Li 0^1 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4057.B7Z65 1874 
 
 Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, Including letter 
 
 3 1924 013 210 475 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013210475 
 
IroTn- cc JW&i£aZiiei77^2or?l'idffwoi?ci. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OP 
 
 MES. BAKBAULD, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 LETTEES AND NOTICES 
 OF HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS. 
 
 BY HER GREAT NIECE 
 ANNA LETITIA LERRETON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS, 
 
 YOBK STBEET, OOYENT GARDEN. 
 
 1874. 
 
 [ALL BI&HIS BESEBVSD.] 
 

PEEFACE. 
 
 The writer of tte following J\Iemoir is one of the 
 few surviving members of Mrs. Barbauld's family who 
 retains a personal recollection of her, having spent 
 much of her early life under her care, owing her like- 
 wise a large debt of gratitude and love. Earnestly 
 desiring to revive some memory of one who though 
 enjoying in her lifetime a considerable amount of literary 
 fame, is now, from the circumstance of her works 
 having been long out of print and difficult to procure, 
 comparatively unknown to the present generation, the 
 author has availed herself of a collection of letters and 
 family papers in her possession, to compile a fuller 
 account of the life and family of Mrs. Barbauld, than 
 her niece Lucy Aikin thought herself justified in doing, 
 when she wrote the original Life, prefixed to the edition 
 of the Works of Mrs. Barbauld, published soon after 
 her death in 1825. 
 
 Feelings of delicacy towards members of Mr. 
 Barbauld's family, then Hving, prevented the true ac- 
 count being given of the unfortunate state of mind with 
 which her husband became afflicted, a calamity which 
 in a great degree cjippled her powers for maciy of the 
 
best years of her life. Many names were also suppress- 
 ed for reasons no longer existing. 
 
 The aoconnt of Mrs. Barbauld's ancestors, written 
 in late years by Miss Aikin, for the benefit of the 
 younger members of her family ; though not intended 
 for publication, is now printed to shew the influences 
 which in part formed Mrs. Barbauld's pure and noble 
 character. 
 
 The poems alli^ded to in the course of the Memoir, 
 will be found at the end of the volume ; as well as her 
 Essay " On Inconsistency in our Expectations," which 
 has always been considered one of the most finished of 
 her prose writings, and was a few years ago printed and 
 circulated by an unknown friend. The portrait pre- 
 fixed, is from a cameo, for which she sat about the 
 year 1773, at the request of her valued friend Josiah 
 Wedgwood. 
 
 Hampstead, 1874. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Letter from Eev. Dr. Doddridge to Miss 
 
 
 Jennings . . 
 
 201 
 
 Bonner's Ghost by Mrs. Hannah More 
 
 205 
 
 Answer by Mrs. Barbauld 
 
 208 
 
 Washing Day 
 
 211 
 
 Life 
 
 215 
 
 Enigma 
 
 217 
 
 Notice of Arthur Aikin 
 
 219 
 
 Essay on Inconsistency in our Expectations 
 
 225 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
 Anna Letitia, the eldest child, and only 
 daughter of John Aikin, d.d. and Jane his 
 wife, daughter of the Kev. John Jennings, 
 was born at the village of Kibworth Har- 
 court in Leicestershire, on the 20th June, 
 1743. 
 
 The following particulars relating to her 
 family, are taken from some unpublished 
 memorials written by the late Lucy Aikin, 
 her niece. 
 
 " John Aikin, my great grandfather," 
 says Miss Aikin, " transferred himseK at an 
 early age from the Scotch town of Kircud- 
 bright to London. How long this place 
 
had been the seat of the Aikins, or what 
 station they held there, I cannot say, all 
 that my father knew on the subject was, 
 that the family arms were registered in the 
 Herald's Office at Edinburgh ; consequently 
 that they, like Scotchmen in general, laid 
 claim to '/rentle blood,' however little they 
 might possess of the world's wealth. 
 
 Of the career of my great grandfather in 
 London, I am equally uninformed, till he 
 became the master of a linen draper's shop 
 in that part of Newgate Street than called 
 Blowbladder Street, from the vicinity of the 
 great meat market of the city. He appears 
 at this time to have been a man of substance, 
 and he took to wife Anne Bentall, whose 
 father was deacon of the congregation of that 
 Daniel Burgess of whom Swift has left us an 
 amusing notice in the Tatler, showing him 
 to be more rogue than fool in his fanatical 
 rants. An old portrait of my great grand- 
 mother which I have seen, represented her 
 with nothing striking about her except a 
 profusion of long ringlets, which had cer- 
 tainly nothing of Puritan primness. My 
 
father had a great notion that she was a 
 very silly woman, and handed down to his 
 posterity this one anecdote of her. Some 
 few months before the birth of her eldest 
 son, walking with her husband in the fields, 
 she was siezed with a violent longing to crop 
 a few mouthfuls of the tempting herbage. 
 In those days, as we have aU heard, any 
 fancy of a matron under such circumstances 
 must be gratified at all events. Precious 
 privilege, now lost to the sex ! Down there- 
 fore went the dame on hands and knees and 
 grazed. To this circumstance my father 
 added, that his father, between jest and 
 earnest, would ascribe his rural tastes ! 
 
 This couple had three sons, of whom my 
 grandfather was the eldest. He was at 
 first destined for commerce, and placed in 
 a mercantile house as French clerJc. I pre- 
 sume he had acquired this language at his 
 school, the master of which was probably 
 no deep classic, but having been an actor, 
 taught him that impressive declamation of 
 English verse for which he was always dis- 
 tinguished. An ardent love of study, and 
 
conscious power of intellect, soon rendered 
 the routine of the counting house insupport- 
 able to him, and he prevailed upon an in- 
 dulgent father to enter him a pupil of the 
 Kibworth Academy, afterwards removed to 
 Northampton. 
 
 Of this institution, by the early death 
 of my great grandfather, the Eev. John 
 Jennings, Dr. Doddridge had become the 
 head, but so recently that young Aikin was 
 
 his first pupil The prosperity of my 
 
 great grandfather gradually forsook him. 
 What I have been told was merely this ; 
 that not being so sharp as his countrymen, 
 he allowed them to make a prey of him. In 
 the end he gave up business, and found an 
 asylum with his worthy son at Kibworth. 
 A long old age it was ; he survived to the age 
 of 92. 
 
 My great-great grandfather Jennings was 
 a clergyman, in what was then called Pow- 
 island, and a part of Wales ; and was one 
 of the noble 2000 who resigned their livings 
 rather than violate conscience at the promp- 
 ting of that treacherous bigot Lord Claren- 
 
don. The loss was the heavier to Mr. 
 Jennings from his cure being his own ad- 
 vowson. I know not what carried him to 
 Kibworth, so remote from his native country, 
 for he was a Welshman — but I believe he 
 was the founder of the Academy afterwards 
 carried on by his son. This son, the Eev. 
 John Jennings, was a very industrious 
 
 teacher, and a man of letters After 
 
 the passing of the Toleration Act, he became 
 the dissenting minister of Kibworth. His 
 first wife was a beautiful young girl, only 
 child of one of the principal members of his 
 congregation. Seven months after mar- 
 riage she produced a babe, small and puny, 
 which died almost immediately. Puritan 
 rigor was little disposed in such a case, to 
 grant to a suspected offender the benefit of 
 even the most reasonable doubt. An old hag 
 of the congregation, gained or forced admit- 
 tance to the bedside of the new mother, to 
 tell her, weak and exhausted as she was, 
 the evil thoughts of all the world on this 
 occasion. The poor young creature wept 
 
 B 2 
 
all the rest of the day, and died the next. 
 When the widower married a second time, 
 the father of her who had been ' done to 
 death by slanderous tongues,' said to him, 
 ' caU your first daughter Jane, after my 
 poor girl, and I will give her a rood land.' 
 How much this means I know not, but his 
 daughter, my grandmother, was named 
 Jane, and had the land. Her husband sold 
 it when they removed from Kibworth to 
 Warrington. 
 
 My great grandmother, the second wife of 
 Mr. Jennings, was Anna Letitia, one of the 
 many daughters of Sir Francis Wingate of 
 Harlington Grange, Beds., by the Lady 
 Anne, daughter of Sir Arthur Annesley, 
 first Earl of Anglesey, and Lord Privy Seal 
 under Charles II. Her name of Anna, I 
 suppose she bore in compliment to her 
 mother; Letitia, was an appellation brought 
 into the Wingate family long before. Lettice 
 Wingate, a nun, is commemorated in the 
 pedigree book at Harlington, as having 
 taught her nephew to read. 
 
The old family house,* on the most an- 
 tique end of which, my uncle remembered a 
 plate bearing the date 1396, was the seat of 
 a family, Norman I presume, of the name 
 of Belverge ; bearing on their shield three 
 pears or (bel verger) till it was conveyed by 
 the marriage of an heiress at the end of the 
 14th century, to a Wingate of the neigh- 
 bouring village of Sharpenhoe. Wingate of 
 Harlington, is included in the list of gentry 
 made by the Heralds' College on their visi- 
 tation, held in the reign, and under the 
 auspices of Henry YI ; which intimates 
 him to have belonged, to the Lancastrian 
 party. The master of the Grange was never 
 Lord of the Manor, therefore only the 
 second great man of Harlington ; yet his 
 estates appear to have been considerable. 
 Edward Wingate held the exalted office of 
 
 * The house still stands ; at present occupied by 
 George Pearse, Esq., who married Elizabeth, the only 
 child of Mrs.'Aikin's brother, John Wingate Jennings, 
 the last of the name. This Judy, who never quitted her 
 old home, died a few years ago at a ripe age in the house 
 in which she was bom, beloved and re speeted by all 
 who knew her. 
 
8 
 
 'Masterof the Bears,' to Queen Elizabeth. 
 Sir Francis, in his elaborate letter of declara- 
 tion to the Lady Anne, still preserved, I 
 think, values his estate at 1000 per annum, 
 and promises to keep a coach and six. The 
 Earl, her father, gave her several thousand 
 pounds. Bishop Burnet writes of this noble 
 lord, that he had sold himself so often that 
 at length no party thought him worth buy- 
 ing. He seems indeed to have feathered 
 his nest pretty well, but was certainly an 
 able man. We may take comfort, roguery 
 is not hereditary, folly often is. 
 
 Grand were the- preparations made at 
 poor Harlington for the reception of the 
 bride. The hall and state bedchamber over 
 it, were fitted up on the occasion. The 
 chamber was hung with tapestry, ' disfigur- 
 ing and representing' the judgment of 
 Paris, and other classical stories ; the- bed 
 was of crimson damask, richly adorned with 
 fringe and gilding ; there was a handsome 
 Japan cabinet, heavy arm chairs, and toilet 
 ornameuts to match, and a dressing room 
 
9 
 
 within ; splendors which excited my youth- 
 ful awe and veneration, decayed and faded 
 as they were, — but as for Lady Anne, tra- 
 dition says that she sat her down and cried 
 when she saw to how poor a place she had 
 been brought as her future home. Her 
 husband looks in his portrait very good na- 
 tured, but heavy enough — the Lady Anne — 
 let us hope she was of a sweeter temper 
 than she looks in her's. She was a stiff 
 presbyterian, her husband a jolly episcopa- 
 lian, who said somewhat bitterly, that when 
 he was gone she would certainly turn his 
 great hall into a conventicle. Perhaps this 
 thought had set an edge on his zeal, when, 
 in the character of a Justice of the Quorum, 
 he committed John Bunyan to Bedford gaol 
 for unlicensed preaching. The only mem- 
 orable action of his Ufe, as far as I am aware. 
 But that an old family mansion must 
 absolutely have a ghost, in fact it would be 
 almost as disgraceful to the race to be with- 
 out one as to want a coat without arms, I 
 would not be so undutiful to my great-great 
 grandmother as to tell the tale, but it is a 
 
10 
 
 matter of necessity, so here it is. The lady 
 Anne had a friend who unknown to her 
 husband had made up a purse, the contents 
 of which she destined to he shared among 
 her children by a former marriage. On her 
 deathbed she entrusted to her this deposit. 
 Lady Anne, I dare not say with what 
 thoughts, she being then a widow, and hard 
 pressed enough, delayed to dehver over the 
 money. One night, she was startled by a 
 mysterious rustling in a certain long, dark, 
 crooked passage into which her chamber 
 opened ; the rustling — yes, she could not 
 be mistaken — of a silk gown, the very gown 
 of her departed friend. It passed on to a, 
 certain narrow door, at which something 
 seemed to enter, and the rustling ceased. 
 Her ladyship paid the money next day, and 
 nothing was ever heard or seen more ; but 
 some people had an odd feeling as they 
 passed that door, leading only to the china 
 closet, within my memory. 
 
 A more favorable trait of Lady Anne has 
 been preserved. She possessed two beau- 
 tiful miniatures, evidently a pair; one 
 
11 
 
 represented her brother, Lord Altham, the 
 other a lady, so lovely in feature, and still 
 more in expression, one was never weary of 
 gazing upon it. Lady Anne was accustom- 
 ed often to take it out of her cabinet and 
 weep tenderly over it ; so far her daughters 
 could attest from their own knowledge, but 
 she would never inform them w^hom it 
 represented, or what had been, her story. 
 Lord Altham, worthy to shine amongst the 
 courtiers of Charles II, had three wives 
 living at the same time ; the first of these 
 deceived and unhappy ladies was probably 
 his sister's friend ; yes, it must have been 
 her wrongs over which she shed these fre- 
 quent tears ; and shame at her brother's 
 treachery and wickedness doubtless tied her 
 tongue. 
 
 Sir Francis died in middle age, leaving 
 his lady with three sons, and six iU por- 
 tioned daughters. Some few notices have 
 reached me of all the six sisters. Mr. 
 Moore, the husband of the eldest, was a 
 clergyman, very poor, very honest, and the 
 simplest of the simple. He would some- 
 
12 
 
 times borrow a trifle of his mother-in-law, 
 giving her an acknowledgment in these 
 cautious terms, ' I promise to pay, if I am 
 able.' ' My dear ' he once cried out to his 
 wife, ' a great rude girl came and robbed our 
 apple tree while I was in the garden.' ' And 
 did you let her ?' ' How could I help it ? 
 Neither could he help his sons going to 
 ruin. Another sister married a Dr. Hay, 
 a Scotch physician. She was accounted a 
 wit, and one or two of her good things I have 
 heard, but should be sorry to recite in the 
 ' ears polite ' of a younger generation. 
 
 The sons all possessed the estate in suc- 
 cession. The first dissipated more than his 
 prudfent brother was able to retrieve. The 
 third, John, a retired naval captain, just 
 managed to make both ends meet. He was 
 long a widower, and as he had no surviving 
 child, it was a matter of anxious speculation 
 which nephew he would make his heir. 
 Charles Moore, eldest nephew, chose to re- 
 gard it as his right, and prepared himself 
 for the enjoyment of the few ancestral acres 
 by such a course of idleness, extravagance, 
 
13 
 
 and folly, as determined his uncle never to 
 put them at his mercy. For the opposite 
 qualities he at length declared it to he his 
 intention to leave the old place to my 
 grandfather, Arthur Jennings. 
 
 By way of retaliation I suppose, for his 
 persecution of Bunyan, two of the daughters 
 of Sir Francis married dissenting ministers, 
 not in his lifetime, however. One was 
 Mrs. Norris, the other was Anna Letitia, my 
 great grandmother. One died single, aunt 
 Kachel, of whom all I know is that she had 
 the honor to have Kachel, lady Eussell, for 
 her Godmother ; the families being in some 
 way related.* 
 
 * She was niece to Lady Anglesey, and the Wingates 
 seem to have taken advantage of the relationship to push 
 their fortune, though without success, by the following 
 passage in Lady Russell's Letters. 
 
 " We are told that Mr. Middleton is in a dying con- 
 dition, — his place in the Prize Office is worth about 400 
 a year. My cousin lady Anne Wingate would be con- 
 tented if it could be obtained for Sir Francis. Lord 
 Bedford and myself would show our readiness to serve 
 my Lady Anne and Sir Francis, and the more friends 
 joyn will not recommend it less to my Lord Devonshire, 
 if he can do anything in it. I have writ to him Lord 
 Bedford's thoughts of Sir Francis ; which are, that he 
 is an understanding, honest, gentleman, and has almost 
 
14 
 
 My great grandmother was left a rather 
 young and slenderly provided widow, with 
 four children, Arthur, John, Francis, and 
 Jane, my grandmother Aikin. She con- 
 tinued to reside at Kibworth : Dr. Dod- 
 dridge, her husband's successor as head of 
 the academy, was boarded in her house. 
 Her children were indebted to him for much 
 early instruction, which contributed with 
 their advantages of birth and connections 
 to raise them in the estimation of their 
 neighbours above the level of a narrow for- 
 tune. My grandmother was presented at 
 court by a lady of the Annesley connection, 
 no small distinction in those days. She 
 was sprightly, not without personal charms, 
 and had a natural talent for singing. The 
 result of the whole was, that her honored 
 tutor was moved to indite an elaborate 
 epistle, still preserved, in which he labored 
 to convince her, that it was actually possible 
 
 exceeded any in this country in his zeal and aotiveness 
 towards the present Government." 
 To Lord Devonshire, 1690. 
 
 * Dr. Doddridge's letter is in the appendix. 
 
15 
 
 for a grave divine of thirty years of age to 
 experience the passion of love for a httle 
 gentlewoman of fifteen. The converse of 
 the problem he seems to have taken for 
 granted ; not so the young lady, who sted- 
 fastly refused to become the Eloise of such 
 an Abelard. Arthur her eldest brother, was 
 my grandfather, my elder brothers Could a 
 little remember him, but he died before my 
 birth. I have often regretted it; all I ever 
 heard of him was delightful. My father 
 used to say he had as much of the milk of 
 human kindness as ever man had, and had 
 a rich vein of humor, and told a story ad- 
 mirably. He was short, broad-chested, and 
 of extraordinary strength. His span was 
 eleven inches, and he would say he feared 
 no man if he could once get him within his 
 grip. He would walk when a gay young 
 man from London to Harlington,* six or 
 
 * The village of Hailington is very . near the great 
 chalk downs of Dunstable, at this time one qf the hunt- 
 ing grounds of the famed Dick Turpin and his gang. 
 One morning Mr. Jennings' own horse was found in the 
 stable, heated, trembling, and covered with foam ; evi- 
 dently having been ridden all night. Another time Mrs. 
 Jennings was going to town for the winter, and travelling 
 
16 
 
 eight and thirty miles to a dance, and walk 
 back next morning. He had the bright 
 hazel eye of the Wingates. 
 
 His brother John, destined for a dissent- 
 ing minister was the wit of Dr. Doddridge's 
 academy, and the darling of his relations 
 and friends. A diary of Mr. Merivale his 
 fellow- student records several of the smart 
 sayings and merry stories of ' Jack.' Soon 
 after he had finished his education, he went 
 to live in a kind of chaplain capacity with 
 Mr. Coward, a wealthy merchant I believe, 
 who left the fund which still bears his name, 
 for the education of dissenting teachers. A 
 chaplain, this zealous puritan appears not 
 greatly to have needed, since he took upon 
 himself the performance of the family de- 
 votions. On these occasions he would be 
 
 over the downs towards evening (she always slept on the 
 road) they perceived a horseman persistently keeping 
 pace with them. This went on some time, till Mrs. 
 Jennings got into such a state of alarm and nervousness 
 that she could hear it no longer, and putting her head 
 out of the carriage window, she called out, "If you want 
 to roh us, do!" " Lord bless me madam," cried a familiar 
 voice, "rob you! 1 am only John so and so, keeping up 
 with the carriage for company." 
 
17 
 
 carried out in prayer to very extraordinary 
 lengths indeed, according to the reports 
 of Uncle Jack, faithfully preserved hy his 
 contemporaries. He had once insured for a 
 considerable sum a ship called the Mingen, 
 which was lost. Accounting himself ill- 
 treated by the Deity on the occasion, he 
 thus remonstrated — * But Lord ! thou 
 nichedst me in the Mingen.' 
 
 Let us now return to my grandfather 
 Aikin. Among his fellow-students was Mr. 
 Merivale afterwards a dissenting minister 
 at Exeter, whose diary communicated to me 
 by his grandson (the late John Herman 
 Merivale one of the Judges in Bankruptcy,) 
 is curiously illustrative of the simplicity of 
 the age. ' He and Aikin,' he says, ' set out 
 from London for the Academy on the same 
 day. Aikin having two younger brothers 
 to take to school, travelled by the wagon, 
 but I did not choose it, for it would have 
 cost half-a-guinea !' Therefore he walked by 
 the side. 
 
 After quitting Doddridge's Academy, my 
 grandfather went to the university of Aber- 
 
 c 2 
 
18 
 
 deen, then I believe illustrated by a schcyol 
 of learned and able theologians, such as 
 Lowman and the Fordyces who were casting 
 off the fetters of Calvin. My grandfather 
 settled at length in what was called low 
 Arianism, which subsequently became, under 
 his tuition, the system of the Warrington 
 divines, almbst without exception. That 
 his University regarded him as an alumnus 
 to be proud of, was evinced by its degree of 
 D.D. conferred upon him at Warrington, 
 not alone without' solicitation but without 
 notice. In fact to his humble and retiring 
 temper, the distinction was actually dis- 
 tressing, and he would have been well 
 pleased to shut up his diploma in a drawer, 
 and say nothing about it to any one. He 
 had just married and accepted the invitation 
 of a congregation at Market Harborough, 
 when ^n affection of the chest ascribed to 
 a faU, compelled him to resign his pulpit, 
 and look to tuition as his sole resource. A 
 letter to his friend Merivale explains his 
 circumstances with a charming simplicity. 
 Twelve pounds per annum for board, lodging 
 
19 
 
 and the instruction of sucli a man ! But lie 
 had his reward in the attachment, the ven- 
 eration, of his scholars ; in the atmosphere of 
 respect and admiration which everywhere 
 surrounded him ; and his gains were ade- 
 quate to his humble wants, his modest 
 wishes. He left behind him as the savings 
 of his life, with some small additions pro- 
 bably on the side of his wife, about five-and 
 twenty hundred pounds. 
 
 In my first visit to Liverpool, twenty 
 years after my grandfather's death, I several 
 times met with elderly or middle-aged gen- 
 tlemen who showed me attentions I was at 
 a loss to account for, till I found they all 
 boasted of having been ray grandfather's 
 pupils. Not twenty years since a gentleman 
 introduced himself with ' I was at your 
 grandfather's funeral.' 
 
 It was his constant care never, even by 
 inadvertence to do the smallest hurt to any 
 human creature. To this principle he gave 
 a last token of adherence in his positive 
 direction not to be buried within the walls 
 of the Meeting-house, but in the open 
 
20 
 
 Churcliyard. After resigning his tutorship, 
 shortly before his death, he calmly said that 
 he had now nothing to do either for this 
 world or another. 
 
 A letter from his widow (Dr. Doddridge's 
 Miss Jenny) is touching in its piety and 
 resignation. 
 
 To Mrs. Barbauld. Jan. 1st, 1781. 
 My dear Child, 
 
 lit is a considerable alleviation "of the 
 heavy stroke that is fallen upon me that I 
 havechildrenwho were sensible of the worth 
 of their excellent father, and I believe sin- 
 cerely lament the loss of him, and tenderly 
 sympathise with their afflicted mother, let 
 us mingle our tears and pay that best tribute 
 of honour and love to his memory, the imi- 
 tating his virtues. I am indeed greatly 
 afflicted, and the few remaining days of my 
 pilgrimage will be sorrowful, oh ! may it be 
 that sorrow by which the heart is made 
 better ! may His gracious purpose be answer- 
 ed that I may have reason to say, it is good 
 for me that I have been afflicted. Nor 
 
21 
 
 would I ungratefully forget His past boun- 
 ties, my whole life has been a life of mercies ; 
 my union with your dear father was a 
 constant source of happiness ; very few 
 couples have lived so long together ; peace 
 and plenty crown'd our days, we saw our 
 children brought up, saw them virtuous, 
 esteemed, beloved, and comfortably settled 
 in the world ; and when increasing infir- 
 mities no longer permitted my dearest 
 partner to labour in his Lord's vineyard, he 
 was called to receive his reward, and has 
 left a name behind him that wiU reflect an 
 honor on his latest posterity. On his ac- 
 count we ought to rejoice, his constitution 
 was so worn that had he continued longer, 
 his sufferings would probably have been 
 greater than his enjoyments, let us therefore 
 say from our hearts, the Lord gave, the Lord 
 has taken away, blessed be the name of the 
 Lord. 
 
 It would have been a soothing consolation 
 if your poor father had been able to take 
 such a last leave of us as his piety and love 
 would have dictated, but alas ! he was so 
 
22 
 
 oppressed with the violence of his distemper, 
 that I beheve that though he was sensible 
 he had not the command of his thoughts, 
 and his asthma was so severe that he could 
 scarce collect breath to utter a short sen- 
 tence. Two or three times he pressed me 
 to go to bed, and whenever I gave him 
 anything said with his usual complaisance, 
 ' thank you my dear, ' and when I asked him 
 if he would have Dr. Turner called in, said 
 with some calmness, no, no ; but gave no 
 intimation that he was apprehensive of his 
 approaching change. The few words I have 
 mentioned were (in a manner) all he spoke 
 during his short illness ; t'is a satisfaction 
 to me that I never left him from the time 
 he was seized till I closed those eyes which 
 were the light of my life. Your brother 
 saw him expire, and was affected as a son 
 ought to be ; he and your sister have shewn 
 me every attention and tenderness, and 
 press me to live with them. I have not yet 
 determined how I shaU dispose of myself, 
 but if upon mature consideration I have 
 reason to think that it wiU be neither incon- 
 
23 
 
 venient nor disagreeable to them, it seems 
 the most eligible asylum I could chuse. 
 Was I to continue in my present solitary 
 situation, I believe I should sink under it. 
 Pray for your poor mother, that I may attain 
 to a calm submission to the divine will, and 
 so live that I may again meet with the dear 
 partner of my soul in that happy world 
 where all tears shall be wiped away, and 
 there shall be no more death. 
 
 I am ever your affectionate Mother, 
 Jane Aikin. 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. Aikin had two children, 
 Anna Letitia, afterwards Mis. Barbauld, 
 and her brother John, the writer and phy- 
 sician, four years younger than herself. 
 
 That quickness of apprehension by which 
 she was distinguished shewed itself from her 
 earliest infancy. Her mother says in a 
 letter, in which after gently bewailing the 
 backwardness of her grand- children, Ed- 
 mund and Lucy, both under four, ' I once 
 indeed knew a little girl who was as eager 
 to learn as her instructors could be to teach 
 
24 
 
 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." The earliest event she used 
 to speak of as remembering, was the stir in 
 the family caused by the news of the entrance 
 of the Pretender's Army into England in 
 1745, she then being three years old. Kib- 
 worth being in the high road to London, 
 the question of their immediate removal 
 was anxiously discussed, till the news of the 
 defeat of the rebels put an end to their 
 alarms. 
 
 To resume Miss Aikin's narrative. — "Her 
 mother, a woman of sense and a gentle- 
 woman said, that there was no alternative 
 for a girl brought up in a boy's school, 
 between being a prude and hoyden. She 
 preferred the first, rightly, no doubt, if the 
 case must be so, but it was owing to this 
 training, I presume, that Mrs. Barbauld 
 never appeared at her ease, nor felt so, as 
 she has often told me, in general society. 
 
25 
 
 Ceremonious she was, and humble to strang- 
 ers to a degree which sometimes provoked 
 one. Strangers would sometimes say they 
 could not be afraid of her, sfi.e was so un- 
 assuming, which was true. In her youth, 
 great bodily activity, and a lively spirit 
 struggled hard against the tight rein which 
 held her. London cousins wondered some- 
 times at the gymnastic feats of the country 
 lass. It was these perhaps, added to the 
 brightness of her lilies and roses which sunk 
 so deep into the heart of Mr. Haynes, a 
 rich farmer of Kibworth. He followed this 
 damsel of fifteen to Warrington and obtain- 
 ed a private audience of her father, and 
 begged his consent to make her his wife. 
 My grandfather answered that his daughter 
 was then walking in the garden, and he 
 might go and ask her himself. With what 
 grace the farmer pleaded his cause I know 
 not ; but at length out of all patience at his 
 unwelcome importunities, she ran nimbly 
 up a tree which grew by the garden wall, and 
 let herself down into the lane beyond, leav- 
 ing her suitor 'planteld.' The poor man 
 
 D 
 
26 
 
 went home disconsolate ; he hved and died 
 a bachelor ; though he was never known to 
 purchase any other book whatever, ' the 
 works of Mrs. Barbauld ' splendidly bound 
 adorned his parlour to the end of his days. 
 This whole story I heard from an old servant 
 of the family, and my aunt who was present, 
 did not contradict it in a single word. 
 
 My father had a notion that her deport- 
 ment alarmed young men, and rather struck 
 them ' with amazement and blank awe ' than 
 won their hearts, but this was surely a mis- 
 take, I know three or four of her lovers who 
 never ceased to regard her with affection as 
 well as admiration. Her conversation in 
 her happiest moods had a charm inexpres- 
 sible ; wit, playful wit, tempered with true 
 feminine softness, and the gentle dignity 
 of a high mind, unwont to pour forth its 
 hidden treasures on all demands. 
 
 She observed to me once, that she had 
 never been placed in a situation which 
 suited her. It was true, unless the bright 
 years of Warrington might be excepted. 
 She had then her father, her brother, the 
 
27 
 
 academic body, and a crowd of admirers. 
 But the manner of her home savored no 
 doubt of puritanical rigor. She and her 
 mother, neat, punctual, strict, though of 
 cultivated mind and polished manners, were 
 thoroughly uncongenial. 
 
 The removal of her father, Dr. Aikin, to 
 Warrington as Theological tutor to the 
 newly founded Academy (or rather college) 
 there, took place when she was just fifteen. 
 Her person is thus described a,t this time. 
 ' She was possessed of great beauty, dis- 
 tinct traces of which she retained to the 
 latest period of her life. Her person was 
 slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with 
 the bloom of perfect health ; her features 
 regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes 
 beamed with the light of wit and fancy.' 
 The Warrington Academy belongs now 
 so entirely to the past, that a short account 
 of it seems almost necessary here ; and I 
 am happy to be allowed to make use of 
 a most interesting and lively sketch read 
 by Mr. Henry A. Bright of Liverpool to 
 the Historic Society of Lancashire and 
 
28 
 
 Cheshire — ' In the year 1753 the failure 
 or decay of the several Academies belong- 
 ing to the EngUsh Presbyterian body 
 caused no inconsiderable anxiety to the 
 more thoughtful and earnest among the 
 liberal dissenters. Where could those 
 ministers be educated in theology un- 
 shackled by creed and doctrine ? On none 
 did these questions press with greater 
 weight than on John Seddon, the young 
 minister at Warrington. The idea of found- 
 ing a new Academy was never dropped until 
 it had been carried out in action. How he 
 worked, and wrote, and explained, and 
 begged ! He is never discouraged, though 
 his discouragements are innumerable. He 
 is never down-hearted though his friends 
 are always suggesting difficulties and pro- 
 phesying evil A circular was sent 
 
 round signed by Daniel Bayley (of Manches- 
 ter), John Lees, afterwards Sir Caryll 
 Worsley, and seven others; and in June, 
 1757, the first general meeting was held. 
 Lord Willoughby of Parham* was appoint- 
 
 *His nephew who was one of the first pupils at 
 
29 
 
 ed President. Sir H. Hoghton, Messrs; 
 Heywood and Percival, and other Manches- 
 ter and Liverpool gentlemen subscribed to 
 take bouses in Warrington and appoint 
 tutors for tbe new Academy. ' Tbe tutors 
 will take boarders into their houses at j£15 
 per annum for those who had two months 
 vacation, and .£18 for those who had no 
 vacation.' These terms are however ex- 
 clusive of tea, washing, fire and candles. 
 The tutors were Dr. Taylor of Norwich, 
 author of the Hebrew Concordance, whose 
 learning was so generally acknowledged that 
 all the English and Welch Bishops and 
 Archbishops, with but four exceptions, were 
 subscribers to the work. Mr. Holt was 
 mathematical tutor, and Dr. Aikin languages 
 and literature, and after Dr. Taylor's death, 
 divinity; Dr. Priestley, Dr. Enfield, and the 
 Eev. Gilbert Wakefield were afterwards ap- 
 pointed. ' The tutors in my time,' says Dr. 
 Priestley, 'lived in the most perfect harmony. 
 
 Warrington, "was afterwards 17th and last Lord 
 Willoughby of Parham ; the last also of the old Presby- 
 terian nobility of England. 
 
 D 2 
 
30 
 
 We drank tea together every Saturday, and 
 our conversation was equally instructive and 
 pleasing, — we were all Arians, and the only 
 subject of much consequence on which we 
 differed respected the doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment, concerning which Dr. Aikin held 
 some obscure notions.' 
 
 In the letter of invitation from Mr. 
 Seddon to Dr. Aikin at Kibworth, one pas- 
 sage is curious, as showing what traveUing 
 in England was a hundred years ago. ' Mr. 
 Holland has given us some reason to hope 
 y* you will come over to Warrington in the 
 Easter week, in order to take a view'of y' 
 future situation; if so, give me leave to 
 recomend y° following plan. I'll suppose 
 you set out from Kibworth on Sunday after- 
 noon ; as you intend travelling in post- 
 chaises, you'l easily reach Loughborough, 
 or perhaps Derby that night, y' next night 
 you may come to Offerton, w*" is about a mile 
 short of Stockport, where I am with Mrs. 
 Seddon, and will be ready to receive you and 
 wait upon you to Warrington ; you will do 
 well to come prepared for riding, for you 
 
31 
 
 will not meet with any carriages at Stock- 
 port ; nor are the roads to Warrington proper 
 for them ; when you get to a place called 
 Bullock's Smithy, about two miles short of 
 Stockport, enquire for Offerton. Mr. Eoe, 
 late of Birmingham, now Uves there ; and 
 we shall be glad to see you. If you'l write 
 to me time enough, and be particular eno'' 
 in your time, I will endeavour to meet you 
 with my own chaise, or send a servant for 
 that purpose.' 
 
 Besides the students, distinguished 
 strangers came to Warrington to consult 
 the tutors, or visit the students. Howard 
 the Philanthropist came in order that the 
 younger Aikin might revise his MSS and 
 correct his proofs. Eoscoe of Liverpool 
 came, and first learned to care for Botany 
 from his visits to the Warrington Botanical 
 dardens. Pennant the NaturaUst ; Currie, 
 the biographer of Burns ; and many a Pres- 
 byterian minister, eminent then, though 
 now forgotten — were among the visitors to 
 the Athens of our county. But there were 
 other attractions besides the tutors and 
 
32 
 
 their philosophy. 'We have a knot of 
 lasses just after your own heart ' writes Mrs. 
 Barbauld, then Miss Aikin, to her friend 
 Miss Belsham ' as merry, blithe and gay, as 
 you could wish ; and very smart and clever 
 — two of them are the Miss Eigbys. We 
 have a West Indian family too, that I think 
 you would like ; a young couple who seem 
 intended for nothing but mirth, frolic, and 
 gaiety.' It was a sad day for Warrington 
 when Miss Lizzy Rigby became Mrs. Bunny, 
 and Miss SaUy Rigby was wooed and wed- 
 ded by Dr. Parry of Bath : — it was sadder 
 still when the lively West Indian had to 
 slip away from his creditors and leave War- 
 rington for ever — saddest of aU was it when 
 ' our poetess ' herself, after winning the 
 hearts of half the students, some one or two 
 of whom lived sighing and single for her 
 sake- -when she too followed the Miss Eigbys' 
 unfortunate example, and was carried off to 
 Palgrave.' From difficulties in the man- 
 agement of this Academy however, and the 
 deaths of Dr. Taylor, Dr. Aikin, and Mr. 
 Seddon, and the want of sufficient discipline, 
 
33 
 
 — the hopes of the Trustees were but partial- 
 ly realized, and the Academy was closed in 
 1786, after a useful but precarious existence 
 of nine and twenty years. A CoUege at 
 Manchester was established to which the 
 Warrington Trustees transferred their 
 library — It then removed to York, and has 
 now removed to London. It still retains 
 the old Warrington characteristics of a free- 
 dom quite unshackled, a fearless daring in 
 the cause of truth, andra clear and penetra- 
 ting glance into the deepest problems of 
 theology. An extract from a letter from 
 Lucy Aikin to Mr. Bright will close the 
 subject. ' I have often thought with 
 envy of that society. Neither Oxford nor 
 Cambridge could boast of brighter names 
 in literature or science than several of these 
 dissenting tutors — humbly content in an 
 obscure town, and on a scanty pittance, to 
 cultivate in themselves, and communicate to 
 a rising generation, those mental acquire- 
 ments and moral habits which are their 
 own exceeding great reward. They and 
 theirs lived together like one large family. 
 
34 
 
 and in the facility of their intercourse they 
 found large compensation for its deficiency* 
 in luxury and splendor — such days are past 
 — whom have we now ' content with science 
 in a humhle shed ? ' 
 
 It was at Warrington in the year 1773 
 that the 1st yoL of Miss Aikin's Poems 
 was published. They had an immediate 
 success. The reviews praised, letters of 
 congratulation poured in — from old friends, 
 — from entire strangers. Two of these 
 have been preserved, from Dr. Priestley, 
 whose excellent wife was her dearest friend 
 — and from Mrs. Montagu. 
 
 Leeds, 13th June 1769. 
 Dear Miss Aikin, 
 
 You will be surprised when I tell 
 you I write this on the behalf of Pascal 
 Paoli and the brave Gorsicans, but it is 
 strictly true. Mr. Turner of Wakefield, 
 who says he reads your poems not with 
 admiration but astonishment, insists upon 
 my writing to you, to request that a copy 
 of your poem called Corsica may be sent to 
 
35 
 
 Mr. Boswell, with permission to publish it 
 for the benefit of those noble islanders. He 
 is confident that it cannot fail greatly to pro- 
 mote their interest now that a subscription 
 is open for them, by raising a generous ardor 
 in the caxise of liberty, and admiration of 
 their glorious struggles in its defence. Its 
 being written by a lady, he thinks, will be a 
 circumstance very much in their favour, and 
 that of the poem ; but there is no occasion 
 for Mr. Boswell to be acquainted with your 
 name, unless it be your own choice some 
 time hence. I own I entirely agree with 
 Mr. Turner in these sentiments, and there- 
 fore hope Miss Aikin will not refuse so 
 reasonable a request, which will at the same 
 time lay a great obligation on friends in 
 England, and contribute to the relief of her 
 own heroes in Corsica. I consider that you 
 are as much a general as Tyrtseus was, and 
 your poems (which I am confident are much 
 better than his ever were) may have as great 
 an effect as his. They may be the coup de 
 grace to the French troops in that island, 
 and Paoli, who reads English, will cause 
 
36 
 
 it to be printed in every history in that re- 
 nowned island. 
 
 Without any joke, I wish you would com- 
 ply with this request. In this case you 
 have only to send a corrected copy to us at 
 Leeds, or to Mr. Johnson* in London, and 
 I will take care to introduce it to the notice 
 of Mr, Boswell by means of Mr. Vaughan 
 or Mrs. Macaulay, or some other friends of 
 liberty and Corsica in London. The sooner 
 this is done the better. Mr. Turner regrets 
 very much that it was not done some time 
 ago. 
 
 I shall not tell you what I think of your 
 poems, for more than twenty reasons, one of 
 which is that I am not able to express it. 
 We are now aU expectation at the opening 
 of every packet from Warrington. 
 
 My piece on Perspective is nearly ready 
 for the press. Come and see me before it 
 is quite printed, and I wiU engage to teach 
 you the whole art and mystery of it in a few 
 hours. If you come a month after, I may 
 know no more about the matter than any 
 
 * The publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard. 
 
37 
 
 body else. I am about to make a bolder 
 push than ever for the pillory, the King's 
 Bench Prison, or something worse. Tell Mr. 
 Aikin he may hug himself that I have no 
 connexion with the Academy. On Monday 
 next Mr. Turner and I set out on a visit to 
 the Archdeacon at Richmond. 
 
 With aU our compliments to all your 
 worthy family, 
 
 I am, with the greatest cordiality. 
 Your friend and admirer, 
 
 J. Priestley. 
 
 Hill Street, Feb. 22nd, 1774. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 If I had not been prevented by 
 indisposition from making my immediate 
 acknowledgments, you would have been 
 assured before this time of my sense of the 
 favour done to me by your polite letter, and 
 the great pleasure I feel in the opening a 
 more intimate correspondence with Miss 
 Aikin. As the world is in general too much 
 disposed, you are certainly obliged to every 
 man who is not jealous, and every woman 
 
 E 
 
38 . 
 
 who is not envious of your talents ; that I 
 did not withhold the praise that is due to 
 them gives me some merit with you, but 
 that you may not over rate the obligation 
 I will confess that I act from a perfect and 
 long experience, that it is more to my per- 
 sonal happiness and advantage to indulge 
 the love and admiration of excellence, than 
 to cherish a secret envy of it. To this dis- 
 position I owe friendships which have been 
 the happiness and honour of my life. You 
 must not expect to find in me, the talents 
 which adorn the friends around me, I shall 
 not think myself disgraced in your opinion 
 if you find something in me to love, tho' 
 nothing to admire. The genuine effect of 
 polite letters is to inspire candour, a social 
 spirit, and gentle manners ; to teach a dis- 
 dain of frivolous amusements, injurious 
 censoriousness, and foolish animosities. To 
 partake of these advantages and to live 
 under the benign empire of the muses, on 
 the conditions of a naturalized subject, who, 
 riot having any inherent right to a share of 
 office, credit, or authority, seeks nothing but 
 
39 
 
 the protection of the society is all I aim at. 
 I am much pleased with the hope you give 
 me of adding so valuable an ornament to my 
 circle of Friends as Miss Aikin, I always 
 wish to find great virtues where there are 
 great talents, and to love what I admire, so, 
 to tell you the truth, I made many enquiries 
 into your character as soon as I was acquaint- 
 ed with your works, and it gave me infinite 
 pleasure to find the moral character returned 
 the lustre it received from the mental ac- 
 complishments. Your essays have made 
 me still more intimately acquainted with the 
 turn of your mind, more sincerely your 
 friend, and more warmly your admirer. I 
 dare not repeat, to you, what I have said of 
 them to others ; what might, to your modest 
 difl&dence, have the appearance of flattery 
 would set me at a distance from your friend- 
 ship to which I aspire. I hope whenever 
 you come to London you vrill come before 
 the Spring is far advanced, for I usually 
 leave London early in May. Bad health, 
 and a variety of engagements make me a 
 remiss correspondent, but I shall at any 
 
40 
 
 time be very happy to hear from you, and 
 happier still if you can suggest anything 
 I can do for your service. If any work ap- 
 pears in the Literary World which you would 
 wish to have convey'd to you, favour me at 
 .any time with your commands. . Your style 
 is so classical, that I inlagine that your 
 Father's Study chiefly abounds with old 
 books, if anything new excites your curiosity 
 let me have the pleasure of conveying it to 
 you. With great esteem, 
 
 I am Dear Madam, 
 
 Your most obedient and 
 sincere humble Servant, 
 Eliz. Montagu. 
 I made my Mend Gen. Paoli very happy 
 by presenting him with your Poems. The 
 muses crown virtue when fortune refuses 
 to do it. 
 
 After passing through four editions with- 
 in twelve months, this first volume was 
 followed, ere the end of the year, by another, 
 in which she and her brother joined : the 
 title was ' Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, 
 
41 
 
 by J. and A. L. Aikin.' These likewise met 
 with much notice and admiration, and have 
 been several times reprinted. 
 
 Having thus successfully laid the founda- 
 tion of a literary reputation, she might have 
 gone on to longer and more important works, 
 had not an event, of the greatest conse- 
 quence in all women's lives, now taken place 
 which subjected her to new influences, new 
 duties, and station in life. 
 
 Shortly before this time, there came as a 
 pupil to the Academy a young Frenchman of 
 the name of Eochemont Barbauld, 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 ; and on the marriage of one of 
 the daughters of George II to the Elector 
 of Hesse, was appointed his chaplain, and 
 attended her to Cassel. 
 
 At this place his son Eochemont was born. 
 On the breaking up of the household of the 
 Electress he returned to England with his 
 father, who destined him for the Church, 
 
 E 2 
 
42 
 
 but somewliat unadvisedly sent him for 
 instruction to the dissenting Warrington 
 Academy ; and from the change of opinions 
 formed there, he felt obliged to renounce his 
 expectations from the Church, though by 
 doing so he raised the further obstacle of 
 want of fortune and profession to the ob- 
 jections already felt by Miss Aikin's parents 
 to his union with their daughter. 
 
 Lucy Aikin speaks in strong but no doubt 
 appropriate terms of this event; which, 
 consideration towards surviving members 
 of the Barbauld family, prevented her saying 
 when she first wrote the life of her aunt. 
 
 " Her attachment to Mr. Barbauld was 
 the illusion of a romantic fancy — not of a 
 tender heart. Had her true affections been 
 early called forth by a more genial home 
 atmosphere, she would never have allowed 
 herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations 
 of amorous rapture, set off with theatrical 
 French manners, or have conceived of such 
 exaggerated passion as a safe foundation on 
 which to raise the sober structure of domes- 
 tic happiness. My father ascribed that 
 
43 
 
 ill-stai*red union in great part to the baleful 
 influence of tlie ' Nouvelle Heloise,' Mr. B. 
 impersonating St. Preux. She was inform- 
 ed by a true friend that he had experienced 
 one attack of insanity, and was urged to 
 break off the engagement on that account. 
 — ' Then ' answered she, ' if I were now to 
 disappoint him, he would certainly go mad.' 
 To this there could be no reply ; and with 
 a kind of desperate generosity she rushed 
 upon her melancholy destiny. It should 
 however in justice be said, that a more up- 
 right, benevolent, generous or independent 
 spirit than Mr. Barbauld's did not exist, as 
 far as his malady would permit ; his moral 
 character did honor to her choice, but he 
 was liable to fits of insane fury, frightful in 
 a schoolmaster. Her sufferings with such 
 a husband, who shall estimate ? Children 
 this pair seemed immediately to have des- 
 paired of. My brother Charles, born only 
 one year after their marriage, was bespoken 
 by them almost directly, they took him 
 home with them before he was two years 
 old — she enjoyed in his dutiful affection— 
 
44 
 
 in the charms of his dehghtful disposition 
 — his talents and his accomplished mind, 
 her pride, her pleasure, the best solace of 
 her lonely age. Mrs. Barbauld's indolence 
 was a standing subject of regret and re- 
 proach with the admirers of her genius 
 — but those who blamed her, little knew 
 the daily and hourly miseries of her home ; 
 — they could not compute the amount of 
 hindrances proceeding from her husband's 
 crazy habits, and the dreadful apprehensions 
 with which they could not fail to inspire 
 her. 
 
 At length the blow fell — Mr. B's insanity 
 became manifest, undeniable, and it took the 
 unfortunate form of a quarrel with his wife. 
 Well for her that she had the protection of 
 an opposite neighbour in her brother ! We 
 were all of us constantly on the watch as 
 long as she persisted in occupying the same 
 house with the lunatic. Her life was in 
 perpetual danger. Then shone forth the 
 nobleness of her spirit. She had a larger 
 share than any woman I ever knew of the 
 great quality of courage — courage both 
 
45 
 
 physical and moral. She was willing to 
 expose herself to really frightful danger from 
 the madman's rage, rather than allow him 
 to be irritated by necessary restraint. When 
 all was over and this miserable chapter of 
 her history finally closed, her genius reas- 
 serted its claims. Her best poems, her 
 noble, though not appreciated, 1811 — all 
 those evincing a tenderness she had never 
 before been known to possess, — bear date 
 from her widowhood." 
 
Unconscious of the future miseries of her 
 life, Mrs. Barbauld shortly after her marriage 
 prepared to accompany her husband to the 
 village of Palgrave in Suffolk, where he had 
 accepted the charge of a dissenting congre- 
 gation, and opened a boys' school. Before 
 they had determined upon this plan Mrs. 
 Montagu wrote to propose to her to become 
 the Principal of a kind of Ladies' College 
 which she wished to establish, and in these 
 days it is curious to read in Mrs. Barbauld's 
 answer the reasons she gives for decliniag 
 the offer. " A kind of Academy for ladies " 
 she says, " where they are to be taught in a 
 regular manner the various branches of 
 science, appears to me better calculated to 
 form such characters as the Precieuses or 
 Femmes Savantes than good wives or .agree- 
 able companions. The best way for a 
 
47 
 
 woman to acquire knowledge is from con- 
 versation with a father or brother, and by 
 such a course of reading as they may 
 recommend, perhaps 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 my situation has been peculiai', and 
 would be no rule for others. I should 
 likewise object to the age proposed — 
 geography, languages, &c. are best learned" 
 from about nine to thirteen. I should have 
 little hopes of cultivating a love of know- 
 ledge in a young lady of fifteen who came 
 to me ignorant and uncultivated : it is 
 too late then to begin to learn. The em- 
 pire of the passions is coming on — those 
 attachments begin to be formed, which in- 
 fluence the happiness of future life — the 
 care of a mother alone can give suitable 
 attention to this important period. The 
 ease and grace of society ; the duties 
 in their own family, — to their friends, the 
 detail of domestic economy — lastly their 
 behaviour to the other half of their 
 
48 
 
 species, who then begin to court their notice 
 — these are the accompHshments which 
 a young woman has to learn till she is 
 married or fit to be so ; and surely these are 
 not to be learned in a school : my next 
 reason is that I am not at aU fit for the 
 task. I have seen a good deal of the educa- 
 tion of boys, but in a girls' school I should 
 be quite a novice. I never was at one my- 
 self, I have not even the advantage of sisters ; 
 indeed for the early part of my life, I con- 
 versed little with my own sex. In the village 
 where I was there were none to converse 
 with ; and this I am sensible has given me 
 an awkwardness about common things 
 which would make me peculiarly unfit for 
 the education of girls. 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 my- 
 self to be remarkably deficient in graceful- 
 ness of person, in my air and manner — I am 
 sensible the common schools are upon a 
 very bad plan, and believe I could project 
 a better — but I could not execute it." 
 
49 
 
 The rapid and uninterrupted success of 
 the school was no doubt partly owing to 
 Mrs. Barbauld's name ; and Mr. Barbauld's 
 county connections brought them several 
 sons of noblemen and gentlemen of fortune. 
 Mrs. B. threw herself heart and soul into 
 the work. She kept aU the accounts (still 
 extant) of the school and their private purse. 
 She wrote charming lectures on History and 
 Geography, and took the entire charge of a 
 class of Uttle boys. The first Lord Denman, 
 Sir William Gell, Dr. Sayers, and William 
 Taylor of Norwich, both well-known writers, 
 were among these. For them and her ne- 
 phew Charles she wrote her ' Early Lessons ' 
 and ' Hymns in Prose.' Dr. Johnson and 
 Mr. Fox were both pleased to express their 
 disapproval of her wasting her talents in 
 writing books for children,* but, practically 
 employed in education as she then was, she 
 felt the entire want of elementary books fit 
 to put into their hands, and naturally was 
 led to try to supply it. Her preface to the 
 
 * See Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Eecolleotions 
 of C. J. Fox by Mr. Rogers. 
 
 P 
 
50 
 
 Early Lessons first written for her little 
 Charles explains this. 
 
 " This little puhlication was made for a 
 particular child, but the public is welcome 
 to the use of it. It was found that amidst 
 the multitude of books professedly written 
 for chUdren, there is not one adapted to the 
 comprehension of a child from two to three 
 years old. A grave remark or a connected 
 story however simple is above his capacity, 
 and nonsense is always below it, for folly is 
 worse than ignorance. Another defect is 
 the w&ntoi good paper, a clear and large type, 
 and large spaces. Those only who have 
 actually taught young children can be sensi- 
 ble how necessary these assistances are. 
 The eye of a chUd cannot catch a small 
 obscure iU-formed word amidst a number of 
 others all equally unknown. To supply 
 these deficiencies is the object of this book. 
 The task is humble, but not mean, for to lay 
 the first stone of a noble building and to 
 plant the first idea in a human mind can 
 be no dishonor to any .hand." 
 
 Of the 'Hymns in Prose for Children,' 
 
51 
 
 perhaps the best known of all her writings, 
 she says in her preface her " peculiar object 
 was 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 and delight ; and thus by deep, 
 strong, and permanent associations, to lay 
 the best foundation for practical devotion 
 in future life." That this end was accom- 
 plished, the numerous editions, even to {he 
 present time, of this charming little work, 
 fuUy shows. 
 
 To relieve their minds as much as pos- 
 sible during this busy life, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Barbauld always spent -their winter vacation' 
 in London, and took some journey in the 
 summer, a few extracts from the letters she 
 regularly wrote to her brother are here given. 
 
 London, Jan., 1784. 
 
 "Well my dear brother, here we are in 
 
 this busy town, nothing in which (the sight 
 
 of friends excepted) has given us so much 
 
52 
 
 pleasure as the sight of the baUoon exhibit- 
 ing in the Pantheon, it is sixteen feet one 
 way and seventeen another. When set 
 loose from the weight, it mounts to the top 
 of that magnificent dome with such an easy 
 motion as puts one in mind of Milton's line, 
 
 "rose like an exhalation" Next to 
 
 the balloon, Miss Burney is the object of 
 public curiosity. I had the pleasure of 
 meeting her yesterday. She is a very un- 
 affected sweet and pleasing young lady — 
 but you, now I think of it, are a Goth, and 
 have not read Cecilia. Eead it, read it, 
 for shame ! 
 
 I begin to be giddy with the whirl of 
 
 London,' and feel my spirits flag. There 
 
 ■ are so many drawbacks, from hair dressers, 
 
 bad weather, and fatigue, that it requires 
 
 strong health greatly to enjoy being abroad. 
 
 We are got into the visiting way here, 
 which I do not consider quite as an idle 
 employment, because it leads to connections, 
 but the hours are intolerably late ; the other 
 day at Mrs. Chapone's, none of the party but 
 ourselves was come at a quarter to eight, 
 
63 
 
 and the first lady .that arrived said she 
 hurried away from dinner without waiting 
 for coffee. There goes a story of the 
 Duchess of Devonshire, that she said to a 
 tradesman, ' call on me to-morrow morning 
 at four,' and that the honest man knocked 
 the family up at day-break. Last week we 
 met the American Bishops at Mr. Vaughan's, 
 — if bishops they may be called — without 
 title, without diocese, and without lawn 
 sleeves. I wonder our bishops will con- 
 secrate them, for they have made very free 
 of the Common Prayer, and have left out 
 
 two Creeds out of three 
 
 I have been much pleased with the poems 
 of the Scottish Ploughman, (Burns). His 
 Cotter's Saturday Night has much the same 
 merit as the Schoolmistress ; and the Daisy, 
 and the Mouse, are charming. The Eton 
 Boys have published a periodical which they 
 say is clever.* Dr. Price has a letter from 
 Mr. Howard dated Amsterdam ; he says the 
 Emperor gave him a long audience. A 
 pasquinade was fixed upon the gates of the 
 
 * The Philanthropist. 
 
 F 2 
 
54 
 
 lunatic hospital in Vienna, ' Josephus, ubi- 
 cumque secundus, Mc primus.' 
 
 The King, I heard, was playing at drafts 
 with Dr. Willis, and having got a man to 
 the top, the Dr. asked ' if he would not crown 
 his king.' ' No ' said his Majesty, ' for I 
 think a king the most miserable man on 
 earth.'* 
 
 Charles is losing his hair, (after a fever) 
 I beUeve I ought to have the rest shaved, 
 but it is such a frightful thing to see a boy 
 in a wig. Do you remember some of my 
 father's scholars in wigs ? I do, and coat 
 lappets set out with buckram. Well, I hope 
 we do improve in taste : 
 
 What have you seen, you wiU say, in 
 London ? Why in the first place Miss 
 More's new play which fills the house very 
 well and is pretty generally liked. Miss 
 More is I assure you very much the ton, and 
 
 * Mrs. Barbauld always felt respect and attachment to 
 the King, partly perhaps from being exactly of the same 
 age. Her writings seem to have become known at Court, 
 as her mother, inoae of her letters, says "MissBelsham 
 has heard that Her Majesty (Queen Charlotte) has declar- 
 ed, that if she is an enthusiast in anything it is in 
 admiration of Mrs. Barbauld." 
 
55 
 
 moreover has got 600Z or 700/ by her play. 
 I wish I could produce one everj' two winters, 
 we would not keep school. I cannot say 
 however that I cried so much at ' Percy,' as I 
 laughed at the ' School for Scandal ' which 
 is positively the wittiest play I remember 
 to have seen, and I am sorry to add,- one of 
 the most immoral and licentious. In prin- 
 ciples, I mean, for in language it is very 
 decent. 
 
 Mrs. Montagu, not content with being 
 the Queen of literature and elegant society, 
 sets up for the Queen of fashion and splen- 
 dour. She is building a very fine house, 
 has a fine service of plate, dresses, visits 
 more than ever, and I am afraid will be as 
 much the woman of the world as the philo- 
 sopher. I heard much of the Astronomer,* 
 who has discovered three hundred new stars 
 and a new planet or comet. He was a piper 
 in a Hessian regiment, and has improved 
 telescopes to an astonishing degree. He 
 has sat they say for twenty-four hours, rub- 
 bing and polishing his spectrum, and been 
 
 * Hersohel. 
 
56 
 
 fed by the attentions of others. We are 
 reading in idle moments, Boswell's long 
 expected life of Johnson. It is like going 
 to Ranelagh, yon meet all your acquain- 
 tances ; but it is a base and a mean thing to 
 bring thus every idle word into judgement; 
 the judgement of the public. Johnson, I 
 think, was far from a great character, he 
 was continually sinning against his consci- 
 ence, and then afraid of going to HeU for it. 
 A Christian, and a man of the town ; a 
 philosopher, and a bigot; acknowledging 
 life to be miserable, and making it more 
 miserable through fear of death ; professing 
 great distaste to the country, and neglecting 
 the urbanity of towns ; a Jacobite and 
 pensioned ; acknowledged to be a giant in 
 literature, and yet we do not trace him as 
 we do Locke, or Eousseau or Voltaire in his 
 influence on the opinion of the times. We 
 cannot say, Johnson first opened this view 
 of thought, led the way to this discovery, 
 or this turn of thinking. In his style he is 
 original, and there we can track his imita- 
 tors. — In short, he rather seems to me to 
 
57 
 
 be one of those who have shone in the belles 
 lettres, rather than what he is held out to 
 be by many, an original and deep genius in 
 investigation 
 
 Mrs. Montagu, who entertains all the 
 aristocrats of France, had invited a Mar- 
 chioness De Boufflers and her daughter to 
 dinner -after making her wait till six, the 
 Marchioness came and made an apology for 
 her daughter, that just as she was going to 
 dress she was seized with a 'degout momen- 
 tane du monde, ' and could not wait upon her. 
 
 Mr. Brand HoUis has sent me an Ameri- 
 can poem, a regular epic in twelve books — 
 The Conquest of Canaan — but I hope I need 
 not read it. . Not that the poetry is bad^ if 
 the subject were more interesting. What 
 had he to do to make Joshua his hero, when 
 he had Washington of his own growth. 
 
 Mr. Howard is setting out upon another 
 tour to the north-west of England ; he looks 
 well and happy and lively; he has been 
 south as far as Moscow, where he says that 
 they live in all the Asiatic magnificence. 
 He told me of a Russian nobleman who has 
 
58 
 
 built a convent, where he has educated at 
 his own expense 600 young ladies, by whose 
 means he hopes to polish the Empire." 
 
 A further notice of this great man occurs 
 in a letter about this time, in a letter from 
 Mrs. Barbauld's mother in Warrington. 
 " Mr. Howard left us yesterday to the great 
 regret of all who had the happiness of his 
 acquaintance, he is indeed an astonishing 
 person ; where could another be found who 
 would incur the expense, fatigue and danger 
 which he has done, in visiting three times 
 over every prison in England, besides many 
 in foreign parts ; where, one who has 
 brought his appetites under such subjection 
 as to be able to live almost without eating ? 
 He takes nothing but a dish of tea or coffee 
 and a mouthful of bread and butter tiU 
 night ; and then eats only a few potatoes, 
 and drinks nothing but water, and yet he 
 never seems to want either spirits or 
 strength, and is a most lively entertaining 
 companion." He once told them that 
 wishing, whilst in Paris, to see the BastiUe, 
 he made inquiries for that purpose, and 
 
59 
 
 finding it quite impossible to obtain an order, 
 he determined to try without one. Accord- 
 ingly he boldly drove up to the gates in a 
 handsome carriage and four, with several 
 servants in livery, dressed himself like a 
 gentleman of the court. Stepping out of 
 the carriage, with an air of authority, he 
 desired to be shown over the building. The 
 officials, taken by surprise, and never doubt- 
 ing from his deportment his right to be 
 obeyed, permitted him to examine every- 
 thing he chose. A further short account 
 of him by Lucy Aikin may be introduced 
 here — it was written late in her life to a 
 young relation. 
 
 " Few, very few, survive to the present 
 time to say, I remember Howard the ever 
 memorable philanthropist — Ihave seen him, 
 his image is still before my eyes — a small 
 man, brisk in his movements, with an ex- 
 pressive countenance — extremely fond of 
 children and entertaining them with narra- 
 tives fitted to their understanding. I was 
 indeed no more than eight years old when 
 his high career was arrested by death, on a 
 
60 
 
 far distant coast, but immediately before 
 embarking on his last hazardous journey, 
 he had passed some time where my father 
 then resided, at Yarmouth in Norfolk, occu- 
 pied in preparing for the press, with his 
 assistance, his concluding volume on Laz- 
 arettoes. Prisons, and Hospitals. He loved 
 to unbend at times from this occupation, to 
 forget for a few moments in domestic inter- 
 course the scenes of distress and horror which 
 he had encountered in the fulfilment of his 
 high mission, and which he viewed it as a 
 sacred duty to expose to public notice. The 
 society of my mother was peculiarly accept- 
 able to him. Her step-mother was a lady 
 of the Whitbread family, with which Mr. 
 Howard was closely connected both by 
 blood and friendly intercourse, and from 
 this circumstance she had enjoyed from her 
 tenderest years, the privilege of knowing and 
 revering him, whilst her strictness of prin- 
 ciple, her steady conduct, and the whole 
 cast of her serene and amiable character, 
 had been peculiarly adapted to win his 
 esteem and aJBfection. 
 
61 
 
 Both in hi*s frequent visits to London, 
 where Arthur Jennings, my grandfather, 
 usually lived, and afterwards in Bedford- 
 shire, where he had inherited a small family 
 estate at Harlington, within a few miles of 
 his own property at Cardington, Mr. 
 Howard had many opportunities of cultivat- 
 ing this family connection, and I conceive 
 this to have been the channel through which 
 my father, the nephew as well as the son- 
 in-law of Mr. Jennings, was introduced to 
 him. It had been the irreparable misfor- 
 tune of Mr. Howard, owing to the narrow 
 and sordid notions of ignorant guardians, 
 who placed him under an utterly incompe- 
 tent schoolmaster, never to obtain the power 
 of writing correctly his own language. On 
 this account he had always found it desirable 
 to obtain literary assistance, in giving to 
 the world the valuable matter of his works. 
 
 It was under my father's superintendence 
 that his previous volumes had issued from 
 the Warrington Press, and he was now for 
 the last time imparting a precious record of 
 his unparalleled exertions to one who enter- 
 
 a 
 
62 
 
 «d heart and soul into his objects, and 
 honored himself almost beyond all human 
 beings." 
 
 Eleven years spent in teaching left Mrs. 
 Barbauld, as well as her husband, so much 
 exhausted and out of health, that they gave 
 up their school at the end of that time, in 
 1785 ; and after a year spent on the contipent 
 and another in London, fixed themselves at 
 Hampstead, where, besides taking one or 
 two pupils, Mr. Barbauld accepted an invi- 
 tation to perform duty at a small chapel, 
 for which a larger building has now been 
 substituted, and of which the Eev.Dr. Sadler 
 is the minister. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld describes the place in a 
 letter to her brother ; 
 
 " Hampstead is certainly the pleasantest 
 village about London. The mall of the 
 place, a kind of terrace, which they call 
 Prospect Walk, commands a most extensive 
 and varied view over Middlesex and Berk- 
 shire, in which is included, besides many 
 inferior places, the majestic Windsor and 
 lofty Harrow, which last is so conspicuously 
 
63 
 
 placed that you know King James called it 
 'God's visible Churcli upon earth.' Hamp- 
 stead and Highgate are mutually objects to 
 each other, and the road between them 
 is delightfully pleasant, lying along Lord 
 Mansfield's fine woods, and the Earl of 
 Southampton's ferme ornee. Lady Mans- 
 field and Lady Southampton, I am told, are 
 both admirable dairy- women, and so jealous 
 of each other's fame in that particular, that 
 they have had many heart-burnings, and 
 have once or twice been very near a serious 
 falling- out, on the dispute which of them 
 could make the greatest quantity of butter 
 from such a number of cows. On observing 
 the beautiful smoothness ofthe turf in some 
 of the fields about this place, I was told, the 
 gentlemen to whom they belonged had them 
 rolled like a garden plot. 
 
 I imagine we shall stay here till pretty 
 late in the autumn, but if we enjoy the 
 sunny gleams, we shall likewise endure 
 many a cutting blast, for I think, except 
 Avignon, this is the most windy place I ever 
 was in. 
 
64 
 
 As we have no house, we are not visited 
 except by those with whom we have con- 
 nections, but few as they are, they have 
 filled our time with a continual round of 
 company, we have not been six days alone. 
 This is a matter I do not altogether wish, 
 for they make very long tea drinking after- 
 noons, and a whole long afternoon is really 
 a piece of life. However they are very 
 kind and civil. I am trying to get a little 
 company in a more improving way, and 
 have made a party with a young lady to 
 read Italian together. 
 
 I pity the young ladies of Hampstead, 
 there are several very agreeable ones. One 
 gentleman in particular has five taU mar- 
 riageable daughters, and not a single young 
 man is to be seen in the place, but of 
 widows and old maids such a plenty." 
 
 The village of Hampstead was then even 
 more secluded than its distance from town 
 seemed to warrant, the hiU apparently being 
 considered almost inaccessible. In a diary 
 kept by Mr. Barbauld, he frequently speaks 
 of being prevented going to town by the 
 
65 
 
 state of the roads ; and the passengers by 
 the stage coach were always required to walk 
 up the hill. Mrs. B. in a letter to Dr. Aikin 
 describes the house they afterwards took as 
 " standing in the high road at the entrance 
 of the village quite surrounded by fields." 
 The house still stands — the one immediately 
 above Eosslyn Terrace— but the fields have 
 alas, disappeared. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld found many excellent and 
 kind friends in this place. Mrs. Joanna 
 Baillie, Mr. Hoare, and Mr. and Mrs. Carr 
 of Frognal were some of the most intimate ; 
 with the last large family she remained on 
 affectionate terms to the end of her life. 
 Mr. Carr, then Solicitor to the Excise, was 
 always ready to give her his valuable legal 
 advice, and help ; and the eldest daughter, 
 afterwards married to the Et. Hon. Dr. 
 Lushington, was her peculiar favorite. 
 
 Joanna Baillie and her sister had lately 
 established themselves also in a house at 
 Hampstead, in which for the next half 
 century they received all the choicest society 
 England could boast — Mrs. Barbauld writes 
 
 G 2 
 
66 
 
 —" I have received great pleasure lately from 
 the representation of De Montfort, a tragedy 
 which you probably read half a year ago in 
 a volume entitled ' A series of Plays on the 
 Passions.' I admired it then, but little 
 dreamed I was indebted for my entertain- 
 ment to a young lady of Hampstead whom 
 I visited, and who came to Mr. Barbauld's 
 Chapel all the while with as innocent a face 
 -as if she had never written a line. The 
 play is admirably acted by Mrs. Siddons 
 and Kemble, and is finely written, with 
 great purity of sentiment, beauty of diction, 
 strength and originality of character ; but it 
 is open to criticism — I cannot believe such 
 a hatred natural. The affection between 
 the brother and sister is beautifully touched, 
 and as far as I know, quite new. The play 
 is somewhat too good for the present taste." 
 At Hampstead Mrs. Barbauld wrote 
 several of her prose Essays, and contributed 
 to Dr. Aikin's popular little work of 
 " Evenings at Home " — of which however 
 only fourteen of the ninety-nine pieces are 
 her's. Also a poem addressed to Mr. 
 
67 
 
 Wilberforee ontlie rejection of the " Bill for 
 abolishing the Slave Trade." Mrs. Hannah 
 More acknowledged a copy of the poem as 
 follows. 
 
 Cowslip Green. July, 1791. 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 Sickness and a variety of perplexing 
 circumstances have thrown me so much 
 out of the way of seeing you, that I hardly 
 feel myself intitled to any mark of kindness 
 from you. But had I seen your incompar- 
 able Poem by accident, and had it not come 
 to me endeared as your gift, I should not 
 have been able to have withheld writing to 
 you to express my delight, my gratitude, 
 my admiration. I cannot tell you how 
 many times I have read it. I really had 
 begun to pray (as I told the excellent person 
 to whom you have addressed it) that my 
 poetical enthusiasm was quite dead, but I 
 find that like another idol it was only gone 
 a journey or was asleep, and that it can be 
 awakened at any time by such verses as you 
 have sent me. I thank you for writing so 
 
68 
 
 well, for writing on a subject so near my 
 heart, and for addressing it to one so every- 
 way worthy of your highest esteem. I could 
 not forbear repeating to him part of the 
 animated description of the union of bar- 
 barity and voluptuousness in the West 
 Indian woman, and he did full justice to 
 this striking picture.* He is now upon a 
 visit to me, and I wish I could tempt Mr. 
 Barbauld and you to indulge me with your 
 company you would find quiet, plea- 
 sing picturesque scenery, a few books and 
 a great deal of friendship. 
 
 I hardly know how to enclose the trifling 
 verses within. I wrote them in a playful 
 
 *Lo ! where reclined, pale Beauty courts the breeze 
 Diffused on sofas of voluptuous ease ; 
 With anxious awe her menial train around 
 Catch her faint whispers of half-uttered sound ; 
 See her, in monstrous fellowship unite 
 At once the Scythian and the Sybaiite ! 
 Blending repugnant vices, misallied, 
 Which frugal nature purposed to divide ; 
 See her, with indolence to fierceness joined, 
 Of body delicate, infirm of mind, 
 .With languid tones imperious mandates urge ; 
 With arm recumbent wield the household scourge ; 
 And with unrufled mien, and placid sounds, 
 Contriving torture, and inflicting wounds. 
 
69 
 
 hour at the Bishop's ; they owe their ap- 
 pearance in print to the gallantry of my 
 friend Mr. Walpole. To send them to you 
 is keeping up the African trade of beads and 
 bits of glass in exchange for gold and ivory. 
 My sisters join me in kind regards to Mr. 
 B. and yourself, 
 
 I am, my dear Madam, 
 Your obliged and very affectionate, 
 
 H. MOEE." 
 
 The poem mentioned at the end of this 
 letter was called * Bonner's Ghost ' in which 
 he is supposed to lament the liberality of 
 the age ; this drew an answer, which will 
 be found in the Appendix. It was never 
 before printed, but copies must have been 
 circulated, as the lines 
 
 " Nor brush one cobweb from St. Paul's 
 Lest you sbould shake the dome," 
 
 were quoted in a Church debate in the 
 House of Commons. It is to be supposed 
 she did not send a copy to her friend Hannah 
 More. 
 
 Between the Aikin and the Eogers family 
 
70 
 
 a long friendsliip had subsisted, and Mrs. 
 Barbauld watched the career of the young 
 poet* with affectionate interest — he pre- 
 served among his papers the following letter 
 — we cannot discover however whether he 
 accepted the invitation it contains, and join- 
 ed Mrs. Barbauld's party to the Long Koom. 
 
 " To Mr. Samuel Eogers, junr. 
 Sir, 
 
 We are obliged to you for much 
 elegant amusement, thro' the books which 
 we safely received, and which we shall beg 
 leave to keep a little longer. Your visit was 
 so short that we wish to think of anything 
 which may induce you to make a longer, and 
 
 *Mr. Eogers has often been accused of too great fond- 
 ness for rank and fashion, he was however sincerely 
 anxious to become a popular poet, and nothing gratified 
 him more than to think his writings known to the 
 classes below himself. He told Miss Aikin, in illustra- 
 tion of this, that being one evening in the gallery of the 
 Opera House, he observed a plain, very respectable, 
 elderly man gazing at him for a long time with great 
 earnestness. At length, between the acts, this person 
 quitted his seat, and coming up to him said solemnly, 
 " pray sir, isyourname Samuel Eogers?" "Yes, itis," 
 he replied, with a benignant smile. " Then sir, I should 
 be glad to know why you have changed your poulterer." 
 
71 
 
 as "we are to have an assembly at the Long 
 Eoom, on Monday next, the 22nd, which 
 they say will be a pretty good one, I take 
 the liberty to ask whether it will be agree- 
 able to you to be of our party, and in that 
 case, we have a bed at your service. I 
 could, I am sure, have my petition supported 
 by a round robin of the young ladies of 
 Hampstead, which would act like a spell 
 to oblige your attendance, but not being 
 willing to make use of such compulsory 
 methods I will only say how much pleasure 
 it will give to Sir, 
 
 Your obliged and obedient servant, 
 A. L. Baebauld. 
 Oar dinner hour, if you can give us your 
 company to dinner, is half after three. 
 
 Hampstead, October, (about 1788.) " 
 
 In the year 1793 Mrs. Barbauld paid a 
 visit to Edinburgh, no letters are preserved 
 describing it, but Sir Walter Scott gives the 
 following account of an evening at Mr. 
 Dugald Stewart's, at which he was not 
 himself present, though he and Mrs. 
 
72 
 
 Barbauld afterwards met in London. 
 
 It will be observed that lie calls her Miss 
 Aikin though she had been married more 
 than twenty years. 
 
 " About the summer of 1793 or 1794, the 
 celebrated Miss Letitia Aikin, better known 
 as Mrs. Barbauld, paid a visit to Edinburgh, 
 and was received by such literary society as 
 the place then boasted, with the hospitality 
 to which her talents and her worth entitled 
 her. Among others, she was kindly wel- 
 comed by the late excellent and admired 
 Professor Dugald Stewart, his lady, and 
 family. 
 
 It was in their evening society that Miss 
 Aikin drew from her pocket-book a version 
 of ' Lenore ' executed by William Taylor, 
 Esq., of Norwich, with as much freedom as 
 was consistent with great spirit and scru- 
 pulous fidelity. She read this composition 
 to the company, who were electrified by 
 the tale. It was the more successful, that 
 Mr. Taylor had boldly copied the imitative 
 harmony of the German, and described the 
 spectral journey in language resembling 
 
73 
 
 that of the original. Burger had thus 
 painted the ghastly career. 
 
 ' Und hurre, hurre, top, hop, hop ! 
 Ging'a fort in sausendem Galopp, 
 Dass KosB und Keiter sohnoben, 
 TJnd Kies und Funken stoben.' 
 
 The words were rendered by the kindred 
 sounds in English. 
 
 ' Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed, 
 Splash, splash, across the sea. 
 Hurrah ! the dead can ride apace 
 Dost fear to ride with me ?' 
 
 When Miss Aikin had finished her reci- 
 tation she replaced in her pocket-book the 
 paper from which she had read it, and en- 
 joyed the satisfaction of having made a 
 strong impression on the hearers, whose 
 bosoms thrilled yet the deeper as the baUad 
 was not to be more closely introduced to 
 them. The author* was not present on this 
 occasion, although he had then the distin- 
 guished advantage of being a familiar friend 
 and frequent visitor of Professor Stewart 
 and his family. But he was absent from 
 town whUe Miss Aikin was in Edinburgh, 
 
 * Sir Walter Scott. 
 H 
 
74 
 
 and it was not until his return that he 
 found all his friends in rapture with the 
 intelligence and good sense of their visitor, 
 but in particular with the wonderful trans- 
 lation from the German by means of which 
 she had delighted and astonished them. 
 The enthusiastic description given of 
 Biirger's ballad and the broken account of 
 the story, of which only two lines were 
 recollected, inspired the author, who had 
 some acquaintance as has been said, with 
 the German language, and a strong taste 
 for popular poetry, with a desire to see the 
 original." 
 
 (From Scott's Essay on Imitations of the 
 Ancient BaUads.) 
 
 The only reference found to this visit, is 
 in a letter to her niece Lucy Aikin, who 
 also visited Edinburgh many years later — 
 it is dated from Stoke Newington, Decem- 
 ber 12th, 1811. 
 
 "My dear Niece, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your 
 entertaining letter, indeed we live very 
 
75 
 
 much upon your letters, and as that kind 
 of food has the property as well as the 
 widow's cruse of being divided without di- 
 minishing, we do not scruple to impart it. 
 I rejoice you spend your time so pleasantly 
 at Edinburgh, as indeed you could not well 
 fail to do in such a family and such a town. 
 I have not yet received from the Princess 
 Mary her picture set in diamonds, nor a 
 tea equipage of Sevres China, nor so much 
 as a gold medallion of the King, with a 
 round robin of thanks from all the Koyal 
 family, one or other of which I have been 
 in daily expectation of ever since I heard 
 from you Lord Buchan's intention with re- 
 gard to my poor copy of verses,* which, I 
 must confess I did not think quite calculated 
 to please a courtly ear, however, as Lord 
 Buchan has got them, let him do what he 
 pleases. — Pray tell him with my compli- 
 ments, that I have by no means forgotten his 
 hospitality nor the pleasant day I spent at 
 Dryburgh Abbey, nor the busts, nor the 
 
 * On the King's illness. 
 
76 
 
 incident of my hat's falling into the Tweed, 
 and if lie will send me the verses he wrote 
 on that occasion, I will send him mine on 
 
 the ruins of the Abbey Does Jeffery 
 
 ride his great horse yet ? By the way, I 
 wish Grace would draw a caricature of that 
 scene, where you were bridling, Miss 
 Fletcher I suppose tittering, and the con- 
 scious culprit * bowing — or is he where he 
 ought to be, on his knees at your feet — but 
 possibly you are very good friends by this 
 time. 
 
 Well I have finished my verses, there are 
 a hundred and fifty faults in them, more 
 than I can mend, but my brother is pleased 
 with them, so I shall have some talk with 
 friend Eichard about it.f I would advise 
 you to let Constable have the Ode to Dun 
 
 * Dr. liad been engaged to Miss Aikin ; he broke 
 
 it off owing to a distrust of his pecuniary resources, which 
 turned out to be quite unfounded. Meeting her some 
 years after at Edinburgh, where she was much admired 
 and caressed, he would gladly haye renewed the engage- 
 ment had Miss A. been so inclined ; she was so no longer 
 however, though they remained good friends to the end 
 of their lives. 
 
 ■j- Mr. Eichard Taylor, the printer. 
 
77 
 
 Edin and Holyrood House, and that pretty 
 little piece to Grace Fletclier on her draw- 
 ing her mother's portrait, which you have 
 written, but send us down some copies by 
 the coach, for I want to see them. How 
 ridiculous the complaint of the Clans you 
 tell me of against Miss Baillie. I suppose 
 it would be taking too great a liberty to write 
 anything about Gog and Magog, lest it 
 should affront some of their descendants. 
 
 Pray if you see Miss Maclear give her 
 my affectionate compliments, and to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Dugald Stewart pray express my 
 affectionate veneration. Farewell, tho' we 
 miss you, we do not wish you in any other 
 place or company than that where you are 
 receiving and giving so much pleasure. 
 Your affectionate aunt, 
 
 A. L. Baebauld." 
 
 A letter from Dr. Priestley in his self- 
 imposed banishment in America belongs to 
 this period. 
 
 H 2 
 
78 
 
 " Northumberland, 
 
 United States, 1797. 
 Dear Mrs. Barbauld, 
 
 The pleasure I received from your 
 letter was the greater from it having been 
 unexpected. It has brought a great number 
 of pleasing scenes to mind, tho' attended 
 with the melancholy reflection that one 
 person* present to them all is now absent. 
 Tho' for many years she wrote but few 
 letters, there were not many persons who 
 were more frequently the subject of our 
 conversation, or whom she spoke of with so 
 much pleasure as yourself. Indeed, pleas- 
 ing impressions of so early a date are not 
 soon effaced, if no pains were taken to revive 
 them. If my diaries had not been destroyed 
 in the riots, I should have been able to 
 retrace some of them better than I can do 
 now. She often lamented the loss of a folio 
 book, into which she had copied all your 
 unpublished poems, and other small pieces, 
 especially the first poem we ever saw of 
 yours, on taking leave of her when we left 
 
 * His wife. 
 
79 
 
 Warrington, and of this I think I heard you 
 say you had no copy. The perusal of it 
 would give me more pleasure now than it 
 did at the first. The short and very just 
 character which you draw of her I have, and 
 value much. We regretted also the loss of 
 the little poem you wrote on the birth of 
 Joseph. But the time is fast approaching, 
 with respect to me, when our intercourse, 
 from which I have derived so much satis- 
 faction, will be renewed with advantage ; 
 and to this future scene late events have 
 drawn my attention in a more particular 
 manner than ever. How much to be pitied 
 are they who are not Christians. What 
 consolation can they have in their sorrow ? 
 mine have sometimes such a mixture of joy 
 as hardly to describe the name. 
 
 Your letter, tho' dated Feb. 28th, I have 
 but just received, and since that date I find 
 I am under particular obligations to you for 
 taking under your care a daughter of Sally.* 
 A friend in need, they say, is a friend indeed, 
 and such you are to her, and I consider it 
 
 * Dr. Priestley's daughter, Mrs. FiEch. 
 
80 
 
 as more than any act of friendsliip to myself. 
 
 What you wish almost, I wish altogether, 
 that you and many others of my friends, in 
 England, were here. There cannot be a 
 more delightful spot on the face of the earth, 
 and here I trust we shall have peace. In 
 England, I fear, there wiU be troubles. If 
 possible, however, I propose to myself the 
 satisfaction of seeing my native country once 
 more before I die. 
 
 I am glad that what I published here in 
 defence of Christianity, gives you pleasure. 
 By this time you may have seen more pieces 
 of the same tendency. Here the defection 
 from Christian principles is as great as with 
 you. But I consider it a certain sign of 
 better times. I am much pleased with Mr. 
 Towers on Prophecy. It is an extraordinary 
 performance for so young a man. I hope 
 that a beginning being now made, our 
 correspondence will be continued, at least 
 occasionally. I shall always be exceedingly 
 happy to hear from you. With aU our best 
 respects, Tour's and Mr. Barbauld's, 
 
 Most sincerely, 
 
 J. Priestley." 
 
Dr. Aikin wlio had been for some years 
 establislied as a physician in London, was 
 in 1798 attacked with an Ulness which seem- 
 ed to threaten his Ufe, and put an end to 
 his hopes of remaining in practice. He 
 therefore gave up his house to his son 
 Charles, and took one in Stoke Newington, 
 then a pretty and rural village, of which Lucy 
 Aikin writes, "This suburban village has 
 been a very Elysian field of non-conformity. 
 Worthy Dr. Watts resided here five years 
 from 1876, 'as tutor to the son of Sir John 
 Hartopp, Bart. The last thirty-six years 
 of his life, which ended in 1748, were also 
 passed here under the roof of first. Sir 
 Thomas Abney, and afterwards of his widow 
 and daughter in succession. Dr. Price 
 lived as domestic chaplain for the thirteen 
 years preceding 1757, with Mr. Streatfield, 
 of Church street, Stoke Newington, in one 
 
82 
 
 of the two houses which about 1709 had 
 afforded a tranquil shelter to the memorable 
 Daniel Defoe, also a dissenter. 
 
 Here too England's great philanthropist 
 John Howard, born in 1727, resided between 
 1752 and 1756. On his removal, with 
 characteristic generosity, he made a hand- 
 some donation to the congregation in Church 
 street, for the purpose of providing a house 
 for the minister. Here no doubt must have 
 ' been formed his intimate, confidential, and 
 affectionate friendship, with the excellent 
 Dr. Price, in which he found unfailing aid 
 and solace, down to their last solemn leave- 
 taking, previous to the departure of Howard 
 on his last pilgrimage." 
 
 Dr. Aikin, though so ill when he went to 
 Stoke Newington (to which the family were 
 drawn by its being the abode of Mrs. Kinder, 
 Mrs. Aikia's only sister,) recovered, and 
 really hved twenty years there ; giving him- 
 self to a life of literature, but occasionally 
 practising in consultation, and attending 
 many poor persons gratuitously. 
 
 Between himself and his sister the tend- 
 
83 
 
 erest affection had always existed, and the 
 longing for daily intercourse now became so 
 strong in both, that Mrs. Barbauld in 1802 
 persuaded her husband to quit Hampstead 
 and purchase a house close to her brother's, 
 in which she remained to the end of her 
 life. A little poem addressed to her by her 
 brother, at this time expresses their feelings. 
 
 Tet one dear wish still struggles in my breast, 
 And points one darling object unpossest; — 
 How many years have whirled their rapid course 
 Since we, sole streamlets from one honored source, 
 In fond ajffection as in blood allied, 
 Have wandered devious from each other's side ; 
 Allowed to catch alone some transient view, 
 Scarce long enough to think the vision true ! 
 then while yH of life some zest remains. 
 While transport yet can swell the beating veins, 
 "While sweet remembrance keeps her wonted seat, 
 And fancy still retains some genial heat ; 
 When evening bids each busy task be o'er, 
 Once let us meet again, to part no more ! 
 
 The following letters belong to this time. 
 They are arranged according to dates. The 
 literary project, mentioned by Miss Edge- 
 worth, in the first letter, does not appear to 
 have ever been carried out. 
 
84 
 
 July 22nd, 1804. 
 " My dear Madam, 
 
 I will not trouble you -with any 
 common places, about time, and distance, 
 and friendship, but taking it for granted 
 that you are the same Mrs. Barbauld, and 
 that I am the same Maria E. who made 
 acquaintance with each other in the year 
 1799, 1 proceed to mention a seheme of my 
 father's. He thinks that a periodical paper, 
 to be written entirely by ladies, would suc- 
 ceed, and we wish that aU the literary ladies 
 of the present day might be invited to take 
 a share in it. — No papers to be rejected — 
 each to be signed by the initial of the 
 author's name — each to be inserted in the 
 order in which it is received. 
 
 If you approve, tell us what would be the 
 best method of proceeding. Would a paper 
 in the Monthly Magazine put the business 
 in train ? Why cannot you, dear Mrs Bar- 
 bauld, prevail upon yourself to come to 
 Ireland, or rather, why cannot we prevail 
 upon you ? We do not pretend to diminish 
 the terrors of sea- sickness, but we could 
 
85 
 
 hope to balance a few hours of pain by some 
 months of pleasure. We are vain enough 
 to feel tolerably certain that you would be 
 happy in the midst of a family, united 
 amongst themselves, who have from their 
 childhood, heard the name of Mrs. Barbauld 
 with respect, and who, as they have grown 
 up, have learnt better and better to appre- 
 ciate her merit. 
 
 Mrs. Edgeworth and my father join with 
 me in every kind wish for your health and 
 happiness, and we hope we have not lost our 
 place in good Mr. Barbauld's esteem and 
 affection. Believe me to be, my dear 
 madam. 
 
 Your sincerely affectionate, 
 
 Makia Edgewoeth." 
 
 " Stoke Newington, 
 
 Aug. 30th, 1804. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 I wish I could convey to you an 
 adequate idea of the pleasure it gave me to 
 receive a letter from your hand, and I will 
 add, of the sensibility excited in me by that 
 
 I 
 
86 
 
 token of your esteem, conscious as I was 
 that my own hand had but ill obeyed the 
 dictates of my heart, in expressing those 
 sentiments of esteem and regard which are 
 indelibly engraven upon it. When I received 
 your letter I was just going to Tunbridge, 
 and as the contents required some consider- 
 ation, I thought it best not to answer it 
 tin my return. As to the scheme of a peri- 
 odical paper, there is no one who would not 
 be dehghted to see it undertaken by your- 
 self and Co., provided the Co. was in any 
 measure adequate to the first of the firm, 
 but I do not know what to say to the idea, 
 which seems to be a leading one in your 
 plan, of inviting the literary ladies to join 
 it. All the hterary ladies ! Mercy on us ! 
 Have you ever reckoned up how many there 
 are, or computed how much trash, and how 
 many discordant materials would be poured 
 in from such a general invitation. I feel 
 also doubtful of the propriety of making it 
 declaredly a lady's paper. There is no bond 
 of union among literary women, any more 
 than among literary men ; different senti- 
 
87 
 
 ments and different connections separate 
 them much more than the joint interest of 
 their sex would unite them. Mrs. Hannah 
 More would not write along with you or me, 
 and we should probably hesitate at joining 
 Miss Hays, or if she were living, Mrs. 
 Godwin. But suppose a sufficient number 
 willing and able to co-operate, which I am 
 willing to think might probably be found, 
 still I do not see why it should be ostensibly 
 * The Lady's Paper.' Many would sneer 
 at the title, they would pretend to expect, 
 however unreasonably, frivolity or romance. 
 There is a great difference between a paper 
 written by a lady, and as a lady. To write 
 professedly as a female junto seems in some 
 measure to suggest a certain cast of senti- 
 ment, and you would write in trammels. 
 If a number of clergymen were to join in 
 writing a paper, I think they should not 
 call it ' The Clergymen's Paper,' except they 
 meant to make it chiefly theological. With 
 regard to the scheme in general of a peri- 
 odical paper, I am apt to think there is 
 room for one. The Mirror, and Cumber- 
 
88 
 
 land's Observer were the last of the kind, if 
 indeed they may be reckoned of the kind. 
 The Mirror was never circulated in England 
 but in vols,, and I am not sure whether the 
 Observer was anywhere. A paper is a 
 pleasing mode of writing, as it admits equal- 
 ly the lightest and the gravest subjects ; the 
 most desultory, and the most profound, if 
 treated concisely ; but humour and charac- 
 ter, the manners and modes of the times, 
 seem to be the subject more particularly 
 called for. And why if you can find gen- 
 tlemen, should not gentlemen be admitted. 
 I am sure we have not any writer of that 
 sex who ought not, and I believe who would 
 not, be proud to join with Miss Edgeworth; 
 and surely Mr. Edgeworth at least would 
 give his assistance, and would not Dr. 
 Beddoes ? How rich an accession that 
 would be. One thing my own judgment is 
 clear in, that there ought not to be more 
 than half-a-dozen principals in such a 
 scheme, occasional correspondence should 
 also be admitted, but by no means without 
 selection, and a very strict one too, other- 
 
89 
 
 wise you would be overwhelmed with trash ; 
 and if you print in London, the person who 
 selects must live there, and perhaps the 
 same person as Editor should have the care 
 of the paper, so far that it should be on him 
 or her to see that the press did not stand 
 still. I should think signatures, that might 
 be afterwards acknowledged like those in 
 the Spectator, would in general be more 
 agreeable to the feelings of the writers than 
 the giving the name at first. With regard 
 to myself, I would offer you my assistance, 
 and should feel highly gratified in all re- 
 spects if you permitted me to join my name 
 with yours, did I feel that fertility and flow 
 of fancy which is requisite for the under- 
 taking. Once it was a favorite scheme of 
 mine, had my brother been willing to join, 
 and I had then several little pieces which 
 might have answered such a purpose, but 
 they have been scattered about in Mag- 
 azines, and I dare not Vtast to the future, 
 expecting naturally to grow duller and duller, 
 and besides always writing slow, so that I 
 should not dare to bring upon myself an 
 
 I 2 
 
90 
 
 obligation, I should feel a tremendous one, 
 that of supplying the press at stated times, 
 whether I have anything to say or not— 
 but 1 would rank with pleasure among the 
 occasional contributors, If I can be of any 
 service by sounding or inviting anybody 
 that I know in London, male or female, to 
 the scheme, command me. We have here 
 Miss Baillie, Mrs. Opie, give me leave 'to 
 add my niece Lucy Aikin, and many others ; 
 Mr. S. Eogers I rather think would not be 
 averse to join a scheme of this kind. But 
 you — you are a host in yourself. How 
 much have we all to thank you for of en- 
 tertainment and instruction, how admirably 
 have you contrived to join fancy, interest, 
 knowledge of the world, sound sense, use- 
 ful morality in the various pieces which 
 with so rich and flowing a vein of instruct- 
 ion you have poured out before us. Will 
 you permit me to name my two favorites in 
 your last work. *They are Eosanna and 
 To-morrow, tho' the latter I confess I read 
 not without some twinges of conscience 
 which interrupted my amusement 
 
91 
 
 I am told just now I ought to be fright- 
 ened at the impending invasion, and if I 
 were at a watering place perhaps I should, 
 but really the invasion has been got up so 
 often it begins to lose its effect, and I think 
 we are pretty well prepared; besides my be- 
 ing afraid will do no good. 
 
 Kemember us to Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth 
 with affection and gratitude, and may 
 every happiness rest on yourself and your 
 family is the wish of Mr. Barbauld and 
 myself." 
 
 To Mrs. Barbauld, 
 
 " Edgeworthstown, 
 
 September 4th 1804. 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 I tell youj because I know it will 
 give you pleasure, that no people in similar 
 situations upon this oblate spheroid which 
 used formerly to be called a globe, live to- 
 gether in more perfect amity and confidence 
 than Mrs. E., Maria, and myself, a-nd yet tiU 
 this day I never ventured to open a letter 
 directed to either of them. But this morn- 
 
92 
 
 ing, as Maria's literary partner, I took it 
 upon nay conscience and honour to open 
 yours in her absence, as I knew your hand 
 and as I was privy to the contents of her 
 letter to you. She will take great pleasure 
 in returning an answer of her own ; but that 
 shall not prevent me from seizing this 
 favourable occasion of assuring you of my 
 most sincere and affectionate esteem, and 
 of the regard and respect which I feel for 
 Mr. Barbauld. 
 
 I agree with you implicitly in aU you 
 say with respect to my scheme for a Fem- 
 inead. It is something curious that the 
 subject and the title should be spoken of in 
 Mr. Edwards' letters to Kichardson, which 
 came to our hands long after Maria had 
 written to you. 
 
 In particular I agree with you about the 
 imprudence of engaging to furnish, as poor 
 Johnson was obliged to do, a certain quantity 
 of copy every week. To avoid this necessity 
 nothing is requisite but such a collection of 
 papers as would suffice for two thirds of the 
 work before we pubhshed any. To prevent 
 
93 
 
 all cavil as to female authorship — let the 
 paper be announced as the work of a society 
 of Gentlemen and Ladies. Bankers, I 
 mean honest, solvent bankers, keep two- 
 thirds of whatever may be demanded from 
 them in constant, readiness, we may therefore 
 not only collect two-thirds of the original 
 stock, but each of the society may engage 
 to furnish one additional paper as soon as 
 one of their writing has been published. — 
 The editor would thus be tolerably secure 
 of sufficient support. 
 
 The names you mention are highly ap- 
 proved of in this family. Miss BaiUie has 
 more of what is usually called genius than 
 most ladies whose works have fallen into my 
 hands. The correctness, sound judgment, 
 and enlarged mind of another female writer, 
 who has still more genius, might be acquir- 
 ed by Miss B. if she is a lady who supposes 
 that those who write and act the best are 
 those who are most capable of improvement. 
 I do not know Mrs. Inchbald, but my son 
 LoveU (who is still prisoner at Verdun) 
 thought well of her ; would she be a useful 
 
94 
 
 correspondent ? We are so unfortunate as 
 never to have seen Miss Aikin's poetry for 
 children ; but we saw one piece of her writ- 
 ing in London five years ago, and we saw 
 the lady herself. We are therefore able to 
 determine that she does not disgrace the 
 Aikin school. 
 
 We have read the greatest part of 
 Richardson's Life and Correspondence. 
 Your criticisms are excellent, and your 
 censures of the indecent passages in your 
 author are highly becoming and highly 
 useful. As your sex becomes more civiliz- 
 ed every day, it is necessary that they should 
 become more circumspect in conversation 
 and in aU the paraphemaha of modesty. 
 A married lady in France is allowed one 
 lover, she is pardon'd for two ; three is rather 
 too many — ^but great deUcacy of sentiment, 
 elegant language, decent dress, and a good 
 choice of the objects of her attachments will 
 preserve her from absolute excommunica- 
 tion, but a failure in any of these circum- 
 stances places her in a disreputable class of 
 females. You have made R. appear to 
 
95 
 
 great advantage, -without using any of the 
 unfaithful arts of an editor. You have 
 shewn, that like other mortals, he had fail- 
 ings; but his enthusiasm for virtue, his 
 generosity, and true politeness of heart and 
 conduct, are brought so distinctly before the 
 eye, that we love the man as much as we 
 admire the author. His invitations to his 
 friends are so kind and so hearty, that we 
 really wish to learn his art of persuading 
 those whom he loved to visit him, and we 
 would try it first' upon you. If the 
 French land in England, which I think wiU 
 happen, come over here, where you may be 
 sure they will not come till they have tried 
 their fortune on the shores of Britain. 
 
 We have learned some good precepts from 
 your criticisms, and in return I have mark'd 
 two or three careless passages in the early 
 part of your life of Eichardson. I took the 
 book out of the hands of one of the eight 
 readers round our table this 4th of Septem- 
 ber, 1804, 9 p.m., to look for some of my 
 criticisms, but I was so struck upon the 
 second reading with your excellent remarks 
 
96 
 
 upon Pamela, tliat I could not turn away to 
 look for them, and the book could not be 
 spared to me. Why do you quote Sedley's 
 lines, they are un peu trop seduisants. I 
 am delighted with Mad. Klopstock, and ab- 
 solutely shocked at her death. Eichardson's 
 remarks on Miss Mulso's correspondence 
 about love are of high value, particularly to 
 us, as they are the best apologies I have 
 seen for Belinda — whom Madam de Sanza 
 (formerly MUe. Flacoux) thought a monster, 
 not a woman. 
 
 Mrs. E's. daughter, whom she was nurs- 
 ing when you saw her, caught something of 
 the divine air from your kisses. She 
 promises to have an observing judicious 
 mind and an affectionate temper. She has 
 two other daughters — none of them beauties 
 — but all very well — all healthy. I have a 
 charming daughter — a most promising lad 
 of science, ten years old — and two fine 
 captains, who wiU defend and amuse you if 
 you come here — but nobody here or else- 
 where values you more highly than I do. 
 
 Be so good as to give my respects to Dr. 
 
97 
 
 Aikin who supports virtue, science, and good 
 letters, so ably by his pen and his example. 
 I am, D'- Madam, 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 K. L. Edgewoeth." 
 
 " Edgeworthstown, 
 
 Sept. 23rd, 1804, 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 On my return home yesterday I 
 had the pleasure of your letter ; my father 
 would not forward it to me, but kept it, as 
 he said, on purpose to increase my agreeable 
 associations with home. It was indeed a 
 great pleasure to receive such a letter from 
 you. From the first moment that you pro- 
 fessed a regard for us, I never could doubt 
 of our holding a place in your esteem, so 
 long as we remained unchanged ; but not- 
 withstanding the steadiness of this belief, 
 it was delightful to me to receive assurances 
 under your own hand and seal that I was 
 in the right. The freedom and affectionate 
 warmth of your letter were peculiarly grate- 
 ful to me ; and though the praise you bestow 
 
 K 
 
98 
 
 on some of our works, may be far beyond 
 what your cool judgment would allow, yet 
 I am perfectly well satisfied to find that in 
 our cause your judgment is not cool. Is not 
 it said of Pascal, that he wore a girdle of 
 spikes, which he pressed into himself when- 
 ever he was conscious of any emotions of 
 vanity ? How deep they must have been 
 pressed, if he had been praised by Mrs. 
 Barbauld ! For my part, I do not pretend 
 to any ascetic humility, nor do I inflict upon 
 myself the penance of abstinence from the 
 refined delicacies of praise — especially when 
 they are presented by a friend. 
 
 With respect to the Lady's Paper, my father 
 desires me to tell you, dear Madam, that it 
 was his proposal, not mine ; I am glad that 
 your objections have appeared to him satis- 
 factory. I agree with you perfectly in 
 thinking that to provoke a war with the 
 other sex, would be neither politic nor be- 
 coming in ours . Our literature should never 
 be placed in competition with theirs to 
 plague them, it should be added to the 
 common stock of amusement and happiness. 
 
99 
 
 To attempt to form a corps of literary 
 women, where all would wish to be officers, 
 except those best suited to command, where 
 there would be no discipline, and where, as 
 you observe, the individuals might not 
 choose to mess together, would be absurd 
 and ridiculous. 
 
 As I was not at home, when my father 
 answered your letter, I am perhaps repeat- 
 ing the very things which he has said ; but 
 this you must excuse, for we are notorious 
 for expressing the same ideas, often in the 
 same words, at different ends of the same 
 room. 
 
 To one thing in your letter, dear Madam, 
 I must object, even if my father has not 
 dared to do so : I must remonstrate against 
 your being only an occasional correspond- 
 ent. I am not surprised, that you should 
 not like to bind yourself to feed the press 
 with daily delicacies, but by proper economy 
 and arrangements, amongst the principal 
 purveyors, you would never be exposed to 
 this tremendous necessity. I hope therefore 
 that upon second thoughts, which Dr. Aikin 
 
100 
 
 will in this case aUow to be best, you will 
 consent to giye credit to owe firm, by placing 
 your name foremost as the acting partner. 
 We should rejoice to have the able, and 
 elegant assistance of Miss Aikin, of your 
 brother, and of Mr. Eogers, Miss BailUe, 
 and Mrs. Opie. 
 
 Do not imagine, dear Mrs. Barbauld, 
 when I mention the life of Richardson, that 
 I am going to attempt that return of eulo- 
 gium, with which authors sometimes treat 
 each other. — You are quite above this traffic 
 of bays, and, I hope, so am I. The eager 
 interest with which I read the life of Rich- 
 ardson you would have thought the most 
 unequivocal testimony I could give of 
 my liking it. My father, in jest, said that 
 I was wildly anxious to read it, because it 
 was the life of an author, but I knew that 
 my interest in it arose from its being writ- 
 ten by Mrs. Barbauld. I think I should be 
 able to distinguish her style from that of 
 any other female writer by the ease, fre^ 
 quency, and felicity, of its classical allusions 
 —allusions sufficiently inteUigible to the 
 
101 
 
 unlearned, and wliich serve as freemason 
 signs to the learned. 
 
 Though you have such an aversion to the 
 sea, we do not yet give up the hopes of 
 having you and Mr. Barbauld at Edge- 
 worthstovra. We shall expect you along 
 with the blessings of peace. But when — 
 is I fear in the bosom of Emperors. In the 
 mean time, dear madam, accept my grate- 
 ful thanks for your kindness, and believe 
 me with sincere esteem and admiration. 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 Maria Edgeworth." 
 
 " Stoke Newington, 
 
 January 28th, 1805. 
 Dear Miss Edgeworth, 
 
 I appear before you again as a 
 culprit, and you have too much reason to 
 imagine me inattentive to the contents of 
 your last most friendly letter. They have 
 however dwelt much upon my mind, and 
 when I returned home (for I received it at 
 Bristol) I revolved the scheme much in my 
 
 K 2 
 
102 
 
 mind, and made what enquiries I could of 
 the probable success of a periodical paper, 
 and it should seem that the first step should 
 be to consult with a Bookseller, for tho' 
 there would be no doubt of the success when 
 gathered into volumes, there is no very 
 recent experience of an undertaking of this 
 kind in the feuille volante. The Mirrors were 
 never published in England, till they were 
 in volumes ; and the Ramblers, as I see from 
 Richardson's correspondence, lay heavy on 
 Cave's hands when they first came out. 
 Therefore the opinion of a Bookseller should 
 be first had, and that Bookseller should be 
 a man, active, and disposed to push such a 
 scheme, not to let the papers sleep in his 
 shop for want of advertisements, &c. Then 
 as to the coadjutors, as it is no longer 
 necessary they should be all ladies, I have 
 been this long while attacking my brother 
 on the subject, but on account of his other 
 engagements, I cannot get him to think of 
 more than an occasional paper, which I dare 
 say he would now and then offer. There is 
 a person, whom I should think very proper 
 
103 
 
 for such an undertaking, and I think it not 
 unhkely that it might suit him, as, with a 
 good deal of genius, he has not, that I know 
 of, any important hterary work in hand ; I 
 mean Mr. WiUiam Taylor of Norwich, He 
 has an uncommon share of learning and in- 
 formation, and great originality of thought 
 and style ; the last mentioned quality it is 
 necessary to apprise you of, because it often 
 leads him to singularity both in matter and 
 style, and I believe he often sports opinions 
 for the value of defending them, with a 
 great deal of ingenuity and critical acumen. 
 In language, he is fond of old Saxon words, 
 thinking, and very justly, that we have 
 weakened the nerve and strength of our 
 language, by abandoning much of its ancient 
 riches. But he can write without these 
 particularities. He has written a good deal 
 of poetry, which ought, I think, to have 
 established his fame, but it has been care- 
 lessly thrown into Magazines, piece by 
 piece, and has not assumed that importance 
 to the eye, which is generally necessary to 
 give celebrity. Perhaps you may have seen 
 
104 
 
 his translation (the best I think) of Biirger's 
 Leonora ; and a beautiful one of Goethe's 
 Iphigenia. As a man, he is most amiable 
 and worthy, I was on the point of men- 
 tioning the scheme to him, but I thought it 
 was right you should j&rst know what he was. 
 But, my dear Madam, I am convinced it is 
 necessary for such a scheme as this, that 
 you should yourself come to town, and in 
 truth you ought to do so on every account. 
 We cannot let Ireland engross you. Come 
 and enjoy your own celebrity. Come and 
 give pleasure to your numerous friends. 
 Come and explore all London can afford of 
 food for the mind and the imagination. In 
 two or three years there is always something 
 new. How much I should rejoice in such 
 a determination, I trust I need not say^ 
 nor how much I shall feel myself honoured 
 and delighted with as much as you can 
 afford me of your society. I became very 
 impatient for your Griselda, before Johnson 
 thought proper to produce it, need I add we 
 have read it with great pleasure. It is 
 charming, like everything you write, but I 
 
105 
 
 can tell you the gentlemen like it better than 
 the ladies, and if you were to be tried by a 
 jury of your own sex, I do not know what 
 punishment you might be sentenced to, for 
 having betrayed their cause. " The author 
 is one of your own sex, we men have 
 nothing to do but to stand by and laugh ;" 
 was the remark of a gentleman, no less 
 candid aman than Dr. Aikin : and then the 
 moral (a general moral if I understand it 
 right), that a man must not indulge his 
 wife too much ! If I were a new-married 
 woman, I do not know whether I would 
 forgive you till you had made the amende 
 honorable, by writing something to expose 
 the men. All however are unanimous in 
 admiring the sprightliness of the dialogue, 
 and the ingenious and varied perversenesses 
 of the heroine. The Eoyal Institution has 
 been very much crowded this year, and 
 Sidney Smith is the favourite of the day. 
 I have not heard him, but I understand he 
 makes his lectures on morals yeij diverting, 
 which is not exactly what I should have 
 expected from such a subject, however, it sue- 
 
106 
 
 ceeds. Have you seen Master Betty ? have 
 you heard Sidney Smith ? are the questions 
 that generally succeed one another. We 
 enjoyed great pleasure this summer in see- 
 ing your two sisters at Bristol, and in being 
 introduced to Mr. King, whom we had not 
 seen before. And now, if I were not so near 
 the bottom of my paper, I should turn to 
 Mr. Edgeworth, and thank him for the 
 favour of a charming letter, which, if I 
 possessed a share of his sprightliness, I 
 would endeavour to answer. I am very sen- 
 sible to the obliging things you both say on 
 the subject of Eichardson, and I kiss the 
 rod with regard to the verses of Sedley. 
 To own the truth, my conscience did remon- 
 strate a little, but I was seduced by the 
 beauty of the verses. Seriously however 
 I shall be much obliged to Mr. Edgeworth 
 or you for any criticisms on the life, because 
 Phillips talks of publishing it separately. 
 I am obliged to comprise in little room a 
 thousand things, as weU from Mr. Barbauld 
 as myself, which would endeavour to express 
 the esteem and affection so justly due to 
 
107 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth and all your family. 
 Believe me ever, with high regard. 
 Yours &c., 
 
 A. L. Baebauld." 
 
 To Miss Aikin, 
 
 At Mr. Taylor's, Norwich. 
 " My dear Niece, 
 
 After the very entertaining letter 
 you favoured me with, you had a right 
 to expect an earlier answer, and nothing, 
 believe me, has prevented it, but the con- 
 ciousnessof not having equal entertainment 
 to ofier in return. 
 
 I am much obliged to you for the infor- 
 mation relative to the convenience of our 
 good friends with regard to receiving us, 
 but I do not now think we shall take the 
 journey at all this year, for I am grown so 
 deaf of late, that I am not willing to intrude 
 such an infirmity on the sprightly and ani- 
 mating parties Norwich affords, or to 
 undergo myself the mortification of Tanta- 
 lus, when the cup of social joy is offered to 
 my lips. I rejoice however in the pleasure 
 
108 
 
 that you are giving and receiving, and most 
 particularly in the good accounts of your 
 health, the foundation of all enjoyment. 
 I hope this journey wiU strengthen and 
 confirm it, and that every circumstance 
 will contribute to increase the pleasure we 
 shall enjoy, when we see you again. We 
 have paid two pleasant visits since I heard 
 from you, one was to Mr. Kogers in his 
 elegant house, looking into the Green Park, 
 every decoration of which is as elegant and 
 recherche as his verses. Indeed, I think one 
 might naturally conclude from the perusal 
 of his poems, that his bookcase is of satin- 
 wood, and his drawing room furnished with 
 marbles, bronzes, &c. The company was 
 Mrs. Weddel a connoiseur in painting and 
 an intimate friend of the late Mr. Palgrave, 
 Grifford, Mathias, the Eogers*, and Sharpes, 
 and Mr. S. — distinguished in the witty and 
 fashionable world, and whose conversation 
 is esteemed by his admirers the most bril- 
 liant of any man's in those circles. There is 
 a romantic story belonging to his marriage. 
 When abroad in Italy, he unconsiously, as 
 
109 
 
 it is said, made a conquest of the heart of a 
 married lady. Her husband, who doted 
 upon her, discovered his wife's attachment, 
 I believe indeed she acknowledged it to him, 
 upon which he wrote to Mr. S. who had 
 then left the place, to meet him at a town 
 which he named. Mr. S. went and found 
 the corpse of the husband, who had shot 
 himself, and a letter in which he said that 
 finding Mr. S. alone could make his wife 
 happy, he had taken out of the way the 
 only impediment to their union and charged 
 him as a man of honour to marry and pro- 
 tect his wife. And could she marry him 
 upon her husband's grave said I ? But 
 Mr. Barbauld asserts she was obliged to it 
 from regard to her husband, who otherwise 
 would have shot himself thro' the head for 
 nothing. I leave it as a crust for the female 
 casuists. Well, our other visit was paid 
 yesterday to Dr. Gregory* (or parson G. as 
 his parishioners call him) and his wife at 
 West Ham. My brother and sister were with 
 
 * Rector of West Ham, and husband to a dear old 
 friend of Mrs. Barbauld' s. 
 
 L 
 
110 
 
 us. We called in the way on Mr. Lindsay 
 who has got a very noble house indeed by 
 Old Ford, which situation lying under some 
 suspicion from the neighbourhood of the 
 Lea marshes, Mr. Macmurdo stoutly asserted 
 that the playground was as high as St. 
 Paul's. West Ham betrays its vicinity by a 
 plantation of reeds for the basket makers, 
 and causeways raised above the meadows, 
 and as a village it is inferior to Layton — 
 however our friends like it, they have got a 
 good house and Mrs. Gregory seems quite 
 happy with the varied employments of 
 visiting the parish, taking care of her chil- 
 dren, pigs, ducks, peacocks, cows, &c., &c.; 
 she assures me she can make butter. 
 
 We have been reading with might and 
 main to get thro' Mr. Eoscoe's four 4to 
 vols. ; for four 4to vols., let me tell you, is an 
 arduous undertaking ; and there is such an 
 utter depravity of morals, and all kind of 
 principles among these Italians, that there 
 is hardly one I care three farthings' about. 
 I was struck with one passage as affording 
 a fine frame for a novel in the gloomy and 
 
Ill 
 
 terrible style to be entitled The Confessions of 
 Gonsalvo. Gonsalvo, it seems, on his death- 
 bed lamented two faults he had been guilty 
 of in the course of his life ; but there was a 
 third crime he never would reveal, ' he could 
 have unfolded a tale ' says Koscoe, but he 
 died a penitent, and trusted it with his other 
 faults to the bosom of his God. Now he 
 must have revealed it to his Confessor who 
 might have committed it to writing and it 
 was probably found by the French, in some 
 of the late convulsions, from whence Mr. 
 Godwin, I think, might come to the know- 
 ledge of this mysterious and horrible crime. 
 Or will you and Mr. Taylor undertake it ? 
 But I believe your conferences are rather 
 metaphysical, and if so, pray Madam what 
 is your opinion of causation ? Do you agree 
 with Dugald Stewart, Hume, and Mr. Leslie, 
 because if you do, I think you may as well 
 throw Paley's last work into the fire. But 
 perhaps you are by this time got to Yar- 
 mouth, and if so, I fear you are out of the way 
 of enjoying and giving pleasure. Where- 
 ever you are, pray remember us to those we 
 
112 
 
 know and love. To Mr. Taylor and dear 
 Susan, I will certainly write soon. There 
 is onfy one sentence of your letter I quarrel 
 with, where you apologize for large paper. 
 Fie ! Eepeat the fault and I wiU forgive 
 the apology. AU are weU and desire to be 
 remembered. 
 
 Your affectionate aunt, 
 A. L. Baebauld. 
 Stoke Newington, 
 
 July 27th, 1805." 
 
 " Edgeworthstown, 
 
 Feb. 26th, 1806. 
 My dear Mrs. Barbauld, 
 
 Holcroft wrote the heads of the 
 Chapters in Popular Tales ; he was employ- 
 ed by Johnson to correct the press. We were 
 so much scandalized when we saw them that 
 Johnson offered to cancel the whole im- 
 pression. My father says that I should not 
 enter into long explanations about trifles ; 
 but I cannot help being anxious to assure 
 you, that those trite vulgar sentences were 
 
113 
 
 not written by my father and preceptor. 
 You will wonder why I should thus abruptly 
 address my justification to you. My dear 
 Madam, we have just been reading a review, 
 or rather an eulogium of Popular Tales, 
 which from the excellence of the writing 
 and its generous warmth, we are persuaded 
 could be written by no other but our friend 
 Mrs. Barbauld. I never felt, and my father 
 declares he never felt, so much pleasure from 
 any praise — indeed we never before received 
 any of so high value and from a judge whom 
 we so much respect. We would rather 
 have one grain of such praise than a cwt. 
 of compliment from common critics. 
 
 I regret that I inserted in the Modern 
 Griselda the offensive line from Chaucer. 
 Let me assure you that this little tale was 
 written in playfulness not bitterness of 
 heart. My father had often declared that 
 he could not be imposed upon by me ; but 
 that he should know my writing without 
 my name to it. When he was absent for a 
 few weeks, and none but the ladies of the 
 family at home, I wrote this story, sent it to 
 
 L 2 
 
114 
 
 Jolinsoii, had it printed witli a title page 
 without my name, and on my father's re- 
 turn home showed it to him. Not one of 
 the female committee who sat upon it every 
 day whilst it was writing and reading ever 
 imagined that it would be thought a severe 
 libel upon the sex — perhaps because their 
 attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who 
 is at least as much a panegyric as Mrs. 
 Bolingbroke is a satire upon the sex. It is 
 curious that the Edinburgh Eeviewers laugh 
 at us for introducing into every story some 
 charming wife, sister, mother, or daughter, 
 who acts the part of the good fairy of the 
 piece. Leonora will confirm them in this 
 opinion and will I hope make my peace with 
 you. 
 
 There is some probability that my father 
 and two or three of this family may be in 
 England this year, and we look forward to 
 the hopes of seeing you, my dear Madam, as 
 one of the greatest pleasures that a visit to 
 London can afford. My brother Sneyd, 
 who is going to enter the Temple, wiU cer- 
 tainly accompany my father to England. 
 
115 
 
 You may remember, if you do not always 
 forget your own goodness, that you select- 
 ed and read to us, several years ago, some 
 lines On Evening m the Monthly Mag. by 
 C. S. E. — written when he was ten years 
 old. He has not indulged since in writing 
 much poetry as he had far other studies to 
 pursue for the College of Dublin — on quit- 
 ing that College he wished to leave some 
 memorial behind, and he has just finished a 
 poem called The ' Transmigrations of Indur ' 
 — ^the plan taken from your tale in Evenings 
 at Home. If this poem should obtain a 
 premium from the College we shall think 
 it worthy of the honor of being presented 
 to you my dear Mrs. Barbauld. 
 
 My father did not see you since he saw 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carr in Bloomsbury Square : 
 they were extremely civil to him, and im- 
 pressed him with the idea that they would 
 be inclined to comply with any reasonable 
 request that he might make to them. My 
 father wishes for Mr. Carr's advice as to 
 the best method of disposing of Sneyd in 
 London for two years to come. It is his 
 
116 
 
 present intention to be called to tlie Irish 
 bar, and two years wiU be suflficient eating 
 for him, to complete his terms, as he has 
 already eaten nine terms ia Dublin. If 
 Mr. Carr could afford five minutes to write 
 to him he would esteem it a real favour. 
 
 He wants his advice at present, simply on 
 these questions — 
 
 Where should Sneyd lodge ? And what 
 mode of living whould he recommend ? 
 
 Mrs. Edgeworth and my father are as 
 anxious as I am to preserve a place in Mr. 
 Barbauld's benevolent heart. My father 
 hopes he is now quite weU. 
 
 Believe me, dear Mrs. Barbauld, I am 
 with sincere esteem and grateful affection. 
 Your friend, 
 
 Maeia Edgewoeth." 
 
 To Miss Edgeworth, 
 
 " Stoke Newington, 
 
 March 23rd, 1806. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 Few things, believe me, can give 
 me greater pleasure than to be remembered 
 
117 
 
 by you with, tliat partiality wliicli you have 
 indulged me with. To read you, to hear 
 from you, and to see you, makes up the 
 most agreeable climax in the world, and I 
 am truly delighted to find that we on this 
 side the water may hope to enjoy the last 
 part of it. But I was much surprised to 
 see your letter begin with the name of 
 Holcroft. How, thought I, can Holcroft 
 come in as a third between Miss Edgeworth 
 and me ? To be serious, I do assure you 
 upon my honour, that I did not write the 
 Eeview of Popular Tales,* nor did I see a 
 single word of it tiU I received the printed 
 vol. Nor did I ever review any work of 
 yours. I am also of opinion that the man- 
 ner in which the titles were mentioned, was 
 not sufficiently respectful to Mr. Edgeworth, 
 even supposing him the author, and that it 
 was very little necessary to mention them 
 at aU. For my own part I am not sure that 
 I knew there were titles tiU Mr. Edgeworth 
 directed my attention towards them, for 
 when a building is very iavitiug I am but 
 
 * It was written by Lucy Aikin. 
 
118 
 
 little inclined to stop at tlie porch. And 
 now, my dear Miss Edgeworth, permit me 
 to ask whetlier it is not more regular to 
 address any remarks relative to a Eeview 
 to the Editor, who is the only ostensible 
 person in the business. I do assure you I 
 have never asked, nor do I know, the 
 Eeviewer of any article of mine in the 
 Annual E., tho' the Editor is my own Ne- 
 phew. And now let me thank you for the 
 very high pleasure and entertainment we 
 have recently received from your Leonora, 
 the heroine is an amiable and touching 
 picture of every virtue, and if there are any 
 who think you have played false to our sex 
 in Griselda, I hope they will be satisfied 
 with the amende honorable you have made 
 them. If I were writing to any one but 
 yourself, I should say more than you would 
 perhaps allow me to, of the delicate satire, 
 the good sense and knowledge of life, the 
 wit and brilliancy displayed in the charac- 
 ters of Ohvia and Gabrielle, that admirable 
 Gabrielle, so truly a Frenchwoman, so 
 characteristic, and yet, tiU you drew her, 
 
119 
 
 not that I know of, described. And the 
 General's letters ! But I forbear. There 
 is however in all human compositions some- 
 thing for a critic to nibble at, and if I have 
 the pleasure of seeing you, I shall ask you 
 whether you believe a promise binding upon 
 the conscience, that cannot be kept without 
 a crime, an engagement to one person that 
 implies the breach of a previous solemn vow 
 to another. It is impossible, I think, such 
 a sentiment can be yours, yet is not the 
 reader led to think so ? Extricate me my 
 dear Friend from this difficulty. Pray have 
 you seen a small vol. of Poems by Mr. Mont- 
 gomery ?* We are all delighted with them, 
 and consider him as a new star risen on the 
 poetical horizon. The author is a printer 
 at Sheffield, and has made himself what he 
 is, and seems to have keenly felt, as aU in 
 narrow circumstances must do, the mortifi- 
 cation of having his mind ill suited to his 
 situation and his prospects. There is a 
 poem in particular, entitled the Ocean, very 
 striking, both from its sentiments and its 
 
 * James Montgomery. 
 
120 
 
 harmony. A verse of it has been running 
 in my head all day, as the Park and Tower 
 Guns were firing for our late victory. — 
 
 For Britannia is -wielding lier trident to-day, 
 And consuming ter foes in her ire ; 
 She is hurling her thunders with absolute sway, 
 Prom her waye-ruling chariots of fire. 
 
 I have sent Mr. Edgeworth's Queries to 
 Mr. Carr, from whom I suppose he has 
 heard or will hear. I think it is since Mr. 
 E. saw him that Mr. Oarr has got the place 
 of Solicitor of Excise. I hope in any case 
 we shall see Mr. Sneyd's Poem when he 
 comes to town. The subject seems to me 
 susceptible of much poetical embellishment. 
 We are impatient to know when you come 
 to London, and how many of the family 
 wiU be of the party; I would have all, I would 
 not willingly spare one of you to stay at 
 home. When the new projected Balloons 
 are perfected, how pleasantly a family party 
 might come over in one. I have only one 
 word to say, indulge us at Newington as 
 much as you can with your much valued 
 company. In the mean time, present from 
 
121 
 
 Mr. Barbauld and myself, the most cordial 
 and respectful remembrances to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Edgeworth and all the family, and 
 believe me, with the highest sentiments of 
 esteem, Dear Madam, 
 
 Your obliged and faithful, 
 
 A. L. Baebauld. 
 
 Me. Baebauld's increasing mental disease 
 at this time, made his wife constantly feel 
 the comfort of living close to her brother 
 and his family — though it was not tiQ her 
 life was actually endangered by his violence, 
 that she would consent to any restraint 
 being put upon the unhappy sufferer. He 
 one day at dinner, seized a knife from the 
 table and pursued her round the room ; she 
 only escaped by springing from the window 
 
122 
 
 into the garden, and taking refuge in Dr. 
 Aikin's house.* In the end, a separation 
 took place, and Mr. Barbauld was, in the 
 care of a keeper, removed to a house next 
 Mr. C. E. Aikin's, in London, where he seem- 
 ed for a time to mend. Being, however, 
 imprudently trusted with money, he one day 
 bribed his attendant to allow him to walk 
 out alone, and as he never returned, search 
 was made, and his lifeless body found in the 
 New Eiver. Miss Aikin remarks " 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 
 
 * It was singular that Mrs. B. ran another danger 
 from the same cause a few years later. 
 
 In Mr. Robinson's diary he gives an interesting ac- 
 count of Mr. Elton Hamond, a young man of great 
 talents, eloquence, and remarkably fine person. He 
 came to Mrs. B. with an introduction from the Edge- 
 worths, ^nd was a very frequent visitor, indeed, he 
 persuaded her to take his sister as an inmate for several 
 years. After a time he became very strange, and in the 
 end destroyed himself. Mr. Robinson, whom he left 
 his executor, found after his death, among his papers, 
 one which discussed at great length, the best way of 
 'putting an end to Mrs. Barlauld's lijfe ' — by poison, a 
 sudden blow, shooting, stabbing, &c. 
 
123 
 
 severe trials through which she had passed, 
 and by the mournful void, which always 
 succeeds the removal of an object of long and 
 deep, however painful, interest. An affect- 
 ing Dirge was found among her poems 
 which records her feelings on this occasion." 
 
 Pure spirit ! where art thou now ! 
 whisper to my soul ! 
 let some soothing thought of thee 
 This bitter grief controul ! 
 
 T'is not for thee the tears I shed, 
 Thy Bufferings now are o'ei'j'''^ '' 
 The sea is calm, the tempest psist. 
 On that eternal shore. 
 
 No more the storms that wrecked thy peace. 
 Shall tear that gentle breast, 
 ITor Summer's rage, nor Winter's cold. 
 Thy poor, poor frame molest. 
 
 Thy peace is sealed, thy rest is sure, 
 My sorrows are to come ; 
 Awhile I weep and linger here. 
 Then follow to the tomb. 
 
 And is the awful veil withdrawn 
 That shrouds from mortal eyes. 
 In deep impenetrable gloom. 
 The secrets of the skies ? 
 
124 
 
 0, in some dream of visioned bliss, 
 Some trance of rapture show 
 Where, on the bosom of thy God, 
 Thou rest'st from human woe ! 
 
 Thence may thy pure devotion's flame 
 On me, on me descend ; 
 To me thy strong aspiring hopes, 
 Thy faith, thy fervour lend. 
 
 Let these my lonely path Ulume, 
 And teach my weakened mind 
 To welcome alt that's left of good, 
 To all that's lost resigned. 
 
 Farewell ! with honour, peace, and love. 
 Be thy dear memory blest ! 
 Thou hast no tears for me to shed, 
 When I too am at rest. 
 
 The following extract from a letter of Sir 
 James Mackintosh to Mrs. John Taylor of 
 Norwich, must have reached England after 
 Mr. Barbauld's tragical end. It cannot now 
 be known whether it was ever seen by the 
 mourner ; but it may be taken for granted, 
 that so kind and faithful a friend as Mrs. 
 Taylor, would have communicated anything 
 that might have soothed her feelings at 
 such a time of distress. 
 
125 
 
 " Bombay, 10th Oct., 1808. 
 
 If I had been a little more acquainted with 
 Mrs. Barbauld, 1 should have written to 
 her.* If I could have spoken any conso- 
 lation, it would have been only payment of 
 a long arrear of instruction and pleasure for 
 thirty years. In another sense, it would 
 have been but the payment of a debt. I 
 could have said little, but what I learned 
 from herself. If ever there was a writer 
 whose wisdom is made to be useful in the 
 time of need, it is Mrs. Barbauld. No 
 moralist has ever more exactly touched the 
 point 'oi the greatest practicable purity, 
 without being lost in exaggeration or sink- 
 ing into meanness. She has cultivated a 
 philosophy which wUl raise and animate 
 her, without refining it to that degree, when 
 it is no longer applicable to the gross pur- 
 poses of human life, and when it is too apt 
 to evaporate in hypocrisy and ostentation. 
 Her observations on the moral of ' Clarissa,' 
 
 * On the aberration of intellect, under which her 
 husband was then suffering. 
 
 M 2 
 
126 
 
 are as fine a piece of mitigated and rational 
 stoicism as our language can boast of : and 
 she who has so beautifully taught us the folly 
 of inconsistent expectations and complaints, 
 can never want practical wisdom under the 
 sharpest calamities. Mental disease is per- 
 haps the subject on which topics of conso- 
 lation are the most difficult to be managed. 
 Yet I have been engaged since my arrival 
 here in a very singular and not altogether 
 unsuccessful correspondence with poor Hall, 
 formerly of Cambridge, on the subject of 
 his own insanity. With Mrs. B's firmer 
 and calmer philosophy, I should think it 
 easy to teach the imagination habitually to 
 consider the evil only as a bodily disease, 
 of which the mental disturbance is a mere 
 symptom. That this habit deprives insan- 
 ity of its mysterious horrors, is obvious 
 enough from the instance of febrile dehrium, 
 which fills us with no more horror than 
 any other morbid appearance, because we 
 steadily and constantly consider it as an 
 effect. The horrible character of the disease 
 seems much to depend on its being consid- 
 
127 
 
 ered as arising from some secret and 
 mysterious change in the mind, which, by 
 a sort of noble superstition, is exalted 
 above vulgar corporeal organs. Whoever 
 firmly regards it as the result of physical 
 causes, wiU spare themselves much of this 
 horror, and acquire the means of being use- 
 ful to the sufferer. My advice may be 
 useless, but I should wish my sympathy 
 known to Mrs. Barbauld. It is the privilege 
 of such excellent writers, to command the 
 sympathy of the distant and unborn. It is 
 a delightful part of their fame; and no 
 writer is more entitled to it, than Mrs. 
 Barbauld." 
 
Mes. Barbauld had the fortitude to seek 
 relief from dejection in Uterary occupation, 
 and incapable, as yet, of any stronger effort, 
 she consented to edit in 1810, a collection 
 of British Novelists, with an introductory 
 essay, and biographical and critical notices 
 prefixed to each author. 
 
 In the following year, she compiled for 
 the use of young ladies, a collection of 
 verse and prose in one volume, entitled the 
 Female Speaker. She also resumed her 
 correspondence with a few friends ; some 
 letters are given here. 
 
 To Mrs. Taylor. 
 
 "June 18th, 1810. 
 
 A thousand thanks for your kind 
 letter ; still more for the very short visit 
 that preceded it — ^though short — ^too short, 
 it has left indelible impressions on my mind; 
 
129 
 
 my heart lias truly had communion with 
 yours — your sympathy has been bahn to it ; 
 and I feel that there is no one now on earth 
 to whom I could pour out that heart more 
 readily, I may say so readily, as to yourself. 
 Very good also has my dear amiable Mrs. 
 Beecroft been to me, whose lively sweetness 
 and agreeable conversation, has at times, 
 won me to forget that my heart is heavy. 
 
 I am now sitting alone again, and feel 
 hke a person who has been sitting by a 
 cheerful fire, not sensible at the time of the 
 temperature of the air, but the fire removed, 
 he finds the season is still winter. Day after 
 day passes, and I do not know what to do 
 with my time, my mind has no energy, nor 
 power of application. I can tell you, how- 
 ever, what I have done with some hours of 
 it, which have been agreeably employed in 
 reading Mrs. Montagu's Letters. I think 
 her nephew has made a very agreeable 
 present to the public; and I was greatly 
 edified to see them printed in modest octavo, 
 with Mrs. Montagu's sweet face (for it is a 
 very pretty face) at the head. They cer- 
 
130 
 
 tainly show a very extraordinary mind, full 
 of wit, and also of deep thought, and sound 
 judgement. She seems to have liked, not a 
 little, to divert herself with the odd and the 
 ludicrous, and shows herself, in the earlier 
 letters, passionately fond of races and balls : 
 this was natural enough at eighteen. Per- 
 haps you may not so easily pardon her for 
 having early settled her mind, as she 
 evidently had, not to marry except for an 
 establishment. This seems to show a want 
 of some of those fine feehngs, that one ex- 
 pects in youth ; but when it is considered 
 that she was the daughter of a country 
 gentleman with a large family, and no 
 fortune to expect, and her connections aU 
 in high life, one is disposed to pardon her, 
 especially as, I dare say, she would never 
 have married a fool or a profligate, I heard 
 her say — ^what I suppose very few can say — 
 that she never was in love in her life. Many 
 of the letters are in fact essays ; and I think 
 had she turned her thoughts to write in 
 that way, she would have excelled Johnson. 
 I have also turned over Lamb's Speci- 
 
131 
 
 mens of Old Plays, and am much pleased 
 with them. I made a discovery there, that 
 La Motte's fable of Genius, Virtue, and 
 Keputation, which has been so much 
 praised for its ingenious turn, is borrowed 
 from Webster, an author of the age of 
 Shakespeare ; or they have taken it from 
 some common source, for a Frenchman was 
 not very likely to light upon an English 
 poet of that age : they knew about as much 
 of us then, as we did, fifty years ago, of the 
 Germans. It is surprising how little in- 
 vention there is in the world ; no vei-y good 
 story was ever invented. It is perhaps 
 originally some fact a Uttle enlarged, 
 then by some other hand embellished with 
 circumstances, then by somebody else, 
 a century after, refined, drawn to a point, 
 and furnished with a moral. When shall 
 we see the moral of the world's great story, 
 which astonishes by its events, interests by 
 the numerous agents it puts in motion, but 
 of which we cannot understand the bear- 
 ings, or predict the catastrophe ? It is a 
 tangled web, of which we have not the clue. 
 
132 
 
 I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, 
 splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I 
 consider the horrible waste of life, the mass 
 of misery, which such gigantic combats 
 must occasion. I will think no more of it ; 
 let me rather contemplate your family; 
 there the different threads all wind evenly, 
 smoothly, and brightly." 
 
 To Miss Edgeworth. 
 " Btoke Newington, 
 
 September 5th, 1809. 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your 
 permission to enrich the Selection of Novels 
 with your ' Belinda ' and ' Griselda,' and am 
 quite of your opinion that the latter answers 
 more truly to the definition than 'Castle 
 Rackrent,' the high merit of which has 
 given me a desire to lay hands upon it, 
 as writers sometimes will strain a point to 
 enrol a favorite character among their 
 countrymen. I remember Mr. Senebier, in 
 his account of the illustrious men of Geneva, 
 reckons, first, those who were born and lived 
 
133 
 
 there ; then those who were born in the 
 territory, but lived elsewhere ; thirdly, those 
 who lived at Geneva and were bom in other 
 countries, and, lastly, some of those if very 
 eminent, who had made any occasional stay 
 in the place. I mention it, that if you 
 have a particular objection to be claimed by 
 future generations for any country province 
 you may take care not to go there. But to 
 return to my Novels, from which I confess 
 I have rambled somewhat unreasonably. 
 As you wish them to be printed from your 
 corrected copy, the Booksellers will be much 
 obliged to you to send one as soon as may 
 be convenient, as they wish now to set 
 about printing in good earnest. To say the 
 truth, the whole ought to have been out 
 long ago, but the course of my thoughts 
 and my whole mind has been so adverse 
 for many months past, which you will not 
 wonder at, to the engagement I had enter- 
 ed into, that I have sufficiently exercised 
 the forbearance of the Booksellers. Let me 
 'now, my dear Miss Edgeworth, thank you 
 for the very great pleasure which, in com- 
 
 N 
 
134 
 
 mon with all who read, I have received from 
 your new tales. I may not, to you, ex- 
 patiate on the variety, the invention, the 
 spirit, ever new and ever charming, of your 
 various publications, but I may congratulate 
 you on having so much power, and so much 
 will to impress the heart with virtuous feel- 
 ings,"and by those modes of writing which 
 are generally managed so as to enfeeble the 
 mind, to gird it up for the real business 
 and duties of life You may expect some 
 striking Poetry soon from Montgomery,* I 
 do not know whether he is a favourite of 
 yours. I think Campbell has disappointed 
 the public in his Gertrude, and I doubt if 
 he will ever recover his ground. You know 
 I presume, that Miss Hamond is with me, 
 and I am gratified to find that she seems 
 to be happy, as it also contributes to my 
 comfort that I have one with me to break 
 the solitude of my desolate house. I saw 
 her brother yesterday, the high respect all 
 the family have for you makes an interest- 
 ing point of connexion between us. Miss 
 
 * James Moutgomery. 
 
135 
 
 Hamond says modestly that she is not your 
 correspondent, and therefore hardly thought 
 herself entitled to send her respects. I told 
 her I should send them notwithstanding, and 
 I have now not room for more than to add 
 minetoMr. andMrs.Edgeworth, whose kind- 
 ness I know. I am a poor correspondent, 
 but should you ever feel inclined to bestow a 
 line upon me, it would give me true pleasure. 
 My Brother's famUy desires remembrances." 
 
 To Mrs. Barbauld. 
 
 " Edgeworthstown, 
 January 18th, 1810. 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 I have great pleasure in making a 
 good beginning of this new year by fulfilling 
 a request of your's. My brother Sneyd will 
 have the honor of waiting upon you with 
 ' Belinda.' I wish I could be of the party, 
 but alas ! this is quite out of my power. 
 My father, thank God, has perfectly recover- 
 ed his health and strength, but he is now 
 engaged in an undertaking which wiU attach 
 him for some time to the bogs of Ireland. 
 
136 
 
 Sneyd will give you an account of the 
 Commissioners for improving our bogs; 
 and pray ask him for a history of the moving 
 bog in our neighbourhood, of the wonders 
 of which he has been an eye witness. I 
 would tell you of these, but that he can teU 
 in five minutes what I could not write in 
 five. So to return to my own business. 
 ' Belinda ' I have taken some, and my fatheJ 
 has taken a great deal of pains, to improve 
 her. In the first volume, the alterations 
 are very slight, and merely verbal. In the 
 second volume, ' Jackson ' is substituted for 
 the husband of Lucy instead of 'Juha,' 
 many people having been scandahsed at the 
 idea of a black man marrying a white 
 woinan ; my father says that gentlemen have 
 horrors upon this subject, and would draw 
 conclusions very unfavorable to a female 
 writer who appeared to recommend such 
 unions ; as I do not understand the sub- 
 ject, I trust to his better judgment, and 
 end with — for Juba read Jackson. 
 
 In the third volume, I have taken out 
 everything that gave encouragement (be- 
 
137 
 
 yond esteem) to Mr. Vincent, for great 
 complaints were made against Belinda for 
 want of constancy to Clarence Hervey, and 
 for jilting Vincent. By taking out her 
 consent to marry, I hope I shall in some 
 degree, satisfy all parties. Belinda is but 
 an uninteresting personage after all, but I 
 cannot mend her in this respect, without 
 making her over again — and indeed with- 
 out making the whole book over again. 
 I was not either in Belinda or Leonora 
 sufficiently aware that the goodness of a 
 heroine interests only in proportion to the 
 perils and trials to which it is exposed. 
 
 I have been made still more sensible of 
 my own deficiencies, by just reading the 
 ' Simple Story,' which throughout has such 
 a powerful, irresistible, interest. I hope you 
 think of it as I do, that it is one of the most 
 pathetic tales that ever was written. 
 
 I long, my dear madam, to see your 
 prefaces * and wish for your sake as well as 
 for that of the public, that they were finished ; 
 for I know how any unfulfilled engagement 
 
 * To Mrs. Barbauld's Edition of the British Novelists. 
 
 N 2 
 
138 
 
 of that sort presses upon the mind. 
 
 What a loss, what an irreparable loss we 
 have had of our excellent friend Johnson ;* 
 ask Sneyd to tell you how generously, how 
 kindly, he behaved tons in the last act almost 
 of his life . I think the excellent character of 
 him which appeared in the Star cou-ld have 
 come from none but such a writer and such 
 a friend as Mrs. Barbauld. I am glad to 
 hear that Johnson's habits of liberahty did 
 not injure his fortune, and that his property 
 descends to a representative so worthy of 
 him as Mr. Miles. Ask Sneyd also how 
 Mr. Miles behaved towards us. I know you 
 have pleasure in hearing of instances of 
 virtue in whatever class or rank of Hfe. 
 
 I do not know whether you received a 
 letter I wrote you some time ago, about a 
 son of Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield, Mr. Edward 
 W. who has spent some time with us. The 
 idle stories which have been in circulation 
 about him and which originated, as I firmly 
 believe, only in the imprudence or malice of 
 some young ladies have died away, and 
 * Mr. Johnson the Publisher. 
 
139 
 
 people are coming round to our opinion of 
 him. I wish to have this supported how- 
 ever by your testimony in his favour. 
 
 I beg you will say every thing that is 
 kind for me to Miss H. Hamond, who I hope 
 continues with you, that is the best wish I 
 can form for her improvement and happi- 
 ness. I hope her brother is well, and 
 engaged in some fixed pursuit, commercial 
 or literary or both. Mrs. Edgeworth and 
 my father beg their kind respects to you. 
 Believe me, dear Madam, 
 
 Your obliged and affectionate 
 
 Mabia Edgeworth." 
 
 1810. 
 " Dear Miss Edgeworth, 
 
 I feel myself very faulty towards 
 you in not having written before, when I 
 have many things to thank you for, and 
 many things to say. It has in part been 
 owing to the expecting the corrected copy 
 of ' Griselda,' as it has not been sent, I 
 imagine you have no corrections to make, 
 and I find the Printers, without my know- 
 
140 
 
 ledge, have presumed so far on that 
 supposition as to proceed to the printing, 
 but they desired me to say they would 
 cancel anything you wished, if they have 
 notice time enough. I hope however you 
 have no alterations, I am sure I cannot 
 discern that it wants any. We have read 
 with great pleasure Mr. Edgeworth's work.* 
 You and he, who are all candour, encourage 
 me to criticise it, and had I felt that I had 
 anything to offer which would be of service, 
 I might have been presumptuous enough to 
 attempt the task, but indeed I had not. 
 There is only one passage which struck me 
 as particularly objectionable in the detail, 
 that is partly obviated by a note, and in 
 another Edition Mr. Edgeworth will prob- 
 ably alter it in such a manner as to prevent 
 misconstruction. You will perhaps guess 
 that I mean the passage where the Gauls 
 (as I recollect, I have not the book to refer 
 to) are mentioned as exciting the courage 
 of their youth by allowing them to torment 
 their prisoners. But tho' my penny arrows 
 
 * Practical Education. 
 
141 
 
 of criticism, if I were inclined to shoot them, 
 would recoil blunted and harmless against 
 the book considered as a composition, I do 
 not say that I can quite agree with the 
 author with respect to the leading idea, the 
 devoting a chUd from' its birth to a particu- 
 lar profession. I fear the expectations of 
 the present would be often disappointed, 
 from the alteration in his own circumstances 
 which fifteen or sixteen years is likely to 
 produce ; few ever remain in the same 
 position, except gentlemen of estates for 
 that space of time, they are richer or poorer, 
 they have changed their residences and got 
 into other connections, a relation will in- 
 troduce their child into his business, &c. 
 How can a young couple entering hfe, with 
 their fortune to make, uncertain of success 
 and whether their family be large or small, 
 devote from its birth, their first child to any 
 particular profession. They can only de- 
 termine, as they generally do, that it shall 
 be very clever and very successful and rise 
 very high in whatever it undertakes, The 
 cradle is rocked by Hope, but her bright 
 
142 
 
 visions can scarcely take any determinate 
 form. Then with regard to the child, his 
 health, the gradual development of his 
 faculties, impressions made accidentally wlU 
 favour or counteract the views of his parents, 
 and circumstances will operate over which 
 they have no controul. A friend of mine 
 says she is sure her son was determined to 
 the law hy seeing Counsellor Mingay, who 
 Hved next door to them, coming home every 
 evening with his green bag, which he 
 imagined was full of money. I should be 
 afraid also, where the plan succeeded, of 
 producing a regard too exclusive for a par- 
 ticular walk of life. I should have supposed 
 the paths of life did not divide so soon. 
 Let the young colt run freely about for a 
 while before the blinkers are put on, which 
 must, alas, when he is put to real service 
 confine his eyes to one unvarying straight- 
 forward path, for the remainder of his life. 
 But from all these saucy remarks which 
 you have encouraged me to make on the 
 work of one so infinitely better acquainted 
 with life and manners than myself, do you 
 
143 
 
 conclude that I wish the book unwritten or 
 altered ? Certainly not. In this as in all 
 great questions let men of abilities write, 
 and write strongly, on the side that strikes 
 them; by this collision the truth wiU be 
 struck out. A part of a system is often 
 practicable where the whole may not be so, 
 and the reader, from various viewsof various 
 authors, strikes out a medium which would 
 be insipid in the authors themselves, but 
 may best suit his particular case. Alas ! 
 how have we been disappointed on this side 
 the water by the failure of your proposed 
 expedition to England. How fondly did I 
 cherish the hopes of seeing you ; I will foster 
 the idea that it is only delayed, and I hope 
 the state of Mr. Edgeworth's health will 
 allow me to do so. Everybody here has 
 been reading with great avidity ' The Lady 
 of the Lake,' and there are two parties about 
 it. One that extol it above anything the 
 author has written, another that pretends 
 it is made up of shreds and patches from 
 his former poems. For' my own part I 
 pretend not to decide whether it exceeds or 
 
144 
 
 falls short of the fancy of his former Poems, 
 but I am sure it has most beautiful passages, 
 and I admire the fertility of genius and the 
 wonderful rapidity with which, in so short 
 a period, he has poured out three Poems of 
 so much bulk as well as beauty. Have you 
 read my Niece's Poem ?* I dare venture to 
 predict that you will be pleased with it, and 
 I hope the gentlemen will allow that the 
 partiaUty of a woman to her sex has not 
 led her to assume more importance for them 
 than fairly belongs to them. 
 
 She begins to feel a little of the trepidation 
 about the Eeviews, very natural in a young 
 author, but you, my dear Miss Edgeworth, 
 I hope, feel yourself quite above them. 
 You cannot be judged by them, they may be 
 judged by their strictures upon you. I had 
 not seen the Quarterly before you mention- 
 ed it. I then read it with great indignation 
 indeed, nor could I help venting a little of 
 it, as much as I thought would do good, in 
 a paper, which perhaps you saw in the 
 
 * Epistles on Women by Lucy Aikin. 
 
145 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine. Write on, shine 
 out, and defy them." 
 
 " Edgeworthsto-vm, 
 
 August 1st, 1810. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Barbauld, 
 
 Your kind and delightful letter 
 gave us all peculiar pleasure, not only from 
 its kindness and the highly gratifying ex- 
 pressions of a regard, which we know to be 
 sincere, but from its proving to us that your 
 mind has resumed all its energy, and that 
 you have recovered from that cruel and 
 unavoidable depression of spirits. You can 
 hardly know unless you were with us, my 
 dear Mrs. B., how much we rejoiced at this, 
 nor how earnestly we desire to add, if we 
 could, to your happiness. Why cannot you 
 cross this vile sea, and be with us in a 
 week ? Look at the frank of ihis letter. 
 With pride I bid you look and see that it is 
 franked by your pupil Lord Selkirk, a pupil 
 who does you the greatest honor, a pupil 
 who sets you the best example too, for this 
 
 
 
146 
 
 is his second visit to Edgeworthstown. — 
 And you ! 
 
 Lord Selkirk begs me to remember bim 
 to you in tbe most respectful and kind 
 manner, and I am sure you wiU be glad to 
 bear that be seems in perfect bealtb and 
 bappiness. His arrival, and that of a suc- 
 cession of visitors, prevented my finisbing 
 tbe errata for Griselda as soon as I wisbed, 
 and must now be my apology for sending 
 tbem to you in their blotted and blurred 
 state, for I really have not time this day to 
 copy tbem, and I fear to delay your printer. 
 
 Your observations on Professional Educa- 
 tion, are as solid as they are elegantly 
 expressed. My father thanks you for them 
 with his whole bead and heart. He is 
 correcting the book for a second Edition, 
 and he will avail himself of your remarks 
 about the impossibility in some classes of 
 life of the parents early deciding the child's 
 profession. 
 
 I thank you my kind and able defender 
 for the essay in the Gentleman's Magazine. 
 May it ever be my fate to be so attacked 
 
147 
 
 • 
 
 and so defended. We did not know the 
 Essay was written by you, but the moment 
 we read it we were struck, not only with its 
 strength and ability, but with its judicious 
 zeal, and we settled that it must be written 
 by some friend who was warmly and per- 
 sonally interested for us. 
 
 Can you suppose that any one in this 
 house could see an advertisement of a book 
 of Miss Aikin's without immediately sending 
 for it ? But alas ! you little know how long 
 it is before our impatience to see new pub- 
 lications can be gratified. In the centre of 
 Ireland we wait sometimes months before 
 we can get possession of the books we long 
 for. We have not yet the Lady of the 
 Lake of our own, though we have begged 
 and borrowed her, and though we wrote for 
 her the moment we heard that she was about 
 to appear in the world. For ' Epistles on 
 Women' we wrote at the same time, and 
 again, and again, and again! And now 
 we have forbid Sneyd, who is coming 
 over, to appear before us, unless he brings it 
 with him, or unless he sends it (as I have 
 
148 
 
 • 
 
 desired him till I am hoarse) under cover, 
 to Edward Connor, Esq., Dublin Castle. 
 What has prevented his doing this, I 
 cannot imagine, and really wish I could 
 beat him for it. 
 
 We have not yet given up all hopes of 
 seeing you in England, My father talks of 
 going to London in spring, but I dare not 
 feed my fancy on these ' pictured tales of 
 bright heroic deeds.' I know this however, 
 for certain, that if we do reach London ever 
 again, nothing can prevent our having the 
 pleasure of seeing you, and hearing you. 
 My fathei* has quite recovered his health, 
 tod is as busy in the vast Hibernian bogs 
 as possible. I don't know whether he wiQ 
 improve them, but I am sure they have im- 
 ittOted him, foi the air and exercise have 
 quite I'enovated him. Mrs. Edgeworth 
 sends her real love to you, which I assure 
 you, she never sends, as words of course, to 
 any body. She is again in blooming health, 
 and her darling little Francis repays her 
 for all she has suffered for him. He has 
 all his father's liveUness of look and quick- 
 
149 
 
 ness of motion, and lie is without exception, 
 tiie best humored little mortal of his years, 
 of his months I mean, that I ever saw. He 
 is now crowing and dancing at the window, 
 looking out at his sisters who are making 
 hay. I am much inclined to believe that 
 he has a natural genius — for happiness — in 
 other words, as Sydney Smith would say, 
 great hereditary ' constitutional joy.' 
 
 I am very well, and have been very idle 
 lately, but intend to be industrious. I have 
 however begun a story on Patronage and 
 wish I could talk with you about it for half 
 an hour or even five minutes. It is so vast 
 a subject that it flounders about in my hands 
 and overpowers me. I have also written a 
 preface and notes (for I too will be an editor) 
 for a little book which a very worthy country- 
 woman of mine is going to publish — Mrs. 
 Leadbeater, grand- daughter to Burke's first 
 preceptor — She is poor — She has behaved 
 most handsomely about some letters of 
 Burke's to her grand-father and herself. 
 It would have been advantageous to her to 
 publish them, but as Mrs. Burke (Heaven 
 
 2 
 
150 
 
 knows why) objected, she desisted. The 
 Bishop of Meath afterwards persuaded Mrs. 
 B. that the letters w^ be highly honorable 
 to Burke's memory, and Mrs. B. retracted 
 and gave her permission, but Mrs. Lead- 
 beater, who is a yery scrupulous quaker, 
 conceived that having once promised not to 
 pubUsh them during Mrs. Burke's hfe, she 
 should not break this promise. This 
 perhaps is a foolish delicacy but it is a fault 
 on the right side. The book she is now 
 going to pubUsh, ' Cottage Dialogues,' will 
 be, I hope, for Ireland, what the Cottagers 
 of Glenburnie are for Scotland — minus the 
 humor of the cottagers. I d o not pretend to 
 say that the dialogues are equal in humor or 
 ability to Mrs. Hamilton's book, but I think 
 they will do as much good in this country 
 as her's did in Scotland. And they give 
 such an excellent picture of the modes of 
 living of the lower Irish, that I am in hopes 
 they will interest in England. Of this she, 
 poor modest simple creature, had not the 
 least hope or idea till we suggested it. We 
 took her M.S. out of the hands of an Irish 
 
151 
 
 publisher, and our excellent friend's worthy 
 successor in St. Paul's Church Yard has on 
 our recommendation agreed to publish it for 
 her. She accepts from me a preface and 
 notes for the mere English reader. 
 
 Adieu my dear Mrs. Barbauld, abruptly, 
 but most sincerely, and affectionately, 
 Your obliged, 
 
 Makia Edgeworth." 
 
 It was soon after her removal to Stoke 
 Newington that Mrs. Barbauld made the 
 acquaintance of one whose active kindness 
 and animated and interesting conversation 
 brightened many of her lonely hours. Mr. 
 Henry Crabb Robinson's own characteristic 
 account of his introduction to her is given 
 here. 
 
 " I formed a new acquaintance of which 
 I was reasonably proud and in the recollec- 
 tion of which I still rejoice. At Hackney I 
 saw repeatedly Miss Wakefield, a charming 
 girl (eldest daughter of the Eev. Gilbert 
 Wakefield,) and one day at a party where 
 Mrs. Barbauld had been the subject of con- 
 
152 
 
 versation, and I had spoken of her in 
 enthusiastic terms, Miss Wakefield came to 
 me and said 'Would you like to know Mrs. 
 Barbauld ?' I exclaimed 'you might as weU 
 ask me whether I should like to know the 
 Angel Gabriel ! ' 'Mrs. Barbauld is how- 
 ever much more accessible, I wlU introduce 
 you to her nephew.' She then called to 
 Charles Aikin whom she soon after married; 
 and he said 'I dine every Sunday with my 
 aunt at Stoke Newington, and I am expected 
 always to bring a friend with me. Two 
 knives and forks are laid for me. WiU you 
 go with me next Sunday ? ' Gladly ac- 
 ceding to the proposal, I had the good 
 fortune to make myself agreeable, and 
 soon became intimate in the house. Mrs. 
 Barbauld bore the remains of great personal 
 beauty. She had a brilliant complexion, 
 light hair, blue eyes, a small and elegant 
 figure, and her manners were very agreeable, 
 with something of the generation then 
 departing. She received me very kindly, 
 spoke of my aunt, and said she had once 
 slept at my father's house. Mrs. Barbauld 
 
153 
 
 is so well known by her writings that it is 
 needless for me to attempt to characterize 
 her. In the estimation of Wordsworth she 
 was the first of our literary women, and he 
 was not bribed to this judgement by any 
 especial congeniality of feeling. I may here 
 relate an anecdote connecting her and 
 Wordsworth, though out of its proper time 
 by many years ; but it is so good that it 
 ought to be preserved from oblivion. 
 
 It was after her death, that Lucy Aikin 
 published Mrs. Barbauld's works, of which 
 I gave a copy to Miss Wordsworth. Among 
 the poems, is a stanza on Life,* written in 
 extreme old age. It had delighted my sis- 
 ter, to whom I repeated it on her deathbed. 
 It was long after I gave these works to Miss 
 Wordsworth, that her brother said, ' Kepeat 
 me that stanza by Mrs. Barbauld.' I did so. 
 He made me repeat it again ; and so he 
 learned it by heart. He was at the time 
 walking in his sitting roOm, at Eydal, with 
 his hands behind him, and I heard him 
 mutter to himself ' I am not in the habit 
 
 * In the Appendix. 
 
154 
 
 of grudging people their good things, but I 
 wish I had written those lines.' 
 
 Life, we've been long togetlipr 
 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather." 
 
 Mr. Eobinson also mentions taking 
 Wordsworth to meet Mrs. Barbauld at a 
 party at Mr. C. E. Aikin's, at which, though 
 rather a large one, he himself and the 
 hostess* were the only persons in the room 
 who were not authors. He at another time 
 took his friend Charles Lambf and his sister 
 
 * Her daughter may be allowed here to record the 
 opinion passed upon her by Mr. Wordsworth, in writing 
 to Mr. Eobinson. " I have never been well since that 
 evening, yet I am content to pay this price for the 
 knowledge of so pleasing a person as Mrs. Charles 
 Aikin, being quite an enthusiast, when I find a woman 
 whose countenance and manners are what a woman's 
 ought to be." 
 
 Her family lost her soon after, by a rapid attack of 
 fever, leaving them desolate, and her youngest child an 
 un weaned infant. 
 
 ■j- Another friend of Mr. Robinson's, an enthusiastic 
 young American, came one day with a letter of intro- 
 duction. He was shewn, for a few minutes, into a 
 room where the table was laid for dinner, and wishing 
 to preserve some memorial of his visit, he took some 
 salt out of a saltcellar, and put it into his pocket. He 
 repeated this anecdote himself at Dr. Aikin's, when 
 Mrs. A., who was rather deaf, understood him to say, 
 he had put the saltcellar into his pocket, which being 
 
155 
 
 to spend an afternoon with Mrs. Barbanld. 
 She, as well as Dr. Aikin and his daughter, 
 did early justice to Lamb's genius. 
 
 At the end of the year 1811, a very 
 gloomy period, Mrs. Barbauld wrote a poem 
 bearing that name, which unfortunately 
 reflected too much of the despondency of 
 her own mind, and drew down many severe 
 remarks, notwithstanding the beauty of the 
 verse. Mr. Eobinson says "Dear Mrs. 
 Barbauld this year incurred great reproach, 
 by writing a poem entitled 1811. It 
 prophesies that on some future day, a 
 traveller from the Antipodes will, from a 
 broken arch of Blackfriars' Bridge, contem- 
 
 a ratter handsome old-fashioned silver one, she was 
 filled with -wonder at this trait of American manners, 
 till her mistake being happily discovered, was rectified, 
 amid the merriment of the party. 
 
156 
 
 plate the ruin of St. Pauls.* This was 
 writteji more in sorrow than in anger ; but 
 there was a disheartening and even gloomy 
 tone, which I, even with all my love for 
 her, could not quite excuse. It provoked 
 a very coarse review in the Quarterly, which 
 many years after, Murray told me, he was 
 more ashamed of than any other article in 
 the review." 
 
 * Mr. Eobinson must have had in his mind a similar 
 passage in Maoaulay's works, but the following is an 
 extract from Mrs. Barbauld's Poem " 1811 ". Mustnot 
 this have suggested Lord Macaulay's celebrated " New 
 Zealander " on the ruined arch of Blackfriars' Bridge ? 
 
 " Tet then the ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires 
 With pictured glories of illustrious sires, 
 With duteous zeal, their pilgrimage shall take. 
 From the Blue Mountains, or Ontario's Lake ; 
 With fond adoring steps to press the sod 
 By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod. 
 
 But who, their mingled feelings shall pursue. 
 When London's faded glories rise to view ? 
 
 Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet 
 Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street ; 
 Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, 
 The broken stairs with perilous step shall cUmb, 
 Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round. 
 By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound, 
 And choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey 
 Through reeds and sedge, pursue his idle way." 
 
157 
 
 Miss Edgeworth says, * ' I cannot describe 
 to you the indignation, or rather the dis- 
 gust, that we felt at the manner in which 
 you are treated in the Quarterly Eeview, so 
 ungentlemanlike, so unjust, so insolent a 
 review I never read. My father and I, in 
 the moment of provocation, snatched up 
 our pens to answer it, but a minute's re- 
 flection convinced us, that silent contempt 
 is the best answer — that we should not 
 suppose it possible, that it can hurt any- 
 body with the generous British public, but 
 the reviewers themselves. The lines even 
 which they have picked out with most 
 malicious intent, are excellent, and speak 
 for themselves. But it is not their criticism 
 on your poem which incenses me, it is the 
 odious tone in which they dare to speak of 
 the most respectable and elegant female 
 writer that England can boast. The public, 
 the public will do you justice !" 
 
 This was the last time she appeared in 
 print. No one indeed, who loved her, could 
 have wished her to be again exposed to 
 such a shock to her feelings, or such cruel 
 
158 
 
 misunderstanding of her sentiments. The 
 remainder of her life was passed quietly at 
 Stoke Newington, among her family and a 
 few friends. From her nephew Charles, 
 she received all the duty and affection of a 
 son, and in the great sorrow of his life, her 
 kindness to him and his motherless child- 
 ren, was unremitting. 
 
 One of the few journies she again took, 
 was to her old friends Dr. and Mrs. Estlin, 
 near Bristol, from whose house she visited 
 Mrs. Hannah More. 
 
 She writes to Dr. Aikin. 
 
 Bristol. 
 "Dear Brother, 
 
 I thank you for your kind letter, 
 and hope soon to return to the dear circle, 
 for indeed it is quite time I should turn my 
 thoughts homeward. I cannot, however, at 
 present fix the day, but I believe it will be the 
 latter end of nest week. Mr. Belsham, I 
 have reason to think, will not come into this 
 part of the country, and my friends here wiU 
 not let me go without some acquaintance. 
 
159 
 
 We continue to have very fine weather 
 here. It has rained one evening and the 
 ensuing night, and I think that is all the 
 rain we have had since I came here. We 
 had a very pleasant day last Monday at 
 Ham Green. Mr. Bright has greatly en- 
 larged the house, and done it with so much 
 judgment, that you do not perceive it was 
 not aU huilt at once, and he has opened the 
 view, so that you see the river and the 
 vessels from the drawing room. I wished 
 my sister there to see a fine magnolia in 
 full bloom, with many other fine plants 
 and trees. The finest plants, however, are 
 the olive branches round his table, there 
 seems to be the greatest confidence and 
 harmony through all the family. Miss 
 Bright is a very excellent young woman, and 
 employs herself very much among the poor. 
 There is an abominable practice here, which 
 is that of building high stone walls, by way 
 of enclosure, which shut out the view from 
 the road ; this they have done great part of 
 the way to Mr. Bright's. 
 
 You ask me how my visit to Mrs. More 's 
 
160 
 
 went off. Very pleasantly indeed. Nothing 
 could be more friendly than their reception, 
 and nothing more charming than their 
 situation. An extensive view over the 
 Mendip hills is in front of their house, with 
 the pretty view of Wrington. Their house 
 (cottage, because it is thatched,) stands on 
 the declivity of a rising ground, which they 
 have planted and made quite a little para- 
 dise. The five sisters, aU good old maids, 
 have lived together these fifty years, without 
 any break having been made in their little 
 community, by death, or any other cause of 
 separation. Hannah More is a good deal 
 broken by iUness, but possesses fuUy heir 
 powers of conversation, and her vivacity. 
 We exchanged riddles like the wise men of 
 old. I was given to understand she is 
 writing something. Hannah had read with 
 great pleasure your Selden and Usher, and 
 thought it very liberal. 
 
 I have had great pleasure in congratu- 
 lating my good friends here, on a legacy of 
 three thousand pounds, which has been left 
 them by an old scholar. John Estlin too 
 
161 
 
 has five hundred. Dr. Stock, five thousand. 
 
 I hope you will go on with your plan of 
 Biography. I like it much, and here is a 
 subject for you in Bristol ; a Quaker, Mr. 
 Keynolds, who they say gives away ten 
 thousand a year; he lives very plainly 
 himself. 
 
 Love to the Einders and my sister. 
 Your ever afi"ectionately 
 
 A. L. Barbauld." 
 
 To Miss Edgeworth. 
 
 "Stoke Newington, 
 
 August 23rd, 1816. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 Will you permit me to address 
 you, conscious as I am, that I have neglect- 
 ed the advantage and the honour of that 
 intercourse by letter, which my heart all 
 the while acknowledged in its fullest extent. 
 What an excellent and what a cruel piece 
 is your ' To-morrow !' How you could en- 
 ter so well into feelings which your activity 
 and strength of mind must have hindered 
 you from partaking, I cannot imagine, but 
 
 p 2 
 
162 
 
 to me it has given many a twinge of con- 
 science, and most particularly ia tlie affair 
 of letter writing which, if I have happened 
 to delay a little too long, always becomes 
 difficult to me beyond imagination. Days 
 pass, and the more honour and esteem I 
 have for my correspondent, the more 1 feel 
 that I have nothing worth communicating 
 and my brain feels dry, as the remaining 
 biscuit after a voyage. With regard to your- 
 self, though longing to write, I doubt if I 
 should have had the courage, but for a hint 
 communicated by Mrs. Joanna BaiUie 
 intimating that I might have taken amiss 
 not seeing more of you when you were ia 
 London. Oh my dear Miss Edgeworth, I 
 cannot bear you should think so for a mo- 
 ment. Much as I value your society, I well 
 know the demands on your time, I know 
 the homage paid you and I exulted in it 
 for your sake and for my sex's sake. And 
 now will you forgive me ? Will you now 
 receive all the acknowledgment I owe you, 
 both in common with all those who have 
 been, delighted and instructed by your 
 
163 
 
 claarmmg works, and more particularly as 
 having received them from your hands. 
 Long may you continue to delight the 
 world with livelier wit and humour than 
 those who write merely for amusement, and 
 with juster and more impressive sentiments 
 of morality than most of those who write 
 merely for instruction. I should ask you 
 if you could resist the general spirit of 
 migration and stay at home when England 
 is pouring itself over the continent, if I did 
 not hear, and very sorry I am to hear it, 
 that Mr. Edgeworth's state of health is 
 such as must prevent your leaving him. 
 I tremble to think what tours must be pre- 
 paring for the press, what sweeping 
 characters of nations will be given by the 
 traveller who has dined two or three times 
 at a table d'hote, and how often we shall be 
 sick between Dover and Calais. I am 
 wishing to lay a tax on English Absentees, 
 not the tourist of a few months, but the 
 Nobleman who dismisses his servants, shuts 
 up his mansion, and spends his vast rents 
 abroad. Pray have you any summer in 
 
164 
 
 Ireland ? We have not ; a sweeping, chill- 
 ing, hope disappointing summer, if we must 
 call it such, but that it might not entirely 
 want energy, we have had, it seems, an 
 earthquake in Scotland. A summer with- 
 out heat, is like a youth without affections, 
 there is nothing to cheer the damp and 
 dreary season which succeeds it. I have 
 myself felt much want of some enlivening 
 influence, to counteract the langour of age, 
 and the dreariness of a solitary house. 
 Writing anything I have not felt equal to, 
 and reading has at times been a task to me, 
 but at present I feel better. Every one 
 here has not been so idle. Perhaps you 
 have seen my brother' s^?i?iaZs, and though 
 necessarily somewhat dry, from the necess- 
 ary compression of such an eventful period, 
 I think you will have been pleased with the 
 fairness and impartiality, with which they 
 are written. My niece. Miss Aikim, has 
 made some progress in her ' Memoirs of the 
 Eeign of Queen EUzabeth.' She is taking 
 great pains with it, and I hope it will 
 answer her expectation and her friends'. 
 
165 
 
 We are expecting every day anotlier Canto 
 of ' Childe Harold,' but I apprehend tlie 
 author has lost too much of the pubUc 
 favour, by his late cruel behaviour to his 
 wife, to be as popular as he has been. I 
 have now upon my table, the strangest 
 Poem 'Wilson's City of the Plague,' aheap 
 of horrors, natural and moral ; and ' Leigh 
 Hunt's Rimini,' the most fantastic. Thus 
 it is, when the natural and easy, has become 
 a beaten path, and the intellectual taste 
 wants excitement, as the sensitive, by more 
 pungent, relishes the originally disagreeable. 
 My dear Madam, have I not tired you ? 
 Will you forgive me ? Will you love me, 
 little as I may deserve it? Will you convey 
 my respectful compliments to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Edgeworth, and best wishes for all your 
 family, and will you believe me, with the 
 highest esteem, and most affectionate good 
 wishes. 
 
 Your ever obliged, 
 
 A. L. Baebauld. 
 I beg you to believe that I have written 
 this upon the ' knees of my heart.' " 
 
166 
 
 To Mrs. Barbauld. 
 
 1816. 
 "My dear Madam, 
 
 My sight has lately been so much 
 impaired, as to prevent me from writing 
 with my own hand ; I have, however, such 
 a number of good secretaries, as to prevent 
 me from feeling much inconvenience from 
 this circumstance ; and I now and then 
 derive a peculiar pleasure in using my pen, 
 upon some extraordinary occasion, to assure 
 a friend of the continuance of my regard. 
 Maria is very timid: — though she ought 
 to have been satisfied, as I was, with the 
 consciousness of feeling undiminished af- 
 fection and esteem for you. She feared that 
 you might have been hurt, by the hurried 
 manner in which she saw you at Newington. 
 You were too wise, and too kind, to 
 attribute the shortness of her visit, to any 
 thing but necessity. Indeed the tenor of 
 our lives shows that we value the friendship 
 of the wise and good, instead of courting 
 the notice of the great. In London we 
 certainly met a most flattering reception ; 
 
167 
 
 but it has not tempted us to renew our 
 visit. We are perfectly bappy in absolute 
 retirement, and we have not the least desire 
 to rush into the continental vortex. 
 
 Your letter, my dear Madam, gave me a 
 kind of satisfaction, that is perhaps allied 
 to vanity ; but it was a proof of what I have 
 often asserted that ' I never lost a friend in 
 my life.' 
 
 I do not pretend to have made many, 
 but it is a real pleasure to know that I have 
 lost none. 
 
 We have sent for Dr. Aikin's Annals, 
 which we never heard of till now. 
 
 Believe me to be sincerely yours, 
 
 ElCHD. LOVBLL EdGEWOETH." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Barbauld, 
 
 Your kind, warm, friendly letter, 
 has set my heart at ease, upon a subject 
 which has long been very painful to me. 
 I feared, and I could not bear to think, 
 that I had lost that place in your esteem 
 and affection, with which I knew that you 
 once honoured me. I could not bear the 
 
168 
 
 idea, that you suspected me of being so 
 weak, so vain, so senseless, as to have my 
 brain turned by a little fashionable flattery, 
 and to have so changed my character, as 
 not to feel the difference between your 
 friendship, and the common-place compli- 
 ments of Lady This and That and T'other. 
 Your letter has dissipated all the very 
 painful fancies, and real fears that have 
 been growing and preying upon me these 
 two years. Thank you — ' on the hnees of 
 my heart ' I thank you. And be assured that 
 your condescension and goodness, in beg- 
 ging my pardon, when I ought to have 
 begged, and did a hundred times in my 
 secret soul beg yours, is not thrown away 
 upon me. 
 
 So we will now go on where we left off, 
 too long ago. I will write whenever I have 
 anything to say that I wish to say to you, 
 whether it be worth your hearing or not ; 
 and if you do not answer me, I wUl only 
 regret, I promise you I wiU never be angry, 
 nor will I ever more fret myself, with the 
 notion, that you are angry with me. God 
 
169 
 
 bless Mrs. Baillie, for breaking the ice 
 between us. 
 
 You have no idea how long, how terribly 
 long, it is, before books of any substantial 
 merit, reach this remote ultimate Edge- 
 worthstown. Such trash as ' Glenarvon ' 
 and such mischief as ' Bertram ' comes too 
 fast, poisoning all the wind. We have book 
 societies in the country, and do order books 
 of merit and reputation ; but it is a tedious 
 time before the Dublin booksellers get them, 
 as they dare not write for them on their 
 own account. I shall immediately bespeak 
 Dr. Aikin's Annals for our society. We 
 shall anxiously expect Miss Aikin's Eeign 
 of Elizabeth. Have you seen a book of 
 Dr. Millar's, on the Philosophy of History ? 
 The introductory chapter is weU done, but 
 I fear there is a vice de construction in the 
 plan of the book. The witty, bitterly witty, 
 Plunket told him, that with such a plan, 
 he should not have published the book, till 
 the day of Judgment. His plan, you know, 
 is to shew, that all history forms a moral 
 drama. Now, till the drama is finished. 
 
170 
 
 how can lie come to the moral, and without 
 omniscience, how can he see the connexion 
 of the parts and the whole. 
 
 I have lately seen a poem, which remind- 
 ed me of the spirit of your '1811.' I do 
 not mean to say in the versification, for that 
 is unharmonious, and often defective, but 
 I admire in it the noble spirit of patriotism 
 and virtue. His classical taste and Anti- 
 Byron principles. The poem I mean is 
 'Greece' byMr. Haygarth. I know nothing 
 of him, but I think if he cultivates his 
 interests, he may either become a fine his- 
 torian, or a fine tragedian. This praise 
 impUes a great range of mind, but I do not 
 say he is — I say he may become — aUthis, 
 — and I should very much wish to know 
 whether you think the same. 
 
 On the contrary, I do not think that the 
 author of ' Bertram,'* though he has writ- 
 ten a successful tragedy, wiU ever write a 
 good tragedy — feeling run mad ! — 
 
 As to ' Glenarvon,' it surely can do no 
 mischief, it is such nonsense. I stuck fast 
 
 * The Kev. R. C. Maturin. 
 
171 
 
 in the blood and love in the second volume, 
 and in that condition, fell fast asleep, and 
 never would have opened my eyes on the 
 third volume, but that my father begged 
 me to read the death of the Princess of 
 Madagascar, which seems, with aU that 
 relates to the Princess, to be written by a 
 pen, much superior to Lady Caroline 
 Lamb's. — Who wrote it ? Is it known ? 
 
 We have just got a little book called 
 'Display,' a tale for young people, which 
 we like much. It is written by the daugh- 
 ter of a physician, a Miss Jane Taylor, who 
 keeps a school near Dublin. I am not 
 acquainted with her. The good people in 
 this book, are more to my taste, than those 
 in Coelebs, because they are not so meddling. 
 I only wish they had not objected to young 
 people going to balls. Before I could finish 
 my sentence, in praise of all the good sense 
 and excellent writing of this tale, a circle of 
 young and old ladies were open-mouthed 
 with the question, — but why object to 
 balls ? I hope you like the Antiquary. And 
 I hope you have no doubt of its having 
 been written by Walter Scott. 
 
172 
 
 We have just receiyed two numbers of a 
 new 'Journal of the Arts and Sciences,' edit- 
 ed at the Eoyal Institution of Great Britain. 
 Like it much. Glad to see Sir Humphrey 
 Davy's lamp lighting him back to the paths, 
 of Science, from the bootless excursion he 
 took into the land of fashion. Better be 
 the first, than the last of a class. Better 
 be the first man of science, than the last 
 man of fashion. — Especially as he can be 
 the one, and cannot be the other. 
 
 In the first number of this Journal, there 
 is a paper, by Dr. Park, on the laws of sensa- 
 tion, which my father admires very much. 
 
 I think the nerves will give physicians 
 and philosophers, enough to do for the next 
 century. The humorers have had their day. 
 
 Here is a gentleman in our neighbour- 
 hood, who one year imagines himself to be 
 without bones, and another year without 
 muscles, and one year is a Harry- long-legs, 
 and another a man ; and all the time, eats 
 and drinks heartily, and wears a coat like 
 other men, and is not considered as more 
 than nervous. 
 
173 
 
 I will now finish, lest you should repent 
 having let loose my pen upon you. My 
 father has been better lately ; but his health 
 is far from strong. I say as little as I can 
 upon this subject, it is too near my heart. 
 Mrs. Edgeworth is in as blooming, happy, 
 and useful health as when you knew her 
 at Clifton. 
 
 I wish, my dear Mrs. Barbauld, I could 
 transport you into this large cheerful family, 
 where every body, — from little Pakenham 
 at four years old, to the old housekeeper, 
 ' eldest of forms,' would do every-thing 
 in their power to make you feel quite at 
 home. You should never see any wash- 
 ing-day* but one. 
 
 Your friend, Lord Longford, has just 
 written us word that he is going to be 
 married, and from his own and the impar- 
 tial account of his dear sister — (commonly 
 called the Duchess of Wellington), the lady 
 he has chosen will not only permanently 
 please himself but satisfy the anxious 
 
 * A playful poem of Mrs. B's given in the Appendix. 
 
 Q 2 
 
174 
 
 wishes of his host of family friends. She 
 is Lady*Georgina Lygon, tenth daughter of 
 Lord Beauchamp, He says she wUl not 
 permit him to be an ' absentee ', so we shall 
 now have him again settled at Pakenham 
 HaU, within ten miles of us. Now, my 
 dear Mrs. Barbauld, could not you summon 
 up resolution enough to be sea sick for six 
 hours, say ten at the utmost, to make us 
 happy, and I hope yourself, for as many 
 months ! I have two brothers now at 
 Cheltenham, Lovell and Sneyd, both known 
 to you, both coming over to Ireland, Mrs. 
 Sneyd E. also — could you not come with 
 them ? Anna (Mrs. Beddoes) also coming 
 in the spring. 
 
 Think of what has been said ! and do not 
 tremble at the thoughts of my pestering 
 you often with such long letters, for I 
 assure you it is not my habit, but in the 
 warmth of heart kindled by your warm 
 affectionate letter all this poured out. 
 Your affectionate, obUged 
 
 and grateful friend, 
 
 Maeia Edgeworth." 
 
175 
 
 To Miss Edgeworth. 
 " Bear Madam, 
 
 I am penetrated with your kind- 
 ness, your frank forgiveness and the valued 
 favour of your long letter. For your kind 
 invitation too I sincerely thank you, nor 
 could anything be more attractive than the 
 society to which you invite me, not to 
 mention the attraction of a country, interest- 
 ing, and to me new, hut indeed I am now 
 too old to travel, or shall I rather say, I 
 expect to take a journey longer than that, 
 and to a country more unknown. Short 
 excursions indeed I do not disclaim, and 
 am now just returned from a visit to Mr. 
 W. Smith* of Parndon, whose family I be- 
 lieve you know. He is now one of the 
 oldest members of the House of Commons 
 that we have, and has always been very 
 steady to his principles, but he was then as 
 busy as an old Eoman in getting in his 
 harvest. Patty Smith, the eldest and most 
 accomphshed, is in very indifferent health, 
 I am sorry to say. My brother is delighted 
 
 * Mr. Williain Smith M.P. for Norwich. 
 
176 
 
 that you are pleased with Mr. Haygarth's 
 Poem, for the author is the son of a very 
 intimate friend of his, a Physician, who 
 died lately at Bath, or rather near it, and 
 left his son in circumstances to indulge all 
 his elegant tastes without being confined 
 to any profession ; he is now again upon 
 his travels. I think his Poem elegant and 
 beautiful, but you wiU excuse my differing 
 from you, if I say that I should rather 
 reverse the character you give of his 
 genius, and the author of Bertram ; for 
 Haygarth seems to me to have already 
 attained nearly the acme of his, grace, 
 elegance, classic taste ; but in Bertram, 
 along with much that is dark, wild, and 
 repulsive, equally to taste and moral sense, 
 I think I see sparks of a high genius and 
 more capabilities of improvement — Au reste, 
 pray do not reproach us with sending you 
 ' Bertram,' you sent it us. I have not 
 seen Dr. MiUar's publication, but I can 
 hardly allow to Plunket that in a good 
 Drama you must wait for the conclusion 
 before you can form any opinion of the 
 
177 
 
 catastrophe of the piece. We judge by the 
 bearings. Who doubts long before the con- 
 clusion of the piece, that Desdemona's 
 innocence will become apparent, and Othello 
 die in agonies of remorse, but in the great 
 Drama of the Universe, the difficulty is to 
 see the bearings. Turner in his History of 
 the Anglo-Saxons, a work of great research, 
 has attempted something of this kind, but 
 I think without much success. * Display ' we 
 sent for on your recommendation, and are 
 much pleased with a good deal of it, but 
 we are entirely of your opinion with regard 
 to balls, and indeed there is a great deal in 
 her system that I should object to, par- 
 ticularly the doctrine, which I think a very 
 pernicious one, that all, the innocent and 
 good as well as the bad, must undergo a 
 mysterious change before they are in a safe 
 state. Emily was very good for aught that 
 I could see before her conversion. I 
 trembled, as I drew near the close, lest 
 Elizabeth should have a fine fortune left 
 her by somebody, and was much pleased 
 with the author's good sense in handing 
 
178 
 
 her to her post behind the counter. By the 
 way, are you not mistaken in the Author ? 
 We take it to be the production of Jane 
 Taylor of Ongar, who has written several 
 pieces, both verse and prose, for children. 
 I am just entering on ' Mrs. Marcet's 
 Conversations on PoHtical Economy,' a 
 new subject for a Lady's pen. You are I 
 believe personally acquainted with Mr. 
 Eoscoe, I send you the enclosed sonnet 
 to show how weU he bears the bitter depri- 
 vation, to a man of letters and of taste, of 
 his noble collection of books and paintings. 
 Among the curiosities of literature let me 
 ask if you have seen the Eimini of Leigh 
 Hunt ? An. author, who, in exaggeration 
 of all the slovenliness of the new school, 
 has thought proper to come into public with 
 Tiis neckcloth untied and his stockings aboul; 
 his heels. 
 
 My dear Miss Edgeworth, though I shall 
 never see, I enjoy your account of Edge- 
 worthstown. I do not conceive a more 
 agreeable abode, and beg to be remembered 
 to every individual of it. I rejoice much in 
 
179 
 
 the approacliing happiness of Lord Long- 
 ford and the more because, if he is what he 
 was, I beheve him fully qualified to appre- 
 ciate and enjoy domestic pleasures. If he 
 is so good as to remember me pay my com- 
 pliments. My nephew Arthur Aikin and 
 his friends have been in the bustle of 
 canvassing for some weeks past. He is 
 soliciting for the situation of Secretary to the 
 Society of Arts,* vacant by the death of Mr. 
 Taylor, and with a very fair prospect of 
 success. He has sixteen hundred members 
 to canvass and being naturally rather taci- 
 turn and very modest, we have been amused 
 to think how he would acquit himself, but 
 he says he improves in assurance every day. 
 In point of literary and scientific merit, none 
 of the candidates can pretend to stand a 
 comparison with him. My dear Miss 
 Edgeworth, if I did as I ought to do, I 
 should write this bad scrawl, full of blun- 
 ders, over again, but then I should lose my 
 
 * He held this office for twenty years, and that of 
 Chemical Lecturer of Guy's Hospital for almost as long 
 a time afterwards. A short notice of him by his sister 
 Lucy Aikin, will be found in the Appendix. 
 
180 
 
 frank, so you must excuse it, and believe 
 me ever your obliged, affectionate, 
 
 A. L, Baebauld." 
 September 17th, 1817. 
 
 To Mr. Rogers. 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 My Brother and Sister as well as 
 myself are very truly sensible of the favour 
 of your invitation, nor are we insensible of 
 the entertainment* which Monday evening 
 will afford, notwithstanding which we must 
 with sincere thanks decline so tempting an 
 offer. With regard to Lucy, whose youth 
 and spirits would best have borne the fatigue 
 of such a day, or rather night, and might 
 have communicated enjoyment as well as 
 received it, she is at Liverpool. Suffer me 
 to add with regard to myself, I feel sensibly 
 touched with the Mndness which prompted 
 you to think of me on this occasion, distant 
 as I am from you, and little able as I feel 
 myself to return by mine the pleasure I 
 
 * The fireworks and illuminations for the Peace with 
 France. 
 
181 
 
 always receive from your company. I have 
 another instance of attention from you 
 which has for some time demanded my 
 thanks, a most elegant little poem,* which 
 as its parent did not choose to own it, was 
 left to disclose its parentage by its merits. 
 You scorn to take advantage of the tame 
 you are in possession of, and choose to 
 surprise the admiration youmightcommand. 
 I hope this is an earnest of more, and as I 
 see you can with readiness take any style 
 and manner you please, I shaU be upon the 
 watch for you whenever I see anything par- 
 ticularly elegant. 
 
 Adieu dear Sir, and believe me no one is 
 more desirous of your esteem or sensible to 
 your friendship than your obliged and 
 faithful, 
 
 A. L. Bakbauld. 
 
 Excuse blunders, I write with children 
 about me." 
 
 She received about this time a visit from 
 one who seems to form a link with the 
 
 * Jacqueline. 
 
182 
 
 succeeding age, Dr. Channing, who alludes 
 to it in a letter to Miss Aikin after Mrs. 
 Barbauld's death. 
 
 " Boston, Feb. 27th, 1827. 
 I thank you, as thousands have 
 done for your tribute to the memory of 
 Mrs. Barbauld, and I am peculiarly in- 
 debted to you" for the present of her works. 
 
 I can remember Mrs. B's poetry from 
 early Ufe, and I owe her more than delight. 
 Some of her pieces we may suppose she 
 wiU recollect for ever with pleasure, for they 
 have lifted many minds to that pure world 
 in which she has found rest. Much of the 
 prose volume was new to me, and I felt 
 that she had not received the praise due to 
 her in this species of composition. I was 
 struck with the felicity of the style, and the 
 freshness and animation and frequently the 
 originahty of her thoughts. 
 
 1 remember my short interview with her 
 with much pleasure. Perhaps I never saw 
 a person of her age who had preserved so 
 much of youth — on whom time had laid so 
 
183 
 
 gentle a hand. Her countenance had 
 nothing of the rigidness and hard lines of 
 advanced life, but responded to the mind 
 like a young woman's. I carry it with me 
 as one of the treasures of memory." 
 
 Mr. Crabb Eobiuson also in one of his 
 last visits to her, remarks, as well as Dr. 
 Ghanning, upon her personal appearance. 
 
 " I called on the Colliers, and then went 
 to Mrs. Barbauld's. She was in good 
 spirits, but she is now the confirmed old 
 lady. Independently of her .fine under- 
 standing, and literary reputation, she 
 would be interesting. Her white locks, 
 fair and unwrinkled skin, briUiant starched 
 linen, and rich silk gown, make her a fit 
 object for a painter. Her conversation is 
 lively, her remarks judicious, and always 
 pertinent." (Mr. Kobinson's Diary.) 
 
 A letter to Miss Edgeworth, and the 
 fragment of verse which foUows it, are 
 almost her last writings. 
 
184 
 
 " My dear Miss Edgeworth., 
 
 I was very glad to see your hand 
 writing again, and to hear that your pen 
 was again in employment, that pen which 
 has already given us so much pleasure, and 
 from which, I hope, the world may expect 
 pleasure and improvement for many years 
 to come. 
 
 The Enigma"' you do me the honour to 
 ask for, wiU accompany this, hut I have 
 first to find it, for though I have looked a 
 good deal, I have not yet been able to lay 
 my hands on it. I beg to make proviso, 
 that if I should want myself to insert it in 
 any publication, I may be at liberty to do 
 it. Though, truly, that is not very likely, 
 for weU do I feel, one faculty after another 
 withdraAving, and the shades of evening 
 closing fast around me, and be it so. What 
 does life offer at past eighty, (at which 
 venerable age, I arrived one day last June,) 
 and I beheve you will allow, that there is 
 not much of new, of animating, of inviting, 
 to be met with after that age. For my own 
 
 * In tte Appendix. 
 
185 
 
 part, I only find that many things I knew 
 I have forgotten, many things I thotight I 
 knew, I find I knew nothing about ; some 
 things, I know, I have found not worth 
 knowing, and some things I would give — 
 Oh ! what would one not give to know, are 
 beyond the reach of hum-an ken. Well, I 
 believe this is what may be called prosing, 
 and yoa can make much better use of your 
 time than to read it. I saw yesterday two 
 boys, modern Greeks, in the costume of 
 their country, introduced by Mr. Bowring, 
 who has the charge of them. — du Grec, ah 
 ma soeur du Grec, ils parlent du Grec ! I 
 have been reading one or two American 
 novels lately. They are very well, but I do 
 not wish them to write novels yet. Let 
 them explore and describe their new 
 country. Let them record the actions of 
 their Washington, the purest character per- 
 haps, that history has to boast of ; let them 
 enjoy their free, their unexpensive govern- 
 ment, number their rising towns, and boast 
 that persecution does not set her bloody foot 
 in any corner of their extensive territories. 
 
 B 2 
 
186 
 
 Then let them kindle into poetry, but not 
 yet, not tUl the more delicate shades and 
 nicer dehneations of life are familiar to 
 them, let them descend to novels. But 
 tempted, by writing to you, I am running 
 on, tiU my eyes are tired, and perhaps you 
 too. Compliments to Mrs. Edgeworth and 
 all your family. If I find the riddle, I will 
 send it you, mean while, I am, with the 
 truest esteem and friendship, dear Miss 
 Edgeworth, your affectionate friend, 
 
 A. L, Barbauld. 
 Stoke Newington, 
 
 Oct. 25th, 1823." 
 
 Fall, fall ! poor leaf, that on tte naked bough, 
 Sole lingering spectacle of sad decay, 
 Sits shivering at the blasts of dark November ; 
 Thy fellows strew the ground, not one is left 
 To grace thy naked side ; late who could count 
 Their number multitudinous and thick, 
 Veiling the noon-day blaze, behind their shade 
 The birds half-hid disported ; clustering fruit 
 Behind their ample shade lay glowing ripe ; 
 No bird salutes thee now ; nor the green sap 
 Mounts in thy veins, thy spring is gone, thy summer; 
 Even the crimson tints, 
 
187 
 
 Thy grave but rich autumnal livery, 
 
 That pleased the eye of contemplation — 
 
 Some filament perhaps, some tendril stronger 
 
 Than all the rest, resists the whistling blast. 
 
 Fall, fall, poor leaf, 
 
 Thy solitary single self shews more 
 
 The nakedness of winter, 
 
 "Why wait aid fall, and strew the ground like them ? 
 
 The following is taken from Miss Aikin's 
 Memoir. 
 
 "An asthmatic complaint which was 
 slowly tmdermuiing her excellent constifu- 
 tion, more and more indisposed her for any 
 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 continued to the last 
 though her memory of recent circumstances 
 became somewhat impaired. Her dispo- 
 sition, (of which sensibility was not in earlier 
 life the leading feature,) now mellowed into 
 softness, pleasingly exhibited. ' those ten- 
 der 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, 
 
188 
 
 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 
 and 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 it must 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 con- 
 temporary 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 decUne which had served as a pain- 
 full preparation to the final parting. A few 
 months later she lost in the excellent Mrs. 
 John Taylor of Norwich, perhaps the most 
 intimate andhighly valued of all her distant 
 friends. 
 
189 
 
 A gentle and scarcely perceptible decUne 
 was now sloping the passage to the tomb. 
 She felt and hailed it as a release from 
 languor and infirmity, a passport to another 
 and higher state of being. Her friends 
 however flattered themselves that they 
 might continue to enjoy her a little longer, 
 and she had consented to remove to the 
 house of her adopted son, that his affec- 
 tionate attention 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 to the neigh- 
 bouring 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 she expired without a struggle, on the 
 9th of March 1825, in the eighty second 
 year of her age. 
 
 To claim for this distinguished woman 
 the praise of purity and elevation of mind, 
 may well seem superfluous. Her education 
 and connections, the course of her hfe. 
 
190 
 
 the whole tenour of her writings, bear testi- 
 mony to this part of her character. It is a 
 higher, or at least a rarer commendation 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 whom she failed to 
 mention in terms of admiration, esteem, or 
 affection. To humbler aspirants, who often 
 applied to her for advice or assistance, she 
 was invariably courteous, and often service- 
 able. The sight of youth and beauty was 
 pecuUarly gratifying to her fancy and feel- 
 ings, and children and young persons were 
 large sharers in her benevolence ; she loved 
 their society, and would often invite them 
 to spend weeks and months in her house, 
 where she spared no pains to amuse and 
 instruct them, and she seldom failed to 
 recall herself to their recollection, by af- 
 fectionate and playful letters, or welcome 
 presents. 
 In the conjugal relation, her conduct 
 
191 
 
 was guided by the highest principles of 
 love and duty. As a sister, the uninter- 
 rupted 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 be called 
 personal." 
 
 Though in the preceding pages, Mrs. 
 Barbauld's literary character has been 
 chiefly dwelt upon, it would be an imperfect 
 view of it, which did not include some notice 
 of her deep interest in the cause of civil 
 and religious liberty. 
 
 Living as she did, through times in which 
 the profession of liberal opinions was in the 
 highest degree unpopular, not to say dan- 
 gerous, she never hesitated to employ all 
 her gifts of eloquence and reasoning, to 
 endeavour to bring about a better state of 
 things, and as a dissenter especially, to free 
 
192 
 
 those who shared her opinions, from the 
 social disabihties, which after the lapse of 
 many years were happily removed. 
 
 On the defeat of a Bill brought before 
 Parliament in 1790, for the repeal of the 
 Corporation and Test Acts, she wrote a 
 powerful and eloquent pamphlet, which 
 though anonymous, was soon recognised as 
 hers. The following letters addressed to 
 her, among many others, at that time, from 
 Mr. Sogers, and Dr. Moore the author of 
 Zeluco, and father of General Sir John 
 Moore, show the appreciation of the hberal 
 party of her 'efforts on this occasion. 
 
 " Newington Green, March 29th, 1790. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 I have read over and over again 
 the address to the opposers of the Eepeal, 
 and cannot sufficiently thank you for hav- 
 ing first suggested it to my notice ; though 
 its spirit and elegance are now indeed the 
 subj ect of universal admiration and curiosity. 
 Its author may elude our search for a little 
 while, but cannot long remain undiscovered. 
 
193 
 
 Its fine irony, its elevation and sublimity 
 of sentiment, will soon blaze out the secret, 
 though 'wrapt in tenfold night.' And 
 whoever has read the essays of a lady whose 
 superior genius every one has the discern- 
 ment to see and admire except yourself, is 
 already, I think, in the possession of a clue 
 that cannot fail to direct his inquiries. 
 I remain with great respect. 
 Dear Madam, your obliged 
 Friend and Servant, 
 
 Saml. Eogers. 
 
 I beg my best Compts. 
 to Mr. Barbauld." 
 
 " To the Kevd. Eochemont Barbauld, 
 Clifford Street, 
 
 29 Nov. 1790. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 When I had the pleasure of seeing 
 Mrs. Barbauld and you at your house at 
 Hampstead, I had not read her address to 
 the opposers of the repeal of the Test Acts, 
 but I had heard a report of her intending 
 to answer Mr. Burke's famous pamphlets, 
 
 s 
 
194 
 
 —and: I coafess li heard this with some 
 degree of; concern, for notwithstanding^^ the 
 high opinion^I hadiormed of Jier talentgj I. 
 could not help ;beang: a: littlfe uneasy at the 
 thoughts ol her: entering the lists with so 
 formidable an antagonist!— bat: I have just 
 finished the perusal of Iheri address, and all 
 my fears _ are vanished. I hardly know 
 anything in, the English language superior 
 in delicacy of.irony, and i strength of reason- 
 ing, to that: truly eloquent; performance. 
 AndiiQimy, opinion she could not employ 
 her time more to her own honour and the 
 public benefit, than by publishing her senti- 
 ments on Mr. Burke's works. 
 
 I beg. you. will offer my respectful thanks 
 to Mrs. Barbauld for the pleasure I received 
 from her pamphlet, which 1 sincerely think 
 the most elegant and most judicious pro- 
 duction that has issued from the press for 
 a very long time. 
 
 I am dear Sir, with much esteem, 
 Your obedient humble servant. 
 
 T. MOOEE." 
 
195 
 
 In a letter to a friend announcing the 
 death of her, who had been to him as a 
 mother, Mr. Charles Kochemont Aikin con- 
 cludes with the following passage. 
 
 ' ' I will fill this page with a few hues which 
 will interest you, as being I believe, the very 
 lastwhich my venerable aunt committed to 
 paper when she felt the hand of death ap- 
 proaching her. It is a few unfinished 
 sentences, but to me deeply interesting." 
 
 ""Who are you? 
 
 Do you not know me, have you not expected toe ? 
 
 "Whither do you cany me ? 
 
 Gome with me and you shall .knoiw. 
 
 The way is dark. 
 
 It is well trodden. 
 
 Yes, in the forward track. 
 
 Come along ! 
 
 Oh, shall I see there my beloved ones, will they wel- 
 come me, will they know me, oh, tell me, teU me, 
 thou canst teU me ? 
 
 Yes, but thou must come first. 
 
 Stop a little, keep thy hand off till thou hast told 
 me ! 
 
 I never wait. 
 
 Oh shaU I see the warm sun again in my cold grave ? 
 
196 
 
 Nothing is there that can feel the sun. 
 Oh where theti ? 
 Come, I say." 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld was buried in the family 
 vault of Dr. Aikin in Stoke Newington 
 Church-yard. 
 
 Shortly after her death Mr. 0. R. Aikin 
 was requested by the congregation of, 
 Newington Green Chapel, where she had 
 attended as long as her strength allowed, to 
 place some memorial of her upon their 
 walls. 
 
 A marble tablet was therefore erected by 
 him with the following inscription written 
 by her nephew Arthur Aikin. 
 
197 
 
 EPITAFB. 
 ♦ 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD, 
 
 Daughter op John Aikin, d.d. 
 
 and wipe op 
 The Eev. Roohemont Baebauld, 
 
 FOEMEELY THE EESPECTED MINISTEE OF THIS CONGEEGATION. 
 
 SHE WAS BOEN AT KIBWOETH IN LEICESTBESHIEE, 20th JUNE, 1743, 
 AND DIED AT STOKE NEWINGTON, 9th MAECH, 1825. 
 
 ENDOWED BX THE GIVEE OF ALL GOOD 
 
 WITH WIT, GENIUS, POETIC TALENT, AND A VIGOEOUS UNDEESTANDING 
 
 SHE EMPLOYED THESE HIGH GIFTS 
 
 IN PEOMOTING THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE, 
 
 OF CIYEL AND EELIGIOUS LIBEBTY, 
 
 OF PUEE, AEDENT, AND AFFECTIONATE DEVOTION. 
 
 LET THE YOUNG, NUETUEED BY HEB WEITINGS IN THE PUEE SPIRIT 
 
 OF CHRISTIAN MOEAIITY; 
 
 LET THOSE OF MATUEEE YEARS, CAPABLE OF APPEETIATBSTG 
 
 THE ACUTENESS, THE BEILLIANT FANCY, AND SOUND EEASONING 
 
 OF HEE LITEEAEY COMPOSITIOHS ; 
 
 LET THE SUKVIVING PEW WHO SHARED HEE DELIGHTFUL 
 
 AND INSTEUOTIVE CONYEESATION, 
 
 BEAR WITNESS 
 
 THAT THIS MONUMENT EECOEDS 
 
 NO EXAGGEBATED PEAISE. 
 
 s 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 From the Rev. Dr. Doddridge to Miss Jennings, 
 (afterwards Mrs. Aikin.) 
 
 D"^- Mad"" 
 
 I owe Dear Miss Jenny and her good 
 Mamma my earliest Thanks for all the Pleasure I 
 had in the Company of both at Harborough, and 
 must confess that when I left it I hardly expected 
 so much as I found in conversing with Miss Cotton 
 at MaidweU. It seems to me that I am going into 
 a kind of Solitude when I am leaving you, but it 
 prov'd otherwise on Fryday and Saturday. Besides 
 the Satisfaction I always find in the Conversation of 
 so valuable a Friend as Lady Russel, the Lady I 
 mention'd before gave me a great Deal. I know 
 you hear this with a charitable Pleasure and flatter 
 your self with a secret Hope that she is making a 
 Conquest on a fond Heart from which you might 
 apprehend some farther Trouble, of that Mad™ you 
 will judge when I teU you, that the most delightfal 
 
202 
 
 part of her Conversation was that which turn'd upoa 
 her Father and Mother of whom she gave me the 
 following Account which I humbly recommend to 
 your serious Perusal. 
 
 Mr. Cotton was turn'd of 30 when he fell in 
 Love w"" the Lady who is now his Wife. She was 
 then like your self a gay beautiful Creature just in 
 the Bloom of fifteen, in whom that truly wise and 
 good Man /discern'd those early Marks of Piety 
 Genius Politeness good Humour and Dificretion 
 which I am more and more admiring in you, and 
 which engage him to prefer her to those whose Age 
 might have seem'd more suitable to his own. He 
 pursued his Addresses with all possible Applicaition 
 and exerted in her Service all the Tenderness with 
 which so charming a Creature could inspire him and 
 all the poKteness which Le had ileamt i&om a most 
 liberal Education and several years Travels thro' 
 Italy and France in the Company of some Persons 
 of great Distinction which renders him thus late in 
 the Evenisng of Life incomparably more agreeable 
 than the generality of Mankind in its Morning or 
 Meridian. Miss Biddy (for that was her name) 
 heard him with all the Indifference in the World for 
 two years together and often declares that tho' she 
 treated Mmicivily as a Gentleman and a Friend and 
 the rather out of Regard to her Mamma who had a 
 greaj; Eegajrd and Affection for him yet she never 
 
203 
 
 entertain'd any Thoughts of Love to him till within 
 three "Weeks of their Marriage. At last she gave 
 him her Heart with her hand in the 17''' year of 
 her Age and y° 33* of his. And it is now almost 
 half a Century that she has been rejoicing in it as 
 the kindest Providence of her Life. They have 
 been still the Joy of their Friends and each other 
 and are concluding an honourable and a dehghtful 
 Life together as gracefully and as amiably as any 
 Couple I ever knew; and I i verily believe that she 
 is as dear to him now tho' she is rather older than 
 he was in the first Months of their Marriage- 
 
 I might make a variety of pertinent and useful 
 Reflections on this most entertaining and edyfying 
 Story but I shall content my self with mentioning 
 two and refer the rest to your private Meditations. 
 
 It is possible (you see) for a Man of a very 
 agreeable and valuable Character in Life and for a 
 Minister too, deliberately to chuse and passionately 
 to love a Lady considerably younger than himself, 
 even an Infant of 15 (and how much more one who 
 will be 16 in October) And he may continue for 
 Life fond and proud of that Choice. 
 
 And than secondly and lastly (which is to me 
 much more surprizing than the former) that a Lady 
 of that tender and impressible age may hear a 
 Courtship (not the dullest or most despicable in the 
 World) for two years together without any Senti- 
 
204 
 
 ment of Love or Thoughts of Marriage and yet 
 afterwards receive it with -an intire Consent and 
 that peculiar Pleasure which I suppose Nothing 
 upon Earth can give but the Surrender of the Heart 
 to a worthy Man who has deserv'd it by a long 
 Course of Service and Sufferings. 
 
 You must pardon me Madam if after aU this I 
 conclude with my hearty wishes that if we live to 
 the year 1770 a Daughter every Way as agreeable 
 and valuable as Miss Cotton may he telling the 
 same Story (as far as the inferiority of my Character 
 will admit) of the lovely Trifler who is now smiling 
 at so extravagant a Thought 
 
 and her most affectionate Friend 
 
 and obKged humble Servant. 
 
 P. Doddridge. 
 Northampton, May 29th, 1730. 
 
 Your Aunt Norris went away this morning. 
 Pray give my best services to your Dear Mamma, 
 not forgetting my other Friends at Harborough. I 
 long and yet I fear to see you. 
 
 I hope to be w"^ you in a few Days, but vrill keep 
 your Brother here so long as I stay myself. 
 
205 
 
 BISHOP BONNER'S GHOST, 
 By Mrs. Hannah More — written 1789. 
 
 In the gardens of the palace at Fulham is a dark 
 recess, at the end of this stands a chair which once 
 belonged to Bishop Bonner. A certain Bishop 
 (Porteus) more than 200 years after the death of the 
 aforesaid Bonner, one morning undertook to cut 
 with his own hand a narrow walk through this 
 thicket. He had no sooner beguni than lo ! sud- 
 denly up started froni the chair the Ghost of 
 Bishop Bonner, who in a tone of just and bitter 
 indignation uttered the following verses. 
 
 Eeformer hold ! ah spare my shade, 
 Kespect the hallowed dead ; 
 Vain prayer, I see the op'ning glade, 
 See utter darkness fled. 
 
 Just so your innovatmg hand, 
 Let in the moral light ; 
 So chased from this bewilder' d land, 
 Fled intellectual night. 
 
 T 
 
206 
 
 tVTiere now that holy gloom which hid. 
 Pair truth from vulgar ken } 
 Where now that wisdom which forbid, 
 To think that monks were men. 
 
 The tangled mazes of the schools, 
 "Which spread so thick before ; 
 Which knaves entwin'd to puzzle fools, 
 Shall catch mankind no more. 
 
 Those charming intricacies, where ? 
 Those venerable lies ? 
 Those legends, once the Church's care, 
 Those sweet perplexities ? 
 
 Ah ! fatal age, whose sons combined, 
 Of credit to exhaust us; 
 Ah ! fatal age, which gave mankind 
 A Luther and a Faustils. 
 
 Had only Jack and Martin lived, 
 Our power had slowly fled ; 
 Our influence longer had survived. 
 Had laymen never read. 
 
 For knowledge flew, like magic spell. 
 By Typographic art ; 
 Oh shame ! a peasant now can tell, 
 If priests the truth impart. 
 
207 
 
 Ye councils, pilgrimages, creeds 1 
 Synods, decrees, and rules ! 
 Te warrants of unholy deeds. 
 Indulgences, and bulls. 
 
 Where are ye now ? and where alas ! 
 The pardons we dispense ? 
 And penances the sponge of sins ; 
 And Peter's holy pence ? 
 
 Where now the beads which used to swell, 
 lean virtue's spare amount,? 
 Here only faith and goodness fiU, 
 A heretic's account. 
 
 But soft — what gracious form appears ? 
 Is this a convents' life, 
 Atrocious sight ! by all my fears, 
 A prelate with a wife ! 
 
 Ah ! sainted Mary not for this 
 Our pious labours joined. 
 The witcheries of domestic bliss 
 Had shook e'en Gardiner's mind. 
 
 Hence all the sinful, human ties. 
 Which mar the cloister's plan ; 
 Hence all the weak fond charities, 
 Which make man feel for man. 
 
208 
 
 But tortured memory vainly speaks, 
 The projects we ^esign'd ; 
 While this apostate bishop seeks, 
 The freedom of mankind. 
 
 Oh, bom in everything to shake, 
 The systems plann'd by me ! 
 So heterodox, th?it he would make, 
 Both soul and body free. 
 
 iNor clime nor colour stays his hand. 
 With charity deprav'd, 
 He would from Thames to Gambia's strand. 
 Have all be free and sav'd. 
 
 And what shall change h^s wayward heart. 
 His wilful spirit turn ? 
 For those his labours can't convert, 
 His weakness wiU not burn. 
 
 A GOOD OLD Papist. 
 
 "THE APOLOGY OF THE BISHOPS," 
 IN ANSWER TO "BONNER'S GHOST." 
 
 By Mrs. Barbauld. 
 
 Eight Eevd. Brother and so forth 
 The Bishops send you greeting, 
 They honour much the zeal and worth 
 In you so highly meeting. 
 
209 
 
 But your abuse of us, good Sir 
 
 Is very little founded ! 
 
 We blush that you should make a stir 
 
 With notions so ill grounded. 
 
 'Tis not to us should be addrest 
 Your ghostly exhortation, 
 If heresy still lifts her crest 
 The fault is in the nation. 
 
 The State, in spite of all our pains, 
 Has left us in the lurch. 
 The spirit of the times restrains 
 The spirit of the Church. 
 
 To this day down from famed Sacheverel 
 •Our zeal has never cooled. 
 We mean to Truth and Freedom ever lU, 
 But we are over ruled. 
 
 Still damning Creeds framed long ago. 
 Help us to vent our spite ; 
 And penal laws our teeth to shew 
 Although we cannot bite. 
 
 Our spleen against reforming cries 
 Is now as ever shewn ; 
 Though we can't blind the nation's eyes 
 We still can shut our own. 
 
 T 2 
 
210 
 
 Well ■warned from what abroad befells, 
 "We keep all tight at home ; 
 Nor brush one cobweb from St. Paul's, 
 Lest it should shake the dome. 
 
 Once in an age a Louth may chance 
 To wield the pastoral staff, 
 And Fortune for a whim advance 
 A—— or * 
 
 Yet do not thou by fears misled 
 To rash conclusions jump, 
 So little leaven scarce appears, 
 And leaveneth not the lump. 
 
 "What though the arm of flesh be dead 
 And lost the power it gives, 
 The spirit quickeneth, it is said. 
 And sure the spirit lives. 
 
 The Birmingham Apostle then,f 
 And Essex Street Apostate,^ 
 Debarred from paper and from pen 
 Should both lament their lost state. 
 
 Church maxims do not greatly vary, 
 Take it upon my honour, 
 Place on the throne another Mary, 
 We'll find her soon a Bonner. 
 
 * A or Hoadly or Landafi P 
 
 t Dr. Priestley. J The Eevd. Theophilus Lindsay. 
 
211 
 
 WASHING-DAY. 
 
 und their voice, 
 
 Turmug again towards childish trehle, pipes 
 And whistles in its sound. — — 
 
 The Muses are turned gossips ; they have lost 
 The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase, 
 Language of gods. Come then, domestic Muse, 
 In slipshod measure loosely prattling on 
 Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream. 
 Or drowning flies, or shoe lost in the mire 
 By little whimpering boy, vith rueful face ; 
 Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded Washing-Day. 
 Te who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend, 
 With l)owed soul, full well ye ken the day 
 Which week, smooth sliding ajfter week brings on 
 Too soon ; — for to that day nor peace belongs 
 Nor comfort ; — ere the first gray streak of dawn, 
 The red-armed washers come and chase repose. 
 Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth, 
 
212 
 
 E'er visited that day : the very cat, 
 
 From the wet kitchen scared and reeking hearth, 
 
 Tisits the parlour, — an unwonted guest. 
 
 The silent breakfast-meal is soon dispatched ; 
 
 ITninterrupted, save by anxious looks 
 
 Cast at the lowering sky, if sky should lower. 
 
 From that last evU, preserve us heavens ! 
 
 For should the skies pour down, adieu to all 
 
 Eemains of quiet : then expect to hear 
 
 Of sad disasters, — dirt and gravel stains 
 
 Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once 
 
 Snapped short, — and Hnen-horse by dog thrown down, 
 
 And all the petty miseries of life. 
 
 Saints have been calm while stretched npon the rack, 
 
 A.nd Guatimozin smiled on burning coals ; 
 
 But never yet did housewife notable 
 
 Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day. 
 
 — But grant the welkin fair, require not thou 
 
 Who call'st thyself perchance the master there. 
 
 Or study swept, or nicely dusted coat, 
 
 Or usual 'tendance ; — ask not, indiscreet. 
 
 Thy stockings mended, though the yawning rents 
 
 Gape wide as Erebus ; nor hope to find 
 
 Some snug recess impervious ; shouldst thou try 
 
 The 'customed garden walks, thine eye shall rue 
 
 The budding fragrance of thy tender shrubs, 
 
 Myrtle or rose, all crushed beneath the weight 
 
 Of coarse checked apron, — with impatient hand 
 
 Twitched off when showers impend : or crossing lines 
 
 Shall mar thy musing, as the wet cold sheet 
 
213 
 
 Flaps in thy face abrupt. Woe to the friend 
 
 Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim 
 
 On such a day the hospitable rites ! 
 
 Looks, blank at best, and stinted courtesy, 
 
 Shall he receive. Vainly he feeds his hopes 
 
 With dinner of roast chicken, savoury pie, 
 
 Or tart or pudding : — pudding he nor tart 
 
 That day shall eat ; nor, though the husband try. 
 
 Mending what can't be helped, to kindle mirth 
 
 From cheer deficient, shall his consort's brpw 
 
 Clear up propitious : — the unlucky guest 
 
 In silence dines, and early slinks away. 
 
 I well remember, when a child, the awe 
 
 This day struck into me ; for then the maids, 
 
 I scarceknew why, looked cross, and drove me from them : 
 
 Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope 
 
 Usual indulgencies , jelly or creams, 
 
 Eelic of costly suppers, and set by 
 
 For me their petted one ; or buttered toast, 
 
 When butter was forbid ; or thrilling tale 
 
 Of ghost, or witch, or murder — so I went 
 
 And sheltered me beside the parlour fire : 
 
 There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms, 
 
 Tended the little ones, and watched from harm, 
 
 Anxiously fond, though oft her spectacles 
 
 With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins 
 
 Drawn from her ravelled stocking, might have soured 
 
 One less indulgent. — 
 
 At intervals my mother's voice was heard. 
 
 Urging dispatch : briskly the work went on, 
 
214 
 
 AH hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring, 
 
 To fold, and starch, and clap, and iron, and plait. 
 
 Then would I sit me down, and ponder much 
 
 Why washings were. Sometimes through hollow bowl 
 
 Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft 
 
 The floating bubbles ; little dreaming then 
 
 To see, Mongolfier, thy silken ball 
 
 Bide buoyant through the clouds — so near approach 
 
 The sports of children and the toils of men. 
 
 Earth, air, and sky, and ocean, hath its bubbles. 
 
 And verse is one of them — this most of alL 
 
215 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 Animula, vagula, blandula. 
 
 Life ! I know not what thou art, 
 
 But know that thou and I must part ; 
 
 And when, or how, or where we met, 
 
 I own to me's a secret yet. 
 
 But this I know, when thou art fled. 
 
 Where'er they lay these limbs, this head. 
 
 No clod so valueless shall be, 
 
 As all that then remains of me. 
 
 whither, whither, dost thou fly, 
 
 Where bend unseen thy trackless course, 
 And in this strange divorce. 
 
 Ah tell where I must seek this compound I ? 
 
 To the vast ocean of empyreal flame. 
 From whence thy essence came. 
 Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed 
 Prom matter's base encumbering weed ? 
 Or dost thou, hid from sight, 
 "Wait, like some spell-bouna knight, 
 
216 
 
 Through blank oblivious years th' appointed hour. 
 To break thy trance and reassume thy power ? 
 Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be ? 
 say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee ? 
 
 Life ! we've been long together, 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
 ' Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
 Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear ; 
 Then steal away, give little warning. 
 Choose thine own time ; 
 Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime 
 Bid me Good morning. 
 
217 
 
 ENIGMA, 
 
 "We are spirits all in white 
 
 On a field as black as night, 
 
 There we dance and sport and play 
 
 Changing eTsry changing day ; 
 
 Yet with us is wisdom found 
 
 As we move in mystic round. 
 
 Mortal, wouldst thou know the grains 
 
 That Ceres heaps on Libya's plains. 
 
 Or leaves that yellow Autumn strews, 
 
 Or the stars that Herschel views, 
 
 Or fiud how many drops would drain 
 
 The wide-scooped bosom of the main, 
 
 Or measure central depths below, — 
 
 Ask of us, and thou shalt know. 
 
 With fairy feet we compass round 
 
 The pyramid's capacious bound 
 
 Or step by step ambitious climb 
 
 The cloud-capt mountain's height sublime, 
 
 Eiches though we do not use 
 
 'Tis ours to gain, and ours to lose. 
 
 From Araby the Blest we came 
 
 In every land our tongue's the same ; 
 
 And if our number you require 
 
 U 
 
218 
 
 6o count the bright Aonian quire. 
 "Wouldst thou cast a spell to find 
 The track of light, the speed of wind, 
 Or when the snail with creeping pace 
 ShaU the swellJngi globe embrace ; 
 Mortal, ours the powerful spell ; — 
 Ask of us, for we can teU. 
 
 (FlQUBES ON A' SLATE.); 
 
ARTHUR AIK'lJSr, was born at "Warrington in 
 Lancashire, May -19, 1773, and died in London in 
 1854. 
 
 He was the eldest son of John Aikin M.D. long 
 and honorably distinguished in the world of letters. 
 
 In Arthur .the family vocation declared itself 
 from infancy. He could read well before he had 
 eompleted his second year. In his seventh, his 
 father entered him at the excellent Free School of 
 his native town. The start thus gained was never 
 lost. He derived from his father, together with an 
 ardent love of literature, ancient and moden, a zeal 
 for several of those branches of science which he 
 cultivated with the most success in after life ; for 
 Zoology, to the study of which his father had been 
 incited by his intimate correspondence with Mr. 
 Pennant ; foit English Botany, and fur Chemistry, 
 a visit at the age of twelve in the house of Dr. 
 
220 
 
 Priestley, then pursuing at Birmingham, his 
 brilliant course of chemical discovery, confirmed 
 him in his predilection for this science. 
 
 The destination of the grave and studious boy 
 was early fixed for the Christian Ministry. After 
 some years passed under the tuition of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Barbauld he became a student of the 'New College 
 at Hackney, and a favorite pupil in their respective 
 lines of the learned Gilbert Wakefield, and ot Dr. 
 Priestley, who delighted him by claiming his 
 assistance in the arrangement of his new laboratory. 
 
 Mr. Aikin was for nearly two years one of the 
 Ministers of a highly respectable congregation at 
 Shrewsbury. 
 
 At the end of this time, from motives which did 
 him nothing but honour, he relinquished his pro- 
 fession, but not his connection with that part of the 
 country ; he made several tours in Wales, of one 
 of which he published an interesting and instructive 
 account, and he was the first to investigate and 
 describe the geology of Shropshire. 
 
 Henceforth his home was in London; a^d for 
 many years in the house of his beloved brother the 
 late Mr. Charles Aikin, in conjunction with whom 
 he published in 1797 the Chemical Dictionary. 
 In this work the separate articles are not assigned 
 to their respective authors, so intimate was the 
 concert between the Brothers, so equally shared 
 
221 
 
 tte labour and the ability ! Through a long career 
 he preserved without the smallest deviation, " the 
 even tenor of his way." A total absence of ambi- 
 tion ; a natural shyness which shrunk from all 
 display ; a taciturnity often painful and mortifying 
 to his friends, withheld him from ever taking in 
 mixed society, or in general estimation the place 
 which his eminent abilities, his -scientific skill, and 
 the extraordinary variety, extent, and accuracy of 
 his knowledge, justly entitled him ; on the other 
 hand he never engaged in a controversy and never 
 made an enemy. His wants were few, his manners 
 simple, kind and courteou?, his affections tender and 
 constant ; his temper was imperturbable ; his charity 
 
 (Unfailing, his disinterestedness exemplary, his morals 
 
 ^spotless. 
 
 m 2 
 
AGAINST INCONSISTENCY 
 
 IN OUE 
 
 EXPECTATIONS. 
 1773. 
 
AGAINST INCONSISTENCY IN OUR 
 EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 " What is more reasonable, than that they .who 
 " take pains for any thing, should get most in 
 "that particular for which they take pains? 
 " They have taken pains for power, you for right 
 " principles ; they for riches, you for a proper use 
 " of the appearances of things : see whether they 
 " have the advantage of you in that for which you 
 " have taken pains, and which they neglect : If 
 " they are in power, and you not, why will not 
 " you speak the truth to yourself, th^t you do 
 " nothing for the sake of power, but that they do 
 " every thing ? No, but since I take care to have 
 " right principles, it is more reasonable that I 
 " should have power. Yes, in respect to what 
 " you take care about, your principles. But give 
 " up to others the things in which they have 
 "taken more care than you. Else it is just as 
 
226 
 
 '" if, because you have right principles, you should 
 "think it fit that when you shoot an arrow, you 
 " should hit the mark better than an archer, or 
 '" that you should forge better than a smith." 
 Carter's Epicxetus. 
 
 As most of the unhappiness in the world arises 
 -.rather from disappointed desires, than froili positive 
 evil, it is of the utmost consequence to attain just 
 notions of the laws and order of the universe, that 
 we may not vex ourselves with fruitless wishes, or 
 give way to groundless and unreasonable discontent. 
 The laws of natural philosophy, indeed, are tolerably 
 understood and attended to ; and though we may 
 suffer inconveniences, we are seldom disappointed in 
 consequence of them. No man expects to preserve 
 orange-trees in the open air through an English 
 winter; or when he lias 'planted an acorn, to see it 
 become a large oak in a few months. The mind of 
 man naturally yields to necessity ; and our wishes 
 soon subside when we see the impossibility of their 
 being gratified. Now, upon an accurate inspection, 
 we shall find, in the moral government of the world, 
 and the order of the intellectual system, laws as de- 
 terminate, fixed, and invariable, as any in Newton's 
 'Principia. The progress of vegetation is not more 
 
2^7 
 
 oertain then the growth of hahit ; nor is the powei" 
 of attraction more clearly proved than the force of 
 affection or the influence of example. The man 
 therefore who has well studied the operations of 
 nature in mind as well as matter, will acquire a 
 certain moderation and equity in his claims upon 
 Providence. He never will be disappointed either 
 in himself or others. He wiU act with precision ; 
 and expect that effect, and that alone, from his efforts, 
 which they are naturally adapted to produce. Fop 
 want of this, men of merit and integrity often censure 
 the dispositions of Providence for suffering characters- 
 they despise to run away with advantages which, 
 they yet know, are purchased by such means as a 
 high and noble spirit could never submit to. If you 
 refuse to pay the price, why expect the purchase ? 
 We should consider this world as a great mart of 
 commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various 
 commodities, riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integ- 
 rity, knowledge. Every thing is marked at a settled 
 price. Our time, our labour, our ingenuity, is sa 
 much ready money which we are to lay out to the 
 best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject ; 
 but stand to your own judgement ; and do not, like 
 children, when you have purchased one thing, repine 
 that you do not possess another which you did not 
 purchase. Such is the force of well-regulated in- 
 dustry, that a steady and vigorous exertion of our 
 
228 
 
 faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure 
 success. Would you, for instance, be rich ? Do 
 you think that single point worth the sacrificing 
 every thing else to ? You may then be rich. 
 Thousands have become so from the lowest begin- 
 nings by toil, and patient diligence, and attention 
 to the minutest articles of expense and profit. But 
 you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of a 
 vacant mind, of a free unsuspicious temper. If you 
 preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun 
 and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions 
 of morals which you brought with you from the 
 schools, must be considerably lowered, and mixed 
 with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-mind- 
 ed prudence. You must learn to do hard, if not 
 unjust things ; and for the nice embarrassments of 
 a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for 
 you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must 
 shut your heart against the Muses, and be content 
 to feed your understanding with plain, household 
 truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge 
 your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sen- 
 timents ; but must keep on in one beaten track, 
 without turning aside either to the right hand or to 
 the left. " But I cannot submit to drudgery like 
 this — I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well : be above 
 it then ; only do not repine that you are not rich. 
 Is knowledge the pearl of price ? That too may 
 
229 
 
 be purchased — by steady application, and long 
 solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow 
 these, and you shall be wise. " But (says the man 
 of letters) what a hardship is it that many an 
 illiterate fellow who cannot construe the motto of 
 the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and 
 make a figure, while I have little more than the 
 common conveniences of life." Et tibi magna 
 satis ! — "Was it in order to raise a fortime that you 
 consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and 
 retirement ? Was it to be rich that you grew pale 
 over the midnight lamp, and distilled the sweetness 
 from the Greek and Eoman spring? Tou have 
 then mistaken your path, and ill employed your in- 
 dustry. " "What reward have I then for all my 
 labours ? " "What reward ! A large comprehensive 
 soul, well purged from vulgar fears and perturba- 
 tions, and prejudices; able to comprehend and 
 interpret the works of man — of God. A rich 
 flourishing, cultivated mind, pregnant with inex- 
 haustible stores of entertainment and reflection. A 
 perpetual spring of fresh ideas ; and the conscious 
 dignity of superior intelligence. Good heaven ! 
 and what reward can you ask besides ? 
 
 " But is it not some reproach upon the economy 
 of Providence that such a one, who is a mean dirty 
 feUow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy 
 half a nation ?" Not in the least. He made him- 
 
 W 
 
230 
 
 self a meau dirty fellow for that very end. He has 
 paid his health, his conscience, his liberty for it ; and 
 will you envy him his bargain ? Will you hang 
 your head and blush in his presence because he 
 outshines you in equipage and show ? Lift up your 
 brow with a noble confidence, and say to yourself, 
 I have not these things, it is true ; but it is because 
 I have not sought, because I have not desired them ; 
 it is because I possess something better. I have 
 chosen my lot. I am content and satisfied. 
 
 Tour are a modest man — You love quiet and in- 
 dependence, and have a delicacy and reserve in 
 your temper which renders it impossible for you to 
 elbow your way in the world, and be the herald of 
 your own merits. Be content then with a modest 
 retirement, with the esteem of your intimate friends, 
 with the praises of a blameless heart, and a deHcate 
 ingenuous spirit; but resign the splendid distinctions 
 of the world to those who can better scramble for 
 them. 
 
 The man whose tender sensibility of conscience 
 and strict regard to the rules of morality makes him 
 scrupulous and fearful of offending, is often heard 
 to complain of the disadvantages be lies under in 
 every path of honour and profit. " Could I but get 
 over some nice points, and conform to the practice 
 and opinion of those about me, I might stand as 
 fair a chance as others for dignities and preferment." 
 
231 
 
 And why can you not ? What hinders you from 
 discarding this trouhlesome scrupulosity of yours 
 which stands so grievously in your way ? If it be 
 a smaU thing to enjoy a healthful mind, sound at 
 the very core, that does not shrink from the keen- 
 est inspection ; inward freedom from remorse and 
 perturbation ; unsullied whiteness and simplicity of 
 manners ; a genuine integrity 
 
 " Pure in the last recesses of the mind ;" 
 if you think these advantages an inadequate recom- 
 pense for what you resign, dismiss your scruples 
 this instant, and be a slave-merchant, a parasite, 
 or — what you please. 
 
 " If these be motives weak, hreak off betimes ;" 
 
 and as you have not spirit to assert the dignity of 
 virtue, be wise enough not to forego the emoluments 
 of vice. 
 
 I much admire the spirit of the ancient philoso- 
 phers, in that they never attempted, as our moralists 
 often do, to lower the tone of philosophy, and make 
 it consistent with all the indulgences of indolence 
 and sensuality. They never thought of having the 
 bulk of mankind for their disciples ; but kept them- 
 selves as distinct as possible from a worldly life. 
 They plainly told men what sacrifices were required, 
 and what advantages they were which might be 
 expected. 
 
232 
 
 " Si rirtus hoc una potest dare, fortia omissia 
 Hoc age deliciia " 
 
 If you would be a philosopher these are the terms. 
 You must do thus and thus : there is no other way. 
 If not, go and he one of the vulgar. 
 
 There is no one quality gives so much dignity to 
 a character as consistency of conduct. Even if a 
 man's pursuits be wrong and unjustifiable, yet if 
 they are prosecuted with steadiness and vigour, we 
 cannot withhold our admiration. The most char- 
 acteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some 
 one important object, and pursue it through 
 life. It was this made Caesar a great man. His 
 object was amljition ; he pursued it steadily, and 
 was always ready to sacrifice to it every interfering 
 passion or inclination. 
 
 There is a pretty passage in one of Lucian's dia- 
 logues, where Jupiter complains to Cupid that 
 though he has had so many intrigues, he was never 
 sincerely beloved. In order to be loved, says Cupid, 
 you must lay aside your segis and your thunder- 
 bolts, and you must curl and perfume your hair, and 
 place a garland on your head, and walk with a soft 
 step, and assume a winning obsequious deportment. 
 But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing to resign so 
 much of my dignity. Then, returns Cupid, leave off 
 desiring to be loved — He wanted to be Jupiter and 
 Adonis at the same time. 
 
233 
 
 It must be confessed, that men of genius are of 
 all otlLets most inclined to make these unreasonable 
 claims. As their relish for enjoyment is strong, 
 their views large and comprehensive, and they feel 
 themselves lifted above the common bulk of man- 
 kind, they are apt to slight that natural reward of 
 praise and admiration which is ever largely paid to 
 distinguished abilities ; and to expect to be called 
 forth to public notice and favour : without consider- 
 ing that their talents' are commonly very unfit for 
 active life ; that their eccentricity and turn for 
 speculation disqualifies them for the business of the 
 world, which is best carried on by men of moderate 
 genius ; and that society is not olJliged to reward 
 any one who is not useful to it. ' The poets have 
 been a very unreasonable race, and have often com- 
 plained loudly of the neglect of genius and the 
 ingratitude of the age. The tender and pensive 
 Cowley, and the elegant Shenstone, had their 
 minds tinctured by this discontent ; and even the 
 sublime melancholy of Young was too much owing 
 to the stings of disappointed ambition. 
 
 The moderation we have been endeavouring to 
 inculcate will likewise prevent much mortification 
 and disgust in our commerce with mankind. As 
 we ought not to wish in ourselves, so neither should 
 we expect in our friends contrary qualifications. 
 Young and sanguine, when we enter the world, and 
 
234 
 
 feel our affections drawn forth by any particular 
 excellence in a character, we immediately' give it 
 credit for aU others ; and are beyond measure dis- 
 gusted when we come to discover, as we soon must 
 discover, the defects in the other side of the balance. 
 But nature is much more frugal than to heap to- 
 gether all manner of shining qualities in one glaring 
 mass. Like a judicious painter she endeavours to 
 preserve a certain unity of style and colouring in her 
 pieces. Models of absolute perfection are only to be 
 met with in romance ; where exquisite beauty, and 
 briUiant wit, and profound judgement, and imma- 
 culate virtue, are all blended together to adorn some 
 favourite character. As an anatomist knows that 
 the racer cannot have the strength and muscles of 
 the draught horse ; and that winged men, griffins, 
 and mermaids must be mere creatures of the im- 
 agination ; so the philosopher is sensible that there 
 are combinations of moral qualities which never can 
 take place but in idea. There is a different air and 
 complexion in characters as well as in faces, though 
 perhaps each equally beautiful ; and the excellencies 
 of one cannot be transferred to the other. Thus if 
 one man possesses a stoical apathy of soul, acts in- 
 dependent of the opinion of the world, and fulfills 
 every duty with mathematical exactness, you must 
 not expect that man to be greatly influenced by the 
 weakness of pity, or the partialities of friendship : 
 
235 
 
 you must not be offended that he does not fly to 
 meet you after a short absence ; or require from him 
 the convivial spirit and honest effusions of a warm, 
 open, susceptible heart. If another is remarkable 
 for a lively active zeal, inflexible integrity, a strong 
 indignation against vice, and freedom in reproving 
 it, he will probably have some little bluntness in 
 his address not altogether suitable to polished life ; 
 he will want the winning arts of conversation ; he 
 will disgust by a kind of haughtiness and neghgence 
 in his manner, and often hurt the delicacy of his 
 acquaintance with harsh and disagreeable truths. 
 
 "We usually say — that man is a genius, but he 
 has some whims and oddities — suc'h a one has a 
 very general knowledge, hut he is superficial ; &c. 
 Now in all such cases we should speak more ra- 
 tionally did we substitute therefore for hut. He is 
 a genius, therefore he is whimsical ; and the like. 
 
 It is the fault of the present age, owing to the 
 freer commerce that different ranks and professions 
 now enjoy with each other, that characters are not 
 marked with sufficient strength : the several classes 
 run too much into one another. We have fewer 
 pedants, it is true, but we have fewer striking 
 originals. Every one is expected to have such a 
 tincture of general knowledge as is incompatible 
 with going deep into any science ; and such a con- 
 formity to ' fashionable manners as checks the free 
 
236 
 
 workings of the ruling passion, and gives an insipid 
 sameness to the face of society, under the idea of 
 polish and regularity. 
 
 There is a oast of manners peculiar and becommg 
 to each age, sex, and profession ; one, therefore, 
 should not throw out illiberal and common-place 
 censures against another. Each is perfect in its 
 kind. A 'woman as a woman : a tradesman as a 
 tradesman. We are often hurt by the brutality and 
 sluggish conceptions of the vulgar ; not considering 
 that some there must be to be hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water, and that cultivated genius, or even 
 any great refinement and delicacy in their moral 
 feelings, would "be a real misfortune to them. 
 
 Let us than study the philosophy of the human 
 mind. The man who is master of this science, will 
 know what to expect from every one. From this 
 man, wise advice ; from that cordial sympathy ; from 
 another, casual entertainment. The passions and 
 inclinations of others are his tools which he can use 
 with as much precision as he would the mechanical 
 powers; and he can as readily make allowance for 
 the workings of vanity, or the bias of self-interest in 
 his friends, as for the power of friction, or the 
 irregularities of the needle. 
 
 FINIS.