Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Akenside, Mark
AKENSIDE, Mark. Like young Henry Kirke White, the poet of the Pleasures of Imagination was the son of a butcher. He was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on November 9th, 1721. His school was the free one founded by a former mayor of Newcastle, Thomas Horsley. Later, one of the ministers of the Presbyterians added to his school-acquired knowledge in private. In his sixteenth year he sent to the Gentleman's Magazine a copy of verses entitled "The Virtuoso." Sylvanus Urban graciously printed the poem; but the old man was not difficult to please. Other verse contributions succeeded—imitative, yet not without gleams of a true faculty. Some written in the Lake country, while on visits with friends at Morpeth, have Wordsworthian touches. The memories of these visits transfigure the Pleasures of Imagination. In his nineteenth year, being intended for the clerical profession, he proceeded to the university of Edinburgh; but within one session, like many others, he changed his purpose, and transferred his name from the theological to the medical classes—although, indeed, then, as still, the opening years were occupied with the same studies for either. On his change he honourably returned certain moneys which his fellow Presbyterians had advanced towards his theological education. He attended the university for only two years. While there, in 1740, a medical society, which combined with it a debating club, gave him a fine field for the exercise of his oratorical powers. Dugald Stewart states that Robertson the historian, then a student of divinity, used to attend the meetings in order to hear Akenside's speeches. Some of his minor poems belong to this period, such as his Ode "for the Winter Solstice," the elegy called "Love," and the verses "to Cordelia." He returned to his native town in 1741, and then his friendship with Jeremiah Dyson had commenced, "a name never to be mentioned by any lover of genius or noble deeds without affection and reverence" (Willmott). In the years 1741 to 1743 he must have been ardent in his wooing of the Muses. In the summer or autumn of 1743 Dodsley carried with him to Pope at Twickenham a MS. for which the writer asked £120. The oracle of Twickenham having read the poem, counselled the publisher to make no niggardly offer, because "this was no every-day writer." It was something for Pope to be thus prescient in the absence of rhyme albeit Pope's insertions in The Seasons remain to attest that, supreme artist as he was in rhyme, he could also manage blank verse with exquisite cunningness. The MS. was the Pleasures of Imagination, which Dodsley published in 1744. In his twenty-third year the author, like Byron, awoke to find himself famous. The assaults of Warburton and Hurd were scarcely a deduction from the universal welcome. The poet's "Epistle" to Warburton was effective. He went to Leyden, and there pursued his medical studies with ardour. He obtained the degree of M.D., May 16th, 1744; his inaugural dissertation describing the formation and growth of the human fœtus with original observation and acuteness. He now returned to England, advancing more and more in his friendship with the good and large-hearted Dyson. He chose Northampton as the place wherein he should commence practice. It was an unfortunate selection, as Sir James Stonehouse "possessed the confidence of the town," and it was deemed an intrusion. A not very creditable controversy arose; and we are at a loss whether most to admire the stinging rebuffs in honeyed courtesies or the mutual pretence of ultimate satisfaction and good-will. At Northampton Akenside was on friendly terms with Dr Doddridge. There, too, he wrote his "Epistle to Curio," which Lord Macaulay pronounced his best production, as "indicating powers of elevated satire, which, if diligently cultivated, might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden." Willmott traces some of the most nervous lines of the Pleasures of Hope to this "Epistle to Curio." Not succeeding in his profession at Northampton, he removed to Hampstead in 1747. The Odes had then been published. Dr Akenside came to Hampstead under the ægis of the generous Dyson. Somehow, in Hampstead as at Northampton, he manifested a vanity of self-display and hauteur of manner that made him many enemies. Within three years he had to leave Hampstead for London. He set up in Bloomsbury Square in a "fine house," and with an annuity of £300 from the still ungrudging Dyson. One is pleased to come on these words of a far greater poet a century later, "I am not unfrequently," wrote Wordsworth in 1837, "a visitor on Hampstead Heath, and I seldom pass by the entrance of Mr Dyson's villa at Goulder's Hill, close by, without thinking of the pleasure which Akenside often had there." The generous clerk of the House of Commons and secretary of the Treasury nobly earned his imperishable place in the (revised) Pleasures of Imagination. Contemporaneous with his professional duties, the poet became an essayist and reviewer for Dodsley in the now forgotten Museum. In 1753 the university of Cambridge bestowed on him the degree of doctor of medicine. In 1754 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians. In 1755 he read before the college the Gulstonian Lectures; and in 1756 the Croonian Lectures. In 1759 he was chosen assistant, and two months later chief, physician of St Thomas's Hospital. In this year he had removed to Craven Street. In 1762 he changed once more to Burlington Street. In 1760 was published the Harveian Oration by order of the College of Physicians. In 1761, along with Dyson, he passed from a somewhat noisy Whiggery to the Tories, which added "renegade" to his name. In 1765-6 he was working upon the revised and enlarged copy of the Pleasures of Imagination. His fame was widening professionally and poetically, when a putrid fever carried him off suddenly on June 23d, 1770. He was buried at St James's Church on the 28th. As a man, the nearer one gets to Akenside the less is there lovable about him; there seem to have been ineradicable meannesses in his nature. Lavish in his expenditure while practically dependent on Dyson, and remaining dependent after his professional income ought to have released his patron, we cannot think of him as high-minded. His personal vanity was constantly bringing him sorenesses. The "Doctor" in Peregrine Pickle was painted from the life, not a mere creation of Smollett's genius. As a poet, the place of Akenside is secure, but it is not very lofty. His imagination is rhetorical rather than subtle, consisting more of pomp of words than greatness of thought. His chief defect is lack of emotion, and especially pathos. The enlarged Pleasures of Imagination, notwithstanding some noble additions, was a blunder. Some of his minor pieces have a classical grace and charm of expression. (See the original editions of his writings; Bucke's Life, Writings, and Genius of Akenside, 1832; Dyce and Willmott's edition of his Poems; Cunningham's Johnson's Lives of the Poets, s.v.; Biog. Brit,; Medical Biog., s.v.) (a. b. g.)