Mark Akenside (November 9, 1721 – June 23, 1770), was an English poet and physician. November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 52 days remaining. ... // Events Pope Innocent XIII becomes pope Johann Sebastian Bach composes the Brandenburg Concertos April 4 - Robert Walpole becomes the first prime minister of Britain September 10 - Treaty of Nystad is signed, bringing an end to the Great Northern War November 2 - Peter I is proclaimed Emperor of All the Russias... June 23 is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 191 days remaining. ... 1770 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... A poet is some one who writes poetry. ... Physician examining a child A physician is a person who practices medicine. ...

Akenside was born at Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a butcher; he 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 Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1738 A British Philippic, occasioned by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the present Preparations for War (also published separately). This article is about a city in the United Kingdom. ... LAME is an open source MP3 (that is, MPEG-1 audio layer 3) audio compression application. ... The gates of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Grammar School, known locally as The RGS, is a long-established independent school and member of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference, located in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. ... The term dissenter (from the Latin dissentire, to disagree), labels one who dissents or disagrees in matters of opinion, belief, etc. ... Edinburgh (pronounced ), Dùn Èideann () in Scottish Gaelic, is the second-largest city in Scotland and its capital city. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ... Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (c. ...

After one winter as a theology student, he changed to medicine. He repaid the money that had been advanced for his theological studies, and became a deist. His politics, said Dr. Samuel 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 of Tobias Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. He was elected a member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh in 1740. His ambitions already lay outside his profession, and his gifts as a speaker made him hope one day to enter parliament. In 1740 he printed his "Ode on the Winter Solstice" in a small volume of poems. In 1741 he left Edinburgh for Newcastle and began to call himself surgeon, though it is doubtful whether he practised, and from the next year dates his life-long friendship with Jeremiah Dyson (1722-1776). Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ... Historical and modern deism is defined by the view that reason and logic, rather than revelation or tradition, should be the basis of belief in God. ... Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ... Tobias Smollett Tobias George Smollett (March 19, 1721 - September 17, 1771) was a Scottish author, best known for his picaresque novels, such as Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle. ... The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle was first published in 1751, the adventures of the egotistical scoundrel Peregrine Pickle, comic and caustic portrayal of 18th century society. ... Jeremiah Dyson (1722 - 1776) was a British civil servant and politician. ...

During a visit to Morpeth in 1738, he had the idea for his didactic poem, The Pleasures of the Imagination, which was well received, and was subsequently translated into more than one foreign language. He had already acquired a considerable literary reputation when he came to London about the end of 1743 and offered the work to Robert Dodsley for £120. Dodsley thought the price exorbitant, and only accepted the terms after submitting the manuscript to Alexander Pope, who assured him that this was "no everyday writer." The three books of this poem appeared in January 1744. His aim, Akenside tells us in the preface, was "not so much to give formal precepts, or enter into the way of direct argumentation, as, by exhibiting the most engaging prospects of nature, to enlarge and harmonize the imagination, and by that means insensibly dispose the minds of men to a similar taste and habit of thinking in religion, morals and civil life." His powers fell short of this ambition; his imagination was not brilliant enough to surmount the difficulties inherent in a poem dealing so largely with abstractions; but the work was well received. Thomas Gray wrote to Thomas Warton that it was "above the middling," but "often obscure and unintelligible and too much infected with the Hutchinson jargon." Map sources for Morpeth at grid reference NZ2085 Morpeth is a small market town in Northumberland, England. ... The Pleasures of the Imagination is a long didactic poem by Mark Akenside, first published in 1744. ... Robert Dodsley (1703 - September 23, 1764) was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer. ... Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Pope, circa 1727. ... // Events The third French and Indian War, known as King Georges War, breaks out at Port Royal, Nova Scotia The First Saudi State founded by Mohammed Ibn Saud Prague occupied by Prussian armies Ongoing events War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) Births January 10 - Thomas Mifflin, fifth President... Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716 – July 30, 1771), English poet, classical scholar, and professor of history at Cambridge University. ... Thomas Warton (January 9, 1728 - May 21, 1790) was an English academic and poet, holder of the title of Poet Laureate from 1785. ...

William Warburton took offence at a note added by Akenside to the passage in the third book dealing with ridicule. Accordingly he attacked the author of the Pleasures of the Imagination--which was published anonymously--in 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 probably 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. William Warburton (December 24, 1698 – June 7, 1779), was an English critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759. ...

Returning to England he unsuccessfully attempted to establish a practice in Northampton. In 1744 he published his Epistle to Curio, attacking William Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath) for having abandoned his liberal principles to become a supporter of the government, and in the next year he produced a small volume of Odes on Several Subjects, in the preface to which he lays claim to correctness and a careful study of the best models. His friend Dyson had meanwhile left the bar, and had become, by purchase, clerk to the House of Commons. Akenside had come to London and was trying to make a practice at Hampstead. Dyson took a house there, and did all he could to further his friend's interest in the neighbourhood. But Akenside's arrogance and pedantry frustrated these efforts, and Dyson then took a house for him in Bloomsbury Square, making him independent of his profession by an allowance stated to have been £300 a year, but probably greater, for it is asserted that this income enabled him to "keep a chariot," and to live "incomparably well." In 1746 he wrote his much-praised "Hymn to the Naiads," and he also became a contributor to Dodsley's Museum, or Literary and Historical Register. He was now twenty-five years old, and began to devote himself almost exclusively to his profession. He was an acute and learned physician. He was admitted M.D. at the University of 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 1774 privy councillor and cofferer to the household. William Pulteney (1684 - July 7, 1764) was an English politician, created Earl of Bath in 1742 by King George II. The son of William Pulteney by his first wife, Mary Floyd, he was born in April 1684 into an old Leicestershire family. ... The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ... Hampstead is a place in the London Borough of Camden and is close to Hampstead Heath. ... The University of Cambridge (often called Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... College building by Denys Lasdun The Royal College of Physicians of London is the oldest medical institution in England (the oldest medical institution in the UK being the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh), and among the most active of all medical professional organisations. ... George III (George William Frederick) (4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until 1 January 1801, and thereafter King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Akenside died 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.

Akenside's verse was better when it was subjected to severer metrical rules. His odes are rarely lyrical in the strict sense, but they are dignified and often musical. His works are now little read. Edmund Gosse described him as "a sort of frozen Keats." Edmund William Gosse (September 21, 1849 - May 16, 1928) was an English poet, author and critic, the son of Philip Henry Gosse. ...

References

• The authoritative edition of Akenside's Poetical Works is that prepared by Robin Dix (1996). An important earlier edition was prepared by Alexander Dyce (1834) 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.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Alexander Dyce (June 30, 1798 - May 15, 1869) was a Scottish dramatic editor and literary historian. ... Aldine Press was the printing office started by Aldus Manutius in 1494 in Venice, from which were issued the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics of that time. ... Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External link

• Works by Mark Akenside at Project Gutenberg