withstanding
her quiet country life, many ties, and friendships, and acquaintances.
Her poem on 'Corsica' had brought her into some relations with Boswell;
she also knew Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Here is her description of the
'Great Bear:'--

'I do not mean that one which shines in the sky over your head; but the
Bear that shines in London--a great rough, surly animal. His Christian
name is Dr. Johnson. 'Tis a singular creature; but if you stroke him he
will not bite, and though he growls sometimes he is not ill-humoured.'

Johnson describes Mrs. Barbauld as suckling fools and chronicling small
beer. There was not much sympathy between the two. Characters such as
Johnson's harmonise best with the enthusiastic and easily influenced.
Mrs. Barbauld did not belong to this class; she trusted to her own
judgment, rarely tried to influence others, and took a matter-of-fact
rather than a passionate view of life. She is as severe to him in her
criticism as he was in his judgment of her: they neither of them did the
other justice. 'A Christian and a man-about-town, a philosopher, and a
bigot acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more miserable
through fear of death.' So she writes of him, and all this was true; but
how much more was also true of the great and hypochondriacal old man!
Some years afterwards, when she had been reading Boswell's long-expected
'Life of Johnson,' she wrote of the book:--'It is like going to Ranelagh;
you meet all your acquaintances; but it is a base and mean thing to
bring thus every idle word into judgment.' In our own day we too have
our Boswell and our Johnson to arouse discussion and indignation.

'Have you seen Boswell's "Life of Johnson?" He calls it a Flemish
portrait, and so it is--two quartos of a man's conversation and petty
habits. Then the treachery and meanness of watching a man for years
in order to set down every unguarded and idle word he uttered, is
inconceivable. Yet with all this one cannot help reading a good deal
of it.' This is addressed to the faithful Betsy, who was also keeping
school by that time, and assuming brevet rank in consequence.

Mrs. Barbauld might well complain of the fatigue from hairdressers in
London. In one of her letters to her friend she thus describes a lady's
dress of the period:--

'Do you know how to dress yourself in Dublin? If you do not, I will tell
you. Your waist must be the circumference of two oranges, no more. You
must erect a st