Lives of Celebrated Women

In the year 1792, affairs wore a very gloomy and threatening aspect in England. French revolutionary and atheistical principles seemed to be spreading wide their destructive influence. Indefatigable pains were taken, not only to agitate and mislead, but to corrupt and poison, the minds of the populace. At this crisis, letters poured in upon Miss More, from persons of eminence, earnestly calling upon her to produce some little tract which might serve to counteract these pernicious efforts. The intimate knowledge she had shown of human nature, and the lively and clear style of her writings, which made them attractive, pointed her out as the proper person for such an effort. Though she declined an open attempt to stem the mighty torrent, which she thought a work beyond her powers, she yet felt it to be her duty to try them in secret, and, in a few hours, composed the dialogue of “Village Politics, by Will Chip.” The more completely to keep the author unknown, it was sent to a new publisher. In a few days, every post from London brought her a present of this admirable little tract, with urgent entreaties that she would use every possible means of disseminating it, as the strongest antidote that could be administered to the prevailing poison. It flew with a rapidity almost incredible into the remotest parts of the kingdom. Government distributed many thousands. Numerous patriotic associations printed large editions; and in London only, many hundred thousands were distributed.

Internal evidence betrayed the secret of the authorship; and, when the truth came out, innumerable were the thanks and congratulations which bore cordial testimony to the merit of a performance, by which the tact and intelligence of a single female had turned the tide of misguided opinion. Many affirmed that it contributed essentially to prevent a revolution; so true was the touch, and so masterly the delineation, which brought out, in all its relief, the ludicrous and monstrous cheat, whereby appetite, selfishness, and animal force, were attempted to be imposed under the form of liberty, equality, and imprescriptible right.

The success of “Village Politics” encouraged Miss More to venture on a more extensive undertaking. The institution of Sunday schools, which had enabled multitudes to read, threatened to be a curse instead of a blessing; for, while no healthy food was furnished for their minds, the friends of infidelity and vice carried their exertions so far as to load asses with their pernicious pamphlets, and to get them dropped, not only in cottages and in the highways, but into mines and coal-pits. Sermons and catechisms were already furnished in abundance; but the enemy made use of the alluring vehicles of novels, tales, and songs, and she thought it right to meet them with their own weapons.

She therefore determined to produce three tracts every month, written in a lively manner, under the name of the “Cheap Repository.” The success surpassed her most sanguine expectations. Two millions were sold in the first year – a circumstance, perhaps, new in the annals of printing. But this very success, she tells us, threatened to be her ruin; for, in order to supplant the trash, it was necessary to undersell it, thus incurring a certain loss. This, however, was met by a subscription on the part of the friends of good order and morals.

The exertion which it required to produce these tracts, to organize her plan, and to conduct a correspondence with the committees formed in various parts of the kingdom, materially undermined her health. She continued them, however, for three years. “It has been,” she writes, “no small support to me, that my plan met with the warm protection of so many excellent persons. They would have me believe that a very formidable riot among the colliers was prevented by my ballad of ‘The Riot.’ The plan was settled; they were resolved to work no more; to attack the mills first, and afterwards the gentry. A gentleman gained their confidence, and a few hundreds were distributed, and sung with the effect, they say, mentioned above – a fresh proof by what weak instruments evils are now and then prevented. The leading tract for the next month is the bad economy of the poor. You, my dear madam, will smile to see your friend figuring away in the new character of a cook furnishing receipts for cheap dishes. It is not, indeed; a very brilliant career; but I feel that the value of a thing lies so much more in its usefulness than its splendor, that I think I should derive more gratification from being able to lower the price of bread, than from having written the Iliad.”

That Miss More’s efforts in behalf of virtue should be opposed by those against whom they were aimed, will not surprise us. But she was attacked from a quarter whence she had a right to expect sympathy and support. The nature of the attack will be learned from a letter written some years afterwards: “I will say, in a few words, that two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambitious, formed the design of attracting notice and getting preferment by attacking some charity schools – which, with no small labor, I have carried on in this country for near twenty years – as seminaries of vice, sedition, and disaffection. At this distance of time, – for it is now ended in their disgrace and shame, – it will make you smile when I tell you a few of the charges brought against me, viz., that I hired two men to assassinate one of these clergymen; that I was actually taken up for seditious practices; that I was with Hadfield in his attack on the king’s life. At the same time they declared – mark the consistency – that I was in the pay of the government, and the grand instigator of the war, by my mischievous pamphlets. That wicked men should invent this, is not so strange as that they should have found magazines, reviews, and pamphleteers, to support them. My declared resolution never to defend myself certainly encouraged them to go on. How thankful am I that I kept that resolution! though the grief and astonishment excited by the combination against me nearly cost me my life.”

There is not space to go at large into an account of this persecution, which was continued for several years. The most inveterate of her enemies was the curate of her own parish, who was named Bere, and the most distressing result to herself was being obliged to discontinue the school at that place. But, whilst laboring so earnestly for the poor and the humble, Miss More was still mindful of the wants of the higher classes, and, in the midst of her anxiety and distress, which very seriously affected her health, she found time to compose the “Strictures on Female Education,” for their benefit. All her practical admonitions, and all her delineations of female excellence, were afterwards brought together in the character of Lucilla, in the novel of “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” who is a true representative of feminine excellence within the legitimate range of allotted duties. She did not venture on publishing this work without much anxious hesitation. “I wrote it,” she says, “to amuse the languor of disease. I thought there were already good books enough in the world for good people, but that there was a large class of readers, whose wants had not been attended to – the subscribers to the circulating library. A little to raise the tone of that mart of mischief, and to counteract its corruptions, I thought an object worth attempting.” It was published without her name, and though many at once recognized the style, she herself did not acknowledge it till it had passed through many editions. It excited such immediate and universal attention, that, in a few days after its first appearance, she received notice to prepare for a second edition; and shortly afterwards she was followed to Dawlish, whither she had gone to try the effect of repose and the sea air, in restoring her health, by the eleventh edition.

Her works at an early period were duly estimated in the United States, and of the “Cœlebs” thirty editions had been issued before the author’s death. It is not a little creditable to the public taste, that a work so full of plain and practical truth should be so well received. In “Cœlebs,” as well as in some of her smaller productions, Miss More evinces her power of invention, and gives proof that, had she chosen to employ fiction as the vehicle of instruction, her imagination would have afforded her abundant resources; but habit and the bias of her mind led her in another course: a certain substantiality of purpose, a serious devotion to decided and direct beneficence, an active and almost restless principle of philanthropy, were the great distinctions of her character.

When the education of the Princess Charlotte became a subject of serious attention and inquiry, the advice and assistance of Miss More were requested by the queen. Bishop Porteus strenuously advised that the education should be intrusted to her; but, when the latter required that the entire direction should be given to her charge, this was thought, by those in power, to be too great a confidence. They were willing to engage her in a subordinate capacity; but this she declined, and so the negotiation ended. Her ideas on the subject were given to the world under the title of “Hints for forming the Character of a Young Princess” – a book which subsequently was a great favorite with her for whose benefit it was intended, and doubtless contributed to the formation of those virtues and principles which made her death so much lamented.

In the country Miss More had hoped to find retirement. But Barley Wood – a place to which she had removed, about one mile from Cowslip Green – was any thing but a hermitage. “Though,” she says, “I neither return visits nor give invitations, except when quite confined by sickness, I think I never saw more people, known and unknown, in my gayest days. I never had so many cares and duties imposed upon me as now in sickness and old age. I know not how to help it. If my guests are old, I see them out of respect, and in the hope of receiving some good; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from a distance, I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near home, my neighbors would be jealous of my seeing strangers, and excluding them.” Her epistolary labors were enormous. She laid it down as a rule never to refuse or delay answering any application for epistolary advice, enduring the incessant interruptions with indefatigable kindness.

In spite, however, of all the interruptions of company and of sickness; for, as she tells us, “From early infancy to late old age, her life was a successive scene of visitation and restoration,” she found time and strength to compose a series of works on “Morals,” – the last of the three being produced in the seventy-fifth year of her age.

In 1828, Miss More was subjected to the severest trial, perhaps, of her life. After the death of her sister Martha, who had been the manager of the domestic economy of the sisterhood, affairs at Barley Wood got into sad confusion. Dishonest and dissolute servants wasted her substance. After trying in vain to correct the evil by mild remonstrance, she sank quietly under what seemed inevitable, and determined to take the infliction as a chastisement to which it was her duty to submit. At length, however, her friends interposed, and represented to her the danger of her appearing as the patroness of vice, and thereby lessening the influence of her writings. It was determined that her establishment should be broken up. At a bleak season of the year, on a cold and inclement day, after a long confinement to her chamber, she removed to Clifton. From her apartment she was attended by several of the principal gentlemen of the neighborhood, who had come to protect her from the approach of any thing that might discompose her. She descended the stairs with a placid countenance, and walked silently for a few minutes round the lower room, the walls of which were covered with the portraits of her old and dear friends, who had successively gone before her. As she was helped into the carriage, she cast one pensive, parting look upon her bowers, saying, “I am driven, like Eve, out of paradise; but not, like Eve, by angels.” From the shock of the discovery of the misconduct of her servants, Miss More never recovered. After her removal to Clifton, her health was in a very precarious state. To her friends and admirers it was painful to see her great and brilliant talents descending to the level of mere ordinary persons; but the good, the kind, the beneficent qualities of her mind suffered no diminution or abatement. So long as her intellectual faculties remained but moderately impaired, her wonted cheerfulness and playfulness of disposition did not forsake her; and no impatient or querulous expressions escaped her lips, even in moments of painful suffering. Thus free from the infirmities of temper, which often render old age unamiable and unhappy, she was also spared many of the bodily infirmities which often accompany length of years. To the very last her eye was not dim; she could read with ease, and without spectacles, the smallest print. Her bearing was almost unimpaired, and, until very near the close of her life, her features were not wrinkled or uncomely. Her death-bed was attended with few of the pains and infirmities which are almost inseparable from sinking nature. She looked serene, and her breathing was as gentle as that of an infant in sleep. Her pulse waxed fainter and fainter, and her spirit passed quietly away on the 7th of September, 1833.

MRS. BARBAULD

Anna Letitia Barbauld, a name long dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was born at the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on June 20th, 1743. She was the eldest child and only daughter of John Aikin, D.D., and Jane, his wife, daughter of the Rev. John Jennings, of Kibworth, and descended by her mother from the ancient family of Wingate, of Harlington, in Bedfordshire.

That quickness of apprehension by which she was eminently distinguished, manifested itself from early infancy. Her mother writes thus respecting her in a letter which is still preserved: “I once, indeed, knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her; and who, at two years old, could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling, and, in half a year more, could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and, I believe, never shall.”

Her education was entirely domestic, and principally conducted by her excellent mother, a lady whose manners were polished by the early introduction to good company which her family connections had procured her; whilst her mind had been cultivated, and her principles formed, partly by the instructions of religious and enlightened parents, and partly by the society of the Rev. Dr. Doddridge, who was for some years domesticated under the parental roof.

In the middle of the last century, a strong prejudice still existed in England against imparting to females any degree of classical learning; and the father of Miss Aikin, proud as he justly was of her uncommon capacity, long refused to gratify her earnest desire of being initiated in this kind of knowledge. At length, however, she in some degree overcame his scruples; and, with his assistance, she enabled herself to read the Latin authors with pleasure and advantage; nor did she rest satisfied without gaining some acquaintance with the Greek.

The obscure village of Kibworth was unable to afford her a suitable companion of her own sex: her brother, the late Dr. Aikin, was more than three years her junior; and as her father was, at this period, the master of a school for boys, it might have been apprehended that conformity of pursuits, as well as age, would tend too nearly to assimilate her with the youth of the ruder sex, by whom she was surrounded. But the vigilance of her mother effectually obviated this danger, by instilling into her a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve; and she was accustomed to ascribe an uneasy sense of constraint in mixed society, which she could never entirely shake off, to the strictness and seclusion in which it had thus become her fate to be educated.

Her recollections of childhood and early youth were, in fact, not associated with much of the pleasure and gayety usually attendant upon that period of life; but it must be regarded as a circumstance favorable, rather than otherwise, to the unfolding of her genius, to be left thus to find, or make, in solitude, her own objects of interest or pursuit. The love of rural nature sank deep in her heart. Her vivid fancy excited itself to color, animate, and diversify, all the objects which surrounded her; the few but choice authors of her father’s library, which she read and re-read, had leisure to make their full impression, – to mould her sentiments, and to form her taste. The spirit of devotion, early inculcated upon her as a duty, opened to her, by degrees, an exhaustless source of tender and sublime delight; and while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet.

Just at the period when longer seclusion might have proved seriously injurious to her spirits, an invitation given to her learned and exemplary father to undertake the office of classical tutor to a highly respectable academy at Warrington, in Lancashire, was the fortunate means of transplanting her to a more varied and animating scene. This removal took place in 1758, when Miss Aikin had just attained the age of fifteen; and the fifteen succeeding years, passed by her at Warrington, comprehended probably the happiest, as well as the most brilliant, portion of her existence. She was at this time possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest period of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion fair, with the bloom of perfect health: her features were regular and elegant; and her light blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy.

A solitary education had not produced on her its most frequent ill effects, pride and self-importance; the reserve of her manners proceeded solely from bashfulness, for her temper inclined her strongly to friendship, and to social pleasures; and her active imagination, which represented all objects tinged with hues “unborrowed of the sun,” served as a charm against that disgust with common characters and daily incidents, which so frequently renders the conscious possessor of superior talents at once unamiable and unhappy.

Nor was she now in want of congenial associates. Warrington academy included among its tutors names eminent both in science and literature; with several of these, and especially with Dr. Priestley and Dr. Canfield and their families, she formed sincere and lasting friendships. The elder and more accomplished among the students composed an agreeable part of the same society; and its animation was increased by a mixture of young ladies, either residents in the town, or occasional visitors, several of whom were equally distinguished for personal charms, for amiable manners, and cultivated minds. The rising institution, which flourished for several years in high reputation, diffused a classic air over all connected with it. Miss Aikin, as was natural, took a warm interest in its success; and no academic has ever celebrated his alma mater in nobler strains, or with a more filial affection, than she has manifested in that portion of her early and beautiful poem, “The Invitation,” where her theme is this “nursery of men for future years.”

About the close of the year 1771, her brother, after several years of absence, returned to establish himself in his profession at Warrington – an event equally welcome to her feelings and propitious to her literary progress. In him she possessed a friend with discernment to recognize the stamp of genius in her productions, and anticipate their fame, combined with zeal and courage sufficient to vanquish her reluctance to appear before the public in the character of an author. By his persuasion and assistance, her poems were selected, revised, and arranged for publication; and when all these preparations were completed, finding that she still hesitated and lingered, – like the parent bird, who pushes off its young to their first flight, he procured the paper, and set the press to work on his own authority. The result more than justified his confidence of her success; four editions of the work were called for within the year of publication, 1773; compliments and congratulations poured in from all quarters; and even the periodical critics greeted her muse with nearly unmixed applause.

She was not permitted to repose upon her laurels. Her brother, who possessed all the activity and spirit of literary enterprise, in which she was deficient, now urged her to collect her prose pieces, and to join him in forming a small volume, which appeared also in the year 1773, under the title of “Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, by J. and A. L. Aikin.” These likewise met with much notice and admiration, and have been several times reprinted. The authors did not think proper to distinguish their respective contributions, and several of the pieces have, in consequence, been generally misappropriated. The fragment of “Sir Bertrand,” in particular, though alien from the character of that brilliant and airy imagination which was never conversant with terror, and rarely with pity, has been repeatedly ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, even in print.

Having thus laid the foundation of a lasting reputation in literature, Miss Aikin might have been expected to proceed with vigor in rearing the superstructure; and the world awaited with impatience the result of her further efforts. But an event, the most important of her life, was about to subject her to new influences, new duties, to alter her station, her course of life, and to modify even the bent of her mind. This event was her marriage, which took place in May, 1774.

Her husband, the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, was a dissenting minister, descended from a family of French Protestants, who had taken refuge in England in the reign of Louis XIV. Mr. Barbauld was educated in the academy at Warrington, and, at the time of his marriage, had been recently appointed to the charge of a dissenting congregation at Palgrave, in Suffolk, near Diss, in Norfolk, where he had announced his intention of opening a boarding-school for boys. This undertaking proved speedily successful – a result which must in great part be attributed, first to the reputation, and afterwards to the active exertions, of Mrs. Barbauld. She particularly superintended the departments of geography and English composition, which latter she taught by a method then unusual, but which has since been brought much into practice. Her plan, according to the statement of Mr. William Taylor, of Norwich, one of her first pupils, was, to read a fable, a short story, or a moral essay, aloud, and then to send them back into the school-room to write it out on slates in their own words. Each exercise was separately examined by her: the faults of grammar were obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every correction, so that the arts of inditing and criticising were in some degree learnt together. Mrs. Barbauld also instructed the pupils in the art of declamation; and the pleasing accomplishments of good reading and graceful speaking have probably never been taught with more assiduity or with better success than by herself. After a few years thus devoted, Mrs. Barbauld was solicited to receive several little boys as her own peculiar pupils; and among this number may be mentioned Lord Denman, the present Chief Justice of England, and the celebrated Sir William Gell. It was for the use of these, her almost infant scholars, that she composed her “Hymns in Prose for Children.”

In 1775, Mrs. Barbauld published a small volume entitled “Devotional Pieces, compiled from the Psalms of David, with Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, and on Sects and Establishments.” About the same time, she wrote that admirable little volume, “Early Lessons,” a publication which has ever since been a standard work, and, though frequently imitated, yet remains unrivalled amidst all its competitors.

This little volume was written for the use of one of her nephews, who had been adopted by Mr. Barbauld and herself, in consequence of their having no child of their own. In the present day, when parents are in possession of the labors of many clever persons for aiding the task of early instruction, it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the value of Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons.” At the time of its first appearance, as at present, there was a multitude of books professedly written for children, but few adapted to the comprehension of a child of very tender age, that were not at the same time injurious from their folly or puerility.