Born (Anna Letitia Aikin), at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, 20 June 1743. Early youth spent there. At Warrington, 1758–73. Married to Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, May 1774. Settled at Palgrave, Suffolk, and started boys’ school with husband. No children; adopted a nephew, Charles Rochemont Aikin, 1776. School given up, 1785. Travelled in France and Switzerland, Sept. 1785 to June 1786. In London, 1786–87. To Hampstead, April 1787. Visit to Scotland, 1794. Removed to Stoke Newington, 1802. Husband died, 1808. She died, at Stoke Newington, 9 March 1825. Works: “Poems,” 1773; “Miscellaneous Pieces” (with J. Aikin), 1773; “Devotional Pieces,” 1775; “Hymns in Prose: for Children” (under initials: A. L. B.), 1781; “An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts” (anon.), 1790; “Epistle to W. Wilberforce,” 1791; “Evenings at Home” (anon., with J. Aikin), 1792; “Remarks on Mr. G. Wakefield’s Enquiry, etc.,” 1792; “Civic Sermons” (anon.), 1792; “Sins of the Government, Sins of the Nation” (anon.), 1793; “The Religion of Nature” (under pseud. of “Bob Short”), 1793; “Reasons for National Penitence” (anon.), 1794; “Selections from the ‘Spectator,’ etc.,” 1804; “Lessons for Children” (anon.), 1808; “The Female Speaker,” 1811; “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,” 1812. Posthumous: “Works, with Memoir by L. Aikin” (2 vols.), 1825; “Hymns in Rhyme,” 1838; “Memoir, Letters and Selection,” ed. by G. A. Ellis, 1874. She edited: Akenside’s “Pleasures of Imagination,” 1794, and “Works,” 1808; Samuel Richardson’s “Correspondence,” 1804; “The British Novelists” (50 vols.), 1810; and, translated: Jauffret’s “Travels of Rolando,” 1823.

Personal

  Too much is expected from precocity, and too little performed. Miss Aikin was an instance of early cultivation, but in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment now is

“To suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer.”

She tells the children, “This is a cat, and that is a dog, with four legs and a tail; see there! you are much better than a cat or a dog, for you can speak.” If I had bestowed such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent her to the Congress.

  Went to Mrs. Barbauld’s. She was in good spirits, but she is now the confirmed old lady. Independently of her fine understanding and literary reputation, she would be interesting. Her white locks, fair and unwrinkled skin, brilliant starched linen, and rich silk gown, make her a fit object for a painter. Her conversation is lively, her remarks judicious, and always pertinent.

  Mind and heart formed a rare union and well balanced her character. She was governed in her views by reason, and her enthusiasm, though not wanting, was restrained by common-sense and practical judgment. Her heart was warm, full of love and sympathy for all mankind; but the expansion of her interest did not make her overlook the claims of those around her, and her duties to her own little circle. In “the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love” she was most charming and attractive; as the author and poet she was respected and admired; but as a woman, a friend, and a relation, she was beloved and revered.

  Mrs. Barbauld might have easily taken rank as the female Johnson of her day, had not circumstances, together with a natural indolence of temperament, largely associated with modesty, prevented her from making more than occasional use of her literary powers. As it is, this writer leaves behind her a body of very respectable verse and some prose of the highest excellence, with a private reputation which every writer cannot boast of, namely, the reputation of having led a God-fearing, spotless life, as a tender wife to an afflicted husband, a cheerful toiler in the shadow of trouble, a charitable critic of all her acquaintance, and a woman who died, at a very advanced age, idolised by a large family circle. The serene nobility of such a life as Mrs. Barbauld’s is a refreshing thing to come across.

  To the quiet little home at Newington came many distinguished men and women. Earnest thinkers, learned men and women, clever and appreciative of the talents of others were often seen at the door, and the little parlor of Mrs. Barbauld was frequently the meeting-place of England’s men of mark. Here came Mackintosh and Macaulay, Coleridge and Charles Lamb, Sir Henry Holland, Dr. Channing, the Edgeworths, Sir John Bowring, Sir James Smith. Samuel Rogers, and Joanna Baillie, with her sister Agnes, were among the old Hampstead friends. In 1815 one reads of a day at Hampstead at the Carrs, “a charming day,” when Sir Walter Scott told the old lady her reading of Taylor’s “Lenöre’s” “Tramp, tramp, splash, splash,” “made him a poet.”

  Her epitaph justly says of her that she was “endowed by the Giver of all good with wit, genius, poetic talent, and a vigorous understanding;” and the readers of her works will readily allow the easy grace of her style and her lofty but not puritanical principles. Her letters, some few of which have been published since her death, show that though her life was habitually retired she greatly enjoyed society.

General

  I have neither read her verses, nor will. As I have not your aspen conscience, I cannot forgive the heart of a woman that is party per pale blood and tenderness, that curses our clergy and feels for negroes.

  The fair biographer [“Life of Richardson”] unquestionably possesses very considerable talents, and exercises her powers of writing with singular judgment and propriety. Many of her observations are acute and striking, and several of them very fine and delicate. Yet this is not, perhaps, the general character of her genius: and it must be acknowledged, that she has a tone and manner which is something formal and heavy; that she occasionally delivers trite and obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity of important discoveries, and sometimes attempts to exalt and magnify her subject by a very clumsy kind of declamation. With all those defects, however, we think the Life and Observations have so much substantial merit, that most readers will agree with us in thinking that they are worth much more than all the rest of the publication.

  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 of the greatest practicable purity, without being lost in exaggeration, or sinking into meanness. She has cultivated a philosophy which will raise and animate her, without refining it to that degree, when it is no longer applicable to the gross purposes of human life, and when it is too apt to evaporate in hypocrisy and ostentation. Her observations on the moral of “Clarissa” 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.

  Our old acquaintance Mrs. Barbauld turned satirist! The last thing we should have expected, and now that we have seen her satire, the last thing that we could have desired…. Mrs. Barbauld’s former works have been of some utility; her “Lessons for Children,” her “Hymns in Prose,” her “Selections from the Spectator,” et id genus omne, though they display not much of either taste or talents are yet something better than harmless: but we must take the liberty of warning her to desist from satire, which indeed is satire on herself alone; and of entreating, with great earnestness, that she will not, for the sake of this ungrateful generation, put herself to the trouble of writing any more party pamphlets in verse.

  The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose works I became acquainted before those of any other author, male or female, when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for children. I became acquainted with her poetical works long after in Enfield’s Speaker; and remember being much divided in my opinion, at that time, between her Ode to Spring and Collin’s Ode to Evening. I wish I could repay my childish debt of gratitude in terms of appropriate praise. She is a very pretty poetess; and, to my fancy, strews the flowers of poetry most agreeably round the borders of religious controversy. She is a neat and pointed prose-writer. Her “Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Human Expectations” is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays in the language.

  Elegance and strength—qualities rarely uniting without injury to each other combine most perfectly in her style, and this rare combination, added to their classical purity, form, perhaps, the distinguishing characteristics of her writings.

  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.

  “Early Lessons,” a publication which has ever since been a standard work, and, though frequently imitated, yet remains unrivalled amidst all its competitors…. The cause of rational education is more indebted to her than to any individual of modern times, inasmuch as she was the leader in that reformation which has resulted in substituting the use of truth and reason for folly and fiction, in books for the nursery.

  She had both intellect and passion enough to match a spirit heroical.

  Mrs. Barbauld was exceedingly clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson’s style was the best of all that exist. Her blank-verse “Washing Day,” descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under the affliction of a family-washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. And her prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity.

  To claim for Mrs. Barbauld the praise of purity and elevation of mind, might well appear superfluous. She is decidedly one of the most eminent female writers which England has produced; and both in prose and poetry she takes the highest rank. Her prose style is easy and graceful, alike calculated to engage the most common and the most elevated understanding.

  Neither in her earliest or her latest works is there any manifestation of an unformed or a feeble style; all is clear, pointed, forcible, and elegant in her prose; thoughtful, imaginative, spiritual, and musical in her verse.

  At a dinner-party where I was, Fox met Aikin. “I am greatly pleased with your ‘Miscellaneous Pieces,’ Mr. Aikin,” said Fox (alluding to the volume written partly by Aikin, and partly by his sister Mrs. Barbauld). Aikin bowed. “I particularly admire,” continued Fox, “your essay ‘Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.’” “That,” replied Aikin, “is my sister’s!” “I like much,” resumed 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.

  I still think her one of the first of writers in our language, and the best example we have of the benefits of a sound classical education to a woman.

  In her prose as well as her poetry she never offered her work to the public without the most perfect finish which it was possible to give it. She felt that the most self-commending and noble thought could not dispense with the added lustre of the choice and elegant language in which she carefully clothed her sentiments and opinions. As I have said, the essay “Of Inconsistency in Our Expectations” has an acknowledged and prominent rank, being thought by those whose opinions are of value to stand at the head of that class of literature.

  That her writings will occupy a very high place among the authors of her time is more than can be reasonably hoped for. Her voice is “lost among the throng of louder minstrels in these latter days.” Her hymns, however, will keep her name fresh as long as sacred music is a part of divine worship…. These lyrics show that she possessed the spirit of genuine poetry, though it sometimes insensibly slipped into prose as it took form and pressure.

  The poems of Mrs. Barbauld are chiefly written in the elegant pseudo-classic style of the close of the last century. She expresses herself clearly and with grace; a certain artificiality of manner harmonises with her choice of subject. Her poetry is without deep thought or passion; but it is free from blunders of an avoidable kind. The spirit of self-criticism which prompted her to destroy all her juvenile verses, never permitted her to include with her published works any ill-considered thought or unsuccessful effort…. The fame of Mrs. Barbauld’s hymns has outlived the rest of her work. Yet with the exception of her charming “Hymns in Prose for Little Children,” they seem, to a modern reader, deficient in fervour and in religious emotion. They are pure in tone and lofty, but often singularly cold. There can be no doubt, however, of their sincerity.

  Her poetry belongs to that artificial didactic school of the eighteenth century which is so antipathetic to the present age, and must remain in oblivion until the wheel of Time brings round again its fashion. Her prose style, however, is admirable, being modelled upon our best writers; both Macaulay and Mackintosh were warm in their praise of it.

  She has left behind her at least one scrap of verse which is immortal, and much beside that is well worthy a place in the recollection of her country…. The delightful “Early Lessons,” which is the most poetical and idyllic of all baby books. Never were words of one syllable so charmingly employed. The “Hymns in Prose,” perhaps as having a somewhat higher aim, have held their place longer. But hymns in prose are a mistake, and never will be so popular as verse with children; whereas the lovely little pictures of the “Early Lessons” are never out of date. They are, among the dull pages of ordinary lesson books, like vignettes by Stothard among the common illustrations of a penny journal.

  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 ripened 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.

  In those days we read Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons” with a curiosity never gratified as to what became of Charles, who was sometimes such an idiot and sometimes such a sage. In later years Charles Barbauld, as we called him, whose real name was Charles Aikin, reappeared in Carlyle’s “Life of Sterling.”

  I, of course, committed to memory, as children are wont to do, numberless hymns and poems, and I trust that they did me good; but there is nothing of this kind to which I can ascribe any specific benefit, with the exception of Mrs. Barbauld’s “Hymns in Prose,” which, I think, made me permanently appreciative of euphony as distinguished from poetic rhythm, and gave rise to my lifelong habit of testing by the ear the sentences that I read and write.

  Mrs. Barbauld, the author of the noble lines, “Life, we’ve been long together,”—the nobility of which is rather in its sentiment than in its expression—and of much tame and unimportant stuff.