AKEN SIDE.. ARK AKENSIDE was born on the Minth of November, 1721, at New caftle upon Tyne. His father, Mark, was a butcher of the Prefbyterian fect; his mother's name was Mary Lumfden. He received the first part of his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was afterwards inftructed by Mr. Wilfon, who kept a private academy. At the age of eighteen he was fent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify himself for the office of a diffenting minister, and received fome affistance from the fund which the Diffenters employ in educating young VOL. IV. G g men men of fcanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other fcenes, and prompted other hopes: he determined to ftudy phyfic, and repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose, he justly thought it dishonourable to retain. Whether, when he refolved not to be a diffenting minifter, he ceafed to be a Diffenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unneceffary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which fometimes difguifes from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it poffeffes, an envious defire of plundering wealth or degrading greatnefs; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to fubvert and confound, with very little care what shall be established. Akenfide was one of thofe poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of those students who have very early ftored their memories with fentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, work, The Pleafures of Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodfley, by whom it was published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was an hundred and twenty pounds, being fuch 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. In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became doctor of phyfick, having, according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, publifhed a thefis, or differtation. The fubject which he chofe was the Original and Growth of the Human Fatus; in which he is faid to have departed, with great judgement, from the opinion then eftablished, and to have delivered that which has been fince confirmed and received. Akenfide was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or accident had been connected with the found of liberty, and by an excentricity which fuch difpofitions |