provocation would have induced him to publish. It was entitled
"An Ode to the late Thomas Edwards, Esq." Edwards had opposed
Warburton ably in a book entitled "Canons of Criticism," and was
himself a poet. The real sting of this attack lay in Akenside's
production of a letter from Warburton to Concanen, dated 2d January
1726, which had fallen accidentally into the hands of our poet; and
in which Warburton had accused Addison of plagiarism, and said that
when "Pope borrows it is from want of genius." Concanen was one of
the "Dunces," and it was, of course, Akenside's purpose to shew
Warburton's inconsistency in the different opinions he had expressed
at different times of them and of their great adversary. We know not
if the sturdy bishop took any notice of this ode. Even his Briarean
arms were sometimes too full of the controversial work which his
overbearing temper and fierce passions were constantly giving him.

In 1766, Akenside received the thanks of the College of Physicians
for an edition of Harvey's works, which he prepared for the press,
and to which he had prefixed a preface. In June 1767 he read before
the College two papers, one on "Cancers and Asthmas," and the other
on "White Swelling of the Joints," both of which were published the
next year in the first volume of the _Medical Transactions_. In the
same year, one Archibald Campbell, a Scotchman, a purser in the navy,
and called, from his ungainly countenance, "horrible Campbell,"
produced a small _jeu d'esprit_, entitled "Lexiphanes, imitated from
Lucian, and suited to the present times," in which he tries to
ridicule Johnson's prose and Akenside's poetry. His object was
probably to attract their notice, but both passed over this grin of
the "Grim Feature" in silent contempt. Akenside was still busy with
the revisal of his poem, had finished two books, "made considerable
progress with the third, and written a fragment of the fourth;" but