Akenside was never very successful as a physician, although he thoroughly understood his profession, and in some important particulars advanced its science.-JEAFFRESON, JOHN CORDY, 1861, A Book About Doctors.

A contemporary has left this portrait of the poet-physician: "One leg of Dr. Akenside was considerably shorter than the other, which was in some measure remedied by the aid of a false heel. He had a pale strumous countenance, but was always very neat and elegant in his dress. He wore a large white wig, and carried a long sword. He would order the servants (at Christ's Hospital), on his visiting days, to precede him with brooms to clear the way, and prevent the patients from too nearly approaching him."GOSSE, EDMUND, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 1, p. 210.

His English acquaintances in Paris left a much less genial trace on "Peregrine Pickle." Mark Akenside and his unnamed

friend the painter were the originals of the physician and Pallet.

What the author of the "Pleasures of Imagination" had done to offend Smollett is not very clear. If it is true that he made "disparaging remarks on Scotland," that would be enough to account for the unmeasured attack made on him. Perhaps, however, Akenside's real offence was, that he was not a little of a prig, and very much of a bore. He quoted Greek, he was a great republican, he laid down the law, and annoyed Smollett by continual talk about the ancients; at least this is what he did, if the physician is even a gross caricature of the real Mark Akenside. HANNAY, DAVID, 1887, Smollett (Great Writers), p. 83.

HYMN TO THE NAIADS

Throughout the range of English literature, there is nothing more deeply imbued with the spirit of the ancient world than our author's "Hymn to the Naiads." In its solemnity, its pomp of expression, and its mythologic lore, he has shown himself a more successful imitator of Callimachus; yet is far from being the mere echo of a Grecian hymn.-DYCE, ALEXANDER, 1834, ed., The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside.

Up to the days of Keats' "Endymion" and "Hyperion," Akenside's "Hymn to

the Naiads" was thought one of the best attempts to reproduce the classical spirit and ideas. It now takes a secondary place; and at no time could be compared to an actual hymn of Callimachus or Pindar, any more than Smollett's "Supper equal to a real Roman Cœna, the ideal of after the Manner of the Ancients" was which Croly has so superbly described in "Salathiel."-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1857, ed., The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, Life, p. xx.

Akenside's "Hymn to the Naiads" has the true classical spirit. He had caught the manner and feeling, the varied pause. and harmony, of the Greek poets, with such felicity that Lloyd considered his "Hymn" as fitted to give a better idea of that form of composition, than could be conveyed by any translation of Homer or Callimachus.-CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Car

ruthers.

His "Hymn to the Naiads" is usually held, and with good cause, to be his best poem, the most graceful, the most sculpturesque specimen of his blank verse.GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 311.

PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION

Johnson. "I think we have had enough of Gray. I see they have published a splendid edition of Akenside's works. One bad ode may be suffered; but a number of them together makes one sick." Boswell. "Akenside's distinguished poem is his Pleasures of Imagination': but, for my part, I never could admire it so much as most people do." Johnson. "Sir, I could not read it through." Boswell. "I have read it through; but I did not find any great power in it."JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1772, Life by Boswell, ed. Hill, vol. II, p. 188.

In English, Dr. Akenside has attempted the most rich and poetical form of didactic writing in his "Pleasures of the Imagination," and though, in the execution of the whole, he is not equal, he has, in several parts, succeeded happily, and displayed much genius.-BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, ed. Mills, Lecture xl.

It was welcomed as a work of such intrinsic worth ought to be welcomed. From its sale the author's finances were improved

and his fame established. Dr. Johnson mentions, that he has heard Dodsley (by whom it was published) say, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer, for "this was no every day writer. -HUTCHINSON, BENJAMIN, 1789, Biographia Medica.

If his genius is to be estimated from this poem, it will be found to be lofty and elegant, chaste, correct, and classical. BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA, 1795, ed., The Pleasures of Imagination.

Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a great poet. He improved his "Pleasures of the Imagination" in the subsequent editions by pruning away a great many redundances of style and ornament.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture vi.

Of Akenside (the most perfect builder of our blank verse) I know of no edition entitled to particular commendation. Why are his "Pleasures of the Imagination" so little perused? There are a hundred (I had well nigh said a thousand) electrical passages in this charming poem. -DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 735, note.

In his poem, as an elegant critic has observed with great propriety, he has united the grace of Virgil, the colouring of Milton, the incidental expression of Shakspeare, to paint the finest features of the human mind, and the most lovely forms of true morality and religion. BUCKE, CHARLES, 1832, Life, Writings and Genius of Akenside.

Few English poets of the eighteenth century are to be ranked before the author of "The Pleasures of the Imagination."-CLEVELAND, CHARLES D., 1848, A Compendium of English Literature, p. 578.

The mischief is, that the poet, theorizing and poetizing by turns, loses his hold of his readers more than other writers whose topics are less abstract. The philosophical thinker finds better teaching elsewhere; and the poetical student, unless he is also metaphysically inclined, has his enthusiasm chilled by the obtrusive dissertations.-SPALDING, WILLIAM, 185282, A History of English Literature, p. 337.

The analysis of the pleasurable feelings which are awakened in the mind by whatever excites the imagination, though suitable enough as a subject for an essay, becomes insupportable when carried on through a poem of more than two thousand blank verses. Akenside had no sense of humour and no wit, but was an ardent lover of nature; he may be called a second-rate Wordsworth, whose style that of some of his "Odes" much resembles. -ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1868-75, Chaucer to Wordsworth, p. 355.

His

Whether his view of the imagination is always correct or not, his sentiments are always elevated; his language high sounding but frequently redundant, and his versification correct and pleasing. descriptions of nature are cold but correct; his standard of humanity is high but mortal. Grand and sonorous, he constructs his periods with the manner of a declaimer; his ascriptions and apostrophes are like those of a high-priest.-COPPÉE, HENRY, 1872, English Literature, p. 351.

The poem is really Romantic only in its title.-PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON, 1893, The

Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, p. 39.

Is this the land where Akenside displays The bold yet temperate flame of ancient days? -BEATTIE, WILLIAM, 1765, On the Report of a Monument to be Erected in Westminster Abbey to the Memory of a Late Author.

To his versification justice requires that praise should not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer of blankverse; his flow is smooth, and his pauses are musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long continued, and the full close does not recur with

sufficient frequency. The sense is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated clauses, and as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Akenside, Lives of the English Poets.

-Be thou our guest, Impetuous Akenside, some gloomy eve When the red lightning scarce begins to glare,

And the mute thunder hardly designs to growl.

Raised by thy torrent song, we shall enjoy The loud increasing horrors of the storm, Awfully grand.

-HURDIS, JAMES, 1788, The Village Curate.

He possesses a warm imagination and great strength and beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not, like Campbell's "Hope," consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner, and selected to illustrate his positions, it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the

ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers. He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles, and had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity he has been severely caricatured by Smollett in his "Peregrine

Pickle" under the character of the fantastic English doctor in France.-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1815, Early Letters, ed. Norton, p. 23.

Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no elegance of language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. -JEFFREY, FRANCIS LORD, 1816, Jonathan Swift, Edinburgh Review, vol. 27, p. 7.

The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the

direct representations of life, and its

warm realities and affections. We seem to pass in his poem through a gallery of pictured abstractions rather than of pictured things. He reminds us of odours. which we enjoy artifically extracted from the flower instead of inhaling them from its natural blossom. It is true that his object was to teach and explain the nature of mind, and that his subject led him necessarily into abstract ideas, but it admitted also of copious scenes, full of

solid human interest, to illustrate the philosophy which he taught.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

Akenside was one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament. When he found that the change of administration had produced no change of system, he gave vent to his indignation in the "Epistle to Curio," the best poem that he ever wrote; a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden. MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1833, Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, Edinburgh Review; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

lime than the vivacious. He had a deep His genius was more allied to the sublime than the vivacious. He had a deep love for nature; but it was for her laws, her general effects and grand combinations rather than her special beauties. Hence his descriptions, although often winsome, are vague and partake more of thoughtful reverie than minute observation. He delighted to trace mental phenomena more than to paint elaborate landscapes. The metaphysician and nat

uralist are coevident with the scholar and aspirant in his verse. TUCKERMAN, HENRY T., 1849, Characteristics of Literature, p. 253.

Akenside would have made a first-class

metaphysical professor, particularly in the æsthetic department. -MILLER, HUGH, 1856, Essays, p. 451.

Akenside's rich, though diffuse, eloquence, and the store of fanciful illustration which he pours out, evidence a wonderfully full mind for so young a man. CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious English Language, vol. II, p. 287. History of English Literature and of the

A noble thinker.-TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. II, bk. iii, ch. vii, p. 220.

He had the conceptions of a great poet with less faculty than many a little one, and is one of those versifiers of whom it is enough to say that we are always willing to break him off in the middle with an &c., well knowing that what follows is but the coming-round again of what went

before, marching in a circle with the cheap numerosity of a stage-army.LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1871, A Good Word for Winter, My Study Windows, p. 33.

Akenside, didactic in matter, stiffly classical in manner, with a coldly poetic elevation of diction, was not fitted to help his age onward either in freedom, depth or boldness.-BASCOM, JOHN, 1874, Philosophy of English Literature, p. 213.

A certain force and dignity of thought is perceptible beneath a rather cumbrous style; he is prompted to write by a full mind instead of an empty purse. He has a certain message to deliver to mankind, and the difficulty of his utterance is characteristic. Akenside judged

well in desiring a harmony between poetry and philosophy; but the attempt at a fusion was unfortunate. His formulas suffered a fate analogous to that of his master's writings. The rather stilted style and not very lucid thought have in both cases rendered the difficulty of penetrating to the real thought too great for cursory readers; and a poet suffers more than a philosopher for wrapping his meaning in sententious obscurity.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, pp. 364, 365.

Honour is due to Akenside for his homage to the mind and to things of the mind. And it would be unjust to say that his enthusiasm was not sincere. Since, however, he lived as poet so much among ideas, since apart from these ideas his poetry ceases to exist, one cannot but ask, Were his ideas true? Were they the best ideas? Do they still survive? And again, Did Akenside present his ideas in the best way, in a way at once philosophical and poetic? Did he indeed effect the use of reason and imagination? It must be answered that Akenside's theory as a whole will not bear investigation, that some of his ideas are commonplace, some fantastic. Akenside's moral

elevation was self-conscious, a dignity of attitude assumed deliberately, a constructive elevation. . . . He was deficient on the side of common human sympathy; he lacked geniality. He felt himself to be a "superior person, "and he was so in fact; but he had the kind of superior fatuousness that such persons are readily betrayed into. His tone is too high-pitched; his ideas are too much in the air; they do not nourish themselves in the common heart, in the common life of man. Still Akenside really lifts up his head and tries to breathe empyreal gales. -DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 342.

Akenside is stiffly classical in manner, and gives us too much foliage for the fruit.-WELSH, ALFRED H., 1883, Development of English Literature and Language, vol. II, p. 135.

At his very best Akenside is sometimes like a sort of frozen Keats.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 312.

The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be correct, and in that he has succeeded.-DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 118.

Akenside is a very fair touchstone of criticism. It is impossible to like or even to admire him very heartily; he belongs to a class of poets, represented in most days, who are plaster rather than marble, photograph rather than picture, pinchbeck rather than gold or even copper. And yet a reluctant confession must accompany all reasonable depreciation of him. It is a question whether Akenside wants much to have turned his statue into life, or at least his stucco into alabaster.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature p. 579.