[In the following excerpt, the writer summarizes Barbauld's contributions to English literature.]

We fear that not many of our readers will have very distinct ideas suggested to their minds by the name of the excellent woman whose memory Mrs. Ellis has revived in the two handsome volumes noted below [The Life and Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 1874]. Devout churchgoers may have noticed her name in their hymn-books as the author of some of the finest religious lyrics which they contain; and such of them as shall have passed the "mezzo del cammin" of life may rejoice that they encountered, at the outset of their pilgrimage, so gentle and wise a friend as she with her Early Lessons and with her contributions to her brother Dr. Aiken's excellent Evenings at Home. But of the younger generation, whose early days have fallen on times when the writing of children's books has become a trade instead of a religion, on whose infancy the flood-gates of trash have been opened, overwhelming it with slang, vulgarisms, and bad grammar, but few, we imagine, have much knowledge of her or of her works. It is observable that the best books for children, after the discovery of that lilliputian public, were the earliest, judged by the true test of their being good reading for grown people. Not counting Robinson Crusoe, which was meant for children of all growths and all ages, Sandford and Merton came first, the Evenings at Home next, and Miss Edgeworth's books afterwards. The stories for children of a later date, whether mawkishly "goody" or mischievously sensational, are a fit preparation for the reading furnished for their elders by the Braddon and Ouida crew. Dr. Johnson, who had a great contempt for children's books, is recorded by Dr. Burney as having declared that Mrs. Barbauld, as a suitable punishment for the Early Lessons, should be "sent to the Congress." Mrs. Barbauld would not have objected to this penalty, as she speaks in the highest terms of admiration of the Congress as it was then. Perhaps it were not an excessive castigation for the writers of later children's books to send them to the Congress as it is now. . . .

She was one of those fortunate writers who have their good things in this life—an excellent time to have them—and she was better known and her writings more highly esteemed in her lifetime than since her death. They brought her more or less in contact with many eminent contemporaries, men and women. Her literary reputation brought her into occasional intercourse with Scott, Rogers, Horace Walpole, Sir James Mackintosh, Madame D'Arblay, Hannah More, Mrs. Montagu, the Edgeworths, Dr. Priestley, Joanna Bailey, Charles Lamb, and many other celebrities. . . . [Her letters] are extremely good reading, and very illustrative of her character. 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, especially when a better morality shall have restored them from the mutilations of the villanous compilers of hymnbooks—wretches whose crimes should bring them within the penalties of the statute of cutting and maiming. These lyrics show that she possessed the spirit of genuine poetry, though it sometimes insensibly slipped into prose as it took form and pressure. Her fine poem of "Life" certainly bears the unmistakable impress of poetic genius, than the concluding stanza of which Rogers records that he "knew few lines finer"; which Wordsworth "wished he had written"; and which Madame D'Arblay repeated to herself every night before going to sleep:

Life! we've been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time;
Say not Good Night—but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-Morning."