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butes much to the increase of pleasure we are entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the fentiments, of the original author in the ftile, and between them the mind is kept in perpetual employment.

The general recommendation of Shenstone is eafinefs and fimplicity; his general defect is want of comprehenfion and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable

AKEN SIDE.

MARK

ARK AKENSIDE was born on the ninth of November, 1721, at Newcastle upon Tyne. His father, Mark, was a butcher of the Prefbyterian sect; his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the first part of his education at the grammar-fchool of Newcastle; and was afterwards inftructed by Mr. Wilfon, who kept a private academy.

At the age of eighteen he was fent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify him

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felf for the office of a diffenting minifter, and received fome affiftance from the fund which the Diffenters employ in educating young men of fcanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other scenes, and prompted other hopes: he determined to ftudy phyfic, and repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose, he juftly thought it dishonourable to retain.

Whether, when he resolved not to be a diffenting minifter, he ceafed to be a Diffenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unneceffary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which fometimes difguifes from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it poffeffes,

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an envious defire of plundering wealth or degrading greatnefs; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to fubvert and confound, with very little care what fhall be established.

Akenfide was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of thofe ftudents. who have very early stored their memories with fentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, The Pleafures of Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodfley, by whom it was published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was an

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hundred and twenty pounds, being fuch as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer; for this was no every-day writer.

In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pur fuit of medical knowledge; and three years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became doctor of phyfick, having, according to the custom of the Dutch Univerfities, published a thefis, or differtation. The fubject which he chose was the Original and Growth of the Human Fatus; in which he is faid to have departed, with great judgement, from the opinion then established, and to have

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