A KEN SID E.

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ARK AKENSIDE was born on the ninth of November, 1721, at Newcaftle upon Tyne. His father Mark was a butcher, of the Prefbyterian fect; his mother's name was Mary Lumfden. He received the first part of his education at the grammarfchool of Newcastle; and was afterwards inftructed by Mr. Wilfon, who kept a private academy.

At the age of eighteen he was fent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify himself for the office of a diffenting minifter, and received fome affiftance from the fund which the Dif fenters employ in educating young men of fcanty fortune. But a wider view of the world VOL. VI. openca

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opened other scenes, and prompted other hopes: he determined to ftudy phyfic, and repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpofe, he justly thought it dishonourable to retain.

Whether, when he refolved not to be a diffenting minifter, he ceafed to be a Diffenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unneceffary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which fometimes difguifes from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it poffeffes, an envious defire of plundering wealth or degrading greatnefs; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous cagerness to fubvert and confound, with very little care what shall be eftablished.

Akenfide was one of thofe poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of thofe ftudents who have very carly ftored their memories with fentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greateft work, "The Plea "fures of Imagination," appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodfley, by whom it was published, relate, that when the copy was offered him,

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the price demanded for it, which was an hundred and twenty pounds, being fuch 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."

In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became doctor of phyfick, having, according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thefis, or differtation. The fubject which he chofe was "The Original and Growth of the Human Foetus;" in which he is faid to have departed, with great judgement, from the opinion then eftablifhed, and to have delivered that which has been fince confirmed and received.

Akenfide was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or accident had been connected with the found of liberty, and by an eccentricity which such dispositions do not eafily avoid, a lover of contradiction, and no friend to any thing eftablished. He adopted Shaftesbury's foolish affertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended

by Dyfon: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his dedication to the Freethinkers.

The refult of all the arguments which have been produced in a long and eager difcuffion of this idle question, may eafily be collected. If ridicule be applied to any pofition as the test of truth, it will then become a question whether fuch ridicule be juft; and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men, fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for a while equally expofed to the inevitable confequences of cowardice, contémptuous cenfure, and ludicrous reprefentation; and the true state of both cafes must be known, before it can be decided whofe terror is rational, and whofe is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be despised. Both are for a while equally expofed to laughter, but both are not therefore equally contemptible.

In the revifal of his poem, which he died before he had finifhed, he omitted the lines which had given occafion to Warburton's objections.

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