ual 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.

About this time, Mrs. Barbauld's husband, to whom she had been united
for more than thirty years, fell into a state of nervous weakness, and
at last died, in November, 1808. From the dejection occasioned by this
loss, Mrs. Barbauld sought relief in literary occupation, and
undertook the task of editing a collection of the British novelists,
which was published in 1810. To these volumes she contributed an
introductory essay, and furnished biographical and critical notices of
the life and writings of each author; these were written with her
usual taste and judgment. In the next year, she composed and published
the longest and most highly-finished of her poems, entitled "Eighteen
Hundred and Eleven." The time at which this poem appeared was by many
persons looked upon with gloomy forebodings, and the matters of which
it treats were considered as indicative of the waning fortunes of
Great Britain. It was perhaps owing to the spirit of melancholy
prediction by which it is pervaded, that the poem was not received by
the public as it deserved. It is written throughout