Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/51



The evening which was the object of these earnest aspirations had now arrived; and it proved a long, though by no means an unclouded one;—twenty years elapsed before the hand of death sundered this fraternal pair.

A warm attachment to the authors of what has been called the Augustan age of English literature,—on whom her own taste and style were formed,—was observable in the conversation of Mrs. Barbauld, and often in her writings; and she gratified this sentiment by offering to the public, in 1804, a Selection from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian and Freeholder, with a Prelimi-