THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MARK AKENSIDE.



REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.


THE LIFE OF AKENSIDE.


Mark Akenside was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the 9th of November
1721. His family were Presbyterian Dissenters, and on the 30th of
that month he was baptized in the meeting, then held in Hanover
Square, by a Mr. Benjamin Bennet. His father, Mark, was a butcher in
respectable circumstances--his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. There
may seem something grotesque in finding the author of the "Pleasures
of Imagination" born in a place usually thought so anti-poetical as
a butcher's shop. And yet similar anomalies abound in the histories
of men of genius. Henry Kirke White, too, was a butcher's son, and
for some time carried his father's basket. The late Thomas Atkinson,
a very clever _litterateur_ of the West of Scotland, was also what
the Scotch call a "flesher's" son. The case of Cardinal Wolsey is
well known. Indeed, we do not understand why any decent calling
should be inimical to the existence--however it may be to the