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the proud and affectionate enumeration of the names which encircle the brow of Britain with the halo of immortal glory; of the spots consecrated by the footsteps of genius and virtue, where the future pilgrim from the West would kneel with beating heart; the splendid description of London with all its pomp and circumstance' of greatness, the complacent allusion to angel charities,' and the book of life' held out to distant lands,'- and doubt for a moment that this strain was dictated by the heart of a true patriot, a heart which feared because it fondly loved?

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"This was the last of Mrs. Barbauld's separate publications. Who indeed, that knew and loved her, could have wished her to expose again that honoured head to the scorns of the unmanly, the malignant, and the base? Her fancy was still in all its brightness; her spirits might have been cheered and her energy revived, by the cordial and respectful greetings, the thanks and plaudits, with which it was once the generous and graceful practice of contemporary criticism to welcome the re-appearance of a well-deserving veteran in the field of letters. As it was, though still visited by

the thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers,

she for the most part confined to a few friends all participation in the strains which they inspired. She even laid aside the intention which she had entertained of preparing a new edition of her Poems, long out of print and often inquired for in vain: - well knowing that a day must come when the sting of Envy would be blunted, and her memory would have its fame.

"No incident worthy of mention henceforth occurred to break the uniformity of her existence. She gave up all distant journeys; and confined at home to a narrow circle of connexions and acquaintance, she suffered life to slide away, as it were, at its own pace,

Nor shook the outhasting sands, nor bid them stay.

An asthmatic complaint, which was slowly undermining her excellent constitution, more and more indisposed her for any

considerable exertion either of mind or body: but the arrival of a visitor had always the power to rouse her from a state of languor. Her powers of conversation suffered little declension to the last, although her memory of recent circumstances became somewhat impaired. Her disposition, — of which sensibility was not in earlier life the leading feature,— now mellowed into softness, pleasingly exhibited

Those tender tints that only time can give.

Her manners, never tainted by pride, - which, with the baser but congenial affection of envy, was a total stranger to her bosom, were now remarkable for their extreme humility: she spoke of every one not merely with the candour and forbearance which she had long practised; but with interest, with kindness, with an indulgence which sometimes. appeared but too comprehensive; she seemed reluctant to allow, or believe, that any of her fellow-creatures had a failing, while she gave them credit gratuitously for many virtues. This state of mind, which, with her native acuteness of discernment, it must apparently have cost her some struggles to attain, had at least the advantage of causing her easily to admit of such substitutes as occurred for those contemporary and truly congenial friendships which, in the course of nature, were now fast failing her. She lost her early and affectionate friend Mrs. Kenrick in 1819. In December 1822 her brother sunk under a long decline, which had served as a painful preparation to the final parting. A few months later she lost, in the excellent Mrs. John Taylor of Norwich, perhaps the most intimate and most highly valued of all her distant friends; to whose exalted and endearing character she bore the following well-merited testimony in a letter addressed to one of her daughters.

"Receive the assurance of my most affectionate sympathy in those feelings with which you must be now contemplating the loss of that dear woman, so long the object of your respect and affection; nor indeed yours only, but of all who knew her. A prominent part of those feelings, however, must

be, that the dear object of them is released from suffering, has finished her task, and entered upon her reward . . . . Never will she be forgotten by those who knew her! Her strong sense, her feeling, her energy, her principle, her patriot feelings, her piety, rational yet ardent,- all these mark a character of no common sort. When to these high claims upon general regard are added those of relation or friend, the feeling must be such as no course of years can efface.'

"A gentle and scarcely perceptible decline was now sloping for herself the passage to the tomb:- she felt and hailed its progress as a release from languor and infirmity, a passport to another and a higher state of being. Her friends, however, flattered themselves that they might continue to enjoy her yet a little longer; and she had consented to remove under the roof of her adopted son, that his affectionate attentions and those of his family might be the solace of every remaining hour. But Providence had ordained it otherwise she quitted indeed her own house, but whilst on a visit at the neighbouring one of her sister-in-law Mrs. Aikin, the constant and beloved friend of nearly her whole. life, her bodily powers gave way almost suddenly; and after lingering a few days, on the morning of March the 9th, 1825, she expired without a struggle, in the eighty-second year of

her age.

"To claim for this distinguished woman the praise of purity and elevation of mind may well appear superfluous. Her education and connexions, the course of her life, the whole tenour of her writings, bear abundant testimony to this part of her character. It is a higher, or at least a rarer commen. dation to add, that no one ever better loved 'a sister's praise,' even that of such sisters as might have been peculiarly regarded in the light of rivals. She was acquainted with almost all the principal female writers of her time; and there was not one of the number whom she failed frequently to mention in terms of admiration, esteem or affection, whether in conversation, in letters to her friends, or in print. To humbler aspirants in the career of letters, who often applied to her for ad

vice or assistance, she was invariably courteous, and in many instances essentially serviceable. The sight of youth and beauty was peculiarly gratifying to her fancy and her feelings; and children and young persons, especially females, were accordingly large sharers in her benevolence: she loved their society, and would often invite them to pass weeks or months in her house, when she spared no pains to amuse and instruct them; and she seldom failed, after they had quitted her, to recall herself from time to time to their recollection, by affectionate and playful letters, or welcome presents.

"In the conjugal relation, her conduct was guided by the highest principles of love and duty. As a sister, the uninterrupted flow of her affection, manifested by numberless tokens of love, not alone to her brother, but to every member of his family, will ever be recalled by them with emotions of tenderness, respect, and gratitude. She passed through a long life without having dropped, it is believed, a single friendship, and without having drawn upon herself a single enmity which could properly be called personal.

"We now proceed to offer some account of the contents of the present volumes, with a few remarks on the genius of their author. The small bulk of the writings of Mrs. Barbauld, compared with the long course of years during which she exercised the pen, is a sufficient proof that she offered to the public none but the happiest inspirations of her muse, and not even these till they had received all the polish of which she judged them susceptible. To a friend who had expressed his surprise at not finding inserted in her volume a poem which he had admired in manuscript, she well and characteristically replied; I had rather it should be asked of twenty pieces why they are not here, than of one why it is.' Her representatives have in the present instance followed, to the best of their judgment, a similar principle of selection. Out of a considerable number of pieces which appear from their dates to have been rejected by herself from her first publication, they have printed only two: that agreeable jeu d'esprit, "The Inventory of the Furniture of Dr. Priestley's

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Study," probably omitted in the first instance for reasons which no longer exist; and the elegant lines on "The Deserted Village," which are given partly for the sake of connecting the name of their author as a contemporary with that of a poet who has been so long enrolled among the classics of his country. It may also be mentioned, that Goldsmith, whose envy is well known, bore involuntary testimony to the merit of these lines, by exhibiting no sentiment but mortification on hearing them read with applause in a London circle.

"Of the pieces composed since the first publication of Mrs. Barbauld's "Poems" (which form the larger part of the present collection); the two longest, "The Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce," and "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,” have already appeared in separate pamphlets; and the first of them is added to the last edition of the Poems: several of the smaller ones have also been inserted in periodical works. Corrected copies of most of those now printed for the first time were found among her papers, evidently prepared for insertion in the enlarged volume which she long meditated, but never completed.

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"The poems have been disposed, with some unimportant exceptions, in chronological order, as nearly as it could be ascertained. When the productions of a writer extend over so long a period as nearly sixty years, they become in some measure the record of an age, a document for the historian of literature and opinions; and they ought to be arranged with some view to this secondary object, by which their interest is enhanced. It is also agreeable to trace the author's progress from youth to age, by changes of style, or the succession of different trains of thought. In the writings of Mrs. Barbauld, however, the character of the style varies little from the beginning to the end. It is nowhere to be found in an unformed state; for so relentlessly did she destroy all her juvenile essays, that the editor is not aware of the existence of a single piece which can be ascertained to have been composed before the age of twenty: the printed

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