Mark Akenside was son of a butcher at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was sent to the Edinburgh University, with aid of a fund for the purpose, to be educated as a Dissenting minister; but he made medicine his study, was proud of his oratory in the debates of the Medical Society, and aspired to a seat in Parliament. After three years at Edinburgh, Akenside went to Leyden, where he stayed another three years, took his degree as M.D., and found a friend in a student of law, Jeremiah Dyson, who came home with him. “The Pleasures of Imagination,” in its first form, appeared in 1744, when Akenside’s age was twenty-three. Its subject was suggested by Addison’s essays on Imagination, in the “Spectator.” Akenside wrote odes also, and worked at the elaboration of his chief poem throughout his life, publishing the enlargement of his First Book in 1757, and of the second in 1765; the enlargement of Book III., with an unfinished fragment of Book IV., appeared after his death.

Personal

  Of all our poets, perhaps, Akenside was the best Greek scholar since Milton.

  Akenside used every endeavour to become popular, but defeated them all by the high opinion he everywhere manifested of himself, and the little condescension he shewed to men of inferior endowments; by his love of political controversy, his authoritative censure of the public councils, and his bigoted notions respecting government, subjects foreign to his profession, and with which some of the wisest of it have thought it prudent not to concern themselves. In the winter evenings he frequented Tom’s coffeehouse, in Devereux court, then the resort of some of the most eminent men for learning and ingenuity of the time, with some of whom he became entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable situations…. Akenside was a man of religion and strict virtue, a philosopher, a scholar, and a fine poet. His conversation was of the most delightful kind, learned, instructive, and without any affectation of wit, cheerful and entertaining. One of the pleasantest days of my life I passed with him, Mr. Dyson, and another friend, at Putney bowling-green house, where a neat and elegant dinner, the enlivening sunshine of a summer’s day, and the view of an unclouded sky, were the least of our gratifications. In perfect good humour with himself and all around him, he seemed to feel a joy that he lived, and poured out his gratulations to the great dispenser of all felicity in expressions that Plato himself might have uttered on such an occasion.

  When Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” first came out, he did not put his name to the poem. Rolt went over to Dublin, published an edition of it, and put his own name to it. Upon the fame of this he lived for several months, being entertained at the best tables as the ingenious Mr. Rolt. His conversation indeed, did not discover much of the fire of a poet; but it was recollected, that both Addison and Thomson were equally dull till excited by wine. Akenside having been informed of this imposition, vindicated his right by publishing the poem with its real authour’s name.

  Akenside, when a student at Edinburgh, was a member of the Medical Society, then recently formed, and was eminently distinguished by the eloquence which he displayed in the course of the debates. Dr. Robertson (who was at that time a student of divinity in the same university) told me that he was frequently lead to attend their meetings chiefly to hear the speeches of Akenside, the great object of whose ambition then was a seat in Parliament; a situation which he was sanguine enough to flatter himself he had some prospect of obtaining, and for which he conceived his talents to be much better adapted than for the profession he had chosen. In this opinion he was probably in the right, as he was generally considered by his fellow-students as far inferior in medical science to several of his companions.

  That “Akenside, when he walked in the streets, looked for all the world like one of his own Alexandrines set upright,” was a saying of Henderson the actor, for which I am indebted to a true poet of our own day, Mr. Rogers, who heard it repeated many years ago.

  There were two Akensides—Akenside the poet, and Akenside the man; and of the man Akenside there were numerous subdivisions. Remarkable as a poet, he was even yet more noteworthy a private individual in his extreme inconsistency. No character is more commonplace than the one to which is ordinarily applied the word contradictory; but Akenside was a curiosity from the extravagance in which this form of “the commonplace” exhibits itself in his disposition and manners. By turns he was placid, irritable, simple, affected, gracious, haughty, magnanimous, mean, benevolent, harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he was marked by a childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance displayed him almost as a madman. Of plebeian extraction, he was ashamed of his origin, and was yet throughout life the champion of popular interests. Of his real humanity there can be no doubt, and yet in his demeanor to the unfortunate creatures whom, in his capacity of a hospital-physician, he had to attend, he was always supercilious, and often cruel…. Akenside was never very successful as a physician, although he thoroughly understood his profession, and in some important particulars advanced its science.

  A contemporary has left this portrait of the poet-physician: “One leg of Dr. Akenside was considerably shorter than the other, which was in some measure remedied by the aid of a false heel. He had a pale strumous countenance, but was always very neat and elegant in his dress. He wore a large white wig, and carried a long sword. He would order the servants (at Christ’s Hospital), on his visiting days, to precede him with brooms to clear the way, and prevent the patients from too nearly approaching him.”

  His English acquaintances in Paris left a much less genial trace on “Peregrine Pickle.” Mark Akenside and his unnamed friend the painter were the originals of the physician and Pallet. What the author of the “Pleasures of Imagination” had done to offend Smollett is not very clear. If it is true that he made “disparaging remarks on Scotland,” that would be enough to account for the unmeasured attack made on him. Perhaps, however, Akenside’s real offence was, that he was not a little of a prig, and very much of a bore. He quoted Greek, he was a great republican, he laid down the law, and annoyed Smollett by continual talk about the ancients; at least this is what he did, if the physician is even a gross caricature of the real Mark Akenside.

Hymn to the Naiads

  Throughout the range of English literature, there is nothing more deeply imbued with the spirit of the ancient world than our author’s “Hymn to the Naiads.” In its solemnity, its pomp of expression, and its mythologic lore, he has shown himself a more successful imitator of Callimachus; yet is far from being the mere echo of a Grecian hymn.

  Up to the days of Keats’ “Endymion” and “Hyperion,” Akenside’s “Hymn to the Naiads” was thought one of the best attempts to reproduce the classical spirit and ideas. It now takes a secondary place; and at no time could be compared to an actual hymn of Callimachus or Pindar, any more than Smollett’s “Supper after the Manner of the Ancients” was equal to a real Roman Cœna, the ideal of which Croly has so superbly described in “Salathiel.”

  Akenside’s “Hymn to the Naiads” has the true classical spirit. He had caught the manner and feeling, the varied pause and harmony, of the Greek poets, with such felicity that Lloyd considered his “Hymn” as fitted to give a better idea of that form of composition, than could be conveyed by any translation of Homer or Callimachus.

  His “Hymn to the Naiads” is usually held, and with good cause, to be his best poem, the most graceful, the most sculpturesque specimen of his blank verse.

Pleasures of the Imagination

  Johnson. “I think we have had enough of Gray. I see they have published a splendid edition of Akenside’s works. One bad ode may be suffered; but a number of them together makes one sick.” Boswell. “Akenside’s distinguished poem is his ‘Pleasures of Imagination’: but, for my part, I never could admire it so much as most people do.” Johnson. “Sir, I could not read it through.” Boswell. “I have read it through; but I did not find any great power in it.”

  In English, Dr. Akenside has attempted the most rich and poetical form of didactic writing in his “Pleasures of the Imagination,” and though, in the execution of the whole, he is not equal, he has, in several parts, succeeded happily, and displayed much genius.

  It was welcomed as a work of such intrinsic worth ought to be welcomed. From its sale the author’s finances were improved and his fame established. Dr. Johnson mentions, that he has heard Dodsley (by whom it was published) say, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such 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.”

  If his genius is to be estimated from this poem, it will be found to be lofty and elegant, chaste, correct, and classical.

  Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he was hardly a great poet. He improved his “Pleasures of the Imagination” in the subsequent editions by pruning away a great many redundances of style and ornament.

  Of Akenside (the most perfect builder of our blank verse) I know of no edition entitled to particular commendation. Why are his “Pleasures of the Imagination” so little perused? There are a hundred (I had well nigh said a thousand) electrical passages in this charming poem.

  In his poem, as an elegant critic has observed with great propriety, he has united the grace of Virgil, the colouring of Milton, the incidental expression of Shakspeare, to paint the finest features of the human mind, and the most lovely forms of true morality and religion.

  Few English poets of the eighteenth century are to be ranked before the author of “The Pleasures of the Imagination.”

  The mischief is, that the poet, theorizing and poetizing by turns, loses his hold of his readers more than other writers whose topics are less abstract. The philosophical thinker finds better teaching elsewhere; and the poetical student, unless he is also metaphysically inclined, has his enthusiasm chilled by the obtrusive dissertations.

  The analysis of the pleasurable feelings which are awakened in the mind by whatever excites the imagination, though suitable enough as a subject for an essay, becomes insupportable when carried on through a poem of more than two thousand blank verses. Akenside had no sense of humour and no wit, but was an ardent lover of nature; he may be called a second-rate Wordsworth, whose style that of some of his “Odes” much resembles.

  Whether his view of the imagination is always correct or not, his sentiments are always elevated; his language high sounding but frequently redundant, and his versification correct and pleasing. His descriptions of nature are cold but correct; his standard of humanity is high but mortal. Grand and sonorous, he constructs his periods with the manner of a declaimer; his ascriptions and apostrophes are like those of a high-priest.

  The poem is really Romantic only in its title.

  One cannot read “The Pleasures of Imagination” without becoming sensible that the writer was possessed of poetic feeling, and feeling of a kind that we generally agree to call romantic. His doctrine at least, if not his practice, was in harmony with the fresh impulse which was coming into English poetry…. But Akenside is too abstract. In place of images, he presents the reader with dissertations.

General

  To his versification justice requires that praise should not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer of blank-verse; his flow is smooth, and his pauses are musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long continued, and the full close does not recur with sufficient frequency. The sense is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated clauses, and as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.

  He possesses a warm imagination and great strength and beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not, like Campbell’s “Hope,” consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner, and selected to illustrate his positions,—it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers. He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury’s principles, and had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity he has been severely caricatured by Smollett in his “Peregrine Pickle” under the character of the fantastic English doctor in France.

  Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no elegance of language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it.

  The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the direct representations of life, and its warm realities and affections. We seem to pass in his poem through a gallery of pictured abstractions rather than of pictured things. He reminds us of odours which we enjoy artificially extracted from the flower instead of inhaling them from its natural blossom. It is true that his object was to teach and explain the nature of mind, and that his subject led him necessarily into abstract ideas, but it admitted also of copious scenes, full of solid human interest, to illustrate the philosophy which he taught.

  Akenside was one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament. When he found that the change of administration had produced no change of system, he gave vent to his indignation in the “Epistle to Curio,” the best poem that he ever wrote; a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden.

  His genius was more allied to the sublime than the vivacious. He had a deep love for nature; but it was for her laws, her general effects and grand combinations rather than her special beauties. Hence his descriptions, although often winsome, are vague and partake more of thoughtful reverie than minute observation. He delighted to trace mental phenomena more than to paint elaborate landscapes. The metaphysician and naturalist are coevident with the scholar and aspirant in his verse.

  Akenside would have made a first-class metaphysical professor, particularly in the æsthetic department.

  Akenside’s rich, though diffuse, eloquence, and the store of fanciful illustration which he pours out, evidence a wonderfully full mind for so young a man.

  A noble thinker.

  He had the conceptions of a great poet with less faculty than many a little one, and is one of those versifiers of whom it is enough to say that we are always willing to break him off in the middle with an &c., well knowing that what follows is but the coming-round again of what went before, marching in a circle with the cheap numerosity of a stage-army.

  Akenside, didactic in matter, stiffly classical in manner, with a coldly poetic elevation of diction, was not fitted to help his age onward either in freedom, depth or boldness.

  A certain force and dignity of thought is perceptible beneath a rather cumbrous style; he is prompted to write by a full mind instead of an empty purse. He has a certain message to deliver to mankind, and the difficulty of his utterance is characteristic…. Akenside judged well in desiring a harmony between poetry and philosophy; but the attempt at a fusion was unfortunate. His formulas suffered a fate analogous to that of his master’s writings. The rather stilted style and not very lucid thought have in both cases rendered the difficulty of penetrating to the real thought too great for cursory readers; and a poet suffers more than a philosopher for wrapping his meaning in sententious obscurity.

  Honour is due to Akenside for his homage to the mind and to things of the mind. And it would be unjust to say that his enthusiasm was not sincere. Since, however, he lived as poet so much among ideas, since apart from these ideas his poetry ceases to exist, one cannot but ask, Were his ideas true? Were they the best ideas? Do they still survive? And again, Did Akenside present his ideas in the best way, in a way at once philosophical and poetic? Did he indeed effect the use of reason and imagination? It must be answered that Akenside’s theory as a whole will not bear investigation, that some of his ideas are commonplace, some fantastic…. Akenside’s moral elevation was self-conscious, a dignity of attitude assumed deliberately, a constructive elevation…. He was deficient on the side of common human sympathy; he lacked geniality. He felt himself to be a “superior person,” and he was so in fact; but he had the kind of superior fatuousness that such persons are readily betrayed into. His tone is too high-pitched; his ideas are too much in the air; they do not nourish themselves in the common heart, in the common life of man. Still Akenside really lifts up his head and tries to breathe empyreal gales.

  Akenside is stiffly classical in manner, and gives us too much foliage for the fruit.

  At his very best Akenside is sometimes like a sort of frozen Keats.

  The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be correct, and in that he has succeeded.

  Akenside is a very fair touchstone of criticism. It is impossible to like or even to admire him very heartily; he belongs to a class of poets, represented in most days, who are plaster rather than marble, photograph rather than picture, pinchbeck rather than gold or even copper. And yet a reluctant confession must accompany all reasonable depreciation of him. It is a question whether Akenside wants much to have turned his statue into life, or at least his stucco into alabaster.