Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/49

 By this time, the effervescence caused by the French revolution had nearly subsided; and Mrs. Barbauld, who could seldom excite herself to the labour of composition, except on the spur of occasion, gave nothing more to the public for a considerable number of years, with the exception of two critical essays; one prefixed to an ornamented edition of Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, the other to a similar one of the Odes of Collins; of which the first appeared in 1795, the second in 1797. Both are written with elegance, taste and acuteness; but, on the whole, they are less marked with the peculiar features of her style than perhaps any other of her prose pieces.

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