Lecture the Chirty-Eighth. MARK AKENSIDE-THOMAS BLACKLOCK-FRANCIS FAWKES-JAMES GRANIGER NATHANIEL COTTON-DR. THOMAS WARTON-JOSEPH WARTON-THOMAS WARTON-CHRISTOPHER SMART-CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY-THOMAS PERCY-OLIVER GOLDSMITH. TH HE year 1721 produced no less than five poets, whose genius has given comparative celebrity to their names. Akenside, the author of The Pleasures of the Imagination, one of the purest and most elegant didactic poems in the English language; Blacklock, who was blind from his birth; Fawkes, the translator of Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, and other classic poets; Grainger, the opening of whose Ode to Solitude Dr. Johnson considered 'very noble;' and Cotton, whose Visions in Verse for children, and whose 'well-known humanity and sweetness of temper' Cowper so warmly commends. MARK AKENSIDE was the son of a butcher, and was born at Newcastleupon-Tyne, where his father followed his business, on the ninth of November, 1721. His parents were both dissenters, and the Puritan principles imbibed in his early years, seem, as in the case of Milton, to have given a gravity and earnestness to his character, and a love of freedom to his thoughts and imagination, which he preserved through life. He received the early part of his education at the grammar-school of his native place, and was afterward instructed at a private academy, by a Mr. Wilson. At the age of eighteen, the society of Dissenters sent him to Edinburgh university, that he might become qualified for the ministry; but he afterward changed his views, returned the money that he had received, and entered himself as a student of medicine. He was already a poet; and in the fol lowing Hymn to Science, written in Edinburgh, we see at once the forma tion of his classic taste, and the dignity of his personal character: That last best effort of thy skill, Teach me to cool my passion's fires, The master of my heart. Raise me above the vulgar's breath, Still let my actions speak the man, Through every various scene. After having passed three years at Edinburgh, Akenside removed to Leyden to complete his studies; and in 1744, he obtained his doctor's de gree, returned to England, and commenced the practice of his profession in London. During his residence in Holland he had written, at the early age of twenty-three, his Pleasures of Imagination, which he now offered to Dodsley for publication, demanding for the copyright, one hundred and twenty pounds. The price being large, Dodsley, before he concluded to take it, consulted Pope, who having looked it over, advised the bookseller 'to make no niggardly offer, since this was no every-day writer.' The poem attracted much attention, and was, soon after it appeared in London, translated into French and Italian. His reputation, by the publication of the 'Pleasures of Imagination,' being very widely extended, Akenside now resolved to establish himself as a physician in some rural district of the country. With this view he selected Northampton as his future abode; but after an unsuccessful trial of eighteen months, he returned to London, where he passed the remainder of his life. At Leyden he had formed an intimacy with Jeremiah Dyson, a young Englishman of fortune, which ripened into a friendship of the closest and most enthusiastic character; and Dyson, who was afterward clerk of the House of Commons, and a lord of the treasury, had the generosity to allow the poet three hundred pounds a year. After writing a few Odes of the most common-place kind, Akenside made no farther attempt at composition. His society was courted for his taste, knowledge, and eloquence; but his solemn sententiousness of manner, his romantic ideas of liberty, and his unbounded admiration of the ancients, frequently exposed him to ridicule. He died suddenly of a putrid sore throat, on the twenty-third of June, 1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in St. James's Church. In his latter days, Akenside reverted, with melancholy delight, to his native landscape on the banks of the Tyne; and in his fragment of a fourth book of 'The Pleasures of Imagination,' written in the last year of his life, is found the following beautiful passage : O ye dales Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands; where Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides, Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands. Of honourable fame, of truth divine Or moral, and of minds to virtue won By the sweet magic of harmonious verse. The Pleasures of Imagination' is a poem seldom read continuously, though its finer passages, by frequent quotation, particularly in works of criticism and moral philosophy, are well known. The pleasures of which the poem professes to treat 'proceed,' says the author, 'either from natural objects, as from a flourishing grove, a clear and murmuring fountain, a calm sea by moonlight; or from works of art, such as a noble edifice, a musical tune, a statue, a picture, a poem.' These, with the moral and intellectual objects arising from them, furnish abundant topics for illustration; but Akenside dealt chiefly with abstruse subjects, pertaining more to philosophy than to poetry. He did not seek to graft upon them human interests and human passions. In tracing the final cause of our emotions, he could have described their exercise and effects in scenes of ordinary pain or pleasure in the walks of real life. This does not seem, however, to have been the purpose of the poet, and hence his work is deficient in interest. Akenside's blank verse is free and well modulated, and is peculiarly his own. Though apt to run into too long periods, it is more compact in its structure than that of Thomson, and may, perhaps, be considered superior to it. Its occasional want of perspicuity probably arises from the delicacy of the author's distinctions, and the difficulty attending mental analysis in verse. He might also wish to avoid all vulgar and common expressions, and thus err from excessive refinement. A redundancy of ornament certainly, in some passages, mars the clearness of his conceptions; but his higher flights have a flow and energy of expression, and an appropriateness of imagery, peculiar to the great poet. His style is chaste, yet elevated and musical; and though he blends sweetness with his expression, he never compromises his dignity. We close our notice of this interesting writer with the following brief ex tracts: VOL. II.-Z ASPIRATIONS AFTER THE INFINITE. Say, why was man so eminently raised Through life and death to dart his piercing eye, As on a boundless theatre, to run The great career of justice; to exalt To chase each partial purpose from his breast; Of Nature, calls him to his high reward, The applauding smile of Heaven? Else wherefore burns In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope, That breathes from day to day sublimer things, And mocks possession? wherefore darts the mind Majestic forms; impatient to be free, To Heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view, Who that, from Alpine heights, his labouring eye Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade, And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode; Till half recoiling, down the headlong steep Power's purple robes, nor Pleasure's flowery lap, Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view, INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. Mind, mind alone (bear witness earth and heaven.) The living fountains in itself contains Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand Look, then, abroad through nature, to the range Aloft extending, like eternal Jove When guilt brings down the thunder, called aloud And bade the father of his country, hail! |