"I see this instant, in the Public Advertiser, that Dr. Warburton is made King's Chaplain, and enters into waiting immediately. Can you tell me whether this be true? If there be any hazard of finding him at Kensington, I shall not chuse to go thither to-day. I am your affectionate humble servant, "M. AKENSIDE." "Bloomsb. Square, "Saturday Morn. [Sept. 28, 1754]." His encomiastic "Ode to the Bishop of Winchester" bears date the same year. This prelate was the celebrated controversialist, Dr. Hoadley, whose political opinions accorded with the poet's. In June,2 1755, Akenside read the Gulstonian Lectures before the College of Physicians; a portion of which, on the origin and use of the lymphatic vessels in animals, was again read at a meeting of the Royal Society, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1757. Next year 1 Printed in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Coll. of Poems, 1758. 2 See the two following notes. But Dr. Francis Hawkins, Registrar to the College, informs me, that, according to the entries in their annals, Akenside read the Gulstonian Lectures on May 28, 29, and 30. 8 Vol. L. Part I. p. 322 :-"Observations on the Origin and Use of the Lymphatic Vessels of Animals; being an extract from the Gulstonian Lectures, read in the Theatre of the College of Physicians of London, in June, 1755:" consisting of six pages. In consequence of a misprint in this essay, Akenside wrote the following letter to the author of "Clarissa," who, it may be necessary to inform some readers, was a printer: he published a short pamphlet,' in reply to certain animadversions on this essay by Dr. Alexander To Mr. RICHARDSON, in Salisbury Court, Fleet-street. SIR,- I return you many thanks for sending me the sheet about which I wrote to you. I find in it an erratum of that unlucky sort, which does not make absolute nonsense, but only conveys a false and absurd idea. The sheet is mark'd Tt; and in page 328, and line ninth from the bottom, stream is printed instead of steam. If you can without much trouble either print this as an erratum, or rather let somebody with a stroke of a pen blot out the r, as the sheets are dried, I should be greatly oblig'd. I am, Sir, with true respect, your most humble servant, "M. AKENSIDE "Bloomsb. Square. Jan. 25." Letters to Dr. Birch, gc., 4300, in the Brit. Mus. 1 "Notes on the Postscript to a Pamphlet entitled 'Observations Anatomical and Physiological, &c., by Alexander Monro, Junior, M. D. Professor of Anatomy, &c., Edinburgh, August, MDCCLVIII.'" 1758, 8vo, pp. 24, price 6d. Our author writes in the third person, and commences the tract with this clear statement of facts: "Dr. Akenside did, it seems, so long ago as June 1755, in certain annual lectures which he read in his turn at the College of Physicians, advance a new theory concerning these [lymphatic] vessels; a theory which he had at first drawn out for himself, and of which, before that time, no. mention had been made to the public. He did not then print any part of what he had read; thinking perhaps that his notion was already sufficiently made known by being stated at a pub lic lecture before a numerous audience of physicians and other persons qualified to judge of what he advanc'd, and with an explicit account of the evidence on which he founded it. Some time afterwards, when a dispute about this very point had arisen between two other gentlemen, each of them for himself laying claim to the discovery, Dr. A. was prevailed upon to give in at a meeting of the Royal Society so much of his lectures as related to the subject in question. Accordingly this was read as a passage taken from those lectures, the same title Monro of Edinburgh, among which was an insinuation that Akenside's theory was derived from his treatise," De Glandulis Lymphaticis." Here may be introduced another short note1 to Dr. Birch: "DEAR SIR,- Have you got the letters concerning Hume's History? I grudge to buy them. If you have them, and can spare them so long, I should be much oblig'd if you would let me have them a few hours. I am a sort of invalid, just enough to confine me. Your affectionate, humble servant, "M. AKENSIDE." "Bloomsb. Square, "Wednesday Morn." [ March 3d, 1756]. On the 7th, 8th, and 9th of September,2 1756, he read the Croonian Lectures before the College of Physicians. According to Kippis, their subject was the History of the Revival of Learning, to which some of the members objected as "foreign to the institution;" and Akenside, after three lectures, gave up the task in disgust. being then prefixed to it which it now bears in print, and several gentlemen being then present who had formerly heard the lectures themselves. The paper was published by the council of the society." Monro's treatise on the Lymphatics, from which he insinuated that Akenside borrowed his ideas, did not arrive in England till 1756. 1 Letters to Dr. Birch, 4300, in the Brit. Mus. 2 From the information of Dr. Francis Hawkins, Registrar to the College of Physicians. 3 Biog. Brit. [There is some doubt as to the correctness of the statement that Akenside gave up these Lectures in disgust.] The first book of his remodelled "Pleasures of Imagination" is dated 1757. The poem, says Mr. Dyson, appeared originally "at a very early part of the author's life. That it wanted revision and correction he was sufficiently sensible; but so quick was the demand for several successive republications, that in any of the intervals to have completed the whole of his corrections was utterly impossible; and yet to have gone on from time to time in making farther improvements in every new edition, would, he thought, have had the appearance at least of abusing the favour of the public: he chose, therefore, to continue for some time reprinting it without alteration, and to forbear publishing any corrections or improvements until he should be able at once to give them to the public complete; and with this view he went on for several years to review and correct the poem at his leisure, till at length he found the task grow so much upon his hands, that, despairing of ever being able to execute it sufficiently to his own satisfaction, he abandoned the purpose of correcting, and resolved to write the poem over anew, upon a somewhat different and an enlarged plan."1 In 17582 he endeavoured to excite the martial 1 Advertisement to Mr. Dyson's edition of Akenside's Poems, 1772. 2 Quarto, price 6d. : see List of Books for March, 1758, in Gent. Mag. Its motto is, "rusticorum mascula militum Proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus Versare glebas." Нов. spirit of the nation by an "Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England." "Mr. Elliott, father of Lord Minto," says the late Mr. Justice Hardinge,1 "made an admirable speech in support of the Scotch Militia, which I had the good fortune to hear when I was a boy; and it was reported, that, when commended as he was on every side for that performance, 'If I was above myself,' he answered, 'I can account for it; for I had been animated by the sublime Ode of Dr. Akenside." He, soon after, suffered a severe attack of sickness; on the abatement of which, he removed, for change of air, to Goulder's Hill, the seat of Mr. Dyson; and, during a short stay under that friendly roof, he composed his "Ode on Recovering," &c., which contains an elegant allusion to the recent marriage of his patron. Few miscellanies had been so favourably received by the public as Dodsley's Collection of Whitehead, the laureat, published at the same time "Verses to the People of England." On these two effusions Byrom wrote some rhyming "Remarks," in which he says: "Really these fighting poets want a tutor, To teach them ultra crepidam ne sutor; To teach the doctor, and to teach the laureat, Er Helicone sanguinem ne hauriat: Though blood and wounds infect its limpid stream, 1 In a long letter concerning Akenside (the rest of which will be afterwards quoted). — Nichols's Ill. of Lit. Hist. viii. 524. 2 "My harp, which late resounded o'er the land The voice of glory," &c. Ode on Recovering from a fit of Sickness in the Country, 1758, printed in Mr. Dyson's edition of his Poems, 1772. |