Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/55

 from the letters of Richardson the novelist and his correspondents, of which a vast collection had remained in the hands of his last surviving daughter; after whose death they were purchased of his grand children. It must be confessed that, on the whole, these letters were less deserving of public attention than she had probably expected to find them ; and very good judges have valued more than all the remaining contents of the six duodecimo volumes which they occupy, the elegant and interesting life of Richardson, and the finished reviewal of his works prefixed by the editor.

It is probable that Mrs. Barbauld consented to employ herself in these humbler offices of literature, chiefly as a solace under the pressure of anxieties and apprehensions of a peculiar and most distressing nature, which had been increasing in urgency during a long course of time, and which found their final completion on the