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AKENSIDE, MARK (1721-1770) , English poet and physician, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 9th of November 1721. He was the son of a butcher, and was slightly lame all his life from a wound he received as a child from his father's cleaver. All his relations were dissenters, and, after attending the free school of Newcastle, and a dissenting academy in the town, he was sent (1739) to Edinburgh to study theology with a view to becoming a minister, his expenses being paid from a special fund set aside by the dissenting community for the education of their pastors. He had already contributed " The Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza " (1737) to the Gentle-man's Magazine, and in 1738 " A British Philippic, occasioned by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the present Preparations for War" (also published separately). After he had spent one winter as a student of theology, he entered his name as .a student of medicine. He repaid the money that had been advanced for his theological studies, and with this change of mind he seems to have drifted to a mild deism. His politics, says Dr Johnson, were characterized by an " impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what shall be established," and he is caricatured in the republican doctor
jargon
Into a note added by Akenside to the passage in the third book dealing with ridicule, William Warburton chose to read a reflexion on himself. Accordingly he attacked the author of the Pleasures of the Imaginationwhich was published anonymouslyin a scathing preface to his Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections, in answer to Dr Middleton . . . (1744). This was answered, nominally by Dyson, in An Epistle to the Rev. Mr Warburton, in which Akenside no doubt had a hand. It was in the press when he left England in 1744 to secure a medical degree at Leiden. In little more than a month he had completed the necessary dissertation, De ortu et incremento foetus humani, and received his diploma. Returning to England he attempted without success to establish a practice in Northampton. In 1744 he published his Epistle to Curio, attacking William Pulteney (afterwards earl
Hampstead
interest
' The reference is to Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), author of an Inquiry into the Original
(1725).himself almost exclusively to his profession. He was an acute and learned physician. He was admitted M.D. at Cambridge in 1753, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1754, and fourth censor in 1755. In June 1755 he read the Gulstonian lectures before the College, in September 1756 the Croonian lectures, and in 1759 the Harveian oration. In January 1759 he was appointed assistant physician, and two months later principal physician to Christ's Hospital, but he was charged with harsh treatment of the poorer patients, and his unsympathetic character prevented the success to which his undeniable learning and ability entitled him. At the accession of George III. both Dyson and Akenside changed their political opinions, and Akenside's conversion to Tory principles was rewarded by the appointment of physician to the queen. Dyson became secretary to the treasury, lord of the treasury, and in 1794 privy councillor and cofferer to the household.Akenside died on the 23rd of June 1770, at his house in Burlington Street, where the last ten years of his life had been spent. His friendship with Dyson puts his character in the most amiable light. Writing to his friend so early as 1744, Akenside said that the intimacy had " the force of an additional conscience, of a new principle of religion," and there seems to have been no break in their affection.. He left all his effects and his literary remains to Dyson,. who issued an edition of his poems in 1772. This included the revised version of the Pleasures of Imagination, on which the author was engaged at his death. The first book of this work defines the powers of imagination and discusses the various kinds of pleasure to be derived from the perception of beauty; the second distinguishes works of imagination from philosophy; the third describes the pleasure to be found in the study of man, the sources of ridicule, the operations of the mind, in producing works of imagination, and the influence of imagination on morals. The ideas were largely borrowed from Addison
inscriptions " he has left are felicitous in the extreme.The best edition of Akenside's Poetical Works is that prepared (1834) by Alexander Dyce for the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, and reprinted with small additions in subsequent issues of the series . See Dyce's Life of Akenside prefixed to his edition, also Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and the Life, Writings and Genius of Akenside (1832) by Charles Bucke.End of Article: AKENSIDE, MARK (1721-1770) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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