Arthur Aikin Brodribb

“ Wakefield was a man of singular humanity, hating cruelty of all kinds, and sensitive to the misery of others. He abandoned his favourite sports as soon as he conceived that they involved cruelty, and vainly attempted to persuade Fox to do the same. Ἀλήθειαν κὰι ἐλευθερίαν was the motto of his bookplate, and of his life. He holds a distinct position in the history of English scholarship. As a scholar, he had decided merits and conspicuous defects. He had abundance of good taste, extensive general knowledge, and great industry ”

“ Of this essay Johnson observes: ‘The imitators of my style have not hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best, for she has imitated the sentiment as well as the diction.’ Croker refers this remark to the wrong essay. In the year following these literary successes, in 1774, Mrs. Barbauld married. Her husband, the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, came of a French protestant family settled in England since the persecutions of Louis XIV. His father, a clergyman of the church of England, sent him, rather injudiciously, to the dissenting academy at Warrington, where he naturally imbibed presbyterian opinions. ”

“ In a letter to a friend he says that he has no idea of becoming ‘the hero of a cause,’ but ‘at his age it would be trifling not to have a character, and cowardly not to avow and stick to it.’ His position at Yarmouth becoming more and more intolerable, in 1792 he moved to Broad Street Buildings in London, and found within easy reach of Hackney, then the stronghold of the dissenters, a more agreeable field for his medical and literary work. ”

“ On the last work his reputation as a scholar mainly rests. He completed his translation of the New Testament in 1792; a second edition appeared three years later, and another in 1820. During the same period (1792–7) he also wrote not merely an autobiography and several controversial tracts and pamphlets, but a work on the ‘Evidences of Christianity’ (1793) , a ‘Defence of Revealed Religion,’ and a ‘Reply to Thomas Paine's “Age of Reason”’ (1795) .
Wakefield's political opinions grew more extreme with his years, and he was ever ready and anxious to uphold them at all costs. ”

“ BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA (1743–1825) , poet and miscellaneous writer, was the only daughter and eldest child of John Aikin, D.D., and his wife Jane Jennings, and was born in 1743 at Kibworth, Leicestershire. When she was fifteen years old, her father became one of the tutors of the newly established academy at Warrington. There she passed the next fifteen years of her life, and formed intimate and lasting friendships with several of her father's colleagues and their families, in whose cultivated society she had every encouragement to turn to account her early, not to say precocious, education. ”

“ Returning from Aberdeen, he was ordained, and after a short period of work as Doddridge's assistant, he accepted the cure of a dissenting congregation at Market Harborough. An affection of the chest, however, made him a valetudinarian for life, and left him no resource but tuition. It is mainly as a tutor of Warrington Academy that John Aikin is noticeable. ”

“ Although Bergne's name did not come prominently before the general public, the sterling services which his remarkable memory, accuracy, and judgment enabled him to render during the long years of his life in the Foreign Office were universally and cordially recognised by his colleagues, Bergne will be remembered not less as antiquary and numismatist than as an important public sentint. He was one of the founders of the Numismatic Society, of which he was treasurer from 1848 to 1857, and was several times afterwards elected a vice-president, He was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. ”

“ His reputation would be higher if he had been a severer critic of himself. He measured swords with Porson with a light heart, and when Porson published his ‘Hecuba’ in 1797, Wakefield immediately assailed the work in a ‘Diatribe Extemporalis.’ The result was a more or less discourteous controversy, which went on simmering in Porson's notes to the ‘Orestes’ and in the second edition of the ‘Hecuba;’ and an estrangement followed. ”

“ In 1811 she prepared for the use of young ladies a selection, formerly well known and popular, of the best passages from English poets and prose writers. This appeared in one volume, and was called ‘The Female Speaker.’ In the same year she wrote the most considerable of her poems, entitled ‘Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,’ a work which, at a time of the deepest national gloom, was written in eloquent but too despondent strains. Of this poem Mr. Crabb Robinson says: ‘Dear Mrs. Barbauld this year incurred great reproach by writing a poem entitled “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.” ”

“ He was an excellent man, but had a tendency to insanity, which became more and more pronounced towards the close of his life. Soon after their marriage the Barbaulds removed to Palgrave in Suffolk, where Mr. Barbauld had charge of a dissenting congregation, and proceeded to establish a boys' school. ”

“ It may be added that Aikin was greatly interested in chemistry and natural philosophy, branches of science in which, however, his sons, Arthur and Charles Rochemont, were subsequently more distinguished than himself. ”

“ Throughout the greater part of his life he was an industrious student of the Anglo-Saxon language, on which subject he published several works, now out of print, which are characterised both by learning and originality. ”

“ This institution, which may be regarded as the cradle of Unitarianism, was but short-lived, and yet formed during the twenty-nine years of its existence the centre of the liberal politics and the literary taste of the county of Lancashire. ”

“ Reflects the ascending seats with conscious pride.
Three tutors at 100l. a year each were at first chosen. Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, taught divinity; Mr. Holt, of Kirkdale, natural philosophy; and Aikin was classical tutor. Lord Willoughby, of Parham, was the first president of the academy. Early in the history of the academy a fourth tutor was appointed. On the death of Dr. Taylor, in 1761, Aikin became tutor in divinity, which post he held almost to the year of his death, and was succeeded in his old duties by Dr. ”

“ AIKIN, JOHN (1713–1780) , scholar and theological tutor, was born in 1713, in London, where his father, a native of Scotland, had been for some years settled in business. He was placed for a short time as French clerk in a mercantile house, but, an ardent love of study rendering commercial pursuits distasteful to him, he entered the Kibworth Academy, a school of which the celebrated Dr. ”

“ His studies led him gradually to the adoption of Arian or unitarian doctrines, and necessarily involved the resignation of his curacy. In March 1779 he married Anne Watson, the niece of his former rector, and vacated his fellowship. He had not taken priest's orders, nor, as he could no longer subscribe to the articles of the church, could he proceed to the M.A. degree. ”

“ In 1810 appeared her first considerable work, ‘Epistles on Women,’ a poem in spirited but conventional heroics; and in 1814 she wrote her only work of fiction, entitled ‘Lorimer, a Tale.’ These were her earlier efforts, but her reputation was gained entirely by her historical works published between the years 1818 and 1843 ”

“ Pope's ‘Iliad and Odyssey, with Notes,’ London, 1796. block [Memoirs of the Life of Gilbert Wakefield; Aikin's Biographical Dictionary; Fox's Memoirs; Sketch of Gilbert Wakefield by M. E. Martin; Crabb Robinson's Diary; State Trials; Gilbert Wakefield's Pamphlet and Address to the Judges; Gent. Mag.; Watson's Life of Porson; Baker's St. John's College, Cambridge; Munro's Lucretius.] ”

“ Her letters, some few of which have been published since her death, show that though her life was habitually retired she greatly enjoyed society. They record friendships formed or casual acquaintance made with (among others) Mrs. ”