visit to Holland, received the degree of M.D. at the university of Leyden. After residing for a few years at Chester and at Warrington, he settled in medical practice at Great Yarmouth in the year 1784. The society of Yarmouth was at this time exceedingly hostile to dissenters, and the agitation in 1790 for the repeal of the Corporation and Tests Acts embittered differences that would otherwise have been unimportant. On this subject, Aikin, whose political and religious opinions were those of the dissenters, published two warmly written pamphlets, and thereby lost the support of most of his more orthodox friends and patients. The pamphlets were published anonymously, but Aikin was soon known to be their author, and his professional prospects in Yarmouth were virtually ruined. 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. Lucy Aikin, his daughter, describes this migration as ‘a blessed change from Yarmouth.’ In London the warm welcome of his friends, and his own high character, brought him a fair measure of success. He practised as a physician only, and devoted his whole leisure to literature. His career, however, as a physician was cut short a few years later by a stroke of paralysis, in consequence of which he gave up his house and practice to his son, and retired to Stoke Newington. There he spent the last twenty-four years of his life in his favourite studies and occupations. He died in 1822, and left several children. Aikin is better known as a man of letters than as a physician. His elegant scholarship gave a natural polish to all that he wrote, and his varied attainments, as well as his moral uprightness, earned him many friends, among whom were Dr. Priestley; Pennant, the naturalist; Dr. Darwin; James Montgomery; John Howard, the philanthropist; and, for a time, the poet, Southey. He was John Howard's literary executor, and was often employed by him to write reports on prisons, and other documents. His life of Howard has been adopted without acknowledgment by a modern writer. Hardly a year of his life passed without some contribution to literature, but his best known works are ‘Essays on Song Writing;’ ‘Translation of the Germania and the Agricola of Tacitus;’ ‘Biographical Memoirs of Medicine in Great Britain;’ ‘England delineated;’ ‘General Biography’ (10 vols. 4to; the articles marked ‘A’ are more than half of the work); ‘The Arts of Life;’ ‘The Woodland Companion;’ ‘Lives of John Selden and Archbishop Usher;’ critical and biographical prefaces to an edition of the British Poets; and ‘Evenings at Home,’ which last work was written in conjunction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld, but Aikin contributed far the greater number of the pieces. He also began a translation of Pliny's ‘Natural History,’ but was so ‘disgusted by his errors and old women's fables’ that he abandoned the project. 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.
[Unpublished Letters and Memoirs; Lucy Aikin's Memoir of John Aikin.]
AIKIN, LUCY (1781–1864), daughter of the preceding, was born at Warrington in the year 1781. She resided with her parents at Yarmouth and Stoke Newington till the death of her father in 1822, when she removed to Hampstead, where, with the exception of a short interval at Wimbledon, she spent the remainder of her life. She died in 1864. Miss Aikin was in early life a diligent student of French, Italian, and Latin, and at the youthful age of seventeen began to contribute articles to magazines and reviews. 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; namely, ‘Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth’ (1818); ‘Memoirs of the Court of James I.’ (1822); ‘Memoirs of the Court of Charles I.’ (1833); and the ‘Life of Addison’ (1843). The last of these books, which contains many letters of Addison never before published, is the subject of an essay by Macaulay, who, while praising Miss Aikin's other works, and especially her ‘Memoirs of the Court of James I,’ observes that she was ‘far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobalds than among the steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's tea table at Hampton.’ Of her other memoirs she herself writes, on the completion of her ‘Charles I:’ ‘I am resolved against proceeding farther with English sovereigns. Charles II is no theme for me; it
