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<h3>LAETITIA BARBAULD.</h3> [BORN 1743. DIED 1825.] JOHNSTONE. <ANTIMG src="images/it.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="78" height-obs="72" class="floatl" />HE only daughter of Dr John Aikin, a Dissenting minister. Her youth was spent in entire seclusion, and her education was entirely domestic. At two years of age, it is stated on the authority of her mother, she could read with tolerable ease, and, at two years and a half, as well "as most women." It is at least certain that, from the instructions of her father, Miss Aikin acquired a competent knowledge of Latin; and that she was not indebted, for even a single lesson, either to professional female tuition, or to the teachers of the fashionable accomplishments, considered so important in forming the minds and manners of young ladies. Dr Aikin became a teacher at the Dissenting academy in Warrington, in Lancashire, when his daughter was about fifteen. This seminary enjoyed high celebrity. The teachers were all men of distinguished talents. Dr Priestley and Dr Enfield were of their number. In such a society the genius of Miss Aikin was fostered and animated; and her poems, published in 1773, rose into immediate popularity. Verse had the quality of comparative rarity in those days, and a female poet had a clear and unoccupied field. In 1744, Miss Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a young gentleman who, having been sent to Warrington for instruction previous to entering the church, imbibed, with a passion for her, the tenets of the sect to which her family belonged. Mr Barbauld obtained the charge of a congregation in Suffolk, and at Palgrave opened a seminary for the instruction of youth. The acquirements and habits of Mrs Barbauld eminently qualified her to be the coadjutor of her husband in this undertaking, and she afterwards received pupils of a very tender age as her peculiar charge. Of this number were Mr Denman the barrister, and Sir William Gell. Having no child of her own, she adopted the infant of her brother, Dr Aikin; and for his use, and that of her infant class, were composed those early lessons and hymns in prose which confirmed her literary reputation. After a long interval, Mrs Barbauld resumed her pen, and published a selection of papers from the classic essayists, with a Life of Richardson, and a selection from his correspondence. In 1808 she lost her husband, who had for a long time suffered under that mental affliction which makes death a welcome release. After this event, she published a selection of the British novelists, and then her poem, "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,"—a production far more ambitious, though much less successful, than her early and quieter performances. Its tone is that of gloomy prediction, its spirit desponding and altogether infelicitous. That was no palliation for the virulence of party feeling by which this useful and elegant author, now venerable even for years, was assailed by certain periodical writers. She never again appeared before the public. She died at the age of eighty-two, entitled to the veneration and gratitude of every one who has a child to train for this life, and for a higher state of existence. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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