DR. JOHN AIKIN
1747
January 15, Thursday (1746, Old Style): John Aikin was born at Kibworth-Harcourt in Leicestershire, England, son of the Reverend John Aikin and Jane Jennings Aikin. He would obtain his elementary education in the Nonconformist academy at Warrington at which his father, along with the Reverend William Enfield, and Joseph Priestley, was a tutor. He would study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and then in London in the practice of Dr. William Hunter, and then travel to Leiden for more such study. Afterward he would practice as a surgeon at Chester and Warrington. Eventually he would abandon medicine for literature.1
1773
While the fmall-pox struck in the town of Warrington, John Aikin was keeping careful count of thofe who died, and their ages.
The1st meeting of the Medical Society of London, held in this year, caused the creation of a commemorative painting — and in this commemorative painting one can see, with others, John Aikin and Edward Jenner.
1. John’s older sister was Anna Letitia Aikin, who would become a poet and marry a Huguenot, Rochemont Barbauld, becoming known as Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DR. JOHN AIKIN DR. JOHN AIKIN
1777
George Heriot travelled from Edinburgh to London, having it would seem the intention of beginning an artistic career. In this year, however, his father’s business failed and his younger brother John quit the university and joined the Army, so instead of beginning this artistic career, we find him embarking on a voyage to the West Indies (during his time in the New World islands, he would write and sketch extensively).
At some point during this decade, Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld’s brother John Aikin had published a work he had entitled AN ESSAY ON THE APPLICATION OF NATURAL HISTORY TO POETRY. His sister wrote to him of it: I hope your Essay will bring down our poets from the garrets, to wander about the fields and hunt squirrels. I am clearly of your opinion, that the only chance we have of novelty is by a more accurate observation of the works of nature, though I think I should not have confined the track quite so much as you have done to the animal creation, because sooner exhausted than the vegetable.... I think too, since you put me on criticizing, it would not have been amiss if you had drawn between the poet and natural historian, and shown how far, and in what cases, the one may avail himself of the knowledge of the other ... that knowledge becomes so generally spread as to authorize the poetical describer to use it without shocking the ear by the introduction of names and properties not sufficiently familiar.... I have seen some rich descriptions of West Indies flowers and plants, but unpleasing merely because their names were uncouth, and forms not known generally enough to be put into verse.
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DR. JOHN AIKIN DR. JOHN AIKIN
1780
At Leiden, John Aikin was awarded the M.D. degree. He published his BIOG. MEMOIRS OF MEDICINE.
1784
Dr. John Aikin established himself as a physician in Great Yarmouth.
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1785
In a letter she wrote to her brother John Aikin, Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld wrote: “the fields are full of lavender, thyme, mint, rosemary ... the young corn is above half a foot high ... the trees which are not evergreens have mostly lost their leaves ... a single tree, of cypress, shooting up its graceful spire of a deeper and more lively green far above the deeds of its humbler but more profitable neighbours ... there are likewise a vast number of mulberry-trees.”
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1791
Dr. John Aikin’s POEMS included a few ballads in what is now known as the Gothic style, including a ballad “Arthur and Matilda” (this would be part of the APOLOGY) that was accompanied by a note: “The idea of this piece was taken from a ballad translated by an ingenious friend from the German of Buirgher [sic]. The story and scenery are however totally different, and the resemblance only consists in a visionary journey.” (His “ingenious friend” was William Taylor, whose “Lenora” had been composed perhaps as early as the previous year although it would not be published until later. Aikin’s ballad differs from others in the APOLOGY in its reliance upon the so-called “explained supernatural,” in which seemingly otherworldly events are discovered later on in the writing to have been entirely natural in origin — this situates Dr. Aikin as having played a small role in the development of the Gothic genre.)
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1792
Dr. John Aikin’s VIEW OF THE LIFE, TRAVELS AND PHILANTHROPIC LABORS OF THE LATE JOHN HOWARD, ESQUIRE.
In this year one of his pamphlets got Dr. Aikin into some local hot water, and therefore he relocated to London, where he would practise as a consulting physician. During this year and the following one he would be producing LETTERS FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON, ON VARIOUS TOPICS, RELATIVE TO LITERATURE AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1792 AND 1793 (the author did in fact have a son). From this year into 1795, also, he and his sister Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld would be producing an immensely popular series of six volumes of readings, EVENINGS AT HOME.
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DR. JOHN AIKIN DR. JOHN AIKIN
1793
Dr. John Aikin co-wrote with his sister Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror, with Sir Bertrand, a Fragment,” an early defense of the sort of literary production we now characterize as “Gothic.”
1795
Dr. John Aikin’s A DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY FROM THIRTY TO FORTY MILES ROUND MANCHESTER.
1796
From this year into 1807, Dr. John Aikin would be editing the Monthly Magazine. He introduced the poetry of Gottfried August Bürger through publication of William Taylor’s “Lenora.”
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1798
John Aikin retired from his practice of medicine to devote himself to his various literary undertakings, among which would be his 10-volume GENERAL BIOGRAPHY: OR LIVES, CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL, OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS OF ALL AGES, COUNTRIES, CONDITIONS AND PROFESSIONS.
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1799
Publication of the initial volume of John Aikin’s GENERAL BIOGRAPHY: OR LIVES, CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL, OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS OF ALL AGES, COUNTRIES, CONDITIONS AND PROFESSIONS.
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1802
John Aikin’s THE WOODLAND COMPANION OR A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BRITISH TREES, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR USES.
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1807
From this year into 1809, John Aikin would be editing a gazette, The Athenaeum.
1812
Dr. John Aikin’s THE LIVES OF JOHN SELDEN, ESQ. AND ARCHBISHOP USHER; WITH NOTICES OF THE PRINCIPAL ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS WITH WHOM THEY WERE CONNECTED (London: Mathews and Leigh).
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1815
Publication of the 10th and final volume of John Aikin’s GENERAL BIOGRAPHY: OR LIVES, CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL, OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS OF ALL AGES, COUNTRIES, CONDITIONS AND PROFESSIONS.
1816
The beginning of the multiple volumes of John Aikin’s ANNALS OF THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE THE THIRD.
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1820
John Aikin’s SELECT WORKS OF THE BRITISH POETS IN A CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES FROM BEN JONSON TO BEATTIE. WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL PREFACES BY DR. AIKIN. JOHN AIKIN’S POETS
Also, in this year, completion of the multiple volumes of his ANNALS OF THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE THE THIRD: FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT IN THE YEAR 1760, TO THE DEATH OF HIS MAJESTY, IN THE YEAR 1820.
1822
December 7, Saturday: John Aikin died.
1823
The daughter Lucy Aikin published a MEMOIR OF JOHN AIKIN, WITH SELECTIONS OF HIS MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
1830
John Aikin’s THE ARTS OF LIFE, DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS: 1. PROVIDING FOOD.—2. PROVIDING CLOTHING.—3. PROVIDING SHELTER. FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF YOUNG PERSONS. / BY THE AUTHOR OF EVENINGS AT HOME. / FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. (Boston: Carter & Hendee, and Waitt & Dow). THE ARTS OF LIFE
This would be one of the books in the personal library of Henry Thoreau.
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DR. JOHN AIKIN DR. JOHN AIKIN
1840
The 10th edition of John Aikin’s SELECT WORKS OF THE BRITISH POETS IN A CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES FROM BEN JONSON TO BEATTIE. WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL PREFACES BY DR. AIKIN. JOHN AIKIN’S POETS
This would be one of the books in the personal library of Henry Thoreau.
Waldo Emerson would comment unfavorably on this volume in his “Poetry and Imagination,” in LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS, misspelling Dr. Aikin’s name, “When people tell me they do not relish poetry, and bring me ... Aiken’s Poets ... I am quite of their mind.”
1855
Sept. 24. P.M. — Up river to Conantum with C. A very bright and pleasant fall day. The buttonbushes pretty well browned with frost (though the maples are but just beginning to blush), their pale-yellowish season past. Nowadays remark the more the upright and fresh green phalanxes of bulrushes when the pontederias are mostly prostrate. The river is perhaps as low as it has been this year. Hardly can I say a bird sings, except a slight warble, perhaps, from some kind of migrating sparrow. Was it a tree sparrow, not seen? The slender white spikes of the Polygonum hydropiperoides and the rose-colored ones of the front-rank kind, and rarely of the P. amphibium, look late and cool over the water. See some kalmiana lilies still freshly bloomed. Above the Hubbard Bridge the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks, with a silveriness to the under sides of their wings in the light. At first they were in form like a flock of blackbirds, then for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow. Some still raking, others picking, cranberries. I suppose it was the solitary sandpiper (Totanus solitarius) which I saw feeding at the water’s edge on Cardinal Shore, like a snipe. It was very tame; we did not scare it even by shouting. I walked along we see coming from the shore to within twenty-five feet of it, and it still ran toward me in feeding, and when I flushed it, it flew round and alighted between me and C., who was only three or four rods off. It was about as large as a snipe; had a bluish dusky bill about in inch and a quarter long, apparently straight, which it kept thrusting into the shallow water with a nibbling motion, a perfectly white belly, dusky-green legs; bright brown and black above, with duskier wings. When it flew, its wings, which were uniformly dark, hung down much, and I noticed no white above, and heard no note. Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel, — one oak rail, on which fishers had stood in wet ground at Bittern Cliff, a white pine rider (?) with a square hole in [it] made by a woodpecker anciently, so wasted the sap as to leave the knots projecting, several chestnut rails; and I obtained behind Cardinal Shore a large oak stump which I know to have been bleaching there for more than thirty years, with three great gray prongs sprinkled with lichens. It bore above the marks of the original burning. There was a handful of hazelnuts under it emptied by the ground (?) squirrel, a pretty large hole in the rough and thin stem end of each, where the bur was attached. Also, at Clamshell Hill Shore, a chestnut boat-post with a staple in it, which the ice took up last winter, though it had an arm put through it two feet underground. Some much decayed perhaps old red maple stumps at Hubbard’s Bath Place. It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus. How much better than to buy a cord coarsely from a farmer, seeing that I get my money’s worth! Then it only affords me a momentary satisfaction to see the pile tipped up in the yard. Now I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. Each has its history, of which I am reminded when I come to burn it, and under what circumstances I found it. Got home late. C. and I supped together after our work at wooding, and talked it over with great appetites. Dr. Aikin, in his “Arts of Life,” says that “the acorns of warm climates are fit for human food.”
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DR. JOHN AIKIN DR. JOHN AIKIN
1864
Lucy Aikin’s MEMOIRS, MISCELLANIES AND LETTERS, edited by P.H. Le Breton, included a correspondence between 1826 and 1842 with the Reverend William Ellery Channing, and if that sort of thing is your cup of tea, you can download the entire correspondence by way of Google Books.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: December 7, 2013
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
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