Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/17



author:Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a name long dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was born at the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on June 20th, 1743, the eldest child and only daughter of John Aikin, D.D. and Jane his wife, daughter of the Rev. John Jennings of Kibworth, and descended by her mother from the ancient family of Wingate, of Harlington in Bedfordshire.

That quickness of apprehension by which she was eminently distinguished, manifested itself from her earliest infancy. Her mother thus writes respecting her in a letter Rh