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an unclouded one;-twenty years elapsed before the hand of death sundered this fraternal pair.

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"A warm attachment to the authors of what has been called the Augustan age of English literature, on whom her own taste and style were formed, was observable in the conversation of Mrs. Barbauld, and often in her writings; and she gratified this sentiment by offering to the public, in 1804, a selection from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, to which she gave her name. This delightful piece may, perhaps, be regarded as the most successful of her efforts in literary criticism; and that it should be so is easily to be accounted for. There were many striking points of resemblance between her genius and that of Addison. As prose writers, both were remarkable for uniting wit of the light and sportive kind with vividness of fancy, and a style at once rich and lively, flowing and full of idiom: both of them rather avoided the pathetic: in both, the sentiments of rational and liberal devotion' were blended with the speculations of philosophy and the paintings of a fine imagination;' both were admirable for the splendour they diffused over a serious, the grace with which they touched a lighter subject.' The humorous delineation of manners and characters indeed, in which Addison so conspicuously shone, was never attempted by Mrs. Barbauld: in poetry, on the other hand, she surpassed him in all the qualities of which excellence in that style is composed. Certainly this great author could not elsewhere have found a critic so capable of entering, as it were, into the soul of his writings, culling their choicest beauties, and drawing them forth for the admiration of a world by which they had begun to be neglected. Steele, and the other contributors to these periodical papers, are also ably, though briefly, characterized by her; and such pieces of theirs are included in the selection as could fairly claim enduring remembrance.

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"The essay opens with the observation, that it is equally true of books as of their authors, that one generation passeth

Three vols. 12mo, Johnson, 1804.

away and another cometh.' The mutual influence exerted by books and manners on each other is then remarked; and the silent and gradual declension from what might be called the active life of an admired and popular book, to the honourable retirement of a classic, is lightly, but impressively, traced; closed by remarks on the mutations and improvements which have particularly affected the works in question. To young persons chiefly, the selection is offered, as containing the 'essence' of a celebrated set of works. An instructive account is added of each of these in particular, of the state of society at the time of their appearance, the objects at which they aimed, and their effects. This essay will not be found in the present volumes, because it was considered that to separate it from the selection which it was written to introduce, would be to defeat its very purpose.

"During the same year (1804) Mrs. Barbauld was prevailed upon to undertake the task of examining and making a selection from the letters of Richardson, the novelist, and his correspondents, of which a vast collection had remained in the hands of his last surviving daughter; after whose death they were purchased of his grand-children. It must be confessed that, on the whole, these letters were less deserving of public attention than she had probably expected to find them; and very good judges have valued more than all the remaining contents of the six duodecimo volumes which they occupy, the elegant and interesting life of Richardson, and the finished reviewal of his works prefixed by the editor.

"It is probable that Mrs. Barbauld consented to employ herself in these humbler offices of literature, chiefly as a solace under the pressure of anxieties and apprehensions of a peculiar and most distressing nature, which had been increasing in urgency during a long course of time, and which found their final completion on the 11th of November 1808, in the event by which she became a widow. She has touchingly alluded, in her poem of "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," to

'that sad death whence most affection bleeds, Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes.'

And though the escape of a sufferer from the most melancholy of human maladies could not, in itself, be a subject of rational regret, her spirits were deeply wounded, both by the severe trials through which she had previously passed, and by the mournful void which always succeeds the removal of an object of long and deep, however painful, interest. An affecting dirge will be found among her poems, which records her feelings on this occasion. She also communicated to the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, a memoir of Mr. Barbauld; in which his character is thus delineated.

"The scenes of life Mr. Barbauld passed through were common ones, but his character was not a common one. His reasoning powers were acute, and sharpened by exercise; for he was early accustomed to discussion, and argued with great clearness; with a degree of warmth indeed, but with the most perfect candour towards his opponent. He gave the most liberal latitude to free inquiry, and could bear to hear those truths attacked which he most steadfastly believed; the more because he steadfastly believed them; for he was delighted to submit to the test of argument those truths which he had no doubt, could, by argument, be defended. He had an uncommon flow of conversation on those points which had engaged his attention, and delivered himself with a warmth and animation which enlivened the driest subject. He was equally at home in French and English literature; and the exquisite sensibility of his mind, with the early culture his taste had received, rendered him an excellent judge of all those works which appeal to the heart and the imagination. His feelings were equally quick and vivid; his expressive countenance was the index of his mind, and of every instantaneous impression made upon it. Children, who are the best physiognomists, were always attracted to him, and he delighted to entertain them with lively narratives suited to their age, in which he had great invention. The virtues of his heart will be acknowledged by all who knew him. His benevolence was enlarged: it was the spontaneous propensity of his nature,

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as well as the result of his religious system. He was temperate, almost to abstemiousness; yet without any tincture of ascetic rigour. A free, undaunted spirit, a winning simplicity, a tendency to enthusiasm, but of the gentle and liberal kind, formed the prominent lineaments of his character. The social. affections were all alive and active in him. His heart overflowed with kindness to all, the lowest that came within his sphere. There never was a human being who had less of the selfish and worldly feelings, they hardly seemed to form a part of his nature. His was truly the charity which thinketh no ill. Great singleness of heart, and a candour very opposite to the suspicious temper of worldly sagacity, made him slow to impute unworthy motives to the actions of his fellow-men; yet his candour by no means sprung from indifference to moral rectitude, for when he could no longer resist conviction, his censure was decided and his indignation warm, and warmly expressed. His standard of virtue was high, and he felt no propensities which disposed him to lower it. His religious. sentiments were of the most pure and liberal cast; and his pulpit services, when the state of his spirits seconded the ardour of his mind, were characterized by the rare union of a fervent spirit of devotion, with a pure, sublime philosophy, supported by arguments of metaphysical acuteness. not speak the language of any party, nor exactly coincide with the systems of any. He was a believer in the pre-existence of Christ, and, in a certain modified sense, in the atonement; thinking those doctrines most consonant to the tenour of Scripture..... but he was too sensible of the difficulties which press upon every system, not to feel indulgence for all, and he was not zealous for any doctrine which did not affect the heart. Of the moral perfections of the Deity he had the purest and most exalted ideas; on these was chiefly founded his system of religion, and these, together with his own benevolent nature, led him to embrace so warmly his favourite doctrine of the final salvation of all the human race, and, indeed, the gradual rise and perfectibility of all created existence. His latter days were oppressed by a morbid affection

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of his spirits, in a great degree hereditary, which came gradually upon him, and closed the scene of his earthly usefulness; yet in the midst of the irritation it occasioned, the kindness of his nature broke forth, and some of his last acts were acts of benevolence.'

"Mrs. Barbauld had the fortitude to seek relief from dejection in literary occupation; and incapable as yet of any stronger effort, she consented to edit a collection of the British Novelists, which issued from the press in 1810. The Introductory Essay shows extent of reading combined with her usual powers of style; and the Biographical and Critical Notices prefixed to the works of each author are judiciously and gracefully executed.

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"In the following year she compiled for the use of young ladies an agreeable collection of verse and prose, in one volume 12mo. entitled "The Female Speaker." Having thus braced her mind, as it were, to the tone of original composition, she produced that beautiful offspring of her genius, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,”—the longest, and perhaps the most highly finished, of all her poems. The crisis at which this piece was produced, and concerning which it treats, was confessedly one of the most distressful within the memory of the present generation, and the author's own state of spirits deepened the gloom. She, like Cassandra, was the prophetess of woe: at the time, she was heard perhaps with less incredulity, but the event has happily discredited her vaticination in every point. That the solemn warning which she here attempted to hold forth to national pride and confidence, should cause her lines to be received by the public with less applause than their intrinsic merit might well have claimed, was perhaps in some degree to be expected; that it would expose its author-its venerable and female author-to contumely and insult, could only have been anticipated by those thoroughly acquainted with the instincts of the hired assassin of reputation shooting from his coward ambush. Can any one read the touching apostrophe,

Yet, O my country, name beloved, revered!

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