Note 461 — Chapter XXVII
Reading edition
Dr. Akenside, by some thought a Poet, was of the same principles with, and an intimate friend of, Dyson, who obtained his being named Physician to the Queen. To that mistress and to that friend he made a sacrifice of the word Liberty, in the last edition of his poem on the Pleasures of the Imagination. It was uncourtly, a personification to be invoked by one who felt the pulse of royalty. [The alteration to which Walpole refers is as follows. In the old editions there is the passage—
Wilt thou, kind Harmony, descend, And join the festive train, for with thee comes, Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come, Her sister Liberty will not be far.
In the later editions it stands thus—
... for with thee comes Wise Order; and where Order deigns to come, Her sister Liberty will not be far. Nichols’s Liter. Anec. vol. viii. p. 525.
Akenside’s political tergiversation is an unpleasant commentary on a work so full of elevated thoughts as his poem. Personal attachment to Dyson probably influenced him. He died in 1770, in his forty-ninth year.—E.]