Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/25

 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