for the most part, totally casual--they that
employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his
deficience. By any acute observer who had looked on the transactions
of the medical world for half a century a very curious book might be
written on the "Fortune of Physicians."

Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: 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 essays and observations; he became physician to St.
Thomas's Hospital; he read the Gulstonian Lectures in Anatomy; but began
to give, for the Croonian Lecture, a history of the revival of learning,
from which he soon desisted; and in conversation he very eagerly
forced himself into notice by an ambitious ostentation of elegance and
literature. His "Discourse on the Dysentery" (1764) was considered as
a very conspicuous specimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the same
height of place among the scholars as he possessed before among
the wits; and he might perhaps have risen to a greater elevation of
character but that his studies were ended with his life by a putrid
fever June 23, 1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

Akenside is to be considered as a didactic and lyric poet. His great
work is the "Pleasures of Imagination," a performance which, published
as it was at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were
not amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular
notice as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon aptitude
of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much exercised
in combining and comparing them. With the philosophical or religious
tenets of the author I have nothing to do; my business is with his
poetry. The subject is well chosen, as it includes all images that can
strike or please, and thus comprises every species of poetical delight.
The only difficulty is in the choice of examples and illustrations; and
it is not easy in such exuberance of matter to find the middle point
between penury and satiety. The parts seem artificially disposed, with
sufficient coherence, so as that they cannot change their places
without injury to the general design. His images are displayed with such
luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a
"Veil