find, but with fuccefs very much below his expectation.

In 1755, his mafque of Britannia” was acted at Drury Lane; and his tragedy of "Elvira" in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper of the Book of Entries for fhips in the port of London.

In the beginning of the laft war, when the nation was exasperated by ill fuccefs, he was employed to turn the publick vengeance upon Byng, and wrote a letter of accufation under the character of a " Plain "Man." The paper was with great induftry circulated and difperfed; and he, for his feasonable intervention, had a confiderable penfion bestowed upon him, which he retained to his death.

Towards the end of his life he went with his wife to France; but after a while, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and died in April, 1765.

He was twice married, and by his firft wife had feveral children. One daughter, who married an Italian of rank named Cilefia, wrote a tragedy called "Almida," which was acted at Drury Lane. His fecond wife was the daughter of a nobleman's steward, who had a confiderable fortune, which she took care to retain in her own hands.

His ftature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it to want no recommendation that drefs could give it. His converfation was elegant and easy. The reft of his character may, without injury to his memory, fink into filence.

As a wri er, he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no fpecies of compofition in which he was VOL. III.

A A

eminent.

eminent. His Dramas had their day, a fhort day, and are forgotten; his blank verfe feems to my ear the echo of Thomfon. His "Life of Bacon" is known as it is appended to Bacon's volumes, but is no longer mentioned. His works are fuch as a writer, bustling in the world, fhewing himself in publick, and emerging occafionally from time to time into notice, might keepalive by his personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and giving no great pleasure, muft foon give way, as the fucceffion of things produces new topicks of converfation and other modes of amufement.

AKEN

AKEN SIDE.

MARK AKENSIDE was born on the ninth of November, 1721, at Newcastle upon Tyne. His father Mark was a butcher, of the Prefbyterian fect; his mother's name was Mary Lumfden. Hẹ received the firft 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 minifter, and received fome affiftance from the fund which the Diffenters employ in educating young men of fcanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other fcenes, and prompted other hopes he determined to study phyfick, and repaid that contribution, which, being received for a dif ferent purpose, he juftly thought it dishonourable to

retain.

Whether, when he resolved 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 greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what fhall be eftablished.

Akenfide was one of thofe poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of those ftudents who have very early stored their memories with fentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, "The Pleafures of Imagination," appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodfley, by whom it was publifhed, 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 purfuit of medical knowledge; and three years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became doctor of phyfick, having, according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thefis or differtation. The fubject which he chofe was "The Original and Growth of the Human

Foetus;" in which he is faid to have departed, with great judgment, from the opinion then eftablished, and to have delivered that which has been fince confirmed and received...

Aken

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 eccentricity which fuch difpofitions do not eafily avoid, a lover of contradiction, and no friend to any thing establifhed. He adopted Shaftesbury's foolish affertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended by Dyson: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his dedication to the Freethinkers.

The result of all the arguments, which have been produced in a long and eager difcuffion of this idle question, may eafily be collected. If ridicule be applied to any pofition as the teft of truth, it will then become a queftion whether fuch ridicule be juft; and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the teft of ridicule. Two men, fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for a while equally exposed to the inevitable confequences of cowardice, contemptuous cenfure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state of both cafes must be known, before it can be decided whose terror is rational, and whose 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, though he died before he had finished it, he omitted the lines which had given occafion to Warburton's objections.

He published, foon after his return from Leyden (1745), his firft collection of odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotifm to write a very acri