do not easily avoid, a lover of contradiction, and no friend to any thing established. 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 Dyson: 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 be easily collected. If ridicule be applied to any position 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 exposed to the inevitable confequences of cowardice, contemptuous cenfure, and ludicrous reprefentation; and the true ftate 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 defpifed.

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.

He published, foon after his return from Leyden (1745), his firft collection of odes and was impelled by his rage of patriotism to write a very acrimonious epiftle to Pulteney, whom he ftigmatizes, under the name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country.

Being now to live by his profeffion, he first commenced phyfician at Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised, with fuch reputation and fuccefs, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenfide tried the contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he refided more than two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of accomplishments like his.

At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a physician; Gg3

and

and would perhaps have been reduced to great exigencies, but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendfhip that has not many examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Thus fupported, he advanced gradually in medical reputation, but never attained any great extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great city seems to be the mere play-thing of Fortune; his degree of reputation is, for the most part, totally cafual: they that employ him, know not his excellence; they that reject him, know not his deficience. By an acute obferver, who had looked on the tranfactions of the medical world for half a cen tury, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of Phyficians.

Akenfide appears not to have been wanting to his own fuccefs: he placed himself in view by all the common methods; he became a Fellow of the Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge, and was admitted into the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but published, from time to time, medical effays and obfervations; he became phyfician to St. Thomas's Hofpital;

having read the Gulftonian Lectures in Anatomy, he began to give, for the Cronian Lecture, a history of the revival of Learning, from which he foon defifted; and, in converfation, he very eagerly forced himself into notice by an ambitious oftentation of elegance and literature.

His Difcourfe on the Dyfentery (1764) was confidered as a very confpicuous fpecimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the fame height of place among the scholars as he poffeffed before among the wits; and he might perhaps have rifen to a greater elevation of character, but that his ftudies were ended with his life, by a putrid fever, June 23, 1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

AKENSIDE is to be confidered as a didactick and lyrick poet. His great work is the Pleasures of Imagination; a performance which, published, as it was, at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations, which

were not afterwards very amply fatisfied. It has undoubtedly a juft claim to very particular notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon amplitude of acquifitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much exercifed in combining and comparing them.

With the philofophical or religious tenets of the author I have nothing to do; my bufinefs is with his poetry. The fubject is well-chofen, as it includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every fpecies of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of examples and illuftrations, and it is not eafy in fuch exuberance of matter to find the middle point between penury and fatiety. The parts feem artificially difpofed, with fufficient coherence, fo as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general design.

His images are difplayed with fuch luxuriance of expreffion, that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a Veil of Light; they are forms fantastically loft under fuperfluity of drefs. Pars minima eft ipfa Puella fui. The

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