Historical Literature on Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »» Anna Laetitia Barbauld

1773 | The Mouse's Petition

The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.
If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,
Beware, lest in the worm you crush,
A brother's soul you find.
(Anna Barbould, The Mouse's Petition [1773])

1778-88 | Lessons for Children

What has Billy got? He had got a nest of young birds. He has been climbing a high tree for them. Poor little birds !…Do not let them die. The little birds' papa and mamma will be very sorry if they come to die.

It is September. Hark! Somebody is letting off a gun! Here is a bird dropped down just at your feet. It is all bloody. Poor thing ! how it fluttters. Its wing is broken. It cannot fly any further. It is going to die. What bird is it! It is a partridge. Are you not sorry, Charles? It was alive a little while ago.

There was a little girl who loved very dearly to run through the meadows, and catch the butterflies that she saw flying about, or resting on the bright gay flowers in the hedges. But she always found that as soon as she touched them, their wings lost all thier pretty colour, and were sometimes even rent and broken if she held them ever so gently. She was, as she ought to be, so vexed at this, that she determined to catch no more butterflies, but to be contented with seeing them skim from one flower to another, and to stand and look at them while they opened and shut their beautiful wings in the sun.

But though butterflies' wings could be so soon broken and spoiled, birds' she thought could not, and it would be a great deal better, she said to herself, to have pretty young birds in her hand, that might be touched without harm, and would in time sing to her, than the gayest butterflies that were ever seen. And so she persuaded some one to get her a nest-full of young linnets, out of a thick hedge, which she took and put against her bosom, and then fed them, till she thought they would be much happier with her than they were among the boughs and leaves of the tree. But when the old bird flew back, after she had been seeking food for her young, and found her nest gone, she made such a sad twittering that the little girl felt very sorry, and began to think that though the young ones might be glad to have such a nice warm bed as she made them in a little cage, their mother must be very grieved to lose them, and so she went to bed not half so glad at having the young birds as she was at first.

When she got up in the morning she went to look at them, and carry them some food, and she thought, 'Perhaps the old bird has forgotten them by this time;' but it was no such thing, for she was flying backwards and forwards before the window where the cage stood, and would have come quite near, had not some one frightened her. When she put her hand into the cage with the crumbs of bread she had brought, she hoped the little linnets would put up their beaks and shake their wings, and take the food. But they neither chirped nor moved, and she was very vexed, and touched them with her hand again and again to make them stir, but they would not, and then she thought she would take them out, and so she did, and they were all dead. When she saw this she cried, and found she had been very cruel, and said she would never take poor little birds again from their mother.

But after a few days she was again wishing to have something to play with, and to make fond of; and she was so lucky as to find a number of little kittens which an old cat was bringing up in a corner by the kitchen- fire. So she begged her mamma to let her have one, which she did, and she ran immediately and took the prettiest she could see, and went away with it. But she had not long had it in her arms when the mother came after her, and mewing and looking up at her seemed to beg that she would set it down, and let it go back into the kitchen. And the good little girl remembered the poor birds, and would not for the world be so cruel again; and she let the kitten go, but was soon after rewarded by finding it grown very strong, and that it was ready of its own accord to leave the old cat; and so she had it again, and a faithful little thing it was all its life. (Anna Barbauld, Lessons for Children [1778-88])

1804 | In Selections from The Spectator, Tatler, Guaridan, and Freeholder [1804] Anna Laetitia Barbould included Alexander Pope's On Humanity to Animals in the edition.

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1773 | Anna Laetitia Barbauld, The Mouse's Petition, Found in the Trap where he had been Confined all Night in Poems [First Edition: London, 1773] (London, 1777; Digitized by Google, 2006).

1778-1788 | Anna Barbauld, Lessons for Children [Orginally published in a series of books for children of different ages, London, 1778-1788] (London, 1867; Digitized by Google, 2006).

1804| In Selections from The Spectator, Tatler, Guaridan, and Freeholder (London, 1804; Digitized by Google, 2006), Anna Laetitia Barbould included Alexander Pope's On Humanity to Animals [offsite ebook] in the edition.

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