Lives of Celebrated WomenGoodrich, Samuel G. (Samuel Griswold)
History
Lives of Celebrated Women
Goodrich, Samuel G. (Samuel Griswold)
Women -- Biography
In 1790, Mrs. Barbauld published an eloquent and indignant address to
the successful opposers of the repeal of the corporation and test
acts. In the following year was written her poetical epistle to Mr.
Wilberforce, on the rejection of the bill for abolishing the slave
trade. In 1792, she published "Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's
Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social
Worship;" and in 1793, she produced a work of a kind very unusual for
a female--a sermon, entitled "The Sins of Government Sins of the
Nation." In all these works Mrs. Barbauld showed those powers of mind,
that ardent love for civil and religious liberty, and that genuine
and practical piety, by which her life was distinguished, and for
which her memory will long be held in reverence. In particular, her
"Remarks on Mr. Wakefield's Inquiry" may be noticed as being one of
the best and most eloquent, and yet sober, appeals in favor of public
worship that has ever appeared.
Our youthful readers will be pleased to learn that Mrs. Barbauld wrote
some of the articles in that entertaining work by her brother, Dr.
Aikin, entitled "Evenings at Home." These contributions were
fourteen in number. It would be useless to distinguish them here,
or to say more concerning them than that they are equal in merit to
the other parts of the volumes. These papers, trifling in amount,
but not in value, comprise all that Mrs. Barbauld published from
1793 to 1795, when she superintended an edition of Akenside's
"Pleasures of Imagination," to which she prefixed a critical essay.
In 1797, she brought out an edition of Collins's "Odes," with a
similar introduction. These essays are written with elegance, and
display much taste and critical acuteness.
Mr. Barbauld became, in 1802, pastor of a Unitarian congregation at
Newington Green, and at this time he changed his residence to Stoke
Newington. The chief inducement to this removal was the desire felt by
Mrs. Barbauld and her brother to pass the remainder of their lives in
each other's society. This wish was gratified during twenty years, and
was interrupted only by death. In 1804, she published a selection of
the papers contained in the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler and
Freeholder, with a preliminary essay, in which is given an instructive
account of the state of society at the time the papers originally
appeared, and of the objects at which they aimed. This essay has been
much admired for its elegance and acuteness. In the same year, Mrs.
Barbauld prepared for publication a selection from the correspondence
of Richardson, the novelist, prefixing a biographical notice of him,
and a critical examination of his works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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