In the
same year, one Archibald Campbell, a Scotchman, a purser in the navy,
and called, from his ungainly countenance, "horrible Campbell,"
produced a small _jeu d'esprit_, entitled "Lexiphanes, imitated from
Lucian, and suited to the present times," in which he tries to
ridicule Johnson's prose and Akenside's poetry. His object was
probably to attract their notice, but both passed over this grin of
the "Grim Feature" in silent contempt. Akenside was still busy with
the revisal of his poem, had finished two books, "made considerable
progress with the third, and written a fragment of the fourth;" but
death stepped in and blighted his prospects, both as a physician,
with increasing practice and reputation, and as a poet, whose
favourite work was approaching what he deemed perfection. He was
seized with putrid fever; and, after a short illness, died on the 23
d June 1770 at an age when many men are in their very prime, both of
body and mind--that of 49. He died in his house in Burlington Street,
and was buried on the 28th in St. James's Church.
Akenside had been, notwithstanding his many acquaintances and friends,
on the whole, a lonely man; without domestic connexions, and having,
so far as we are informed, either no surviving relations or no
intercourse with those who might be still alive.
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