death stepped in and blighted his prospects, both as a physician,
with increasing practice and reputation, and as a poet, whose
favourite work was approaching what he deemed perfection. He was
seized with putrid fever; and, after a short illness, died on the 23
d June 1770 at an age when many men are in their very prime, both of
body and mind--that of 49. He died in his house in Burlington Street,
and was buried on the 28th in St. James's Church.

Akenside had been, notwithstanding his many acquaintances and friends,
on the whole, a lonely man; without domestic connexions, and having,
so far as we are informed, either no surviving relations or no
intercourse with those who might be still alive. He was not
especially loved in society; he wanted humour and good-humour both,
and had little of that frank cordiality which, according to Sidney
Smith, "warms and cheers more than meat or wine." He had far less
geniality than genius. Yet, in certain select circles, his mind,
which was richly stored with all knowledge, opened delightfully, and
men felt that he _was_ the author of his splendid poem. One of his
biographers gives him the palm for learning, next to Ben Jonson,
Milton, and Gray (he might perhaps have also excepted Landor and
Coleridge), over all our English poets.

In 1772, Mr. Dyson published an edition of his friend's poems,
containing the original form of the "Pleasures of Imagination," as
well as its half-finished second shape; his "Odes," "Inscriptions,"
"Hymn to the Naiads," etc., omitting, however, his poem to Curio in
its first and best version, and some of his smaller pieces. This
edition, too, contained an account of Akenside's life by his friend,
so short and so cold as either to say little for Dyson's heart, or a
great deal for his modesty and reticence. His uniform and munificent