d, a lover
of contradiction, and no friend to anything established. He adopted
Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended
by Dyson; Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his
dedication to the Freethinkers. The result of all the arguments which
have been produced in a long and eager discussion of this idle question
may easily be collected. If ridicule be applied to any position as the
test of truth it will then become a question whether such ridicule be
just; and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the
test of ridicule. Two men fearing, one a real, and the other a
fancied danger, will be for a while equally exposed to the inevitable
consequences of cowardice, contemptuous censure, and ludicrous
representation; and the true state of both cases must be known before it
can be decided whose terror is rational and whose is ridiculous; who
is to be pitied, and who to be despised. Both are for a while equally
exposed to laughter, but both are not therefore equally contemptible.
In the revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it, he
omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton's objections.
He published, soon after his return from Leyden (1745), his first
collection of odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotism to write
a very acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatises, under the
name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country. Being now to live by
his profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr.
Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a
stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the
contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for
liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years,
and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of
accomplishments like his. At London he was known as a poet, but was
still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have been
reduced to great exigencies but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of
friendship that has not many examples, allowed him three hundred pounds
a year. Thus supported, he advanced gradually in medical reputation, but
never attained any great extent of practice or eminence of popularity. A
physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his
degree of reputation is,