diction, and no friend to any thing established. He adopted Shaftesbury's foolish affertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the difcovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended by Dyfon: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his dedication to the Freethinkers.

The refult of all the arguments which have been produced in a long and eager difcuffion of this idle queftion, may easily be collected. If ridicule be applied to any pofition as the test of truth, it will then become a question whether fuch ridicule be just; and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men, fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for a while equally expofed to the inevitable confequences of cowardice, contemptuous cenfure, and ludicrous reprefentation; and the true ftate of both cafes must be known, before it can be decided whofe terror is rational, and whofe is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be defpifed. Both are for a while equally expofed to laughter, but both are not therefore equally contemptible.

In the revifal of his poem, which he died before he had finished, he omitted the lines which had given occafion to Warburton's objections.

He published, foon after his return from Leyden (1745), his first collection of odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotifm to write a very acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he ftigmatizes, under the name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country.

Being now to live by his profeffion, he first commenced phyfician at Northampton, where Dr. Stonehoufe then practifed, with fuch reputation and fuccefs, that a ftranger was not likely to gain ground upon

him. Akenfide tried the conteft a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he refided more than two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of accomplishments like his.

At London he was known as a poet, but was ftill to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have been reduced to great exigences, but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendship that has not many examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Thus fupported, he advanced gradually in medical reputa tion, but never attained any great extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great city seems to be the mere play-thing of Fortune; his degree of reputation is, for the most part; totally cafual: they that employ him, know not his excellence; they that reject him, know flot his deficience. By an acute obfervér, who had looked on the tranfactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of Phyficians:

Akenfide appears not to have been wanting to his own fuccefs: he placed himself in view by all the common methods; he became a Fellow of the Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge, and was admitted into the College of Phyficians; he wrote little poetry; but published, from time to time, medical effays and obfervations; he became phyfician to St. Thomas's Hofpital; he read the Gulftonian Lectures in Anatomy; but began to give, for the Crotinian Lecture, a history of the revival of Learning, from which he foon defifted; and, in converfation, he very eagerly forced himself into notice by an ambitious oftentation of elegance and literature. U

VOL. IV.

His

J.

His Difcourfe on the Dyfentery (1764) was confidered as a very confpicuous fpecimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the fame height of place among the fcholars as he poffeffed before among the wits; and he might perhaps have rifen to a greater elevation of character, but that his studies were ended with his life, by a putrid fever, June 23, 1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

AKENSIDE is to be confidered as a didactick and lyrick poet. His great work is the Pleafures of Imagination; a performance which, publifhed, as it was, at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not afterwards very amply fatisfied. It has undoubtedly a juft claim to very particular notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon amplitude of acquifitions, of a young mind ftored with images, and much exercifed in combining and comparing them.

With the philofophical or religious tenets of the author I have nothing to do: my business is with his poetry. The fubject is well-chofen, as it includes alt images that can ftrike or pleafe, and thus comprises every species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of examples and illuftrations, and it is not eafy in fuch exuberance of matter to find the middle point between penury and fatiety. The parts feem artificially difpofed, with fufficient coherence, fo as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general defign.

His images are difplayed with fuch luxuriance of expreffion, that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by

Veil of Light; they are forms fantastically loft under fuperfluity of drefs. Pars minima eft ipfa Puella fui. The words are multiplied till the fenfe is hardly perceived; attention deferts the mind, and fettles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffufion, fometimes amazed, and fometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing.

To his verfification juftice requires that praise fhould not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps fuperior to any other writer of blank verfe; his flow is smooth, and his paufes are mufical; but the concatenation of his verfes is commonly too long continued, and the full close does not recur with fufficient frequency. The fenfe is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated claufes; and as nothing is diftinguifhed, nothing is remembered.

The exemption which blank verfe affords from the neceffity of closing the fenfe with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into fuch felf-indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament, and are not eafily perfuaded to close the fenfe at all. Blank verfe will therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.

His diction is certainly poetical as it is not profaick, and elegant as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the blank fong. He rarely either recalls old phrafes or twifts his metre into harfh inverhions. The fenfe however of his words is ftrained; when he views the Ganges from Alpine heights; that

is, from mountains like the Alps. And the pedane furely intrudes, but when was blank verfe without pedantry? when he tells how Planets abfolve the ftated round of Time.

It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his defign. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He feems to have fomewhat contracted his diffufion; but I know not whether he has gained in closeness what he has loft in fpendor. In the additional book, the Tale of Solon is too long.

One great defect of his poem is very properly cenfured by Mr. Walker, unless it may be faid in his defence, that what he has omitted was not properly in his plan. "His picture of man is grand and beauti“ful, but unfinished. The immortality of the foul, "which is the natural confequence of the appetites and powers the is invefted with, is fcarcely once hinted "throughout the poem. This deficiency is amply fupplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young; who, "like a good philofopher, has invincibly proved the "immortality of man, from the grandeur of his con"ceptions, and the meannefs and mifery of his ftate; "for this reafon, a few paffages are felected from the

Night Thoughts, which, with those from Akenside, "feem to form a complete view of the powers, fituation, and end of man." Exercises for Improvement in Elocution, p. 66.

His other poems are now to be confidered; but a fhort confideration will dispatch them. It is not eafy to guess why he addicted himself so diligently to lyrick

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poetry,