Akenside

Akenside, MARK, poet and physician, was born in 1721, at Newcastle. The son of a butcher, at the age of seven he was accidentally lamed for life in his father's shop. He was destined for the Presbyterian Church, and in 1739 was sent to study theology at Edinburgh, but soon abandoned it for medicine. He graduated as a physician at Leyden in 1744, and practised at Northampton, then at Hampstead, and finally in London. His success as a practitioner was never very great, owing to his haughty and pedantic manner; but at Leyden he had formed an intimacy with Jeremiah Dyson, and this rich and generous friend allowed him £300 a year. He died in London, June 23, 1770, having nine years earlier been appointed one of the physicians to the queen. Some of his medical treatises possess considerable merit. He contributed verses to the Gentleman's Magazine as early as 1737; and in 1744 appeared his Pleasures of the Imagination, a didactic poem, which was begun in his 18th year, and to which is owing whatever celebrity attaches to his name, though his Hymn to the Naiads (1746) is his finest production. In 1772, Dyson published his poetic works, the best edition of which is that by Dyce, with Life (1834). In Peregrine Pickle, Smollett has sketched Akenside to the life, as the pedant who gives an entertainment after the manner of the ancients. Akenside has little originality. The reader is carried along by the rapid and stately march of lofty images and ideas; but 'all is operose, cumbrous, and cloudy, with abundance of gay colouring and well-sounding words, filling the eye oftener than the imagination, and the ear oftener than either.' See his Life by Bucke (1832).