Mark Akenside as a Pre-Romantic Poet

Mark Akenside, an eighteenth-century Scottish poet and physician, was best known for his philosophical blank verse poem The pleasures of Imagination. He was born at newcastel-on-Tyne on the 9th of November, 1721. Akenside deserves, on account of his poems, a high place in the ranks of the British poetry. His poems are, both in substance and style, more organic, impassioned and poetic than much verse that was written in his day on trivial occasions of topical interest. The Pleasures of Imagination the Hymn to the Naiads, the Inscriptions, the odes and many other poems composed by him are remarkable for (a) purity and loftiness of their though and emotion, (b) chastity, vigorousness and inartificiality of their diction and (c0 impassionedness of their expression and (d) melodiousness and organic quality of their style and form. It is hoped that the present book will be effectively instrumental in restoring Akenside to his proper position as a Pre-Romantic Poet.