520 
‘search after happiness in the country ; 
and, though there doubtless may, and 
must, be many there who are compara- 
tively happy, yet I determined not to 
Stay and look for them; but hastened 
Biography of Eminent Persons. 
[Jan. I, 
back to my inn, swallowed a hasty 
breakfast, and was off by a coach 
which passed immediately after for 
London. 
September 13, 1822. 
BIOGRAPHY OF EMINENT PERSONS. 
—__—— 
DR. AIKIN. 
monn AIKIN, known to the public 
during the last forty years as a 
very pleasing and accomplished writer, 
was born at Kilworth in Leices- 
tershire, and was the son of the 
Rey. Mr. Aikin, a dissenting minister 
who kept a classical academy at that 
place, and was afterwards one of the 
professors at Warrington. 
He was, at a suitable age, appren- 
ticed to a surgeon and apothecary at 
Uppingham, in Rutland; and, on com- 
pleting his term, was sent to Edin- 
burgh, where he graduated as M.D. He 
settled in that profession at Yarmouth, 
and subsequently removed to Norwich, 
his celebrated sister, Mrs. Barbauld, 
and her husband, keeping a seminary 
at Thetford, in that county, and thereby 
adding to the weight of his local influ- 
ence. Yet, although the most amia- 
ble of men, he was neither empirical 
enough, nor sufliciently warm and 
popular in his address, to supersede 
others in their profitable practice. To 
avail himself, therefore, at once of his 
public reputation as a man of letters, 
and of the society of his sister, who 
then had settled at Hampstead, he 
removed to London in 1794. 
Here he sought to combine practice 
with literary engagements among the 
booksellers; but, as the public never 
favour any man in two capacities, his 
success as an author shut him out from 
medical practice; and, at length, he 
settled professedly as a man of letters, 
in 1802, at Stoke Newington, where 
Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld also took up 
their residence. A few years since he 
suffered a severe attack of palsy, 
which deprived him of his corporeal 
and mental faculties; and, to other 
attacks of this disease, he atlength fella 
victim in Dec. 1822, in the 76th year 
of his age. 
His early works consisted of a 
“‘ History of Medicine,” of a work of 
“Medical Biography,” and of a “ His- 
tory of Manchester,” in which he was 
engaged by Stockdale, the bookseller. 
His most original productions were 
the “ Evenings at Home,” in six small 
volumes, his “ Letters tohis Son,” and 
his ‘Annals of George the Third.’ 
He translated “Select Lives from 
Diderot and D’Alembert’s Memoirs of 
the French Academicians ;” and he 
compiled, under an engagement with 
Kearsley, ‘‘a General Biographical 
Dictionary,’ not the most popular, but 
beyond. question the best in the lan- 
guage. He was, besides, a frequent 
contributor to the Monthly Review; 
and he assisted largely in the Annual 
Review, edited by his son. 
As an editor, he produced editions, 
with very elegant critical prefaces, of 
some of our best poets; and he co- 
operated in many other works as editor, 
or reviser, without his name appearing, 
his engagements being always fulfilled 
with good taste and scrupulous fideiity. 
At its first appearance he was en- 
gaged by its proprietor and conductor 
to supervise the sheets of this Miscel- 
lany, and to his sound taste it owed 
much of the public reputation which it 
suddenly acquired. His unacquaint- 
edness with the chicanery of law, and 
the artifices of mankind, rendered him 
the too easy dupe of two knaves, by 
which the conductor was, in 1803, 
robbed in the most flagrant manner of 
several hundred pounds, and hence a 
disagreement and rupture of the eon- 
nexion took place. If the moral dis- 
cretion of Dr. Aikin ever forsook him, 
it was on this occasion. He first ad- 
vertised that he had no longer any con- 
nexion with a work, in which that con- 
nexion was mere matter of private 
concern, never avowed, and then he 
lent his name to a counter-work, 
brought out under the title of the 
Atheneum. The attempt did not suc- 
ceed, and it failed (as we trust every 
Similar attempt will fail which is 
directed against the interests of this 
miscellany,) with heavy losses and 
much yvexation to all parties. 
Nevertheless, than Dr. Aikin a 
better man never lived. He was an 
exampie of equanimity, of disciplined 
feelings, and of social character. If 
he had a fault as a man, and as a 
writer, it was in being too cold, never 
erring 
