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Updated: June 18, 2025
Macklin, I suppose, had not pressed upon his elevation with so much eagerness as the gentleman who complained of him. Dr. Johnson's remark as to the jealousy 'entertained of our friends who rise far above us, is certainly very just. By this was withered the early friendship between Charles Townshend and Akenside ; and many similar instances might be adduced.
The name of the author was to have been concealed, but he does not seem to have kept his own secret very carefully, for it was immediately spoken of as his by Akenside, Johnson, and Dr. Birch. The second volume did not follow till after an interval of twenty-six years.
Newcastle or district celebrities of the time included Mark Akenside, the author of The Pleasures of the Imagination; Dr Thomas Percy, dean of Carlisle, who published, in 1765, his Reliques of English Poetry; and Dr John Langhorne, a northern divine of no small popularity in his day as a poet.
No suburb of London can point to so many distinguished residents as this, the most favoured and the most favourite. Among them may be mentioned Sir Henry Vane, Dr. Johnson, Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Barbauld, Constable, Romney, Sir James Mackintosh, Steele, Gay, Arbuthnot, Akenside, Thomas Day, Leigh Hunt, Keats, William Blake, John Linnell, Wilkie, Stanfield, Du Maurier, and many others.
We rate them by their positive originality, not by their variety of powers. When we think of YOUNG, it is only of his "Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, which others have rivalled or excelled. Of AKENSIDE, the solitary work of genius is his great poem; his numerous odes are not of a higher order than those of other ode-writers.
I found it mighty dull; and, as to the style, it is fit for the second table . Why he thought so I was at a loss to conceive. He now gave it as his opinion, that 'Akenside was a superiour poet both to Gray and Mason.
Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of censure. I have been told that Akenside, who, upon a poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, "That he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's 'Fleece; for, if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence."
When midnight listens o'er the slumbering earth, Let me, O Muse, thy solemn whispers hear: When morning sends her fragrant breezes forth, With airy murmurs touch my opening ear, AKENSIDE.
Some of them contrived, in spite of the centinel placed at the lodging of these great men, to paste up on the door two figures, with the names of Chabot and Dumont; in the "fatal position of the unfortunate brave;" and though certain events in the lives of these Deputies may have rendered this perspective of their last moments not absolutely a novelty, yet I do not recollect that Akenside, or any other author, has enumerated a gibbet amongst the objects, which, though not agreeable in themselves, may be reconciled to the mind by familiarity.
The Drama: Dryden, Otway. Comedy; Didactic Poetry: Roscommon, Marvell, Butler, Pryor, Dryden. 4. The Eighteenth Century. Philosophy: Hume. Miscellaneous Prose: Johnson; the Novelists: Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. The Drama; Non- dramatic Poetry: Young, Blair, Akenside, Thomson, Gray, and Collins. Miscellaneous Prose: Johnson, Goldsmith, "Junius," Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Burke.
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