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:'—

'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