a writer, bustling in the world, showing himself in public, and
emerging occasionally from time to time into notice, might keep
alive by his personal influence; but which, conveying little
information, and giving no great pleasure, must soon give way, as
the succession of things produces new topics of conversation and
other modes of amusement.



AKENSIDE.



Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at Newcastle-
upon-Tyne. His father Mark was a butcher, of the Presbyterian sect;
his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the first part of
his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was afterwards
instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy. At the age of
eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh that he might qualify himself for
the office of a dissenting minister, and received some assistance
from the fund which the dissenters employ in educating young men of
scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other scenes,
and prompted other hopes: he determined to study physic, and repaid
that contribution, which being received for a different purpose, he
justly thought it dishonourable to retain. Whether, when he
resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to be a
dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and
outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which
sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind
which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or