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A Newly Discovered Manuscript Dedication by Mark Akenside

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Robin Dix
Robin Dix
Affiliation:
Dr Robin Dix was a lecturer in the Department of English at Durham University, UK. We regret very much that he did not live to see the publication of this article, as it represents the groundbreaking work on Mark Akenside he conducted throughout his academic life. His colleague Dr Virginia Sampson undertook the final preparation of this article for the press.
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Medical History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 425 - 432
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 For fuller details of Akenside’s university career, and of his failed attempts to establish himself as a physician, first in Northampton, and then in Hampstead, just north of London, see Robin Dix, ‘Akenside’s university career: the manuscript evidence’, Notes and Queries, 1985, n.s. 32: 212–15, and idem, ‘Relations between Mark Akenside and Sir James Stonhouse in Northampton, 1744’, Notes and Queries, 1995, n.s. 42: 219–26 respectively.

2 For Akenside’s election to the Royal Society, see the Society’s records of ‘Certificates of election’, vol. 2, no. 42. To practise as a physician legally in London, doctors were required to be members of the Royal College of Physicians, and the College required that their members held Oxford or Cambridge MDs. Akenside was admitted as a licenciate of the College on 26 June 1751, after undergoing three examinations, and received permission to apply for a degree by Mandamus on 30 September 1752, following negotiations between the president of the College, Dr Wasey, and Cambridge University. This was a recognized way by which the College regularized the position of doctors whom it wanted to sponsor but who held other qualifications. Technically, the Mandate (in Akenside’s case dated 18 December 1752) was issued by the King to the University in question, and the degree was conferred by the University, rather than by one of its colleges. For information regarding the legal position and Cambridge University, I am indebted to Dr Leedham-Green, Cambridge University Archivist; information regarding the dates of decisions taken by the Royal College of Physicians may be found under the relevant dates in their manuscript book of annals, held at their Regent’s Park library.

3 Morton’s medical bibliography (Garrison and Morton), ed. Jeremy M Norman, 5th ed., Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1983, p. 624 (entry 4015.1). The date from which the London College of Physicians became entitled to call itself “Royal”, is a complex matter: see ‘When did the College become Royal?’ in Geoffrey Davenport, Ian McDonald and Caroline Moss-Gibbons (eds), The Royal College of Physicians and its collections: an illustrated history, London, James & James, 2001, pp. 26–8.

4 Other, more detailed, biographies of Akenside are available. His work has always been better known among literary critics than medical historians, doubtless because of the great poetic success he achieved with The pleasures of imagination. In the biographical outline given here, I have therefore tried to emphasize the specifically medical aspects of Akenside’s career. Those wishing to read a more balanced account of his life and works should consult Charles Theodore Houpt, Mark Akenside: a biographical and critical study, New York, Russell and Russell, 1970; Dictionary of National Biography and the Oxford DNB; and Robert Mahony, ‘Mark Akenside’, in John Sitter (ed.), Dictionary of literary biography: eighteenth-century British poets, 2nd series, Detroit, Gale Research, 1991, pp. 3–11.

5 We learn of Mead’s advice in Akenside’s letter to Dyson of 17 May [1744], although in fact another physician, James Stonhouse (later Sir James), had recently established a practice there and received the loyal backing of various prominent residents. For fuller details, see Robin Dix, The literary career of Mark Akenside: including an edition of his non-medical prose, Madison, NY, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006, pp. 137–8, and for the reference to Mead in Akenside’s letter, appendix 1, letter 10, lines 22–6.

6 The full text of the manuscript, held at the British Library, BL Add. 32,886, ff. 254–55, is perhaps most conveniently consulted in Dix, op. cit., note 5 above, p. 307 (no. 16).

7 Dustin Griffin, Literary patronage in England, 1650–1800, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 60.

8 Indeed, so scarce are his manuscripts, that it has even been suggested that either the son or grandson of his friend and patron, Jeremiah Dyson, might have destroyed all the manuscripts he could find, for fear of a homosexual construction being placed upon them. Akenside’s sexual orientation is not known, but he never married, and the friendship with Dyson, which began when the two were in Edinburgh, was the longest and closest relationship of his life. Dyson’s family would have had easy access to the majority of Akenside’s papers, which were left to Dyson in his will.

9 These documents are noted and, where appropriate, transcribed, in Robin Dix, ‘Mark Akenside: unpublished manuscripts’, Durham University Journal, 1994, n.s., 55: 219–26. There are five autograph poetic manuscripts (Akenside MSS. 1–4 in the Ralph M Williams collection at Amherst College Library, Massachusetts, and a single early draft of another ode in the Devon Record Office, UK); a fair copy of a letter dated 2 Jan. 1726 from William Warburton to Matthew Concanen; an account of a conversation between Richard Palmer and some friends of Akenside on 4 May 1766; a seven-page fair copy of his medical essay ‘Observations on the origin and use of lymphatic vessels in animals’ (Royal Society Library, call-mark Letters and Papers III.264), later to appear in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1757, 50: 322–8; his signature on a contract with his publisher Robert Dodsley (National Library of Scotland MS 581), outlining his duties as editor of Dodsley’s periodical, The Museum; a signature showing that he witnessed Dyson’s marriage to his cousin Dorothy Dyson on 11 June 1756 at St Bartholomew the Great (Parish registers, now kept in the Guildhall Library, London, vol. 6779/2); a signed receipt dated 9 Sept. 1756 for a payment of £10 from the College of Physicians for his delivering the Croonian Lectures, delivered 7–9 Sept. (Royal College of Physicians Library, London, Autograph Letters collection, no call-mark); his signature on his will, dated 6 Dec. 1767 and proved 9 July 1770; finally, there is one other known manuscript dedication to Jeremiah Dyson of a published work, The pleasures of imagination, 1744. For further details of this last, see Dix, op. cit., note 5 above, pp. 65–6.

10 The presentation copy of The pleasures of imagination is preserved in the Cracherode collection at the British Library, callmark 671.h.15. Its existence was first noted by David F Foxon, ‘Akenside’s The pleasures of imagination’, The Book Collector, 1956, 5: 77–8. Cracherode, who helped to set up the British Library, was a friend of Akenside, but it is not known how he came by Dyson’s copy of The pleasures of imagination.

11 The book is available for consultation in the Rare Materials Reading Room. The dedication was duly noted in the Wellcome catalogue, but had not been picked up by those working on Akenside.

12 A literal translation might read: “Mark Akenside, friend of Jeremiah Dyson, gave as a gift to his friend, the Works of William Harvey, edited according to his own judgement and emended by his own effort, on 25 August 1766.”

13 The 1744 Latin dedication reads “Viro conjunctissimo / Jeremiæ Dyson, / vitæ, morumque suorum duci, / verum bonarum socio, / studiorum judici, / cujus amicitiâ / neque sanctius habet quicquam, / neque optat carius; / hocce opusculum / (vos, ô tyrannorum impuræ laudes / et servilium blandimenta poetarum, / abeste procul) / dat, dicat, consecratque / Marcus Akinside. / XVII calendas Jan. A.Æ.C. M,DCC,XLIV.” (“To his closest friend, Jeremiah Dyson, Mark Akenside gives, dedicates, and consecrates this little volume; to the man who has guided his life and manners, been the companion in all true pursuits, the judge of his studies; whose friendship none could value more or wish for more dearly. For him, I would use none of the insincere blandishments with which servile poets flatter tyrants.”) Foxon explains that it is impossible to determine whether the presentation date was January 16 or 17: if the formula was meant to read “ad XVII cal. Feb,” this would imply January 16.

14 Annals of the College of Physicians for 3 March 1766, pp. 46–7.

15 ‘Collegium Medicorum Londinense Lectori S,’ called simply ‘Praefatio’ on the Contents page, p. i.

16 George R Potter, ‘Mark Akenside, prophet of evolution’, Modern Philology, 1926–7, 24: 55–64. Potter’s claims about Akenside’s embryology can be supported convincingly enough, but those concerning Akenside’s anticipation of evolution are not reliable.

17 There was also a more scientific reason for accepting preformationism as a theory: it permitted a simple explanation as to why, in the vast majority of cases, foetal development proceeded in a predictable way. For fuller discussion of this, and of the intellectual context within which the seventeenth-century move away from the alternative epigenetic theory took place, as well as the gradual move back towards epigenesis from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, see Shirley A Roe, Matter, life, and generation: eighteenth-century embryology and the Haller-Wolff debate, Cambridge University Press, 1981. For fuller details of Akenside’s own thesis, and the reasoning behind his move away from preformationism, see Robin Dix, ‘The demise of the preformed embryo: Edinburgh, Leiden and the return of epigenetic embryology,’ to be published in David Shuttleton (ed.), Scottish medicine and literary culture, (forthcoming).

18 Maupertuis’ research was published in Leiden, and so was probably spoken about in the medical faculty there around the time that Akenside was registered as a student. The more famous book, Vénus physique, appeared in 1745, but a preliminary study, Dissertation physique sur le nègre blanc, now definitely attributed to Maupertuis, was published in 1744: see Mary Terrall, The man who flattened the earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the Enlightenment, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 209.

19 For further information about Trembley and his research into the hydra, see W H van Seters, Pierre Lyonet, 1706–1789: sa vie, ses collections de coquillages et de tableaux, ses recherches entomologiques, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, pp. 67–8. I should like to thank Dr Emma Spary for drawing this book to my attention.

20 For full details of Akenside’s residence in Leiden, from his arrival on 31 March 1744 at the earliest (20 March in England, where the Julian calendar was used until 1754) to his departure by 27 May (17 May in England, as we know from the fact that he wrote a letter to his friend Jeremiah Dyson from London dated 17 May, having just arrived back in England), see Robin Dix, ‘The pleasures of speculation: scholarly methodology in eighteenth-century literary studies,’ Br. J. Eighteenth-Cent. Stud., 2000, 23: 96–9. The fact that he was able to receive a Leiden degree after a mere six weeks’ residence there strikes us as odd today, but a glance at R W Innes Smith, English-speaking students of medicine at the University of Leyden, Edinburgh and London, Oliver & Boyd, 1932, shows that whilst many students did stay much longer than six weeks, Akenside’s sojourn was not remarkably short; some individuals, indeed, graduated with an MD in just days.

21 It is unfortunately not possible to find out when the Anatomy School acquired either of its seventeenth-century editions of Harvey’s Exercitationes, although they were certainly early acquisitions.