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.

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    Mr. Gronovius, Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Ready, and all your's here salute you. “ I have just been at Langeratu’s to inquire about the Basilica, but not finding him, must refer it to another opportunity.” On the lGtli May, 1744,1 Akenside took his de- gree of Doctor of Physic, at Leyden, the subject of his Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis being He ortu et incremento fcetus humani ,-2 and, doubtless, as soon as he had obtained his diploma, he hastened back to England. In the collection of Odes, which he published in the following year, is an Ode On leaving Holland. He was now desirous to commence the practice of his profession ; and having heard that he had a prospect of succeeding at Northampton, and having made some necessary enquiries on the spot, in June, 1744,3 he soon after fixed himself there as a physician. It was not long, however, before he found that the chief medical business of the place was in the hands of Dr. Stonehouse, from whom it was not to be wrested by a stranger;4 1 See note at page xlii. of this Memoir. a Printed at Leyden in 1744, 4to. “ In this disserta- tion the author is said to have displayed his medical sagacity by attacking some opinions of Leeuwenhoek and other -writers, at that time very generally received, but which have been since discarded by the best physicians and philosophers; and by proposing an hypothesis which is now considered as founded in truth.”—Kippis's Bing. Brit. 3 From the information of Mr. Dyson, (October 25th, 1834,) who thus describes the contents of one of the poet’s letters to his father: “On the 14th June [1744] he writes from Northampton to report the result of his enquiries in relation to the expediency of his settling there, which was such as induced him to do so.” 4 A correspondent (who signs himself Indagator) in the
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