Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/76

 gradual result of principle and reflection, of the events and the experience of life. It was certainly so in that of Mrs. Barbauld. Her Epistle to Dr. Enfield, on his revisiting Warrington in 1789, is the first of her poems which indicates deep feeling; and this was dictated by the tender recollections of departed youth, and the memory of an honoured parent, the first near connexion from whom she had been parted by death. Her other pathetic pieces, The Lines on the Death of Mrs. Martineau the Dirge—the Thought on Death—the Lines on the Illness of the late King—those on the Death of the Princess Charlotte the Octogenary Reflections, and a few others, may easily be traced either to particular afflictive incidents of her life, ,or to reflections naturally arising under the influence of declining years and domestic solitude. By the reader of taste and sentiment these will not be esteemed the least interesting portion of the collection.