THE LIFE OF AKEN SIDE.1 BY THE REV. ALEXANDER DYCE. MARK AKENSIDE 2 was born at Newcastle-uponTyne, November 9th, 1721, and was baptized on the 30th of the same month by the minister of a meeting-house, which his parents used to frequent. His father, Mark, was a respectable butcher. His mother's maiden name was Mary Lumsden. He was their second son. It is said that in after-life he was ashamed of the lowness of his birth, which 1 During the earlier years of his life, the poet spelt his name, both on the title-pages of his publications and in his letters, Akinside; but at a later period he adopted the form Akenside. 2 "Mark Akenside, born the 9th November, 1721; baptized y⚫ 30th of the same month by the Rev. Mr. Benjamin Bennet." History of Newcastle, ii. 513, by Brand, who adds: "The above was communicated by Mr. Addison, glazier at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who married Dr. Akenside's sister, and is in possession of some drawings, which were the works of that ingenious poet in an early period of his life. Mr. Bennet was a dissenting minister at the new meeting-house in Hanover Square, Newcastle-upon-Tyne." According to the Biogr. Brit., Akenside's "parents and relations were in general of the Presbyterian persuasion." B was constantly brought to his recollection by a lameness, originating in a cut on his foot from the fall of his father's cleaver, when he was about seven years old.1 After receiving some instruction at the freeschool of Newcastle, he was sent to a private academy in the same town, kept by a Mr. Wilson, a dissenting minister. maniHis genius and his love of poetry were fested, while he was yet a school-boy. The Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1737, contains one of his earliest attempts at versification, entitled "The Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza:" it is far superior to the sing-song inanities which in those days generally adorned the pages of that miscellany, and is prefaced thus by a letter to the editor: "Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 23. "I hope, Sir, you'll excuse the following Poem (being the performance of one in his sixteenth year), and insert it in your next Magazine, which will oblige, Yours, &c. "MARCUS." To the same popular work he contributed, in the next month, an ingenious fable called "Ambition 1 Brand's Obs. on Pop. Antiq. 114, ed. 1777. 2 Gent. Mag. vii. 244. - Mr. Bucke thinks it was suggested by a passage in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, iii. 156, ed. 1737. - L'je of Akenside, 5. 1 and Content; and, in July following, "The Poet, a Rhapsody." 2 When about the age of seventeen, Akenside used to visit some relations at Morpeth, where it has been rather hastily supposed that he wrote his "Pleasures of Imagination." Passages of it were probably composed there: at various times and places, during several years before its publication, that great work had, no doubt, occupied his mind. In a fragment of the fourth book of the remodelled copy, he pleasingly describes his early sensibility to the beauties of nature, and his lonely wanderings in the vicinity both of Newcastle and of Morpeth: "O ye dales Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands, where 0 ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook To the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1738,* he communicated" A British Philippic, occasioned 1 Gent. Mag. vii. 309. 2 Ibid. vii. 441. 3 Biog. Brit. by the insults of the Spaniards, and the present preparations for war." That its flaming patriotisin was quite to the taste of Mr. Urban, appears from the following advertisement: "N. B. It often turning to our Inconvenience to sell a greater Number of one Magazine than of another, and believing the above noble-spirited Poem will be acceptable to many, not our constant Readers, we have printed it in Folio, Price Six Pence, together with the Motto at large, for which, receiving the Manuscript late, we could not make room. And if the ingenious Author will inform us how we may direct a Packet to his Hands, we will send him our Acknowledgments for so great a Favour, with a Parcel of the Folio Edition." His "Hymn to Science" was printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1739. It is 1 ix. 544, where it is dated "Newcastle-upon-Tyne." Mr. Bucke, not aware of this, supposes that it was written at Edinburgh. He pronounces it to be "worthy the lyre of Collins," to whose imaginative odes it bears no resemblance, and, after quoting the two following stanzas, exclaims, "Has Horace or Gray any thing superior to this?" I confidently answer,many things infinitely superior: "That last best effort of thy skill, |