his much-praised ``Hymn to the Naiads,'' and he also became a
contributor to Dodsley's Museum, or Literary and Historical
Register. He was now twenty-five years old, and began to devote
1 The reference is to Francis Hutcheson (1604-1746), author of an
inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725).
himself almost exclusively to his profession. He was an acute
and learned physician. He was admitted M.D. at Cambridge in
1753, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1754, and
fourth censor in 1755. In June 1755 he read the Gulstonian
lectures before the College, in September 1756 the Croonian
lectures, and in 1759 the Harveian oration. In January
1759 he was appointed assistant physician, and two months
later principal physician to Christ's Hospital, but he was
charged with harsh treatment of the poorer patients, and his
unsympathetic character prevented the success to which his
undeniable learning and ability entitled him. At the accession
of George III. both Dyson and Akenside changed their political
opinions, and Akenside's conversion to Tory principles was
rewarded by the appointment of physician to the queen.
Dyson became societary to the treasury, lord of the treasury,
and in 1774 privy Councillor and cofferer to the household.
Akenside died on the 23rd of June 1770, at his house in
Burlington Street, where the last ten years of his life had
been spent. His friendship with Dyson puts his character in
the most amiable light. Writing to his friend so early as
1744, Akenside said that the intimacy had ``the force of an
additional conscience, of a new principle of religion,'' and
there seems to have been no break in their affection. He
left all his effects and his literary remains to Dyson, who
issued an edition of his poems in 1772. This included the
revised version of the Pleasures of Imagination, on which
the author was engaged at his death. The first book of this
work defines the powers of imagination and discusses the
various kinds of pleasure to be derived from the perception
of beauty; the second distinguishes works of imagination from
philosophy; the third describes the pleasure to be found in the
study of man, the sources of ridicule, the operations of the
mind, in producing works of imagination, and the influence
of imagination on morals. The ideas were largely borrowed
from Addison's essays on the imagination and from Lord
Shaftesbury. Professor Dowden complains that ``his tone is
too high-pitched; his ideas are too much in the air; they do
not nourish themselves in the common heart, the common life
of man.'' Dr Johnson praised the blank verse of the poems, but
found fault with the long and complicated periods. Akenside's
verse was better when it was subjected to severer metrical
rules. His odes are very few of them lyrical in the strict
sense, but they are dignified and often musical, while the few
``inscriptions'' he has left are felicitous in the extreme.
The best edition of Akenside's Poetical Works is that prepared
(1834) by Alexander Dyce for the Aldine Edition of the British
Poets, and reprinted with small additions in subsequent issues
of the series. See Dyce's Life of Akenside prefixed to his
edition, also Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and the Life,
Writings and Genius of Akenside (1832) by Charles Bucke.
AKERMAN, JOHN YONGE (1806-1873), English antiquarian,
distinguished chiefly in the department of numismatics, was
born in Wiltshire. He became early known in connexion with his
favourite study, having initiated the Numismatic Journal in
1836. In the following year he became the secretary of the
newly established Numismatic Society. In 1848 he was elected
secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, an office which
he was compelled to resign in 1860 on account of failing
health. Akerman published a considerable number of works on
his special subject, the more important being a Catalogue
of Roman Coins (1839); a Numismatic Manual (1840); Roman
Coins relating to Britain (1844); Ancient Coins--Hispania,
Gallia, Britannia (1846); and Numismatic Illustrations of
the New Testament (1846). He wrote also a Glossary of Words
used in Wiltshire (1842); Wiltshire Tales, illustrative of
the Dialect (1853); and Remains of Pagan Saxondom (1855).
AKHALTSIKH (Georgian Akhaltsikhe, ``new fortress''),
a fortified town of Russian Transcaucasia, government of
Tiths, 68 m. E. of Batum, in 41 deg. 40' N. lat., 43 deg. 1' E.
long., on a tributary of the Kura, at an altitude of 3375
ft. The new town is on the right bank of the river,
while the old town and the fortress are on the opposite
bank. There is trade in silk, honey and wax, and brown coal
is found in the neighbourhood. The silver filigree work is
famous. Pop. (1897) 15,387, of whom many were Armenians, as
against 15,977 in 1867. From 1579 to 1828 Akhaltsikh was the
capital of Turkish Armenia. In the last-mentioned year it
was captured by the Russians. The Turks invested it in 1853.
AK-HISSAR (anc. Thyateira, the ``town of Thya''), a town
situated in a fertile plain on the Gurduk Chai (Lycus), in
the Aidin vilayet, 58 m. N.E. of Smyrna. Pop. about 20,000,
Mussulmans forming two-thirds. Thyateira was an ancient town
re-peopled with Macedonians by Seleucus about 290 B.C. It
became an important station on the Roman road from Pergamum to
Laodicea, and one of the ``Seven Churches'' of Asia (Rev. ii.
18), but was never a metropolis or honoured with a neocorate,
though made the centre of a conventus by Caracalla. The
modern town is connected with Smyrna by railway, and exports
cotton, wool, opium, cocoons and cereals. The inhabitants are
Greeks, Armenians and Turks. The Greeks are of an especially
fine type, physical and moral, and noted all through Anatolia
for energy and stability. W. M. Ramsay believes them to be
direct descendants of the ancient Christian population; but
there is reason to think they are partly sprung from more
recent immigrants who moved in the 18th century from western
Greece into the domain of the Karasmans of Manisa and Bergama,
as recorded by W. M. Leake. Cotton of excellent quality
is grown in the neighbourhood, and the place is celebrated
for its scarlet dyes. Perebus Thyatirenorum (1893).
AKHMIM, or EKHMIM, a town of Upper Egypt, on the right
bank of the Nile, 67 m. by river S. of Assiut, and 4 m. above
Suhag, on the opposite side of the river, whence there is railway
communication with Cairo and Assuan. It is the largest town on
the east side of the Nile in Upper Egypt, having a population
in 1007 of 25,795, of whom about a third were Copts. Akhmim
has several mosques and two Coptic churches, maintains a weekly
market, and manufactures cotton goods, notably the blue shirts
and check shawls with silk fringes worn by the poorer classes of
Egypt. Outside the walls are the scanty ruins of two ancient
temples. In Abulfeda's days (13th century A.D.) a very
imposing temule still stood here. Akhmim was the Egyptian Apu
or Khen-min, in Coptic Shmin, known to the Greeks as Chemmis
or Panopolis, capital of the 9th or Chemmite nome of Upper
Egypt. The ithyphallic Min (Pan) was here worshipped as
``the strong Horus.'' Herodotus mentions the temple dedicated
to ``Perseus'' and asserts that Chemmis was remark-. able
for the celebration of games in honour of that hero, after
the manner of the Greeks, at which prizes were given; as a
matter of fact some representations are known of Nubians and
people of Puoni (Somalic coast) clambering up poles before the
god Min. Min was especially a god of the desert routes on the
east of Egypt, and the trading tribes are likely to have
gathered to his festivals for business and pleasure, at Coptos
(which was really near to Neapolis, Kena) even more than at
Akhmim. Herodotus perhaps confused Coptos with Chemmis.
Strabo mentions linen-weaving as an ancient industry of
Panopohs, and it is not altogether a coincidence that the
cemetery of Akhmim is one of the chief sources of the beautiful
textiles of Roman and Coptic age that are brought from
Egypt. Monasteries abounded in this neighbourhood from a very
early date; Shenout (Sinuthius), the fiery apostle and prophet
of the Coptic national church, was a monk of Atrepe (now
Suhag), and led the populace to the destruction of the pagan
edifices. He died in 451; some years earlier Nestorius, the
ex-patriarch, had succumbed perhaps to his persecution and to old
age, in the neighbourhood of Akhmim. Nonnus, the Greek poet, was
born at Panopolis at the end of the 4th century. (F. LL. G.)
AKHTAL [GHIYYTH IBN HYRITH} (c. 640-710), one of the most
famous Arabian poets of the Omayyad period, belonged to the tribe
of Taghlib in Mesopotamia, and was, like his fellow-tribesmen,
a Christian, enjoying the freedom of his religion, while not
taking its duties very seriously. Of his private life .few
details are known, save that he was married and divorced,
and that he spent part of his time in Damascus, part with his
tribe in Mesopotamia. In the wars of the Taghhbites with the
Qaisites he took part in the field, and by his satires. In the
literary strife between his contemporaries Jarir and Lerazdaq
he was induced to support the latter poet. Akhtal, Jarir and
Ferazdaq form a trio celebrated among the Arabs, but as to
relative superiority there is dispute. In the'Abbasid period
there is no doubt that Akhtal's Christianity told against his
reputation, but Abu'Ubaida placed him highest of the three
on the ground that amongst his poems there were ten flawless
qasidas (elegies), and ten more nearly so, and that this could
not be said of the other two. The chief material of his poems
consists of panegyric of patrons and satire of rivals, the latter
being, however, more restraified than was usual at the time.
The Poetry of al-Akhtal has been published at the Jesuit press
in Beirut, 1891. A full account of the poet and his times
is given in H. Lammens' Le chantre des Omiades (Paris, 1895)
(a reprint from the Journal Asiatique for 1894). (G. W. T.)
AKHTYRKA, a town of Russia, in the government of Kharkov,
near the Vorskla river, connected by a branch (11 m.)
with the railway from Kiev to Kharkov. It has a beautiful
cathedral, built after a plan by Rastrelh in 1753, to which
pilgrims resort to venerate an ikon of the Virgin. There
are manufactures of light woollen stuffs and a trade in
corn, cattle and the produce of domestic industries. The
environs are fertile, the orchards producing excellent
fruit. A fair is held on the 9th of May. The place was founded
by the Poles in 1642. Pop. (1867) 17,411; (1900) 25,965.
AKKA (TIKEI-TIKKI), a race of African pygmies first seen
by the traveller G. A. Schweinfurth in 1870, when he was in the
Mangbettu country, N.W. of Albert Nyanza. The home of the Akka
is the dense forest zone of the Aruwimi district of the Congo
State. They form a branch of the primitive pygmy negroid
race. and appear to be divided into groups, each with its own
chief. Of all African ``dwarfs'' the Akka are believed the
best representatives of the ``little people'' mentioned by
Herodotus. Giovanni Miani, the Italian explorer who followed
Schweinfurth, obtained two young Akka in exchange for a dog and a
calf. These, sent to Italy in 1873, were respectively 4 ft. 4
in. and 4 ft. 8 in. high, while the tallest seen by Schweinfurth
did not reach 5 ft. None of the four Akka brought to Europe
in 1874 and 1876 exceeded 3 ft. 4 in. The average height of
the race would seem to be somewhat under 4 ft., but sufficient
measurements have not been taken to allow of a conclusive
