"Oh! Christ, his love is mighty! To dwell with him above." ANNA LÆTITIA [AIKIN] BARBAULD. 1743-1825. MRS. BARBAULD was the only daughter and eldest child of the Rev. John Aikin, LL.D., the eldest son of John Aikin, a linen-draper of London. The family were from Kirkcudbright, Scotland. At an early age the son was sent (1723) from London to the Dissenting Academy at Kibworth-Harcourt, Leicestershire, England. The Rev. John Jennings, who had founded the Academy, died the same year, and was succeeded by his pupil, the Rev. Philip Doddridge. From Kibworth, Aikin went to the University of Aberdeen, where he completed his education, and whence in after life he received the honorary degree of LL.D. On his return to England he settled at Market-Harborough, Leicestershire. Miss Jane Jennings, the only daughter of his former teacher, became his wife. At the age of fifteen she had declined the hand of Doddridge. Her mother, Anna Lætitia Wingate, was the granddaughter of Sir Arthur Annesley, the first Earl of Anglesey and Lord Privy Seal under Charles II. Mr. Aikin was speedily compelled, by an affection of the chest occasioned by a fall, to resign his charge. He then returned to Kibworth and revived the Academy, which he conducted with success for several years. Here Anna Lætitia, his daughter, was born June 20, 1743, where also the first fourteen years of her life were spent. She was a precocious child, with a wonderful aptitude for literature. Her education was conducted by her father. "I have seen," she said at a later day, "a good deal of the education of boys, but in a girls' school I should be quite a novice. I never was at one myself. I have not even the advantage of sisters; indeed, for the early part of my life, I conversed little with my own sex." Mr. Aikin in June, 1757, removed to Warrington-on-theMersey, and there, with Dr. John Taylor, of Norwich, and Mr. John Hiot, of Lancaster (all of them Arians), he established a theological school. Dr. Joseph Priestley, Dr. William Enfield, and Gilbert Wakefield subsequently were associated with him as teachers. The place was famed for its literary society, of which Miss Aikin was regarded as one of the principal ornaments. She had been trained in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek classics, and in the exact sciences. Her personal attractions were remarkable. "Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health, her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy." She had a host of admirers and suitors. Her poetic talent had been early developed. Five of her hymns were contributed to Dr. Enfield's "Hymns for Public Worship," Warrington, 1772. A volume of her “Poems" was published in 1773, which ran through four editions in a year. At the close of the same year appeared "Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose by J. and A. L. Aikin," to which her brother John contributed the smaller part. She gave her hand the next year (1774) to Rochemont Barbauld, one of her father's pupils. He was of a French Protestant family, and his father had been chaplain at Cassel to the Elector of Hesse, son-in-law of George II. of England. Her niece, Lucy Aikin, says that "her attachment to Mr. Barbauld was the illusion of a romantic fancy," fostered, as was thought, by "the baneful influence of the 'Nouvelle Heloise,' Mr. B. impersonating St. Preux." She says further: "Had her true affections been early called forth by a more genial home atmosphere, she would never have allowed herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations of amorous rapture set off with theatrical French manners." It was regarded by her best and truest friends as an "illstarred union." Mr. Barbauld, though reputed a religious man, and numbered among the dissenting ministry, was every way her inferior. This gave the cynical Dr. Samuel Johnson occasion to say, "Too much is expected from precocity and too little performed. Miss Aikin was an instance of early cultivation; but in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment now is, 'To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.' If I had bestowed such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent her to the Congress." The "infant boarding-school" was kept at the village of Palgrave, Suffolk, two miles from Diss, Norfolk. The dissenting congregation of the latter place had given Mr. Barbauld a call, which he had accepted. At Palgrave, to which he had removed with his bride, he opened a boarding-school for boys, in which his wife assisted him. Denied the blessing of offspring, she adopted her brother's son Charles, almost from his birth. For him and her more youthful pupils she wrote, and in 1778 published, her "Early Lessons"; and in 1781 her "Hymns in Prose for Children." In 1775 she had published her "Devotional Pieces compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job, with Thoughts on the Devotional Taste and on Sects and Establishments." The school was continued for eleven years with success, but it proved too exhausting for each of them. They bade adieu, therefore, to Palgrave in 1785, spent a year on the Continent and another in London, and then settled at Hampstead, beautifully situated as it then was in the country on the elevated ground to the northwest of London-Mr. Barbauld having accepted the pastoral charge of the dissenting congregation there. In 1793 she made a visit to Edinburgh and met with a hearty welcome from the literary celebrities of that city. She now began to take an active interest in the politics of the day. In 1790 she published "An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts"; in 1791, "A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade"; in 1793, "Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship"; also, "Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation; or, a Discourse for the Fast." She contributed fourteen articles to "Evenings at Home," a work published by her brother, in six volumes (1792-1795), for the benefit of the young. In 1795 she contributed eleven hymns to Rees and Kippis' collection, five of which had appeared (1772) in the Warrington Collection of Hymns. Her brother, in 1798, had removed from London to StokeNewington, a pretty suburban village, a few miles to the northeast of London, where Dr. Watts had passed about forty years of his valuable life. She induced Mr. Barbauld, in 1802, to purchase a house close to her brother's, to which they soon after removed, and where she spent the remainder of her life. In 1804 she published a volume of selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with an admirable Preliminary Essay; also "The Correspondence of Richardson," in six volumes, with a Life of the Novelist, and an able Review of his Works. Many of her publications were undertaken as a refuge from domestic trouble. Her husband had, at an early period, developed a tendency to insanity, which, growing with his years, resulted in frequently-repeated fits of frenzy and madness. Her sufferings from this sad fact were terrible, yet borne without complaint, and with Christian resignation. In one of his paroxysms he rushed upon her with a knife, attempting to take her life. She then separated from him, and he was removed to London, where he was put in charge of a keeper. When the latter was off his guard, March 11, 1808, he escaped and drowned himself in the New River. She wrote an affecting Dirge on the event. Her brother, in 1796, had become the literary editor of the Monthly Magazine, and for ten years she occasionally contributed to its columns. She edited also an edition of "The British Novelists," which was published in 1810, with an Introductory Essay, and biographical and critical notices prefixed to the works of each author. This was followed the next year by "The Female Speaker," a collection of prose and verse; and by her longest and most beautiful Poem, entitled "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," her latest separate publication. The last fourteen years of her life were passed in retirement, with occasional visits to a few literary friends. Even in her old age she "bore the remains of great personal beauty. She had a brilliant complexion, light hair, blue eyes, a small and elegant figure, and her manners were very agreeable." She continued to be the delight of an admiring circle of noble friends to the very last. Her only brother, John, died December 7, 1822. In her later days she was afflicted with asthma, which at length put an end to her life March 9, 1825, in her eighty-second year. In extreme old age she wrote a short poem on "Life," beginning with: "Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part." After her death and the publication of her "Works" by her niece, Miss Lucy Aikin, a copy of the book was given to Miss Wordsworth, the sister of the poet. This particular poem was read to Wordsworth, and at his request repeated, until he had learned it by heart. Then, as he paced his sitting-room at Rydal, Henry Crabb Robinson heard him mutter to himself, "I am not in the habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish I had written those lines: 'Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; |