University of Virginia Library

A. Uncollected Pieces

Of the following thirty-three titles, nineteen are identified as Barbauld’s by signature, her testimony, or a credible witness, and one was reprinted (in part) by Lucy Aikin. Thirteen of them I attribute to Barbauld myself. They are marked by asterisks.

A1. "The Vision of Anna, the Daughter of Haikin." The Christian Miscellany, No. 4 (April 1792), pp. 157—161, as "Art. VIII. A Chapter of Modern Apocrypha." Unsigned. Reprinted in the Christian Reformer; or, Unitarian Magazine and Review, 39 (1853): 111-114, as "An Unedited Parable of Mrs. Barbauld."

According to Joseph Priestley editor J. T. Rutt, the Christian Miscellany was undertaken by Joshua Toulmin, Jr. with encouragement from Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey (Priestley, Theological and Miscellaneous Works, London, 1828—31, 1.ii, p. 88 and note); according to historian R. K. Webb, it was "founded" by Priestley follower John Holland (1766-1826; ODNB entry on Holland). Although Lindsey and Priestley had criticized Barbauld’s 1775 "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste," her Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Tests Acts (1790) had won the admiration of liberal Dissent. The Miscellany's editor dates the "Vision" to 1773, following two failed petitions by Dissenting ministers to obtain "relief from the obligation to subscribe the doctrinal articles of the church of England"; he also notes parallels between passages in it and in the Address to the Opposers. If the editor was John Holland, his source for "Vision" could have been his brother-in-law William Turner, a Warrington Academy graduate who wrote the first history of the academy and collected copies of Barbauld poems. "Haikin" is a Biblicization of Barbauld’s birth name; whether it is her title or the editor’s is not known, but Barbauld imitated the style of the King James Version on other occasions, most famously Hymns in Prose.33 The 1853 editor provides further details about the 1773 petitions and regrets that "Miss [Lucy] Aikin did not admit

this composition into the collected works of her aunt. ... We have reasons for believing that it is known to very few persons." See also ALBVE, pp. 144–145.

A2. *["The Domiphobia, or Dread of Home."] Monthly Magazine, 1 (May 1796): 268–270. Signed "C." and "Warwick Lane, MAY 9th."

In the guise of a physician, the writer treats the fashion for visiting watering–places in summer as if it were a medical condition (Warwick Lane in London was home to physicians). Barbauld wrote a "Letter on Watering-Places" (the piece signed "Henry Homelove") and was fond of medical terminology (see, e.g., Poem 29 in Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, about her brother, who practiced medicine), although none of her known works matches this piece for sheer jargon.34 She also regarded the fad for taking summer holidays as if it were a spell cast upon Britons (ALBVE, pp. 389 and 643n2); and she speaks of the fashion for summer tours and "sea bathing–places" again in "Comparison of Manners" (A17, p. 114). The signature "C." could be her imitation of Addison’s signature practice.

A3. *["Mr. Roscoe’s Lorenzo de Medici."] Monthly Magazine, 2 (July 1796): 443–445. Signed "X.Y.Z." and dated July 15, 1796.

The essay claims (ironically) to disbelieve William Roscoe’s biography, for his Lorenzo is immeasurably more intellectual and public-spirited than the wealthy of today. The writer mentions Francis Hutcheson’s theory of ethics, as does Barbauld in her Remarks on Gilbert Wakefield’s Enquiry into ... Public Worship (1792); also William Paley, whose View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) she read with one of her pupils in 1811; Paley is also praised in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (line 89). The writer also compliments Samuel Rogers, "the banker-poet," whom Barbauld knew and liked; and quotes a couplet from Addison’s Cato (I.iv) containing the words "as it runs refines" (cf. Barbauld’s Hymn VIII, "refining as we run," and her liking for Addison). Barbauld was sent a copy of Roscoe’s Lorenzo in April 1796, for which she thanked Roscoe on 3 April (MS 920 ROS 5800, Liverpool Record Office); ten days after the date of this essay, she reports that she has been reading Lorenzo and calls it "a very capital work" (to Judith Beecroft, 25 July 1796).

A4. *[Letter on William Taylor’s translation of Bürger’s "Lenore."] Monthly Magazine, 2 (September 1796): 601. Signed "B." and dated Sept. 3, 1796.

The writer rebuts Taylor’s claim for Bürger’s originality (in MM, 1 [March 1796]: 118) by paralleling "Lenore" with two English ballads from a 1723 collection, "The Suffolk Miracle" and "William’s Ghost," and deprecates "the vindictive justice of God" in Leonora’s fate (cf. Barbauld’s rejection of the Calvinist God in Remarks on Public Worship); but also declares Taylor’s translation "in parts equal to any composition I have ever read." Taylor was Barbauld’s pupil at Palgrave School; she kept in touch with him, admiring his talent and sometimes chiding him for not exploiting it. She read his "Leonora" aloud to a gathering

of Dugald Stewart’s friends at Edinburgh in 1794, to great acclaim (ALBVE, pp. 364–365).

A5. *["Thoughts on Prophecy. Prophecies for 1797."] Monthly Magazine, 3 (January 1797): 5–8. Signed "Old Lilly," without date or place.

This piece is answered by John Aikin’s "Literary Prophecies for 1797" (MM, 3:91–92). It is political in its allusions to current and recent events, such as the war and the Birmingham Riot ("if we had foreseen, that opinion can be combated only with opinion," alluding to Priestley’s 1791 expostulation "To the Inhabitants of the Town of Birmingham"). The writer characterizes war as "the murder of thousands ... with whom he had no dispute" (cf. Civic Sermon I: "to fight and kill people whom you never quarreled with"); quotes a passage containing the phrase "rise like exhalations" (adapted from Milton; Barbauld quoted the original in a letter to John Aikin, January 1784, describing a balloon); predicts that new novels will be condemned by reviewers but "read with pleasure and approbation" in places occupied typically by women (cf. Barbauld’s defense of fiction in "On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing" in British Novelists [1810]); and predicts "a most grotesque fashion in dress" (cf. Barbauld’s critique of grotesque fashions in "On Fashion"). "Old Lilly" presumably alludes to William Lilly (1602-81), astrologer and pamphleteering prophet.

A6. * ["Consolation for Ideal Calamities."] Monthly Magazine, 3 (February 1797): 96–97, signed "Solomon Sympathy" and dated "Feb. 10."

The "ideal calamities" are those of daily life among the genteel classes ("men of fashion, women of ton, and persons of distinction") regarded by philosophers as beneath notice: missing a ball, losing one’s gloves, not getting a place at a play. The piece teeters between irony and sympathy, as Barbauld often does (for example, in her letter to the Norwich Iris defending Priestley, A15 below), and it takes much the same view of daily pains and pleasures as she was to assert in "Thoughts on the Inequality of Conditions": "I know very well," she writes there, that philosophers "can prove by many learned and logical arguments that external goods have nothing to do with happiness. ... We are therefore bound to believe that these gentlemen, though they appear to enjoy a good table, or an elegant carriage as well as their neighbours, in fact regard them with perfect indifference" (SPP, p. 346). This writer remarks, in similar vein, that "not one of those philosophers and divines who have made the afflictions of human life their study, have condescended to say one word" about the sufferings caused by things like rancid butter, spoiled meat, and over-baked pies. The writer also quotes Oliver Goldsmith twice, including a line ("all the decent manliness of grief") from The Deserted Village, one of Barbauld’s most favorite poems: she declared she would "never be tired" of re-reading it (ALBVE, pp. 105 and 580n22).

A7. *["Character of a Wife."] Monthly Magazine, 3 (March 1797): 182–185. Signed "Humphrey Placid" and dated March 4, 1797.

The case for attribution is mainly biographical: "Humphrey"’s description of the "wife"’s behavior parallels the behavior of Barbauld’s husband, Rochemont.

"[R]est is unknown at our house": "She" is constantly in motion, constantly remodeling and rebuilding. Rochemont’s restlessness was noticed by Barbauld friends, and Lucy Aikin spoke of his "crazy habits."35 "Humphrey" suspects that the "wife" would enjoy being busied by a Chancery suit; Rochemont instituted a Chancery suit in 1799, regarding a loan he had made to a certain John Harvey Pierce (ALBVE, pp. 362–363). "Hope and Fear" are the motives attributed to the "wife"; these could equate with mania and depression, or the early and later stages of mania alone (see ALBVE, Appendix B). The "wife" suspects the servants of dishonesty; that would be consistent with mania going over into paranoia. We do not know whether Rochemont suspected his servants of dishonesty, but in his 1799 lawsuit he accused John Harvey Pierce of dishonesty–an accusation not sustained by the Chancery judge. The "wife" has also "been studying the new doctrine of perfectability, which ... she transfers from mind to matter"; Rochemont adopted the doctrine of a progressive deity whose aim was to perfect the universe (see his "Essay on the Divine Wisdom" and ALBVE, p. 221). The "wife" delights in taking on other people’s problems and giving aid; Barbauld wrote of Rochement that "his heart overflowed with kindness to all" ("Memoir of the Rev. R. Barbauld"). The writer mentions Hampstead, where the Barbaulds lived in 1797; the name "Humphrey," a family name in Barbauld’s birthplace, might have been recalled from her childhood. The fictional mask—a husband complaining of his wife’s eccentric behavior—is identical to that in Barbauld’s "Letter of John Bull" and similar to "Henry Homelove"’s complaint about his wife and daughters. Although "Humphrey" attempts to assimilate the "wife" to that figure of comedy the "notable woman," the behavior described is much more idiosyncratic and does not appear allegorical, as "Mrs. Bull’s" does; the purported satire is correspondingly much narrower in its application. A reference to "my property ... in the West Indies" is not consistent with Barbauld’s authorship, but she knew people from Warrington Academy who owned property in the Indies. Even allowing for comic exaggeration, this piece would appear to give an unrivalled idea of Barbauld’s home life with her husband.

A8. *["Defence of Rhyme."] Monthly Magazine, 3 (May 1797): 335—336. Signed "Cosmo."

The writer replies to an "unmerciful attack" on rhyme in the Monthly ("Is Rhyme an Ornament, or a Defect, in Verse," MM 3:273—277). The writer defends rhyme in terms very like those of Barbauld’s preface to a Cadell and Davies reprint of William Collins (1797), even calling Collins’s unrhymed "Ode to Evening" unsatisfactory to "the ear," as her preface does. The writer claims to be "not unacquainted with the toil and vexation" of rhyming. The type of argument–stating the opponent’s objection, conceding it, and then refuting it by showing that its application would be intolerably wide–is employed in Barbauld’s Remarks on Public Worship (London, 1792): "The exercises of devotion, Mr. Wakefield says, are wearisome. Suppose they were so, how many meetings do we frequent, to how many conversations do we listen with benevolent attention,

where our own pleasure and ... improvement are not the objects to which our time is given up?" (pp. 50–51). Compare "But rhyme is a shackle. Doubtless it is; and so is verse—so is harmonious prose—so is every thing which obliges the writer to exertions superior to those of common language." Barbauld agreed in March or April 1797 to introduce a reprint of Collins’s poems (ALBVE, p. 368), so she had occasion to think about rhyme—and Collins—aside from the Monthly’s article.

A9. "On the Progressive Lateness of Hours kept in England." Monthly Magazine, 6 (July 1798): 4–6. Unsigned.

Barbauld occasionally complains of late hours in her letters (e.g., to John Aikin, [January 1783] and 21 January 1784). The writer mentions English "reserve," as Barbauld does (see ALBVE, pp. 46 and 566n28); repeats the same anecdote about the Duchess of Devonshire’s idea of "morning" that Barbauld reported to John Aikin (31 January 1787); quotes Genesis humorously (Barbauld liked Biblical quotations, and was not above applying them humorously); and quotes from Paradise Lost the same line ("the touch of Ithuriel’s spear") in the same kind of application as Barbauld does in her Address to the Opposers. The writer refers also to a "Spectator" essay which complained that "when the fashion of undressing prevailed amongst the ladies ... the neck was surprisingly grown, and stretched out to half the body." This appears to recall not the Spectator but the Guardian, No. 100: "The disuse of the Tucker has still enlarged it [the neck], insomuch that the Neck of a fine woman at present takes in almost half the Body."36 Barbauld’s later "Comparison of Manners in Two Centuries" alludes to Guardian No. 100, addresses the subject of late hours in nearly the same words as the present essay, and quotes from Tatler 263 a sentence very similar to a sentence in the present essay; she included extracts from Tatler 263 on late hours and from Guardian 100 in her Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder (I:144–148; 3:245–247).John Dixon, father of Barbauld’s Norwich friend Judith Dixon Beecroft, attributed this essay to Barbauld in a manuscript album he kept (Folger M.a. 58). See ALBVE, p. 614n1.

A10. [Obituary of Thomas Mulso.] Monthly Magazine, 7 (February 1799): 163. Unsigned. Reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 69 (March 1799): 254, and John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century 9 (London, 1815): 492–493.

Barbauld acknowledged authorship in a letter to the Rev. Mark Noble, 26 October 1804. See ALBVE, p. 682, for citation.

A11. *["Essay, Medical, Moral, Political & Miscellaneous, on Spirits."] Monthly Magazine, 7 (February 1799): 89–92. Signed "Geoffry Gauger, Excise-Office, Feb. 12, 1799."

Opens with ironic reflections on the government’s excise tax on alcohol ("spirits"), and develops into a political allegory on other kinds of spirits: "Spirit of Contradiction," "Spirit of Innovation," "Spirit of Reform," "Spirit of Religion," and "Spirit of Bigotry." The manner of the allegory resembles that of Barbauld’s

"Cosmogunia" dialogue. The writer uses chemical and medical terminology, including "alterative," a technical word Barbauld uses in "On Education" and her letter defending Edgeworth.37 The writer alludes to the Birmingham Riot ("answer a pamphlet by burning a house"), is sympathetic to moderate political reform and mild versions of religion, and deplores "Bigotry." The writer "once flattered myself I understood" the "Spirit of Liberty": this could allude to Barbauld’s political writings in the early 90s.

A12. *"Sketch of Two Brothers. Addressed to the Quidnuncs." Monthly Magazine, 8 (October 1799): 681–683. Signed "C." Reprinted in The Spirit of the Public Journals for 1800 (London, 1801), pp. 106–109, without attribution.

The two brothers are "Prior" and "Posterior"; Prior loves "a good story," while Posterior "is a plain matter-of-fact man." A satire on gossips and news-fanatics, this essay contains a mock-genealogy similar to those in Barbauld’s "Tale of Pity" and "Knowledge and Her Daughter." The writer is critical of gossip that bandies about numbers of killed and wounded as if they were equivalent to shares prices, much as Barbauld’s poem "Written on a Marble" satirically likens the Battle of Pharsalia to a game at marbles and her Sins of Government reduces military budgets to "merchandized destruction": "so many rupees. ..."

A13. "Memoirs of Mrs. Chapone." Monthly Magazine, 13 (January 1802): 39–40. Signed "A.L.B." and "Hampstead" (where Barbauld was living at the time). Partly reprinted in Mary Hays, Female Biography, attributed to Barbauld; also Weekly Entertainer, or, Agreeable and Instructive Repository, 39 (March 1802): 170–172.

Barbauld acknowledged authorship to Mark Noble, 26 October 1804.

A14. ["Opprobrious Appellations reprobated."] Monthly Magazine, 14 (December 1802): 480–482. Signed "A.L.B." Replies to "Orthophilus" (John Aikin) on the words rebel and infidel (MM, 14 [November 1802]: 376-377).

A15. "To the Editor of the Iris." [Letter defending Joseph Priestley from a satire, "Hudibras Modernized."] Norwich Iris, No. 47, 24 December 1803. Signed "A Lover of Truth."

The Iris was edited by William Taylor (1765–1836), Barbauld’s former pupil at Palgrave School; Taylor was also the author of the satire against which "A Lover of Truth" protests, and his response to the letter resembles that of a pupil rebuked by his teacher: he printed the letter and cut short the satire. This letter is attributed to Barbauld by Taylor’s biographer, J. W. Robberds (Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich [London, 1843], 2:3–4). Internal evidence for attribution is the letter’s expressed view of Priestley, consistent with her poem "Champion of Truth." See ALBVE, pp. 72–73.

A16. *["Remarks on the Principle of Credulity."] Monthly Magazine,16 (December 1803): 504–505. Signed "* * *".

Denies Thomas Reid’s and Dugald Stewart’s theory of an instinctive "principle of credulity"; argues, instead, that children’s disposition to believe their elders is a result of experience. Illustrates with sentences spoken by adults to children, as in Lessons for Children. Closes with an anecdote of Reid "told me by my father, who was acquainted with him." Barbauld’s father had known Reid in college at Aberdeen (William Turner, The Warrington Academy [1813–15, rpt. Warrington, 1957], p. 13).

A17. ["Comparison of Manners in Two Centuries."] Athenaeum, 1 (January and February 1807): 1–10, 111–121. Signed (latter piece only) "Balance."

Attributed by Kenrick and, implicitly, by John Aikin, the Athenaeum’s editor (discussed above).

A18. "The Contrast; or Peace and War." Athenaeum, 1 (January 1807): 14–15. Signed "A.L.B."

A19. "Thoughts on the Inequality of Conditions." Athenaeum, 2 (July 1807): 14–19. Signed "A.L.B." Reprinted, attributed to Barbauld, in the London Cooperative Magazine, 3 (1828): 132–138.

A20. *"A Day-Dream." Athenaeum, 2 (December 1807): 563–565. Signed "A Day-dreamer."

A dream vision in which the narrator’s associates are transformed into beasts. As in Barbauld’s Address to the Opposers, the angel Ithuriel makes people appear in their true shapes, here in answer to the narrator’s wish that people had "a window in their bosoms" through which their "real dispositions" could be read. Ithuriel tells the narrator that "the friend of thy bosom has been the destroyer of thy peace," a statement that would describe Barbauld’s life with her husband. Further, the sharp contrast between the charming and the bestial in the narrator’s associates would correspond to the contrast between Rochemont Barbauld’s sub-manic and paranoid states. In her 1804 Selections from Addison and Steele Barbauld included Guardian No. 106, about a "window in the breast" through which the narrator can read his beloved’s true thoughts.

A21. "Memoir of the Rev. R. Barbauld." Monthly Repository, 3 (December 1808): 706–709. Unsigned. Partly reprinted in Lucy Aikin’s "Memoir" of Barbauld, in Works, 1:xlv-xlix.

A22. *"Truth and Fiction in Manners Compared." Athenaeum, 5 (February 1809): 106–109. Signed "Crito."

Argues in favor of fictions that render historical manners realistically even when those manners fail to meet current ideas of morality. The writer compares Robert Southey’s translation of the Cid, in which historical manners are observed, favorably with Corneille’s Cid, in which they are not; Barbauld makes

the same comparison in very similar words in "On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing" a year later (SPP, p. 387). The writer approves of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion. Barbauld had reviewed The Lay appreciatively: "it abounds ... with circumstances curious to the antiquarian" (Annual Review, 3 [1805]: 600–604). In 1809 Barbauld was at work on The British Novelists and thus concerned with fiction.

A23. ["Miss Anne Finch."] Monthly Repository, 4 (March 1809): 171–172. Signed "Stoke Newington" (where ALB was living in 1809).

Anne Finch was the granddaughter of Joseph Priestley. This obituary is attributed to Barbauld by J. T. Rutt, editor of Priestley's Memoirs (in Priestley, Theological and Miscellaneous Works, 1.i, p. 49n). The lines of verse that close the obituary, however, are from a poem by John Aikin.

A24. [Letter defending Maria Edgeworth's tale "The Dun" from aspersions by the Quarterly Review.] Gentleman's Magazine, 80 (March 1810): 210–212. Signed"Y.Z."

Barbauld acknowledged to Edgeworth having written such a letter (Anna Letitia Le Breton, Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, London, 1874, pp. 144–145).

A25. "A Dialogue on our Obligation to study the Scriptures, and to act on the Motives which they prescribe, even though their Divine Origin should be uncertain." Monthly Repository, 8 (February 1813): 103–107. Unsigned.

Claimed on p. 650 ("my Dialogue") of the "Vindication" (below), which is signed "A.L.B."

A26. "Vindication of the Dialogue on the Scriptures in Reply to Mr. Sturch." Monthly Repository, 8 (October and November 1813): 650–653, 738–741 Signed "A.L.B."38

A27. "Memoir of the late Rev. John Prior Estlin, LL.D." Monthly Repository, 12 (October 1817): 573–575. Signed "A. L. B." and "Stoke Newington, September 22nd, 1817." Reprinted in Monthly Magazine, 44 (1817): 566–568; partly incorporated in the memoir prefacing Estlin's Familiar Lectures on Moral Philosophy (London, 1818), 1:[xi]–xxxi.

Attributed to Barbauld by J. T. Rutt in his edition of Priestley's Memoirs (1.i, p. 420n). Estlin was a friend of Barbauld's from Warrington. His widow asked her to write his obituary, and Barbauld agreed to do so (letter to Susanna Estlin, 27 August [1817]; Estlin Papers, Bristol Reference Library).

A28. *["Fellowship of Unitarian Congregations."] Monthly Repository, 13 (May 1818): 303–304. Signed "A Social Worshiper" and dated April 12, 1818.

Chides wealthy Unitarians for lack of fellowship towards their fellow-congregants. Quotes Barbauld's Hymn VI (lines 5–9); the signature may allude to Barbauld's Remarks on ... Public or Social Worship (1792), in which she had argued that part of the value of social worship lies in its bringing into one community people of widely different ranks. She was said by a contemporary to have called Unitarianism "Christianity in the frigid zone" (ALBVE, p. 153); her ideal of social worship included the human warmth among worshipers argued for by this writer, who censures heads of Unitarian congregations for "coolness and callousness"—and in doing so argues further that by their coolness Unitarians injure their own prospects as a sect.

A29. "On Being Born Again: A Discourse by the late Mrs. Barbauld." Monthly Repository, n.s. I (July 1827): 477–482. Reprinted as American Unitarian Association Tract 13, A Discourse on Being Born Again. By Mrs. Barbauld (Boston, 1827; 2nd ed., 1830).

Introduced by Barbauld's nephew and adopted son, Charles Rochemont Aikin. A page of the autograph survives today (MS Corbett II.7, University of Birmingham Library).

A30. "New Year Discourse. By Mrs. Barbauld." Monthly Repository, n.s. 2 (January 1828): 1–5.

A31. "A Discourse, by Mrs. Barbauld." Monthly Repository, n.s. 2 (March 1828): 145–149.

A32. "A Discourse, by Mrs. Barbauld." Monthly Repository, n.s. 2 (June 1828): 361–367.

A33. "The Misses (addressed to a careless girl.) By the late Mrs. Barbauld." The Juvenile Forget Me Not ... for the Year 1830, ed. Mrs. S. C. [Anna Maria] Hall. London: N. Hailes [1829]. Pp. 1–8. Reprinted in three American newspapers: Louisville Public Advertiser, 19 February 1830; Southern Times (Columbia, SC), 19 April 1830; and [North] Carolina Observer, 13 May 1830; and by Grace Ellis, A Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, with many of her Letters (Boston, 1874), 2:374–380.

The Literary Gazette, mindful of Lucy Aikin's rebuke to the Amulet for publishing two Barbauld comic poems, rebuked the Juvenile Forget Me Not for printing "The Misses": Barbauld's "nearest relatives have requested us to reclaim ... against the growing practice of obtaining and publishing productions intended for the private circles and occasions which called them forth" (12 December 1829, p. 813; see n. 16 above). Their request amounts to an acknowledgement of Barbauld's authorship. In 1834 Hall (1800–81), as if stung by the Aikins' rebuke, justified her having published "The Misses": "It was written by a very excellent lady, who, I am grieved to say, is dead; one to whom I, as well as thousands of others, owe a deep debt of gratitude, for her books afforded me a great deal of instruction when I was a little girl" (A.M.H., "The 'Not' Family," Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, no. 114 [5 April 1834]: 80).