The poetical works of Mark Akenside.

  • Mark Akenside
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The poetical works of Mark Akenside. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/418
    caustic Preface,1 which opens thus : “ In the Pre- fatory Discourse to the first volume oftheD.[ivine] L.[egation] I spoke pretty largely of the Use of Ridicule in religious subjects ; as the Abuse of it is amongst the fashionable arts of Free-thinking: D O for which I have been just now call’d to account, without any ceremony, by the nameless author of a poem entitled The Pleasures of Imagination. For ’tis my fortune to be still concern’d with those who either do go masked, or those who should. I am a plain man, and on my first appearance in this way, I told my name and who I belonged to. After this, if men will rudely come upon me in disguise, they can have no reason to complain, that (in my ignorance of their characters) I treat them all alike upon the same free footing they have put themselves. This gentleman, a follower of Ld. S.[haftesbury], and, as it should seem, one of those to whom that Preface was addressed; certainly, one of those to whom I applied the words of Tully, non decet, non datum est; who affect wit and rail- lery on subjects not meet, and with talents un- equal; this gentleman, I say, in the 105th and 106th pages of his Poem, animadverts upon me in the following manner: Since (say s he) it is beyond cdl contradiction evident that we have a natural sense or feeling of the ridicidous, and since so good a reason may be assigned to justify the supreme Being for 1 This Preface was afterwards reprinted, with some slight alterations, as a Postscript to the Dedication to the Free-thinkers in a new edition of the Divine Legation of Moses.—Both Mr. D’lsrneli ( Quarrels of Authors, i. 97), and Mr. Buclce (Life of Akenside, 37), seem not to know where YVarburton’s attack on the poet originally appeared.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3