Akenside

MARK AKENSIDE (1721 - 1770)

The Newcastle poet-physician was born at 33 Butcher Bank (now Akenside Hill). He trained in Edinburgh and abroad and eventually rose to be physician to the queen at the accession of George III in 1763. Akenside actually had one leg shorter than the other, so the story about his being injured by his butcher father's cleaver was no doubt just a taunt about his humble origins. He was very touchy about this and, possibly as a result, he gained the reputation of behaving roughly to the poor, especially to women. He would tour the wards in his London hospital wearing a full-bottomed wig and clanking sword, while an escort of attendants kept the patients at a suitable distance. He was not an easy man to like, despite being ready to praise other poets. He had annoyed the testy Scots novelist Tobias Smollett (q.v.) by disparaging Scotland. He was consequently satirised as the conceited and pedantic Doctor in Peregrine Pickle.

In Newcastle, Akenside wrote a number of minor poems for the Gentleman's Magazine, including 'A Hymn to Science', but it was while visiting relations at Morpeth that he conceived the plan for Pleasures of Imagination (1744, rewritten 1757) his most celebrated work. It is a long, erudite and complex poem, which takes on the difficult task of rendering a philosophical treatise in verse. Doctor Johnson was not an admirer: 'The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived.' He tempered his criticism, however, by saying: 'In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer of blank verse' - and Milton is among those being compared. Thomas Gray (q.v.) says of Akenside's great poem: '... above the middling and now and then (but for a little while) rises even to the best, particularly in description.' There certainly are occasional striking passages, but it has to be admitted that there is much leaden verse, stuffed with classical allusions. Recalling his youth by the 'dales of Tyne' and the Wansbeck, however, Akenside finds more immediacy:

... O ye Northumbrian shades! which overlook
The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream,
How gladly I recall your well-known seats,
Beloved of old...

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
MARK AKENSIDE (1721 - 1770) The Newcastle poet-physician was born at 33 Butcher Bank (now Akenside Hill). He trained in Edinburgh and abroad and eventually rose to be physician to the queen at the accession of George III in 1763. Akenside actually had one leg shorter than the other, so the story about his being injured by his butcher father's cleaver was no doubt just a taunt about his humble origins. He was very touchy about this and, possibly as a result, he gained the reputation of behaving roughly to the poor, especially to women. He would tour the wards in his London hospital wearing a full-bottomed wig and clanking sword, while an escort of attendants kept the patients at a suitable distance. He was not an easy man to like, despite being ready to praise other poets. He had annoyed the testy Scots novelist Tobias Smollett (q.v.) by disparaging Scotland. He was consequently satirised as the conceited and pedantic Doctor in Peregrine Pickle. In Newcastle, Akenside wrote a number of minor poems for the Gentleman's Magazine, including 'A Hymn to Science', but it was while visiting relations at Morpeth that he conceived the plan for Pleasures of Imagination (1744, rewritten 1757) his most celebrated work. It is a long, erudite and complex poem, which takes on the difficult task of rendering a philosophical treatise in verse. Doctor Johnson was not an admirer: 'The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived.' He tempered his criticism, however, by saying: 'In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer of blank verse' - and Milton is among those being compared. Thomas Gray (q.v.) says of Akenside's great poem: '... above the middling and now and then (but for a little while) rises even to the best, particularly in description.' There certainly are occasional striking passages, but it has to be admitted that there is much leaden verse, stuffed with classical allusions. Recalling his youth by the 'dales of Tyne' and the Wansbeck, however, Akenside finds more immediacy: ... O ye Northumbrian shades! which overlook The rocky pavement and the mossy falls Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream, How gladly I recall your well-known seats, Beloved of old...
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