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 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. |