Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/81

 style which rouses attention, strikes the imagination, and carries them with conviction to the heart.

It appears from a letter of Mrs. Barbauld's, that she early read with great delight, though in an English translation, the Dialogues of Lucian. Perhaps we may remotely trace to the impression thus produced, the origin of her witty and ingenious Dialogue between Madame Cosmogunia and a philosophical Inquirer of the Eighteenth Century, as well as of her Dialogue in the Shades. The allegorical or enigmatical style, however, in which the first of these pieces is composed, seemed peculiarly adapted to her genius; and the skill and elegance with which she composed in this difficult manner is further attested by her Letter of John Bull, by the Four Sisters, (published in Evenings at Home,) by many entertaining Riddles, a few of which are now included among her Poems, and