Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/73

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

lxi


longer exist; and the elegant Lines on The Deserted Village, which are given partly for the sake of connecting the name of their author as a contemporary with that of a poet who has been so long enrolled among the classics of his country. It may also be mentioned, that Goldsmith, whose envy is well known, bore involuntary testimony to the merit of these lines, by exhibiting no sentiment but mortification on hearing them read with applause in a London circle.

Of the pieces composed since the first publication of Mrs. Barbauld's Poems (which form the larger part of the present collection); the two longest, the Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce, and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, have already appeared in separate pamphlets; and the first of them is added to the last edition of the Poems: several of the smaller ones have also been inserted in periodical works. Corrected