The Poetical Works of Akenside and Beattie, Volume 1

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ere this. About a month ago, when I was thinking every post to write to you, I was thrown from my horse, with a very great hazard of my life, and confined a good while afterwards from either writing or reading. But, thank Heaven, for these ten days I have been perfectly well. You are very good-natured about the verses. If they gave you any pleasure, I shall conclude my principal end in publishing them to be fairly answer'd. And that you look upon your reading them in manuscript, and this way of seeing them in print, as an instance of real friendship, gives me groat satisfaction. As for public influence, if they have any, I hope it will be a good one. But my expectations of that kind are not near so sanguine as they once were. Indeed, human nature, in its genuine habit and constitution, is adapted to very powerful impressions from this sort of entertainment; but, in the present state of manners and opinions, it is almost solely on the retir'd and studious of nature that this effect can be looked for; for hardly any besides these have been able to preserve the genuine habit of the mind in any tolerable degree. I am, dear Sir, your most obedient mul most humble servant, M. Akinside. To JI. (vilkes, jun. St. John's-strcet, London. Here, probably, he alludes to his Odes on Several Subjects, which had been published more than two1 months before the date of this letter, and which require particular notice, though they have not obtained the slightest mention from Mr. Bucke. They are prefaced by an Advertisement worthy of preservation: ? The following Odes were written at very distant intervals, and with a view to very different manners of expression and versification. The author 'pretends chiefly to the merit of endeavouring to be correct, and of carefully attending ...