1 4 The. first forty Members 



medicine there. In later years, when the poet was un- 

 successful in his medical practice at Hampstead, where 

 Dyson had bought a house for him, the same benefactor, 

 " with an ardour of friendship that has not many 

 examples/' as Dr. Johnson has remarked, secured a small 

 house for his friend in Bloomsbury Square, and allowed 

 him 300 a year, until he did not require other aid. 

 Dyson had the satisfaction of seeing Akenside secure a 

 prominent and lucrative place among the medical practi- 

 tioners in London, and there can be little doubt that he was 

 the means of procuring the poet's introduction into the 

 Dining Club of the philosophers, of which he continued for 

 some years to be an assiduous member. 

 / To this company the accession of the President of the 

 Royal Society on 23rd April 1747 was an incident of prime 

 importance, for it officially connected them with the great 

 Society to which most of them belonged, and practically 

 x recognised them as its Dining Club. Martin Folkes (1690- 

 1754), who filled this high office, was rather antiquarian and 

 literary than scientific in his studies, though he wrote 

 on astronomy and other physical subjects. As far back 

 as 1723 he had been appointed by Sir Isaac Newton one 

 of the Vice-presidents of the Royal Society, and on the 

 retirement of Sir Hans Sloane from the Presidential Chair 

 on 3oth November 1741, Folkes was elected as his successor. 

 He held the office for eleven years until he relinquished it 

 from failing health. He was also President of the Society 

 of Antiquaries from 1749 till his death in 1754. Accom- 

 plished in many branches of knowledge, mild and courteous ; 

 such was the President under whose gentle sway the Club 

 passed rapidly from infancy to virile youth. An admirable 

 portrait of him, painted by Hogarth, hangs on the walls 

 of the Royal Society's apartments, and a monument to his 

 memory was in 1792 erected in Westminster Abbey. At 

 the time of his entry into the Dining- Club he was fifty- 

 seven years of age. 



No record of the Club previous to the year 1747 appears 

 to be now extant save the two documents above cited from 



