper,—and they so treat of them, that while English eloquence is made a study, while English literature is not for gotten, their praise shall live, their memory shall flourish.
It only remains to speak of her familiar letters. These were certainly never intend ed by herself to meet the public eye. She kept no copies of them; and it is solely by ​ the indulgence of her correspondents or their representatives,—an indulgence for which she here desires to offer her grateful acknowledgements, that the editor has been enabled to give them to the world. She flatters herself that their publication will not be considered as a trespass either against the living or the dead: some of them, particularly a considerable proportion of those addressed to Dr. Aikin, seemed to claim insertion as biographical records; and those written during her residence in France, in the years 1785 and 1786, appeared no less curious and valuable at the present day for the matter they contain, than entertaining and agreeable from the vivacity with which they are written. But it was impossible not to be influenced also by the desire of thus communicating to those admirers of Mrs. Barbauld's genius who did not enjoy the advantage of her personal acquaintance, a just idea of the pointed and elegant remark, ​the sportive and lambent wit, the affectionate spirit of sympathy, and the courteous expression of esteem and benevolence, which united to form at once the graces of her epistolary style and the inexpressible charm of her conversation.
Mrs. Barbauld composed at different periods a considerable number of miscellaneous pieces for the instruction and amusement of young persons, especially females, which will appear in a separate form about the close of the present year.
Hampstead, June 20th, 1825.
* ↑ 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 Phœnix and Dove; The Manufacture of Paper; The Four Sisters.—In a new edition will be added, Live Dolls.
* ↑ Three vols. 12mo, Johnson 1804.