Lancashire, to which place the family moved. The new home afforded
greater freedom and an interesting circle of friends, among them Currie,
William Roscoe, John Taylor, and the famous Dr. Priestley. A very pretty
girl, with brilliant blonde coloring and animated dark-blue eyes, she
was witty and vivacious, too, under the modest diffidence to which she
had been trained. Naturally she attracted much admiration from the
schoolboys and even from their elders, but on the whole she seems to
have found study and writing more interesting than love affairs. The
first suitor, who presented himself when she was about sixteen, was a
farmer from her early home at Kibworth. He stated his wishes to her
father. "She is in the garden," said Mr. Aikin. "You may ask her
yourself." Lætitia was not propitious, but the young man was persistent,
and the position grew irksome. So the nimble girl scrambled into a
convenient tree, and escaped her rustic wooer by swinging herself down
upon the other side of the garden wall.

During these years at Warrington she wrote for her own pleasure, and
when her brother John returned home after several years' absence, he
helped her to arrange and publish a selection of her poems. The little
book which appeared in 1773 was highly praised, and ran through four
editions within a year. In spite of grace and fluency, most of these
verses seem flat and antiquated to the modern reader. Of the spirited
first poem 'Corsica,' Dr. Priestley wrote to her:--"I consider that you
are as much a general as Tyrtæus was, and your poems (which I am
confident are much better than his ever were) may have as great effect
as his. They may be the _coup de grace_ to the French troops in that
island, and Paoli, who reads English, will cause it to be printed in
every history in that renowned island."

Miss Aikin's next venture was a small volume in collaboration with her