Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/21

, which she read and re-read, had leisure to make their full impression,—to mould her sentiments and to form her taste; the spirit of devotion, early inculcated upon her as a duty, opened to her by degrees an exhaustless source of tender and sublime delight; and while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet.

Just at the period when longer seclusion might have proved seriously injurious to her spirits, an invitation given to her learned and exemplary father to undertake the office of classical tutor in a highly respectable dissenting academy at Warrington in Lancashire, was the fortunate means of transplanting her to a more varied and animating scene. This removal took place in 1758, when Miss Aikin had just attained the age of fifteen; and the fifteen succeeding years passed by her at Warrington comprehended probably the happiest, as well as the most brilliant portion of her existence. She was at this time possessed of