Tài liệu A Book of Sibyls Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen pptx

LINK DOWNLOAD MIỄN PHÍ TÀI LIỆU "Tài liệu A Book of Sibyls Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen pptx": http://123doc.vn/document/1046162-tai-lieu-a-book-of-sibyls-miss-barbauld-miss-edgeworth-mrs-opie-miss-austen-pptx.htm

wit. There is a pretty little story told by Mrs. Ellis in her book about Mrs. Barbauld, how one day, when Dr.
Aikin and a friend 'were conversing on the passions,' the Doctor observes that joy cannot have place in a state
of perfect felicity, since it supposes an accession of happiness.
'I think you are mistaken, papa,' says a little voice from the opposite side of the table.
'Why so, my child?' says the Doctor.
'Because in the chapter I read to you this morning, in the Testament, it is said that "there is more joy in heaven
over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance."'
Besides her English Testament and her early reading, the little girl was taught by her mother to do as little
daughters did in those days, to obey a somewhat austere rule, to drop curtsies in the right place, to make beds,
to preserve fruits. The father, after demur, but surely not without some paternal pride in her proficiency,
taught the child Latin and French and Italian, and something of Greek, and gave her an acquaintance with
English literature. One can imagine little Nancy with her fair head bending over her lessons, or, when playing
time had come, perhaps a little lonely and listening to the distant voices of the schoolboys at their games. The
mother, fearing she might acquire rough and boisterous manners, strictly forbade any communication with the
schoolboys. Sometimes in after days, speaking of these early times and of the constraint of many bygone rules
and regulations, Mrs. Barbauld used to attribute to this early formal training something of the hesitation and
shyness which troubled her and never entirely wore off. She does not seem to have been in any great harmony
with her mother. One could imagine a fanciful and high-spirited child, timid and dutiful, and yet
strong-willed, secretly rebelling against the rigid order of her home, and feeling lonely for want of liberty and
companionship. It was true she had birds and beasts and plants for her playfellows, but she was of a
gregarious and sociable nature, and she was unconsciously longing for something more, and perhaps feeling a
want in her early life which no silent company can supply.
She was about fifteen when a great event took place. Her father was appointed classical tutor to the
Warrington Academy, and thither the little family removed. We read that the Warrington Academy was a
Dissenting college started by very eminent and periwigged personages, whose silhouettes Mrs. Barbauld
herself afterwards cut out in sticking-plaster, and whose names are to this day remembered and held in just
esteem. They were people of simple living and high thinking, they belonged to a class holding then a higher
place than now in the world's esteem, that of Dissenting ministers. The Dissenting ministers were fairly well
paid and faithfully followed by their congregations. The college was started under the auspices of
distinguished members of the community, Lord Willoughby of Parham, the last Presbyterian lord, being
patron. Among the masters were to be found the well-known names of Dr. Doddridge; of Gilbert Wakefield,
the reformer and uncompromising martyr; of Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, the Hebrew scholar; of Dr. Priestley, the
chemical analyst and patriot, and enterprising theologian, who left England and settled in America for
conscience and liberty's sake.
Many other people, neither students nor professors, used to come to Warrington, and chief among them in
later years good John Howard with MSS. for his friend Dr. Aikin to correct for the press. Now for the first
time Mrs. Barbauld (Miss Aikin she was then) saw something of real life, of men and manners. It was not
likely that she looked back with any lingering regret to Knibworth, or would have willingly returned thither. A
story in one of her memoirs gives an amusing picture of the manners of a young country lady of that day. Mr.
Haines, a rich farmer from Knibworth, who had been greatly struck by Miss Aikin, followed her to
Warrington, and 'obtained a private audience of her father and begged his consent to be allowed to make her
his wife.' The father answered 'that his daughter was there walking in the garden, and he might go and ask her
himself.' 'With what grace the farmer pleaded his cause I know not,' says her biographer and niece. 'Out of all
patience at his unwelcome importunities, my aunt ran nimbly up a tree which grew by the garden wall, and let
herself down into the lane beyond.'
A Book of Sibyls, by 5
The next few years must have been perhaps the happiest of Mrs. Barbauld's life. Once when it was nearly over
she said to her niece, Mrs. Le Breton, from whose interesting account I have been quoting, that she had never
been placed in a situation which really suited her. As one reads her sketches and poems, one is struck by some
sense of this detracting influence of which she complains: there is a certain incompleteness and slightness
which speaks of intermittent work, of interrupted trains of thought. At the same time there is a natural buoyant
quality in much of her writing which seems like a pleasant landscape view seen through the bars of a window.
There may be wider prospects, but her eyes are bright, and this peep of nature is undoubtedly delightful.
III.
The letters to Miss Belsham begin somewhere about 1768. The young lady has been paying a visit to Miss
Aikin at Warrington, and is interested in everyone and everything belonging to the place. Miss Aikin is no
less eager to describe than Miss Belsham to listen, and accordingly a whole stream of characters and details of
gossip and descriptions in faded ink come flowing across their pages, together with many expressions of
affection and interest. 'My dear Betsy, I love you for discarding the word Miss from your vocabulary,' so the
packet begins, and it continues in the same strain of pleasant girlish chatter, alternating with the history of
many bygone festivities, and stories of friends, neighbours, of beaux and partners; of the latter genus, and of
Miss Aikin's efforts to make herself agreeable, here is a sample: 'I talked to him, smiled upon him, gave him
my fan to play with,' says the lively young lady. 'Nothing would do; he was grave as a philosopher. I tried to
raise a conversation: "'Twas fine weather for dancing." He agreed to my observation. "We had a tolerable set
this time." Neither did he contradict that. Then we were both silent stupid mortal thought I! but unreasonable
as he appeared to the advances that I made him, there was one object in the room, a sparkling object which
seemed to attract all his attention, on which he seemed to gaze with transport, and which indeed he hardly
took his eyes off the whole time The object that I mean was his shoebuckle.'
One could imagine Miss Elizabeth Bennett writing in some such strain to her friend Miss Charlotte Lucas
after one of the evenings at Bingley's hospitable mansion. And yet Miss Aikin is more impulsive, more
romantic than Elizabeth. 'Wherever you are, fly letter on the wings of the wind,' she cries, 'and tell my dear
Betsy what? only that I love her dearly.'
Miss Nancy Aikin (she seems to have been Nancy in these letters, and to have assumed the more dignified
Lætitia upon her marriage) pours out her lively heart, laughs, jokes, interests herself in the sentimental affairs
of the whole neighbourhood as well as in her own. Perhaps few young ladies now-a-days would write to their
confidantes with the announcement that for some time past a young sprig had been teasing them to have him.
This, however, is among Miss Nancy's confidences. She also writes poems and jeux d'esprit, and receives
poetry in return from Betsy, who calls herself Camilla, and pays her friend many compliments, for Miss Aikin
in her reply quotes the well-known lines:
Who for another's brow entwines the bays, And where she well might rival stoops to Praise.
Miss Aikin by this time has attained to all the dignity of a full-blown authoress, and is publishing a successful
book of poems in conjunction with her brother, which little book created much attention at the time. One day
the Muse thus apostrophises Betsy: 'Shall we ever see her amongst us again?' says my sister (Mrs. Aikin). My
brother (saucy fellow) says, 'I want to see this girl, I think (stroking his chin as he walks backwards and
forwards in the room with great gravity). I think we should admire one another.'
'When you come among us,' continues the warm-hearted friend, 'we shall set the bells a-ringing, bid adieu to
care and gravity, and sing "O be joyful."' And finally, after some apologies for her remiss correspondence, 'I
left my brother writing to you instead of Patty, poor soul. Well, it is a clever thing too, to have a husband to
write one's letters for one. If I had one I would be a much better correspondent to you. I would order him to
write every week.'
A Book of Sibyls, by 6
And, indeed, Mrs. Barbauld was as good as her word, and did not forget the resolutions made by Miss Aikin
in 1773. In 1774 comes some eventful news: 'I should have written to you sooner had it not been for the
uncertainty and suspense in which for a long time I have been involved; and since my lot has been fixed for
many busy engagements which have left me few moments of leisure. They hurry me out of my life. It is
hardly a month that I have certainly known I should fix on Norfolk, and now next Thursday they say I am to
be finally, irrevocably married. Pity me, dear Betsy; for on the day I fancy when you will read this letter, will
the event take place which is to make so great an era in my life. I feel depressed, and my courage almost fails
me. Yet upon the whole I have the greatest reason to think I shall be happy. I shall possess the entire affection
of a worthy man, whom my father and mother now entirely and heartily approve. The people where we are
going, though strangers, have behaved with the greatest zeal and affection; and I think we have a fair prospect
of being useful and living comfortably in that state of middling life to which I have been accustomed, and
which I love.'
And then comes a word which must interest all who have ever cared and felt grateful admiration for the works
of one devoted human being and true Christian hero. Speaking of her father's friend, John Howard, she says
with an almost audible sigh: 'It was too late, as you say, or I believe I should have been in love with Mr.
Howard. Seriously, I looked upon him with that sort of reverence and love which one should have for a
guardian angel. God bless him and preserve his health for the health's sake of thousands. And now farewell,'
she writes in conclusion: 'I shall write to you no more under this name; but under any name, in every situation,
at any distance of time or place, I shall love you equally and be always affectionately yours, tho' not always,
A. AIKIN.'
* * * * *
Poor lady! The future held, indeed, many a sad and unsuspected hour for her, many a cruel pang, many a dark
and heavy season, that must have seemed intolerably weary to one of her sprightly and yet somewhat indolent
nature, more easily accepting evil than devising escape from it. But it also held many blessings of constancy,
friendship, kindly deeds, and useful doings. She had not devotion to give such as that of the good Howard
whom she revered, but the equable help and sympathy for others of an open-minded and kindly woman was
hers. Her marriage would seem to have been brought about by a romantic fancy rather than by a tender
affection. Mr. Barbauld's mind had been once unhinged; his protestations were passionate and somewhat
dramatic. We are told that when she was warned by a friend, she only said, 'But surely, if I throw him over, he
will become crazy again;' and from a high-minded sense of pity, she was faithful, and married him against the
wish of her brother and parents, and not without some misgivings herself. He was a man perfectly sincere and
honourable; but, from his nervous want of equilibrium, subject all his life to frantic outbursts of ill-temper.
Nobody ever knew what his wife had to endure in secret; her calm and restrained manner must have
effectually hidden the constant anxiety of her life; nor had she children to warm her heart, and brighten up her
monotonous existence. Little Charles, of the Reading-book, who is bid to come hither, who counted so nicely,
who stroked the pussy cat, and who deserved to listen to the delightful stories he was told, was not her own
son but her brother's child. When he was born, she wrote to entreat that he might be given over to her for her
own, imploring her brother to spare him to her, in a pretty and pathetic letter. This was a mother yearning for a
child, not a schoolmistress asking for a pupil, though perhaps in after times the two were somewhat combined
in her. There is a pretty little description of Charles making great progress in 'climbing trees and talking
nonsense:' 'I have the honour to tell you that our Charles is the sweetest boy in the world. He is perfectly
naturalised in his new situation; and if I should make any blunders in my letter, I must beg you to impute it to
his standing by me and chattering all the time.' And how pleasant a record exists of Charles's chatter in that
most charming little book written for him and for the babies of babies to come! There is a sweet instructive
grace in it and appreciation of childhood which cannot fail to strike those who have to do with children and
with Mrs. Barbauld's books for them: children themselves, those best critics of all, delight in it.
'Where's Charles?' says a little scholar every morning to the writer of these few notes.
A Book of Sibyls, by 7
IV.
Soon after the marriage, there had been some thought of a college for young ladies, of which Mrs. Barbauld
was to be the principal; but she shrank from the idea, and in a letter to Mrs. Montagu she objects to the
scheme of higher education for women away from their natural homes. 'I should have little hope of cultivating
a love of knowledge in a young lady of fifteen who came to me ignorant and uncultivated. It is too late then to
begin to learn. The empire of the passions is coming on. Those attachments begin to be formed which
influence the happiness of future life. The care of a mother alone can give suitable attention to this important
period.' It is true that the rigidness of her own home had not prevented her from making a hasty and unsuitable
marriage. But it is not this which is weighing on her mind. 'Perhaps you may think,' she says, 'that having
myself stepped out of the bounds of female reserve in becoming an author, it is with an ill grace that I offer
these statements.'
Her arguments seem to have been thought conclusive in those days, and the young ladies' college was finally
transmuted into a school for little boys at Palgrave, in Norfolk, and thither the worthy couple transported
themselves.
One of the letters to Miss Belsham is thus dated: 'The 14th of July, in the village of Palgrave (the pleasantest
village in all England), at ten o'clock, all alone in my great parlour, Mr. Barbauld being studying a sermon,
do I begin a letter to my dear Betsy.'
When she first married, and travelled into Norfolk to keep school at Palgrave, nothing could have seemed
more tranquil, more contented, more matter-of-fact than her life as it appears from her letters. Dreams, and
fancies, and gay illusions and excitements have made way for the somewhat disappointing realisation of Mr.
Barbauld with his neatly turned and friendly postscripts a husband, polite, devoted, it is true, but somewhat
disappointing all the same. The next few years seem like years in a hive storing honey for the future, and
putting away industrious, punctual, monotonous. There are children's lessons to be heard, and school-treats to
be devised. She sets them to act plays and cuts out paper collars for Henry IV.; she always takes a class of
babies entirely her own. (One of these babies, who always loved her, became Lord Chancellor Denman; most
of the others took less brilliant, but equally respectable places, in after life.) She has also household matters
and correspondence not to be neglected. In the holidays, they make excursions to Norwich, to London, and
revisit their old haunts at Warrington. In one of her early letters, soon after her marriage, she describes her
return to Warrington.
'Dr. Enfield's face,' she declares, 'is grown half a foot longer since I saw him, with studying mathematics, and
for want of a game of romps; for there are positively none now at Warrington but grave matrons. I who have
but half assumed the character, was ashamed of the levity of my behaviour.'
It says well indeed for the natural brightness of the lady's disposition that with sixteen boarders and a
satisfactory usher to look after, she should be prepared for a game of romps with Dr. Enfield.
On another occasion, in 1777, she takes little Charles away with her. 'He has indeed been an excellent
traveller,' she says; 'and though, like his great ancestor, some natural tears he shed, like him, too, he wiped
them soon. He had a long sound sleep last night, and has been very busy to-day hunting the puss and the
chickens. And now, my dear brother and sister, let me again thank you for this precious gift, the value of
which we are both more and more sensible of as we become better acquainted with his sweet disposition and
winning manners.'
She winds up this letter with a postscript:
'Everybody here asks, "Pray, is Dr. Dodd really to be executed?" as if we knew the more for having been at
Warrington.'
A Book of Sibyls, by 8
Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld's brother, the father of little Charles and of Lucy Aikin, whose name is well known
in literature, was himself a man of great parts, industry, and ability, working hard to support his family. He
alternated between medicine and literature all his life. When his health failed he gave up medicine, and settled
at Stoke Newington, and busied himself with periodic literature; meanwhile, whatever his own pursuits may
have been, he never ceased to take an interest in his sister's work and to encourage her in every way.
It is noteworthy that few of Mrs. Barbauld's earlier productions equalled what she wrote at the very end of her
life. She seems to have been one of those who ripen with age, growing wider in spirit with increasing years.
Perhaps, too, she may have been influenced by the change of manners, the reaction against formalism, which
was growing up as her own days were ending. Prim she may have been in manner, but she was not a formalist
by nature; and even at eighty was ready to learn to submit to accept the new gospel that Wordsworth and his
disciples had given to the world, and to shake off the stiffness of early training.
It is idle to speculate on what might have been if things had happened otherwise; if the daily stress of anxiety
and perplexity which haunted her home had been removed difficulties and anxieties which may well have
absorbed all the spare energy and interest that under happier circumstances might have added to the treasury
of English literature. But if it were only for one ode written when the distracting cares of over seventy years
were ending, when nothing remained to her but the essence of a long past, and the inspirations of a still
glowing, still hopeful, and most tender spirit, if it were only for the ode called 'Life,' which has brought a
sense of ease and comfort to so many, Mrs. Barbauld has indeed deserved well of her country-people and
should be held in remembrance by them.
Her literary works are, after all, not very voluminous. She is best known by her hymns for children and her
early lessons, than which nothing more childlike has ever been devised; and we can agree with her brother,
Dr. Aikin, when he says that it requires true genius to enter so completely into a child's mind.
After their first volume of verse, the brother and sister had published a second in prose, called 'Miscellaneous
Pieces,' about which there is an amusing little anecdote in Rogers's 'Memoirs.' Fox met Dr. Aikin at dinner.
'"I am greatly pleased with your 'Miscellaneous Pieces,'" said Fox. Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire,"
continued Fox, "your essay 'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.'"
'"That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's."
'"I like much," returned Fox, "your essay 'On Monastic Institutions.'"
'"That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's."
'Fox thought it best to say no more about the book.'
These essays were followed by various of the visions and Eastern pieces then so much in vogue; also by
political verses and pamphlets, which seemed to have made a great sensation at the time. But Mrs. Barbauld's
turn was on the whole more for domestic than for literary life, although literary people always seem to have
had a great interest for her.
During one Christmas which they spent in London, the worthy couple go to see Mrs. Siddons; and Mrs.
Chapone introduces Mrs. Barbauld to Miss Burney. 'A very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young
lady,' says Mrs. Barbauld, who is always kind in her descriptions. Mrs. Barbauld's one complaint in London is
of the fatigue from hairdressers, and the bewildering hurry of the great city, where she had, notwithstanding
her quiet country life, many ties, and friendships, and acquaintances. Her poem on 'Corsica' had brought her
into some relations with Boswell; she also knew Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Here is her description of the
'Great Bear:'
A Book of Sibyls, by 9
'I do not mean that one which shines in the sky over your head; but the Bear that shines in London a great
rough, surly animal. His Christian name is Dr. Johnson. 'Tis a singular creature; but if you stroke him he will
not bite, and though he growls sometimes he is not ill-humoured.'
Johnson describes Mrs. Barbauld as suckling fools and chronicling small beer. There was not much sympathy
between the two. Characters such as Johnson's harmonise best with the enthusiastic and easily influenced.
Mrs. Barbauld did not belong to this class; she trusted to her own judgment, rarely tried to influence others,
and took a matter-of-fact rather than a passionate view of life. She is as severe to him in her criticism as he
was in his judgment of her: they neither of them did the other justice. 'A Christian and a man-about-town, a
philosopher, and a bigot acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more miserable through fear of
death.' So she writes of him, and all this was true; but how much more was also true of the great and
hypochondriacal old man! Some years afterwards, when she had been reading Boswell's long-expected 'Life
of Johnson,' she wrote of the book: 'It is like going to Ranelagh; you meet all your acquaintances; but it is a
base and mean thing to bring thus every idle word into judgment.' In our own day we too have our Boswell
and our Johnson to arouse discussion and indignation.
'Have you seen Boswell's "Life of Johnson?" He calls it a Flemish portrait, and so it is two quartos of a man's
conversation and petty habits. Then the treachery and meanness of watching a man for years in order to set
down every unguarded and idle word he uttered, is inconceivable. Yet with all this one cannot help reading a
good deal of it.' This is addressed to the faithful Betsy, who was also keeping school by that time, and
assuming brevet rank in consequence.
Mrs. Barbauld might well complain of the fatigue from hairdressers in London. In one of her letters to her
friend she thus describes a lady's dress of the period:
'Do you know how to dress yourself in Dublin? If you do not, I will tell you. Your waist must be the
circumference of two oranges, no more. You must erect a structure on your head gradually ascending to a foot
high, exclusive of feathers, and stretching to a penthouse of most horrible projection behind, the breadth from
wing to wing considerably broader than your shoulder, and as many different things in your cap as in Noah's
ark. Verily, I never did see such monsters as the heads now in vogue. I am a monster, too, but a moderate one.'
She must have been glad to get back to her home, to her daily work, to Charles, climbing his trees and talking
his nonsense.
In the winter of 1784 her mother died at Palgrave. It was Christmas week; the old lady had come travelling
four days through the snow in a postchaise with her maid and her little grandchildren, while her son rode on
horseback. But the cold and the fatigue of the journey, and the discomfort of the inns, proved too much for
Mrs. Aikin, who reached her daughter's house only to die. Just that time three years before Mrs. Barbauld had
lost her father, whom she dearly loved. There is a striking letter from the widowed mother to her daughter
recording the event. It is almost Spartan in its calmness, but nevertheless deeply touching. Now she, too, was
at rest, and after Mrs. Aikin's death a cloud of sadness and depression seems to have fallen upon the
household. Mr. Barbauld was ailing; he was suffering from a nervous irritability which occasionally quite
unfitted him for his work as a schoolmaster. Already his wife must have had many things to bear, and very
much to try her courage and cheerfulness; and now her health was also failing. It was in 1775 that they gave
up the academy, which, on the whole, had greatly flourished. It had been established eleven years; they were
both of them in need of rest and change. Nevertheless, it was not without reluctance that they brought
themselves to leave their home at Palgrave. A successor was found only too quickly for Mrs. Barbauld's
wishes; they handed over their pupils to his care, and went abroad for a year's sunshine and distraction.
V.
What a contrast to prim, starched scholastic life at Palgrave must have been the smiling world, and the land
A Book of Sibyls, by 10
flowing with oil and wine, in which they found themselves basking! The vintage was so abundant that year
that the country people could not find vessels to contain it. 'The roads covered with teams of casks, empty or
full according as they were going out or returning, and drawn by oxen whose strong necks seemed to be
bowed unwillingly under the yoke. Men, women, and children were abroad; some cutting with a short sickle
the bunches of grapes, some breaking them with a wooden instrument, some carrying them on their backs
from the gatherers to those who pressed the juice; and, as in our harvest, the gleaners followed.'
From the vintage they travel to the Alps, 'a sight so majestic, so totally different from anything I had seen
before, that I am ready to sing nunc dimittis,' she writes. They travel back by the south of France and reach
Paris in June, where the case of the Diamond Necklace is being tried. Then they return to England, waiting a
day at Boulogne for a vessel, but crossing from thence in less than four hours. How pretty is her description of
England as it strikes them after their absence! 'And not without pleasing emotion did we view again the green
swelling hills covered with large sheep, and the winding road bordered with the hawthorn hedge, and the
English vine twirled round the tall poles, and the broad Medway covered with vessels, and at last the gentle
yet majestic Thames.'
There were Dissenters at Hampstead in those days, as there are still, and it was a call from a little Unitarian
congregation on the hillside who invited Mr. Barbauld to become their minister, which decided the worthy
couple to retire to this pleasant suburb. The place seemed promising enough; they were within reach of Mrs.
Barbauld's brother, Dr. Aikin, now settled in London, and to whom she was tenderly attached. There were
congenial people settled all about. On the high hill-top were pleasant old houses to live in. There was
occupation for him and literary interest for her.
They are a sociable and friendly pair, hospitable, glad to welcome their friends, and the acquaintance, and
critics, and the former pupils who come toiling up the hill to visit them. Rogers comes to dinner 'at half after
three.' They have another poet for a neighbour, Miss Joanna Baillie; they are made welcome by all, and in
their turn make others welcome; they do acts of social charity and kindness wherever they see the occasion.
They have a young Spanish gentleman to board who conceals a taste for 'seguars.' They also go up to town
from time to time. On one occasion Mr. Barbauld repairs to London to choose a wedding present for Miss
Belsham, who is about to be married to Mr. Kenrick, a widower with daughters. He chose two slim
Wedgwood pots of some late classic model, which still stand, after many dangers, safely on either side of Mrs.
Kenrick's portrait in Miss Reid's drawing-room at Hampstead. Wedgwood must have been a personal friend:
he has modelled a lovely head of Mrs. Barbauld, simple and nymph-like.
Hampstead was no further from London in those days than it is now, and they seem to have kept up a constant
communication with their friends and relations in the great city. They go to the play occasionally. 'I have not
indeed seen Mrs. Siddons often, but I think I never saw her to more advantage,' she writes. 'It is not, however,
seeing a play, it is only seeing one character, for they have nobody to act with her.'
Another expedition is to Westminster Hall, where Warren Hastings was then being tried for his life.
'The trial has attracted the notice of most people who are within reach of it. I have been, and was very much
struck with all the apparatus and pomp of justice, with the splendour of the assembly which contained
everything distinguished in the nation, with the grand idea that the equity of the English was to pursue crimes
committed at the other side of the globe, and oppressions exercised towards the poor Indians who had come to
plead their cause; but all these fine ideas vanish and fade away as one observes the progress of the cause, and
sees it fall into the summer amusements, and take the place of a rehearsal of music or an evening at Vauxhall.'
Mrs. Barbauld was a Liberal in feeling and conviction; she was never afraid to speak her mind, and when the
French Revolution first began, she, in common with many others, hoped that it was but the dawning of
happier times. She was always keen about public events; she wrote an address on the opposition to the repeal
of the Test Act in 1791, and she published her poem to Wilberforce on the rejection of his great bill for
A Book of Sibyls, by 11
abolishing slavery:
Friends of the friendless, hail, ye generous band!
she cries, in warm enthusiasm for the devoted cause.
Horace Walpole nicknamed her Deborah, called her the Virago Barbauld, and speaks of her with utter
rudeness and intolerant spite. But whether or not Horace Walpole approved, it is certain that Mrs. Barbauld
possessed to a full and generous degree a quality which is now less common than it was in her day.
Not very many years ago I was struck on one occasion when a noble old lady, now gone to her rest, exclaimed
in my hearing that people of this generation had all sorts of merits and charitable intentions, but that there was
one thing she missed which had certainly existed in her youth, and which no longer seemed to be of the same
account: that public spirit which used to animate the young as well as the old.
It is possible that philanthropy, and the love of the beautiful, and the gratuitous diffusion of wall-papers may
be the modern rendering of the good old-fashioned sentiment. Mrs. Barbauld lived in very stirring days, when
private people shared in the excitements and catastrophes of public affairs. To her the fortunes of England, its
loyalty, its success, were a part of her daily bread. By her early associations she belonged to a party
representing opposition, and for that very reason she was the more keenly struck by the differences of the
conduct of affairs and the opinions of those she trusted. Her friend Dr. Priestley had emigrated to America for
his convictions' sake; Howard was giving his noble life for his work; Wakefield had gone to prison. Now the
very questions are forgotten for which they struggled and suffered, or the answers have come while the
questions are forgotten, in this their future which is our present, and to which some unborn historian may
point back with a moral finger.
Dr. Aikin, whose estimate of his sister was very different from Horace Walpole's, occasionally reproached her
for not writing more constantly. He wrote a copy of verses on this theme:
Thus speaks the Muse, and bends her brows severe: Did I, Lætitia, lend my choicest lays, And crown thy
youthful head with freshest bays, That all the expectance of thy full-grown year, Should lie inert and fruitless?
O revere Those sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, Whose potent charm the enraptured soul can raise
Far from the vapours of this earthly sphere, Seize, seize the lyre, resume the lofty strain.
She seems to have willingly left the lyre for Dr. Aikin's use. A few hymns, some graceful odes, and stanzas,
and jeux d'esprit, a certain number of well-written and original essays, and several political pamphlets,
represent the best of her work. Her more ambitious poems are those by which she is the least remembered. It
was at Hampstead that Mrs. Barbauld wrote her contributions to her brother's volume of 'Evenings at Home,'
among which the transmigrations of Indur may be quoted as a model of style and delightful matter. One of the
best of her jeux d'esprit is the 'Groans of the Tankard,' which was written in early days, with much spirit and
real humour. It begins with a classic incantation, and then goes on:
'Twas at the solemn silent noontide hour When hunger rages with despotic power, When the lean student quits
his Hebrew roots For the gross nourishment of English fruits, And throws unfinished airy systems by For
solid pudding and substantial pie.
The tankard now,
Replenished to the brink, With the cool beverage blue-eyed maidens drink,
but, accustomed to very different libations, is endowed with voice and utters its bitter reproaches:
A Book of Sibyls, by 12
Unblest the day, and luckless was the hour Which doomed me to a Presbyterian's power, Fated to serve a
Puritanic race, Whose slender meal is shorter than their grace.
VI.
Thumbkin, of fairy celebrity, used to mark his way by flinging crumbs of bread and scattering stones as he
went along; and in like manner authors trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and
articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones, sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93
Mrs. Barbauld must have been occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the time. A
pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins of the Government and Sins of the People,' show
in what direction her thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of literary work
and interest. She seems to have turned to Akenside and Collins, and each had an essay to himself. These were
followed by certain selections from the Spectator, Tatler, &c., preceded by one of those admirable essays for
which she is really remarkable. She also published a memoir of Richardson prefixed to his correspondence.
Sir James Mackintosh, writing at a later and sadder time of her life, says of her observations on the moral of
Clarissa that they are as fine a piece of mitigated and rational stoicism as our language can boast of.
In 1802 another congregation seems to have made signs from Stoke Newington, and Mrs. Barbauld persuaded
her husband to leave his flock at Hampstead and to buy a house near her brother's at Stoke Newington. This
was her last migration, and here she remained until her death in 1825. One of her letters to Mrs. Kenrick gives
a description of what might have been a happy home: 'We have a pretty little back parlour that looks into our
little spot of a garden,' she says, 'and catches every gleam of sunshine. We have pulled down the ivy, except
what covers the coach-house We have planted a vine and a passion-flower, with abundance of jessamine
against the window, and we have scattered roses and honeysuckle all over the garden. You may smile at me
for parading so over my house and domains.' In May she writes a pleasant letter, in good spirits, comparing
her correspondence with her friend to the flower of an aloe, which sleeps for a hundred years, and on a sudden
pushes out when least expected. 'But take notice, the life is in the aloe all the while, and sorry should I be if
the life were not in our friendship all the while, though it so rarely diffuses itself over a sheet of paper.'
She seems to have been no less sociable and friendly at Stoke Newington than at Hampstead. People used to
come up to see her from London. Her letters, quiet and intimate as they are, give glimpses of most of the
literary people of the day, not in memoirs then, but alive and drinking tea at one another's houses, or walking
all the way to Stoke Newington to pay their respects to the old lady.
Charles Lamb used to talk of his two bald authoresses, Mrs. Barbauld being one and Mrs. Inchbald being the
other. Crabb Robinson and Rogers were two faithful links with the outer world. 'Crabb Robinson corresponds
with Madame de Staël, is quite intimate,' she writes, 'has received I don't know how many letters,' she adds,
not without some slight amusement. Miss Lucy Aikin tells a pretty story of Scott meeting Mrs. Barbauld at
dinner, and telling her that it was to her that he owed his poetic gift. Some translations of Bürger by Mr.
Taylor, of Norwich, which she had read out at Edinburgh, had struck him so much that they had determined
him to try his own powers in that line.
She often had inmates under her roof. One of them was a beautiful and charming young girl, the daughter of
Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh, whose early death is recorded in her mother's life. Besides company at home,
Mrs. Barbauld went to visit her friends from time to time the Estlins at Bristol, the Edgeworths, whose
acquaintance Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld made about this time, and who seem to have been invaluable friends,
bringing as they did a bright new element of interest and cheerful friendship into her sad and dimming life. A
man must have extraordinarily good spirits to embark upon four matrimonial ventures as Mr. Edgeworth did;
and as for Miss Edgeworth, appreciative, effusive, and warm-hearted, she seems to have more than returned
Mrs. Barbauld's sympathy.
Miss Lucy Aikin, Dr. Aikin's daughter, was now also making her own mark in the literary world, and had
A Book of Sibyls, by 13
inherited the bright intelligence and interest for which her family was so remarkable. Much of Miss Aikin's
work is more sustained than her aunt's desultory productions, but it lacks that touch of nature which has
preserved Mrs. Barbauld's memory where more important people are forgotten.
Our authoress seems to have had a natural affection for sister authoresses. Hannah More and Mrs. Montague
were both her friends, so were Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Chapone in a different degree; she must have
known Mrs. Opie; she loved Joanna Baillie. The latter is described by her as the young lady at Hampstead
who came to Mr. Barbauld's meeting with as demure a face as if she had never written a line. And Miss Aikin,
in her memoirs, describes in Johnsonian language how the two Miss Baillies came to call one morning upon
Mrs. Barbauld: 'My aunt immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and gave utterance to
her admiration with the generous delight in the manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her.' But
it seems that Miss Baillie sat, nothing moved, and did not betray herself. Mrs. Barbauld herself gives a pretty
description of the sisters in their home, in that old house on Windmill Hill, which stands untouched, with its
green windows looking out upon so much of sky and heath and sun, with the wainscoted parlours where
Walter Scott used to come, and the low wooden staircase leading to the old rooms above. It is in one of her
letters to Mrs. Kenrick that Mrs. Barbauld gives a pleasant glimpse of the poetess Walter Scott admired. 'I
have not been abroad since I was at Norwich, except a day or two at Hampstead with the Miss Baillies. One
should be, as I was, beneath their roof to know all their merit. Their house is one of the best ordered I know.
They have all manner of attentions for their friends, and not only Miss B., but Joanna, is as clever in
furnishing a room or in arranging a party as in writing plays, of which, by the way, she has a volume ready for
the press, but she will not give it to the public till next winter. The subject is to be the passion of fear. I do not
know what sort of a hero that passion can afford!' Fear was, indeed, a passion alien to her nature, and she did
not know the meaning of the word.
Mrs. Barbauld's description of Hannah More and her sisters living on their special hill-top was written after
Mr. Barbauld's death, and thirty years after Miss More's verses which are quoted by Mrs. Ellis in her excellent
memoir of Mrs. Barbauld:
Nor, Barbauld, shall my glowing heart refuse A tribute to thy virtues or thy muse; This humble merit shall at
least be mine, The poet's chaplet for thy brows to twine; My verse thy talents to the world shall teach, And
praise the graces it despairs to reach.
Then, after philosophically questioning the power of genius to confer true happiness, she concludes:
Can all the boasted powers of wit and song Of life one pang remove, one hour prolong? Fallacious hope
which daily truths deride For you, alas! have wept and Garrick died.
Meanwhile, whatever genius might not be able to achieve, the five Miss Mores had been living on peacefully
together in the very comfortable cottage which had been raised and thatched by the poetess's earnings.
'Barley Wood is equally the seat of taste and hospitality,' says Mrs. Barbauld to a friend.
'Nothing could be more friendly than their reception,' she writes to her brother, 'and nothing more charming
than their situation. An extensive view over the Mendip Hills is in front of their house, with a pretty view of
Wrington. Their home cottage, because it is thatched stands on the declivity of a rising ground, which they
have planted and made quite a little paradise. The five sisters, all good old maids, have lived together these
fifty years. Hannah More is a good deal broken, but possesses fully her powers of conversation, and her
vivacity. We exchanged riddles like the wise men of old; I was given to understand she was writing
something.'
There is another allusion to Mrs. Hannah More in a sensible letter from Mrs. Barbauld, written to Miss
Edgeworth about this time, declining to join in an alarming enterprise suggested by the vivacious Mr.
A Book of Sibyls, by 14