Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/75

 found in an unformed state; for so relentlessly did she destroy all her juvenile essays, that the editor is not aware of the existence of a single piece which can be ascertained to have been composed before the age of twenty: the printed ones are all, it is believed, of a considerably later date. Her earliest pieces too, as well as her more recent ones, exhibit in their imagery and allusions the fruits of extensive and varied reading. In youth, the power of her imagination was counterbalanced by the activity of her intellect, which exercised itself in rapid, but not unprofitable excursions over almost every field of knowledge. In age, when this activity abated, imagination appeared to exert over her an undiminished sway.

The quality which principally distinguishes the later productions of her Muse is pathos. In some tempers sensibility appears an instinct, while in others it is the