Book A"^ r* 9: 
 
 M(]:si:nti:I) iiv 
 
DR. GARTH ^,„^:::£^^ 
 
 THE 
 
 KITKAT POET 
 
 1661-1718 
 
 HARVEY GUSHING, M.D. 
 
 Reprinteairom 
 
 The Johns Hopkins Hospital Bllletin 
 
 January 
 
 1906 
 
 'Zi)t. Bora (Sfafttmorc (precd 
 
 THE FRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
 BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A. 
 
 1906 
 

 i"' 
 
 2'}-'-'- 
 
 1 
 
/^i>^ 
 
FROM JACOB TONSON'S MEZZOTINT REPHODUCTIONS OF KNELLER'S PORTRAITS OF THE KIT-KAT CLUB MEMBERS. 
 
DR. GARTH: THE KIT-KAT POET^ 
 
 (1661-1718.) 
 By Harvey Gushing, M. D. 
 
 IN the reign of Queen Anne, a ijasty-cook, one Christopher 
 or Kit for short, ' immortal made by his pyes,' kept a 
 tavern near Temple Bar at the Sign of the Cat and Fiddle. 
 Here was wont to gather a group of the most distinguished 
 men of the time, the patriots that saved Britain, according to 
 the opinion of one who in the succeeding generation bore the 
 name of not the least illustrious of them; leaders of the 
 fashionable world, noblemen, poets, statesmen, soldiers; all 
 fine gentlemen, all earnest Whigs, firmly sworn to support the 
 Protestant succession in the house of Hanover. Of this 
 famous club there were first and last some forty-eight mem- 
 bers, including the great Marlborough, Eobert Walpole, Go- 
 dolphin, and Halifax, Addison and Steele, Kneller the artist, 
 and Vanbrugh the builder of Blenheim, Jacob Tonson the 
 famous book-seller — Pope's left leg'd Jacob — and many more 
 besides the subject of this sketch, the popular, the generous, 
 the companionable Garth. 
 
 Mary Pierrepont, the daughter of Lord Kingston, one of 
 the noblemen who helped to make up this distinguished co- 
 terie, was during her childhood an object of her father's 
 special pride and fondness, and the following incident which 
 in later years she loved to recall has been thus related by her 
 granddaughter. " One day at a meeting to choose toasts for 
 
 * Read at a Meeting of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical 
 Club, December 12, 1904. 
 
 (1) 
 
the year, a whim seized liim to nominate her, then not eight 
 years old/ a candidate, alleging that she was far prettier than 
 any lady on the list. The other members demurred because 
 the rules of the club forbade them to elect a beauty whom 
 they had never seen. ' Then you shall see her/ cried he ; 
 and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders home to have her 
 finely dressed, and brought to him at the tavern; where she 
 was received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, 
 her health drunk by every one present, and lier name engraved 
 in due form on a drinking glass. The company consisting of 
 some of the most eminent men in England, she went from 
 the lap of one poet or patriot or statesman to the arms of 
 another, was feasted with sweet-meats, overwhelmed with 
 caresses, and," Lady Louisa Stewart adds with a touch of 
 irony, " what perhaps already pleased her better than either, 
 heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. 
 Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensa- 
 tions; they amounted to ecstasy; never again throughout her 
 whole future life, did she pass so happy a day." 
 
 It is pleasing to think that Samuel Garth, the single medi- 
 cal member of the club, may have participated in this scene, 
 and that the child toast, whom he, unlike some others, con- 
 tinued to admire throughout his life, was passed to him in 
 turn for a greeting. Little could he then have thought that 
 her name, both in medicine and letters, would almost out- 
 shine and outlive his own : for the child heroine of this 
 episode was none other than the Lady Mary Wortley Monta- 
 gue whose gallant struggle against the popular prejudice and 
 professional jealousy of the times, in her effort to introduce 
 
 'Lady Mary, according to recent authority (Firth, Dict. of 
 Nat. Bioq.), was born in May, 16S9, and the Kit-Kat Club, as 
 such, was supposedly not founded until 1703, so that unless the 
 Club held meetings, as is quite possible, before the designation 
 of Kit-Kats was given them, she was not the child she feigned 
 to have been. There is much confusion in regard to dates of 
 many events of these times, especially in regard to such hearsay 
 ones. 
 
 (2) 
 
the practice of " ingrafting " against the small-pox, must ever 
 make her an object of interest to medical men. 
 
 One may perchance be the more readily excused for plung- 
 ing into an incident ahnost in G-arth's middle life, inasmuch 
 as there are no details of 
 
 How the dim speck of entity began 
 
 T'extend its recent form, and stretch to man; 
 
 The Dispensary, Canto i. 
 
 and but scant ones of the time intervening until he became 
 the popular and well known figure in the metropolis. He 
 was born of a good family in Yorkshire,'' probably in 1661 ; 
 was at school in the village of Ingleton, a neighborhood of 
 most romantic scenery; a student at Peterhouse, the eldest of 
 the Cambridge Colleges, where he matriculated July 6, 1676, 
 received his B. A. in 1679, and five years later a Masters de- 
 gree in arts. These are the bare facts which carry us through 
 the first twenty-five years of Garth's life without further ilhi- 
 mination from contemporary writings. What induced him 
 to take up Physick for his life's work seems not to be known, 
 unless it was the direct influence of his college,' and the 
 promise for the better in medicine of Sydenham's and Locke's 
 recent and great reforms. The colleges, however, at the 
 time, had only theoretical instruction in preparation for prac- 
 tice, and it was the custom for those very few students, who 
 like Garth took their degree in arts before entering upon their 
 professional studies, to look elsewhere for opportunities to 
 gain practical knowledge. With this object in 1687 he re- 
 paired to Leyden, then approaching the zenith of its medical 
 fame; and there Garth may possibly have touched elbows in 
 
 "The eldest son ot Wm. Garth of Bowland Forest in the West 
 Riding (Dict. of Nat. Biog.). 
 
 ""Among the colleges at least one (Peterhouse) had in past 
 times a laudable custom of urging her fellows to determine 
 themselves in the line of some faculty — going on ' the Law 
 line,' or that of Physic, or of Divinity." Wordsworth's Scholae 
 Academicae; Some account of the studies at the English Uni- 
 versities in the eighteenth century. Cambridge, 1877. 
 
 (3) 
 
his classes witli the young Dutchman who was destined to 
 become the greatest clinician of his time, and whose name 
 made that of his university famous to the ends of the earth. 
 Four 3'ears later (July 7, 1691) Garth received from his 
 alma mater the degree of M.D., and repairing to the me- 
 tropolis he was promptly admitted (June 2G, 1693) a Fellow 
 of the College of Physicians. 
 
 He must early have distinguished himself, for in the fol- 
 lowing year he is said to have delivered the Gulstonian Lec- 
 ture, choosing De Respiratione as his text. Although a re- 
 quest was made that he should do so, Garth never published 
 this discourse, and consequently we have lost the only one of 
 his strictly medical writings of which knowledge has come 
 down to us. 
 
 A further and still greater compliment was paid the youn,g 
 physician three years later, in 1697, when he w-as asked to de- 
 liver the annual oration in Latin before the College on St. 
 Luke's Day — better Icnown to us as the Harveian Oration.' 
 
 oeatio laudatoria 
 
 in aedibus 
 
 collegii beoalis med. lond. 
 
 17mo die .septembbis 
 
 HABITA 
 
 A. SAM GARTH 
 
 COLL. REG. MED. LOND. .SOC. 
 
 LONDINI 
 
 MDC.XCVII. 
 
 The public tribute that Garth on this occasion paid to 
 William III, as well as the tirade, at the close of the oration, 
 against the professional qiiackery of the times, proved doubly 
 influential in his career; the tribute, an open demonstration 
 of his political affiliations, bringing him later on his Knight- 
 hood; the tirade, immediately, as it made him the acknowl- 
 edged champion of the College of Phj-sicians in a famous 
 quarrel : for thus he was led to write the poem on which alone 
 
 ' An original paper copy of this oration will be found in the 
 Surgeon-General's Library in Washington. 
 
 (4) 
 
his position among the English poets rests. But to explain 
 this I must retrace my steps. 
 
 The Dispensarian Quarrel. 
 
 A CERTAIN lack of sympathy seems always to have ex- 
 isted between those privileged to prescribe, and those 
 who are restricted by law to the dispensation alone of 
 drugs ; and at the time of which we are writing a combination 
 of circumstances had fanned latent animosity into a public 
 broil. The apothecaries, for the most part, were uneducated 
 men and at a somewhat earlier period their relation to the 
 community was so loosely controlled that even the grocers and 
 pepperers were privileged to dispense drugs and the fact that 
 they were legalized, under certain circumstances, to perform 
 phlebotomy sufficed to bring them intimately into contact with 
 the people as patients. By a charter, granted early in the 
 reign of James I, they had been made " Freemen of the 
 Mystery of Grocers and Apothecaries of the City of London," 
 but soon such remonstrance was raised on all sides against 
 their incompetence and such scandal over the adulteration of 
 their commodities that in 1617, owing to the intervention of 
 one of the few distinguished members of their fraternity, 
 Gideon de Laime, the apothecaries were separated by charter 
 from their former associates, the grocers. The new grant 
 placed them under the control of the College of Physicians 
 and to this body was given the power of inspecting their wares 
 and regulatin,g their actions. This restraint was far from 
 agreeable; its consequences were inevitable. The medical 
 therapy of the time was based almost entirely on empiricism 
 and the vendors of drugs found therefore tliat it was a simple 
 matter to compete with the qualified practitioners. They 
 encroached more and more on the physician's province; some 
 of thern indeed amassing large fortunes thereby. 
 
 So modern 'Pothecaries taught the art 
 By Doctors' hills to play the Doctor's part, 
 Bold in the practice of mistaken rules. 
 Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 (5) 
 
Thus Pope, some years later, described the situation as analo- 
 gous in a measure to tliat occupied by the critics who had come 
 to turn tlieir own arms against the poets from whom they liad 
 first learned to write. It has been said by Jeaffreson that the 
 doctors of the day knew so little that the apothecaries found 
 no difficulty in learning as much : so there is no cause to 
 wonder at the story that has come down to us of one of 
 Eadcliffe's patients who left him preferring to be treated by a 
 well known apothecary. Thus it was not long before the 
 apothecaries grew away from the restraint legally imposed 
 upon them and regardless of the College began to prescribe 
 widely on their own responsibility. Were they threatened with 
 punishment, they retaliated by refusing to call in consultation 
 the physician who had censured tliem; an action that in many 
 eases might have completely ruined his practice. The de- 
 pendence that many placed on these consultations, even at a 
 later date, is illustrated by the story of Mead, who in the 
 morning at Batson's coffee-house, in the evening at Tom's, used 
 to receive apothecaries and charge only half-guinea fees for 
 prescriptions written without seeing the patient. The situa- 
 tion was a most entangled one. The apothecaries defended 
 themselves on the ground that they would prescribe and care 
 for the poor who could not afford to pay the physician's fees 
 in addition to the expense of the drugs; possibly a just claim 
 were our beliefs in their charitable pretenses not shaken by a 
 knowledge of what were their actual practices. 
 
 In 1687 the first eifort to counteract these abuses was made 
 by the College. An edict was unanimously passed by that 
 body (July 28, 1687), requiring all the fellows, candidates 
 and licentiates to give gratuitous advice to their neighboring 
 poor; but the solution of the difficulty was not so simple. It 
 was in the first place, as at the present day, difficult to desig- 
 nate those who were to be considered " poor," and the practice 
 not only led to abuses but was further frustrated by the inor- 
 dinately high price immediately put upon all drugs by the 
 apothecaries. As the patients had not the wherewithal to get 
 them filled, prescriptions were thrown to the winds. Under 
 the shadow of benevolence, ton. fliere is said to have lurked 
 
animosity toward the apothecaries; a spirit which of itself, 
 if we are to believe the slander, would certainly have been 
 fatal to the successful carrying out of the edict. With the 
 view, however, of rendering it more effectual, it was deter- 
 mined by a vote in the following year (August 13, 1688), to 
 accommodate the laboratory of the College to the purpose of 
 
 OLD COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, WARWICK LANE, NEAR NEWGATE. 
 
 From a print in the The Gold Headed Cane.* 
 
 Not far from that most celebrated Place 
 Where angry Justice shews her awful Face; 
 
 *,; ^ 3t- 'f- ^ 
 
 There stands a Dome, majestick to the sight, 
 
 A golden Globe plac'd high with artful Skill, 
 Seems to the distant light, a gilded Pill: 
 
 TJie Dispensary. Ed'.x. I. 
 
 * Especially in Munk's edition there is a full account of the 
 various homes and places of meeting of the College from Its 
 establishment in 1518. 
 
 (7) 
 
preparing medicines; the contributors toward the expense were 
 themselves to manage the charity. Such a philanthropy 
 properly controlled would have effectually done away with the 
 abuses of indiscriminate dispensing of drugs, had the apothe- 
 caries submitted to it. Not so. They claimed that it was a 
 money-making scheme on the part of the physicians who 
 aimed thereby merely to undersell them. They even succeeded 
 in raising an opposition in the very College itself ° among those 
 who at heart and for selfish reasons favored the old system ; so 
 that Dispensarians found themselves arrayed against Anti- 
 Dispensarians and the design failed of being carried into 
 execution. 
 
 At this juncture, with the College in an embroiled state. 
 Garth, fresh from the university, appeared at the metropolis; 
 he was early admitted a fellow and allied himself unhesitat- 
 ingly with the Dispensarian party. Courageously, too, since 
 for a youth on foot with little more than his diploma in his 
 pocket to take a stand openly against ' affluent tradesmen, 
 rolling by in their carriages,' as Jeaffreson puts it, who might 
 absolutely injure his prospects, must have required the cour- 
 age of conviction. 
 
 In 1694, the College again succeeded in issuing an order 
 demanding from all members strict obedience to the edict of 
 1688 ; and in the following year ° this new order was presented 
 
 ° Perhaps made the more easy as one of the" members, Francis 
 Bernard had formerly been an apothecary; but owing to distin- 
 guished services had been elevated to the post of assistant physi- 
 cian to St. Bartholomew's and also elected to the College in 
 1687. He was an able and very scholarly man and, remaining 
 loyal to his former guild, must have been a formidable opponent 
 to the Dispensarian party. He is the " Horoscope ' of Garth's 
 poem. 
 
 °A Short Account of the Proceedings of the College of Physi- 
 cians, London, in Relation to the Sick Poor, 1697. See, also, The 
 Copy of an Instrument Subscribed by the President, Censors, 
 Most of the Elects, Senior Fellows, Candidates, etc., of the Col- 
 lege of Physicians in Relation to the Sick Poor. 
 
 ' Among the names occur those of Sir Thos. Millington, who 
 with Boyle, Wrenn. Willis and others had helped found the 
 
 (8) 
 
to the city authorities in the hope of gaining their support ; a 
 hope unfortunately defeated. Not discouraged, the physicians 
 of the Dispensarian party actually raised a subscription 
 (December 22, 1G9G) from among those favoring the charity, 
 each subscribing ten pounds, the money to be " expended in 
 preparing and delivering medicines to the poor at their 
 intrinsic value." To disarm the insinuations of their oppo- 
 nents and to show that the undertaking had the sanction of a 
 College act, the names of all the subscribers, fifty-one in 
 number, were appended to a printed sheet which was widely 
 distributed.' Thus for a time, there was an actiial distribu- 
 tion to the needy of drugs at cost price, and though the 
 experiment was perhaps poorly conducted, its philanthropic 
 intent was genuine enough; as Garth saj's, it was managed 
 with an integrity and disinterest suitable to so charitable a 
 design, though the effort sufficed only to make the long stand- 
 ing disagreement " break out to fury and excess." The usual 
 form of warfare — a paper warfare, emanating from Grub 
 Street — arose. There are many references to the controversy, 
 even in the more stable writings of the time, and it is apparent 
 that most of the men of education outside the profession 
 upheld the cause of the Dispensarians. Among them was 
 Dryden, as shown by the following lines inscribed to a relative, 
 who ' blessed led a country life.' 
 
 The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed, 
 Was easy found, but was forbid the taste; 
 0, had our grandsire walked without his wife. 
 He first had sought the better plant of life! 
 Now both are lost: yet wandering in the dark. 
 Physicians for the tree have found the bark; 
 They, laboring for relief of human kind, 
 
 Royal Society, and who was then president of the College; of 
 Sir Hans Sloane, a later President of the College, who subse- 
 quently served in that capacity for sixteen years, and who founded 
 the British Museum; of Edward Browne, scholar and traveller, el- 
 dest son of the author of the Religio Medici; Robert Brady, 
 the historian and friend of Sydenham; Charles Goodall, also a 
 later president; Sir Edward Hulse and many others. 
 
 <9) 
 
with sharpened sight some remedies may find; 
 The apothecary-train is wholly blind. 
 From files a random recipe they take, 
 And many deaths of one prescription make. 
 Garth, generous as his Muse, prescribes and gives; 
 The shopman sells and by destruction lives; 
 Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood, 
 From Medicine issuing, suck their mother's blood! 
 Let these obey and let the learned prescribe. 
 That men may die without a double bribe; 
 Let them, but under their superiors, kill. 
 When doctors first have signed the bloody bill : 
 He 'scapes the best, who, nature to repair. 
 Draws physic from the fields in draughts of vital air.' 
 
 Garth, seemingly, first became an active belligerent in this 
 warfare from the vantage ground of his Harveian Oration, 
 when, as above mentioned, he took the opportunity of " public- 
 ally ridiculing the multifarious classes of quacks, with spirit 
 and not without humor." ° Though by nature averse to any 
 violent partisanship, his keen mind, ready wit and facile pen 
 must have made him a formidable champion for any cause 
 which he felt himself called upon to support. " In those old 
 days," says Lady Louisa Stewart, " people's brains being more 
 active than their fingers, ballads swarmed as abundantly as 
 caricatures are swarming at present, and were struck ofl: almost 
 as hastily, whenever humor or malice and scurrility formed a 
 theme to fasten upon." One of Garth's chance shafts was 
 winged at this time against another rhyming physician, Sir 
 Eichard Blackmore, who, Saintsbury says, has been made 
 
 'John Dryden. To my Honored Kinsman, ,Iohn Driden, of 
 Chesterton, vs. 96-llG. Garth well proved his generosity in 
 Dryden's case, as a later incident will show. 
 
 • There is some difference of opinion as to the literary merit 
 of this oration. Johnson quotes the single paragraph with 
 which he was familiar and adds sarcastically, " this was cer- 
 tainly thought fine by the author, etc.," but inasmuch as Garth's 
 life was one of the hurried parts of the Biographical Series, 
 Johnson doubtless made no effort to read his writings even were 
 they accessible to him. Chalmers (Bioo. Dict. 1814) says of this 
 speech, " which being soon after published, left it doubtful 
 whether the poet or the orator was most to be admired." 
 
 IIO) 
 
immortal by his satirists '° and seems to have been heartily 
 abominated by all for his pomposity and ' amiable faith in 
 himself.' Garth, ordinarily charitable enough, especially 
 toward his professional brethren and political party, could not 
 overlook Blackmore's anti-Dispensarian attitude and to ridi- 
 cule him composed the following lines, — " To the Merry 
 Poetaster at Sadler's Hall in Cheapside." 
 
 Unwieldy pedant, let thy aukward muse 
 With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. 
 To lash, and not be felt, in thee'a an art; 
 Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy school-boys, sruart. 
 Then be advis'd and scribble not again; 
 Thou'rt fashion'd for a flail, and not a pen. 
 
 If B I's immortal wit thou would'st descry. 
 
 Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. 
 Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; 
 Thy poems and thy patients live not long. 
 
 Poor as they are, there is nothing seriously objectionable in 
 the ridicule of these lines and they suffice merely to illustrate 
 the form of these poetical duels. The bad taste in twitting 
 Blackmore with his early life as a school-master is nothing to 
 the vulgarity, even more in accord with the times, which made 
 physical infirmities a favorite object of satire. Dr. Garth, 
 happily may not be accused of this offence. 
 
 " The Dispensaey." 
 
 GARTH, however, was capable of better things than the 
 writing of doggerel verses. There appeared in 1699, 
 in broadside paper form after the fashion of the times, 
 an anonymous poem in six cantos called The Dispensary, in 
 which the history of the attempt to establish gratuitous dis- 
 
 ' For example, one of Thomas Moore's epigrams runs: 
 
 'Twas in his carriage the sublime 
 Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme. 
 And if the wits don't do him wrong, 
 'Twixt death and epics passed his time 
 Scribbling and killing all day long. 
 
 (11) 
 
pensation of drugs was put into rhyme. The poem had an 
 immediate and imexpected success; was soon after printed in 
 book form ; went through two other editions before the year 
 was out ; and was so widely read during the next two decades, 
 when its characters and subject matter were still of public 
 interest, that ten authorized and some pirated editions were 
 issued. There were several factors which must have contri- 
 buted to its success : first among them, the rapidly spreading 
 popularity of the author, whose touch must immediately have 
 been recognized ; tlie unusual form of versification, also, for 
 Garth was among the first to show the influence which Boileau, 
 the great French versifier, was to have on English poetry ; pos- 
 sibly, too, the curiosity that must have been aroused by the fact 
 that so many public characters figured in the poem either 
 imder fictitious names or with their actual ones feebly masked 
 by hyphenating the consonants." In his preface to the second 
 edition, the author states his main purpose in writing the 
 poem, for " finding the Animosities amongst the Members of 
 the College of Physicians encreasing daily (notwithstanding 
 the frequent Exhortations of our Worthy President to the 
 contrary) I was persuaded to attempt something of this nature, 
 and to endeavor to Eally some of our disaffected Members into 
 
 " In the Spectator (No. 567, July 14, 1714) Addison ascribes 
 this particular style of writing, so common in Anne's time, to 
 Thomas Brown — the ' I do not love thee Dr, Fell ' Thomas 
 Brown — saying, " Some of our authors indeed, when they would 
 be more satirical than ordinary, omit only the vowels of a great 
 man's name, and fall most unmercifully upon all the consonants. 
 This way of writing was first of all introduced by T — m B — wn 
 of facetious memory." 
 
 This same Brown, in a broad-side — " Physic lies a Bleeding " — 
 published in the heat of the Dispensarian quarrel, had himself 
 a fling at the apothecaries! 
 
 Physic lies a Bleeding: or. The Apothecary turned Doctor. A 
 Comedy acted almost every Day in most Apothecaries Shops 
 in London. And more especially to be seen, by Those who are 
 willing to be cheated, the First of April, every year. Absolutely 
 necessary for all Persons that are Sick (or) may be Sick. (Quot. 
 from Juvenal) by Tho. Brown. Dedicated to that worthy 
 and Ingenious Gentleman Dr. J. B. 4to, 1C97. 
 
 (12) 
 
a sense of their Duty, who have hitherto most obstinately 
 oppos'd all manner of Union ; and have continu'd so unreason- 
 ably refractory, etc.," much such a purpose as an editorial in 
 the Times or Lancet might have served today. 
 
 The poem, mock heroic in kind, opens with a description of 
 the College " Eais'd for Use as Noble as its Frame," but in 
 which the God of Sloth had made his lair ; disturbed out of his 
 lethargy by the enterprize attending the building of the Dis- 
 pensary, the slumbering God sends his Phantom to summon 
 Envy " to blast their Hopes and baffle their Designs." 
 
 In Canto II, Envy, the famish'd Fiend, rejoicing at the 
 task, assumes the form of one Colon (Mr. Lee, Warden of 
 Apothecaries Hall) and appears before Horoscope (Dr. 
 Bernard) in his apothecary shop, where "Mummies lay most 
 reverently stale " etc., and where Horoscope was found en- 
 vironed by a crowd of gullible people, promising them future 
 Health for present Fees. Into his breast the Fury breathed 
 a storm of envy against the Dispensarian movement and left it 
 there like a Brood of Maggots to develop. 
 
 Horoscope, in Canto III, through his coadjutor, 'officious 
 Squirt,' calls for a meeting of the Apothecaries at their Hall 
 in Blackfriars; meanwhile he invokes to their aid the Harpy, 
 Disease, " Begot by Sloth, maintain'd by Luxury," through a 
 burnt offering of drugs and old proscriptions. Ill omen 
 attends this sacrifice. The apothecaries meet; one advocates 
 friendly advances to the Faculty; another, a bold fight at 
 Honor's call ; another, Askaris, more slyly urged a consulta- 
 tion with their friends the disaffected members of the Faculty, 
 "who Int'rest prudently to Oaths prefer." The assemblage 
 was scattered by an explosion in the laboratory of Apothecaries 
 Hall. 
 
 Canto IV. At a tavern near Drury Lane, frequented by 
 the apothecaries and where " want of Elbow-room's supply'd 
 in Wine," the company again gather, together with some un- 
 principled members of the College whom they propose to use 
 as their unwilling accomplices as " Boys hatch Game-Eggs 
 under Birds o' Prey." There an altercation takes place 
 between those advising caution and those clamoring for war. 
 It ends in Horoscope being wafted away to the Fortunate 
 Isles to consult the Goddess there. In oracular fashion she 
 tells him that " Wars must insaie, the Fates will have it so." 
 " Dread Fates shall follow, and Disasters great, 
 Pills charge on Pills, and Bolus Bolus meet: 
 Both sides shall conquer and yet Both shall fall; 
 The Mortar now, and then the Urinal." I 
 
 (131 
 
Canto V. Mirmillo, one of the traitorous physicians, be- 
 gins to feel alarm for his safet^y in this alliance and is on the 
 point of withdrawing when the Fiiry, Discord, appearing 
 before him frightens him into joining the fray. The apothe- 
 cary legions meet, the contestants in all manner of armament. 
 Thus, Querpo 
 
 " A Pestle for his Truncheon, led the Van 
 And his high Helmet was a Close-stool pan." 
 
 Eumor brought the news of the intended attack to Warwick 
 Hall where preparations are hurriedly made to receive the 
 assault. In mock heroic fashion the clash takes place with 
 caustics, emetics, cathartics, syringes and what not, as 
 weapons, while " Pestles peal a martial Symphony." 
 
 Canto VI. In the midst of the battle the Goddess of 
 Health appears, calls "enough" and bids Machaon (Milling- 
 ton, President of the College) send a messenger to the Elysian 
 Fields to consult the immortal Harvey as to the best method 
 of terminating their woes. Carus (Garth) is chosen for this 
 mission and, Dante-fashion, with Hygeia as his guide, he visits 
 the lower regions. There, together with all sorts of wondrous 
 subterranean phenomena, he sees old Chaos, an awkward 
 Lump of shapeless Anarchy, with dull Night, his melancholy 
 Consort; pale Fear and dark Distress; parch'd Eye'd Febris; 
 bloated Hydrops; meagre Phthisis; Lepra the loathsome; as 
 well as other Sights that go to " make up the frightful Horror 
 o' the Place." They are at last ferried across the Styx and 
 in the delightful Plain, " where the glad Manes of the Bless'd 
 remain " the Shade of Harvey is found. The Venerable Sage 
 addresses himself to Hygeia on the dissentions of the Faculty 
 " Where slck'ning Art now hangs her Hgad, 
 And once a Science, is become a Trade." 
 
 He finally turns to her companion, Carus, with the admoni- 
 tion, that by attending to Science more, and to Lucre less, and 
 by letting Nassau's (that is King William's or England's) 
 health be their chief aim, the College could once more become 
 restored to the position it held under Willis and Wharton, 
 Bates and Glisson. 
 
 A storm of unfriendly criticism was aroused by the first 
 appearance of the poem. The design was bad. The execution 
 was poor. The best part of the poem was in imitation of 
 Boileau's Lutrin " — and much more besides. Garth, however. 
 
 '- Nicolas Boileau, or M. Desprfiau.x as he was usually called In 
 the memoirs of the time, was one of the favorite writers of the 
 
 (14) 
 
in the preface written for the later editions, gracefully disarms 
 all of these animadversions of his critics. He was proud of 
 the imputation of imitating Boileau and points out the very 
 lines in which he had done so ; he defends his scheme on classi- 
 cal authority and modestly said, " However, I shall not he 
 much concerned not to be thought excellent in an amusement 
 I have very little practiced hitherto, nor perhaps ever shall 
 again." 
 
 A dedicatory letter addressed to the gifted Sir Anthony 
 Henley," appropriately introduces these later editions, for 
 Henley, judging from Garth's words must openly have ex- 
 pressed his approval of the poem when it first appeared. 
 " Your approbation of this poem, is the only exception to the 
 opinion the world has of your judgment, etc." 
 
 As was the custom, too, the poem in its later editions, is 
 prefaced by commendatory verses by friendly hands." And 
 
 day and his poetry exercised great influence, not only over French, 
 but also over later English verse. Lutrin was possibly his best 
 poem. There is an interesting allusion to him and to the Sir 
 Richard Blackmore referred to above, in Lord Hervey's letters. 
 He writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Oct. 28, 1728, " Boi- 
 leau can write a Lutrin what one can read with pleasure a thou- 
 sand times, and Blackmore cannot write upon the Creation any- 
 thing that one shall not yawn ten times over, before one has 
 read it once." 
 
 At the hands of his own countrymen Boileau did not escape 
 animadversions or at least until Voltaire's mot, " Don't say 
 harm of Nicolas, it brings ill-luck," passed into a proverb. 
 
 " Henley is noted for having been ' fed with soft dedications ' 
 by authors to whom he had been generous. He was one of the 
 foremost wits and was a quasi friend of Swift in so far as the 
 Dean could occasionally get a dinner out of him. " He has not 
 seen me for some time in the Coffee-house, and asking after 
 me, desired Lord Herbert to tell me I was a beast forever, after 
 the order of Melchisedec. Did you ever read the Scripture? It 
 is only changing the word priest to beast." Journal to Stella. 
 
 "Among them were the Earl of Orrery (C. Boyle) and C. Cod- 
 rington. It was Boyle whose struggle with Bentley, the Oxford 
 scholar, over some manuscripts led to Swift's " Battle of the 
 Books." He was a member of Swift's ' The Club.' Codrington, 
 
 (IS) 
 
Garth, referring to those that might feel the stiug of his satire, 
 says " If I am hard upon anyone, it is my reader : but some 
 worthy gentlemen, as remarkable for their humanity as their 
 extraordinary parts, have taken care to make him amends for 
 it, by prefixing something of their own." 
 
 Of the literary merit displayed in The Dispensary, liberally 
 though it was applauded at the time, diverse opinions have 
 been given by later critics. All of them, however, are unani- 
 mous in according to it an important position through the 
 influence that it exercised upon the poetical style which con- 
 tinued into the following century.'" Garth seems, as it were, 
 
 a soldier, born in the Barbadoes, friend of the poets, left a large 
 library to Christ Church. He says of Garth: 
 
 " Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy. 
 Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I." 
 
 "Oliver Goldsmith (The Beauties of English Poetry, 1767) com- 
 mends highly Canto VI. It is interesting to note that in 1767 he 
 was unable to find a first edition. He says " the praises be- 
 stowed on this poem are more than have been given to any other; 
 but our approbation at present is cooler, for it owed part of its 
 fame to party." 
 
 Johnson, in the Lives, characteristically says of Garth, " his 
 poetry has been praised at least equally to its merit," and of The 
 Dispensary, " no passages fall below mediocrity, and a few rise 
 much above it." He continues in a more commendatqry strain; 
 " the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or 
 negligence. The author never slumbers in self indulgence; his 
 full vigor is always exerted, scarcely a line is left unfinished; nor 
 is it easy to find an expression used by constraint or a thought 
 imperfectly expressed." 
 
 Henry Hallam (Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 1837- 
 1839) says, "Garth, as has been observed, is a link of transition 
 between the style and turn of poetry under Charles and William, 
 and that we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell and Pope during 
 the Reign of Anne." 
 
 George Saintsbury (English Poets, 1880, Vol. Ill, p. 13) com- 
 ments, " Garth is mainly interesting at the present day because 
 he was the first writer who took the couplet, as Dryden had 
 fashioned it, from Dryden's hands, and displayed it in the form 
 it maintained throughout the Eighteenth Century. In some re- 
 spects it may be said that no advance in this particular mode was 
 
to have introduced Boileau to Alexander Pope and Pope's 
 praise of the poem, it will be remembered, was unstinted. In 
 The Dunciad appear these lines, 
 
 Be thine, my stationer, this magic gift; 
 Cook shall be Prior, and Concanen, Swift; 
 So shall each hostile name become our own, 
 And we too boast our Garth and Addison. 
 
 and in the foot-notes, — Pope's own, — it is said, " nothing is 
 more remarkable than our author's love of praising good 
 writings. ... It must have been particularly agreeable to 
 him to celebrate Dr. Garth, both as his constant friend and as 
 his predecessor in this kind of satire." 
 
 Equally unanimous is the opinion of the later critics, that 
 this once celebrated poem after fifty years of celebrity has 
 ceased to excite common interest, f To the medical profession, 
 however, if not to the community in general, it must always 
 remain of historic import, commemorating as it does the first 
 attempt to establish those out-patient rooms for the dispensa- 
 tion of medicines, which since have become such a universal 
 charity. And whatever may be the actual merits of the poem, 
 Garth, seemingly with no particular literary ambition, never- 
 theless with this single effort placed himself forever high in 
 the ranks of the English Poets. There are other physicians 
 who have courted the Muses and who, unlike Garth, have 
 become renowned more as poets than physicians. Horace 
 Walpole, as a rule none too lenient in matters of literary 
 criticism, in one of his letters, while most flatteringly com- 
 mending some poetry of Dr. Darwin's, continues, " Is it not 
 extraordinary, dear Sir, that two of our very best poets. Garth 
 and Darwin, should have been physicians? I believe they 
 have left all the lawyers wrangling at the turnpike of 
 Parnassus . . . ." " 
 
 ever made on The Dispensary. * * * Except for its versification, 
 which not only long preceded Pope, but also anticipated Addi- 
 son's happiest efforts by some years. The Dispensary is not now 
 an interesting poem." 
 
 '" The Letters of Horace Walpole. Cunningham's Ed'n. 1877, 
 Vol. IX, p. 372. Letter to Thos. Barrett Esq. May 14, 1792. Cun- 
 
 (17) 
 
The Dryden Episode. 
 
 A FEW months after Garth had so abruptly stepped into 
 his place in the ranks of English poets, there died 
 the man who had succeeded Ben Jonson in the post of 
 literary dictator and who was to be followed after a fashion 
 by Addison, Pope and the great lexicographer in turn. From 
 John Dryden, Garth had borrowed the form of couplet which 
 he had so improved, and from him Garth, the physician, ' gen- 
 erous as his Muse,' had received the immortal tribute of praise 
 in verse. It is pouring old wine into new bottles to attempt 
 anew the relation of a story, of which so many versions have 
 come down to us that it is now difficult to tell wherein lies the 
 truth." Authentic, however, seem these facts. John Dryden 
 died in the house still standing on Gerrod Street in narrow 
 and neglected circumstances on the Mayday of 1700, at three 
 o'clock of a Wednesday morning. His body lay in state, 
 twelve days later at no less curious a place than the Hall of the 
 College of Physicians, where on Monday, May the 13th, Garth 
 pronounced his funeral oration and with many others, ' fifty 
 carriages of friends and fifty more besides,' attended the body 
 to Westminster where it was interred between the graves of 
 Chaucer and Cowley in the Poets' Corner. 
 
 Garth is generally considered to have rescued Dryden's body 
 from a supposedly ignominious burial, but whatever part he 
 may actually have played in the matter, certain it is' that he 
 obtained permission from the Board of Censors to allow the 
 funeral exercises to be held at the College." Invitations, 
 specimens of which are still extant," were issued to attend the 
 ceremony at this place. 
 
 ningham's note on this passage says " We had two better poets 
 physicians, Akenside and Armstrong; but this Walpole would not 
 have admitted." 
 
 " Arbuthnot, in The Gold Headed Cane, tells the story as com- 
 monly related, in an imaginary conversation at Mead's. 
 
 "Annals of the College of Physicians; May 3, 1700. 
 
 " They must be very rare. There is no example preserved 
 among the archives of the Royal College of Physicians; none in 
 
 (IS) 
 
H 
 
 K 
 m 
 
 O 
 o 
 
 d 
 
 
 '^ 
 
 
 C/ti 
 
 7^ 
 
That there is any truth in the wild stor}- of the vexatious 
 events that liappened at his funeral, as told in Johnson's Lives 
 and elsewhere, there is no trustworthy evidence. Misstate- 
 ments, long passing as genuine," were founded on a jocular 
 letter by Farquhar, the comic dramatist, addressed to 'his 
 Dear Madam,' and a poem ^ by Tom Brown, and were revived 
 thirty years later for a monetary consideration, seemingly, by 
 the unfortunate Mrs. Thomas ('Corinna'), then a prisoner 
 for debt. The sources are equally unreliable. Farquhar, 
 indeed, begins the very letter "^ in which his infamous bur- 
 lesque appears, with, — •" I was so fuddled, that I hardly 
 remember whether I writ or not," — certainly an indifferent 
 authority. According to Johnson, who, it must be confessed, 
 accepted the story somewhat unwillingly, a private interment 
 was to have been held at the expense of Lord Halifax — the 
 Maecenas of Garth's day. So on the Saturday following his 
 death, the funeral procession with a ' velvet hearse ' was about 
 to leave Dryden's door, when Lord Jeaffries with some rakish 
 companions, happening by, interrupted the proceedings on 
 learning whose private burial it was, promising a large sum 
 for a public funeral and a monument in the Abbey. Eeluct- 
 antly the company was persuaded to disperse while the body 
 was sent to an undertaker's. On the morrow, Jeaffries excused 
 his action as part of a drunken frolic. Lord Halifax also, 
 naturally disgi'untled, refused to concern himself further with 
 the matter after once having had the Abbey lighted and pre- 
 pared. The chagrin of the family may be imagined. Their 
 
 the British Museum. A copy recently came under the hammer 
 at Sotheby's among some Dryden manuscripts and was secured 
 by Mr. Harold Peirce of Philadelphia, to whom I am greatly 
 indebted for the accompanying photograph. 
 
 *■ Until refuted by Malone (Miscellaneous Prose Works of John 
 Dryden, 1800, pp., 355-382). Sir Walter Scott (Life of John Dry- 
 den) also accepted the tale as a romance and gives references 
 for those who wish to consult them. 
 
 "" A Description of Mr. D n's Funeral. 
 
 ^The Works of Mr. George Farquhar. Edn. IX. Lond., 1760. 
 Vol. I, p. 73. 
 
 (19) 
 
circumstances were such as to make it impossible for them to 
 bear the expense of a funeral ; and this is the less to be won- 
 dered at when one considers what formidable functions they 
 were at this time. At this embarrassing juncture, Garth, as 
 Johnson says, " withal a man of generosity and great humanity 
 sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians in Warwick 
 Lane and proposed a funeral by public subscription to which he 
 himself set a noble example." Though the improbability of 
 much of this story was pointed out years later by Malone, the 
 fact of Dryden's actual interment on the second of May at 
 St. Anne's in Soho has only recently come to light by the 
 chance discovery of an entry to that eifect in the parish 
 register."" The circumstances of the disinterment, of the em- 
 balming at Eussel's and of the transfer to the College continue 
 to be obscured by uncertainties and the finale of this marvel- 
 lous structure of fable as Johnson relates it, is too absurd to 
 credit;" that Garth delivered his oration with much good 
 nature from the top of a beer barrel the head of which fell in 
 during the course of the proceedings; that confusion and 
 ribald disorder reigned during the ceremony, at the College, 
 at the Abbey, and on the march thither. For all of this we 
 
 ""A Burial Mystery. Soho Monthly Paper. June, 1904, p. 143. 
 Also, The Athenaeum of July 30. 1904. 
 
 ^' Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance will find 
 it in Dryden's Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 200. It was first pHblished 
 in Wilson's Lite of Congreve, 1730. Mr. Malone has pointed 
 out the falsity of the tale in almost all its parts. Independently of 
 the extreme improbability of the whole story, it is clear from 
 Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jeaffries who, it 
 is pretended, interrupted the funeral, did, on the contrary, largely 
 contribute in helping Garth subsequently to bring it about. 
 
 In a letter from Doctor, afterward Bishop Tanner, dated May 
 6th, 1700, quoted by Malone, there appears the following para- 
 graph: "Mr. Dryden died a Papist if at all a Christian. Mr. 
 Montague had given orders to bury him; but some Lords (my 
 Lord Dorset, Jeaffries, et al.) thinking it would not be splendid 
 enough, ordered him to be carried to Russel's; there he was em- 
 balmed; and now lies in state at the Physician's College and is 
 to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley, etc., at Westminster Abbey, 
 on Monday next." MSS. Ballard in Bibl. Bodl. Vol. VI, p. 29. 
 
 (20) 
 
are probably indebted to the fanciful imaginings of the be- 
 fuddled Farquhar. It is perhaps worthy of note that Garth's 
 share alone of the proceedings did not suffer burlesque from his 
 pen for he said, — " The oration indeed was great and ingeni- 
 ous, worthy the subject and like the author; whose prescrip- 
 tions can restore the living and his pen embalm the dead." 
 
 There is one feature of the ceremony, as related by Thomas 
 Heame,^ that deserves passing mention, indicating as it does 
 a side of Garth's character of which more will be said anon. 
 " Mr. John Dryden, the great poet, was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey among the old poets in May, 1700, being carried from 
 the College of Physicians, where an oration was pronounced 
 by the famous Dr. Garth, in which he did not mention one 
 word of Jesus Christ, but made an oration as an apostrophe 
 to the great god Apollo, to influence the minds of the auditors 
 with a wise, but, without doubt, poetical understanding, and, 
 as a conclusion, instead of a psalm of David, repeated the 30th 
 ode of the third book of Horace's odes beginning " Exegi 
 monumentum, etc."' He made a great many blunders in the 
 pronunciation." Hearne is not the only one who has thus 
 commented on Garth's apparent irreligion; but why should 
 he have been expected to deliver a sermon under those unusual 
 circumstances? That the proceedings were dignified cannot 
 be doubted and Garth's selection of the Ode to Melpomene, 
 which was sung to music, was certainly a fitting and beautiful 
 one. 
 
 " I have reared a monument, my own, 
 
 More durable than brass. 
 
 Yea, kingly pyramids of stone 
 
 In height It does surpass." 
 
 It is almost prophetic of the fact that the spot where Dryden 
 was interred long remained undistinguished by mark of any 
 kind. Not until thirty years later did the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham place a tablet there inscribed simply with Dryden's 
 name.'" 
 
 "Reliquiae Hearnianae, Edn. Bliss, 1726. Vol. II, p. 267. 
 " In his preface to the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses 
 (1717) Garth says of Dryden, "The man, that could make kings 
 
 (21) 
 
Anne's Eeign axd the Kit-Kat Club. 
 
 A LMOST coincident with Dryden's death and the birth of 
 jLJL a new century, Anne came to the throne and with 
 her reign began what has been called the Augustan era in 
 England. There are, as Goldwin Smith has pointed out, 
 certain grounds that substantiate the comparison. Peace, at 
 home at all events, for Marlborough's operations leading up 
 to Blenheim constituted largely a war of the allies and happily 
 a victorious one ; poetry and literature in the persons of Pope, 
 Swift, Addison, Steele and DeFoe; the restoration of classical 
 learning under Bentley's scholarship ; and statesmen who 
 almost with uniformity were patrons of letters. But under- 
 neath there was much vulgarity, ignorance and excess. Even 
 in literature, good breeding as evidenced by such as Addison 
 and Garth, was rare and barely sufficed to safeguard even them 
 against the coarse demands of the popular taste. The Queen, 
 when she felt so disposed, resumed the practice of touching for 
 the evil. Marauders after nightfall, calling themselves 
 Mohawks, terrorized the citizens by their depredations, and 
 animosities, resultant to party feeling, seem to have been 
 almost equally disturbing to the peace. 
 
 The period, too, at least for the fine gentlemen, was one of 
 the tavern and coffee-house, where in lieu of the daily press 
 the news of the day and the gossip of yesterday were washed 
 down, often with so many bottles that the resultant* con- 
 vivialit}' commonly saw the day become the morrow. Thus 
 ductile people like poor Dick Steele were led to send late 
 messengers with lanterns to their Dear Prues, begging them 
 to go to bed and promising to come home " within a pint of 
 wine," — a bibulous way of recording the hours. 
 
 Many hearsay incidents of these coffee-house festivities 
 have come down to lis, some of them hardly acceptable 
 to modern ears. Of Garth there are numerous anecdotes, 
 
 immortal, and raise triumphal arches to heroes, now wants a poor 
 square foot of stone, to show where the ashes of one of the 
 greatest poets, that ever was upon earth, are deposited." 
 
 (22) 
 
indicative for the most part of his readiness and wit. He was 
 sitting one day in the coffee room of the Cocoa Tree Tavern, 
 near his home in St. James Street, conversing with two persons 
 of quality, when the poet Eowe, a vain fellow, fond of being 
 noticed, entered the door. He sat in a box nearly opposite to 
 G-arth, looking frequently around in the hope of catching his 
 eye. Not succeeding in this, he desired the waiter to ask the 
 Doctor for the loan of his snuffbox, which he knew to be a 
 rare one, set with diamonds and the gift of royalty. After 
 taking a pinch and returning it without Garth's deigning to 
 notice him, he sent again for it, and soon again. Finally 
 Garth, who knew him well and saw through his purpose from 
 the beginning, took out his pencil and wrote on the lid the 
 two Greek characters, — $ P — , Fie ! Eowe ! The mortified 
 poet ceased his persecutions. 
 
 It was a coffee-house custom for every one to pay his share 
 of the entertainment, to contribute his club, as it was ex- 
 pressed," and it was not long before this term, coupled with 
 some appropriate adjective, became commonly used in desig- 
 nation of one or another coterie of friends. Gastronomy was 
 at first the chief reason for a club's existence. " Our modem 
 celebrated clubs " Addison saj's, " are founded on eating and 
 drinking, which are points wherein most men agree." Some- 
 what later Dr. Johnson gave his properly indefinite definition 
 of " An assembly of good fellows meeting imder certain con- 
 ditions." The number of these organizations multiplied 
 enormously; many of them, in addition to mere conviviality, 
 fostered objects of a more lofty nature, as literature and the 
 fine arts. A few of them ultimately developed into powerful 
 political machines and of these there are two that continue to 
 be of considerable historical interest; one of them made up 
 
 " Thus Swift writes to Stella, Oct. 13, 1710, " The fine fellows 
 are always inviting him (young Harrison, the poet) to the 
 tavern and make him pay his club. Henley (that is Anthony Hen- 
 ley, to whom Garth dedicated The Dispensary) is a great crony 
 of his: they are often at the tavern at six or seven shillings 
 reckoning, and he always makes the poor lad pay his full share." 
 
 (23) 
 
largely of active Whig members ; the other, the October Club, 
 comprising those desirous of the Stewart succession, the active 
 members of the Tory party. 
 
 Garth's Harveian Oration, with its reference to William III, 
 had early been the straw to show the direction of his political 
 tendencies, and though never a violent partisan at a time when 
 political partisanship meant intolerance, his culture, wit and 
 elegance doubtless made him a companion eagerly sought for 
 by the clique forming the famous Kit-Kat Club, in which, as 
 Macaulay says, were gathered all the various talents and 
 accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 
 
 The early beginnings of this society, its purpose and the 
 source from which its name was derived are all shrouded in 
 some obscurity.'" It seems probable, however, that Jacob 
 Tonson, the celebrated book-seller, one of the dwellers in 
 ' Little Britain,' was its prime mover ; some have said that for 
 selfish reasons he gathered the young and budding wits of his 
 own party at his own oxpeuse to the muttou-pie feasts, lioping 
 through this association with them to obtain the refusal of 
 their youthful publications. Tonson seems to have been no 
 more deserving of affection than other piiblishers of his time, 
 60 bitterly stung by the ' Wasp of Twickenham ' in the 
 Dunciad, especially if we are to judge from the stories of his 
 
 '^ According to Ward, in a curious old boolt, — " The Secret 
 History of Clubs " — the name took its origin from Christopher or 
 ' Kit,' whose tavern, the first place of meeting, was at the Sign 
 of the Cat and Fiddle; later on the Club moved with him from 
 his original humble surroundings, to the Fountain Tavern in the 
 Strand. 
 
 " The Kit-Cat Club came to be so-called from one Christopher 
 Catting (a pudding pye -man) with whose puddings and conversa- 
 tion the first founders of the society were well pleased." Reli- 
 quiae Hearnianae. Edn., Bliss, I, 74. 
 
 In the Spectator, No. 9, Addison, who, being a member, should 
 have known, says, — " The Kit-Cat itself is said to have taken 
 its original from a mutton-pye." Thus the pies were called kit- 
 cats long before the club was so named. 
 
 " The fact is, that on account of its excellence it was called a 
 Kit-Cat as we now say a Sandwitch." Malone. 
 
 (24) 
 
relations with Dryden, a triplet from whose pen portrays him, 
 physically at least, in no very favorable light." He had 
 acquired wealth partly, it is said, by a lucky stroke in the 
 Mississippi Scheme, partly, also, through success in his trade ; 
 for during the Whig administration he was stationer, binder, 
 book-seller and printer to the Crown. After the change in 
 government in 1710, it was largely through his influence that 
 the club held together and out of its peaceable origin grew 
 into an organization that exerted a powerful influence in 
 political affairs. It was no longer at a tavern but at his 
 country home in Barn Elms, Surrey, that the meetings ulti- 
 mately became held, — 
 
 " One night in seven at ttiis convenient seat 
 Indulgent Bocaj (Jacob) did the Muses treat."" 
 
 and it was to decorate their convivium that Godfrey 
 Kneller painted the celebrated portraits^' of the members, 
 exerting himself, it is said, as he seldom did at other times. 
 
 *With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair. 
 With two left legs and .ludas colour'd hair, 
 And frowsy pores, that taint the ambient air. 
 
 " Sir Richard Blackmore. The Kit-Cats. A Poem. London H. 
 Hills, 1708. 
 
 "^ These portraits in Horace Walpole's opinion, (Anecdotes 
 of Painting, Vol. II, p., 204.) possess great sameness and no 
 imagination. " See but a head, it interests you — uncover the rest 
 of the canvas, you wonder faces so expressive could be employed 
 so insipidly." Faint praise indeed; others have not so damned 
 them. 
 
 Inasmuch as the room in which these portraits were to be hung 
 was quite low, the usual half-length (thirty guinea) size could 
 not be used, so that Kneller had to content himself — except in 
 the case of his own portrait which was half-length — with the 
 head and one hand. Thus it was that this particular size and 
 arrangement became known as a ' Kit-Kat portrait.' They meas- 
 ured 28 by 36 inches. While they were at Barn Elms mezzotint 
 engravings were made of the entire series and were published in 
 1723 by Tonson (cf. Frontispiece). They were republished in 
 1795 by J. Faber and were reproduced in 1821 in a volume en- 
 titled " Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons comprising the Kit- 
 Cat Club," — a volume not to be commended for its accuracy of 
 
 (25) 
 
As described by Steele iu the Tatler, the custom of making 
 toasts of the fashionable beauties of the time was peculiar to 
 and originated with the society out of which the Kit-Kat Club 
 was formed and the scene with which this sketch opened was 
 an instance of the annual election. The ' toasts ' were form- 
 ally determined by balloting and when elected they reigned, 
 says the Tatler, indisputably, like the Doge in Venice. One 
 finds mentioned in many a paragraph or letter the names of 
 those who were thus forever celebrated by the attention of that 
 illustrious gathering. When the ' toasts ' for the year had 
 been chosen it was customary for their names to be scratched 
 with a diamond on a drinking glass and, ballads being the 
 fashion of the day, rhymes were often added as well. Garth 
 seems to have had an especial facility for turning out these 
 jingles and many of the verses have been attributed to his 
 fancy; one illustration, however, will suffice to show what 
 doggerel rhymes they were. The stanza is dedicated to Lady 
 Hyde, — Prior's Kitty, beautiful and young, — and runs. 
 
 The God of wine grows jealous of his art; 
 He only fires the head, but Hyde the heart. 
 The Queen of love looks on and smiles to see 
 A nymph more mighty than a deity. 
 
 No one would have lamented more than Garth the perpetua- 
 tion of such vapid lines as these and on a later occasion he 
 excused them as having been spontaneously struck off to meet 
 post-prandial demands. They led nevertheless to his being 
 designated as the Kit-Kat poet. The whole custom suffered 
 ridicule at the hands of Pope or Arbuthnot, one of whom wrote. 
 
 facts. The collection of portraits is said to have been kept intact 
 by Tonson's descendants and is now at Bayfordbury in Herts. 
 A portrait, supposed however to be Kneller's original Kit-Kat 
 portrait, was presented in 1763 by Dr. Chauncey to the College 
 of Physicians and now hangs in the Censor's Room at the left 
 hand Just as you enter the door. It is certainly a very good 
 picture, though possibly a copy. It looks the opposite way from 
 the mezzotint which was possibly reversed by the engraver. In 
 the national Portrait Gallery there is another portrait supposedly 
 by Kneller — a head alone. 
 
 1^6) 
 
Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its name. 
 Few critics can unriddle; 
 Some say from pastry-cook it came, 
 And some from Cat and Fiddle. 
 
 From no trim beaux its name it boasts, 
 Gray statesmen or green wits; 
 But from this pell-mell pack of toasts. 
 Of old " Cats " and young " Kits." 
 
 There are many stories, oft told, of Garth and his friends 
 at these meetings. Some of them are neither credible nor 
 creditable. One night while lounging over his wine he was 
 jokingly rebuked by Steele for neglecting his patients. " Nay, 
 nay, Dick," said he, pulling out his consulting list, " it is no 
 urgent matter after all, for nine of them have such bad con- 
 stitutions that not all the physicians in the world could save 
 them ; and the other six have such good constitutions that all 
 the physicians in the world could not kill them." 
 
 After some twenty years of life, together with the thinning 
 which death made in the Club's ranks, the gatherings them- 
 selves died away. In 1735 Vanbrugh wrote to Tonson, 
 " You may believe, when I tell you, you were often talked of, 
 both during the journey and at home; and our former Kit-Cat 
 days were remembered with pleasure. We were one night 
 reckoning who were left, and both Lord Carlisle and Cobham 
 expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter if 
 you came to town ; not as a club, but as old friends that have 
 been of a club, and the best club that ever met." 
 
 GARTH THE PHYSICIAN AXD FRIEND. 
 
 Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly song. 
 Sense flows in easie numbers from his tongue; 
 Great Phoebus in his learned son we see 
 Alike in Physic as in Poetry. 
 
 John Gay. Poems 1714. To Bernard Lintot. 
 
 FEW indeed have been the disciples of Aesculapius who have 
 climbed ' the severe ascent of high Parnassus ' and at 
 the same time been faithful to their vocation. Too often 
 has this divided allegiance meant the unqualified sacri- 
 fice of Ph3'sic upon tlie shrine of the Corycian nymphs: for 
 
 (2T) 
 
the public has ever been shy of the physician who allows his 
 mind to soar above the level of most practical and mundane 
 things, and a genius so inclined, has, in reciprocation, not 
 uncommonly failed of success in his profession from an equal 
 shyness of the public. As indicated by Gay's lines, such a fate 
 was not meted out to Garth, for he continued throughout life 
 to be for the members of the Whig party what his equally 
 talented contemporary — the author of John Bull — was for the 
 Tories; the fashionable and honored medical consultant. 
 " Never," says Leigh Hunt, " were two better men sent to 
 console the ailments of two witty parties, or show them what a 
 nothing party is, compared with the humanity remaining 
 under the quarrels of both." Their intolerance of one another 
 was said to have been such that a Whig invalid seemed to think 
 it impossible that he could derive any benefit from the advice 
 of a Tory physician and upon the same principle a Tory 
 patient industriously avoided calling on a Whig practitioner. 
 Garth, however, much like Addison in his charitableness and 
 tolerance, seems to have stood aloof from petty professional 
 jealousies and political rivalries and though zealous for and 
 constant to his party, yet he was very far from having the 
 narrow and malicious spirit, so characteristic of the times, 
 and which led, often enough, to hatred of those holding oppo- 
 site political beliefs. Even Dr. Johnson acknowledges that 
 Garth imparted his kindness equally among those who were 
 and those who were not supposed to favor his principles. But 
 even had he shared in these rivalries, the change in government 
 that followed Anne's death in 1714, with Swift's fall and the 
 reinstation of the Whigs, would have placed him on the top 
 wave of political preference." 
 
 With the inauguration of the Hanoverian dynasty. Garth 
 was made the King's Physician in Ordinary, Physician General 
 
 "Radcliffe, it will be remembered, died a few months after 
 Anne (Nov. 1, 1714), having been unable or unwilling to answer 
 the call to her bedside; frightened to death, 'twas said, by the 
 threats of the Tories, who blamed him for not keeping her 
 alive. "You know your doctor (Radcliffe) is gone the way of 
 all his patients, and was hard put to it how to dispose of an 
 
 |2S) 
 
to the Army, and in the same year was knighted with the hero 
 of Blenheim's sword, so the story runs ; presumably the famous 
 diamond-hilted sword, which in after years Marlborough's 
 widow, the celebrated Sarah, plead for in Chancery lest she 
 should live to see her profligate grandchild, who had succeeded 
 to the title, squander for cash the jewels with which it was 
 adorned."'' 
 
 These honors, according to Chalmers, were no more than 
 the just rewards of his medical merit though there need be no 
 doubt that they were influenced by his known political affilia- 
 tions. His social position, his oratorical and poetical success, 
 coupled with the philanthropic spirit that led up to the latter, 
 possibly, too, the part played in the Dryden incident, as well 
 as his natural ability and popularitj', all combined to lead him 
 rapidly into an extensive and profitable practice. Gibber says, 
 " He had the happiness of an early acquaintance with some of 
 the most powerful, wisest, and wittiest men of the age in 
 which he lived. He attached himself to a party, which at last 
 obtained the ascendant, and he was equally successful in his 
 
 estate miserably unwieldy and splendidly unuseful to him." 
 (Pope to Martha Blount.) When Garth learned what disposi- 
 tion Radclitfe had made of his property, he said that for him to 
 establish a library was as inappropriate as for a eunuch to 
 found a seraglio. 
 
 Arbuthnot had been Physician in Ordinary to the Queen— she 
 had always been a Tory at heart — and the change in government 
 removed him, too, permanently from the political horizon. In 
 Swift's correspondence (Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift. 
 Birkbeck Hill. 1899) there is a letter from Arbuthnot on "the 
 terrible shock " which the Queen's death had given him. " I 
 consider myself as a poor passenger; and that the earth is not to 
 be forsaken nor the rocks removed from me." Reason enough 
 for Arbuthnot's downfall has been given by ' the immortal Tit- 
 mouse ' in the description of the part he played in the conspiracy 
 to place the young pretender on the throne — he who preferred 
 Beatrice to the crown. 
 
 " " That sword," said she, " that sword, my Lord would have car- 
 ried to the Gates of Paris. Am I to live to see the diamonds 
 picked off one by one and lodged at the pawn-brokers? " Intro- 
 ductory Anecdotes. Stewart. 
 
 (29) 
 
fortune as his friends. Persons in these circumstances are 
 seldom praised, or censured with moderation." In 1702, 
 Garth became a Censor of the College, practising always, 'tis 
 said, ' in strict regard to the honor and interest of the faculty ; 
 never stooping to prostitute the dignity of his profession 
 through mean and sordid views of self interest by courting 
 even the most popular and wealthy apothecaries ' — a stand 
 which contrasts badly with the story of Mead, the succeeding 
 luminary in the medical sky, and his half guinea prescriptions. 
 In strong contrast also to Mead's predecessor in possession of 
 the Gold Headed Cane, does Garth stand out as one who en- 
 deared himself to his patients as well as to his friends by his 
 politeness, accomplishments and consideration. He was one 
 who knew that the 
 
 Same nerves are fashion'd to sustain 
 
 The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain. 
 
 The Dispensary. Canto i. 
 
 In contemporary writings there are many references to his 
 professional skill and reputation. Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
 tague writes in 1714 to her husband, " But I should be very 
 glad if you saw Dr. Garth if you would ask his opinion con- 
 cerning the use of cold baths for young children," and again, 
 " I hope the child is better than he was but I wish you would 
 let Dr. Garth know — he has a bigness in his joints, but not 
 much; his ankles seem chiefly to have a weakness. I should 
 be very glad of his advice upon it and whether he approves 
 rubbing them with spirits, which I am told is good for him." 
 In the collected works of the notorious Mr. Thomas Brown 
 appears the following epistle addressed: 
 
 TO Doctor Garth: 
 Whether your letter or your prescriptiou has made me 
 well, I protest I cannot tell; hut this much I can say. That 
 as the one was the most nauseous thing I ever knew, so 
 the other was the most entertaining. I would gladly ascribe 
 my cure to the last; and if so, your practice will become so 
 universal you must keep a secretary as well as an apothecary. 
 The observations I have made are these: that your prescrip- 
 tion staid not long with me, but your letter has, especially 
 that part of it where you told me I was not altogether out 
 
 (30) 
 
C"^-^s>*^Aq 
 
 .^^fam^ H^^ f^ 
 
 3^7 
 
 //? 
 
 r^ 
 
 |r^Rcler;is^takcnjhis(^-^Y jD'^'Y of 
 
 /.Kf^im.nf «/!<„)» ™t 97?^t-t-i ////"^ by Veitue and 
 Anno 1716. in rurliumce or an Act lately palied m 
 
 Parliament, (Entituled, An Act for Granting 
 an Aid to Ili<s Majcjly, by a Land-Tax in 
 Great Britain, for the Service of the Year 
 1716.) Th.it you deliver and pay of flich 
 His Mjelty's Treafure as remains in your 
 Charge, arifing^ by Vertiie of the faid 
 ' Ail, unto y/^a/^u^^ ^^zt //?-^ 
 
 or /f/j Afligns, the Sum of bva 
 
 m 
 
 in Repayment of the like Sumhy /^>'/'' lent 
 upon Credit of the faid Ad, and paid into 
 the Receipt of His Majcity's Exchequer 
 the faid <«^y ■'^Day of "^6 ^ /// 5 ' 
 as by a Talley bearing Date the lame Day 
 appears ; together \vich Interelt for the 
 fame, after the Rate of Six Pounds/^rr^t'/n*.' 
 per Jnmmi, at the Hnd of every Three 
 Months, from the Date of the faid IV.l- 
 Icy, until the Repayment of the Principal, 
 And thefe, together with /^V "" or z?^. - 
 Alligns Acquittance, fhall be your Dif- 
 charge herein -^j] 
 
of your memory; you'll find me much altered in everything 
 when you see me, but in my esteem for yourself: I that was 
 as lank as a crane when I left you at London, am now as 
 plump as an ortolan. I have left off my false calves, and had 
 yesterday a great belly laid to me. A facetious widow, who 
 is my confident in this affair, says you ought to father the 
 child; for he that lends a man a sword is in some part acces- 
 sory to the mischief is done with it; however, I'll forgive you 
 the inconvenience you've put me to. I believe you were not 
 aware you were giving life to two people. Pray let me have 
 a consolatory letter from you upon this new calamity; for 
 nothing can be so welcome, excepting rain in this sandy 
 country where we live. The widow saith, she resolves to be 
 sick on purpose to be acquainted with you; but I'll tell her 
 she'll relish your prescriptions better in full health, and it at 
 this distance you can do her no service, pray prescribe her 
 
 Your humble Servant. 
 
 And so the Churchills, and Lady Hervey — beautiful Molly 
 Lepel — the Walpoles and others among those, who, through 
 their letters, are still well known to us, despite the gap of 
 almost two hundred years, often make mention of Garth the 
 Aesculapian as well as of Garth the companion. But intimate 
 as he seems to have been with those who were socially and po- 
 litically among the great, his benevolence and true profes- 
 sional kindliness toward the needy seems in no way to have 
 suffered. His reputation for charitableness, as one learns 
 from many sources, was well deserved. " No physician knew 
 his art more nor his trade less." 
 
 Poor Dick Steele never forgot his own indebtedness to 
 Garth. He dedicated his play, The Lover, to him, saying, 
 " The pitiful artifices which empyrics are guilty of, to drain 
 cash out of valetudinarians, are the abhorrence of your gener- 
 ous mind; and it is as common with Garth to supply indigent 
 patients with money for food, as to receive it from wealthy 
 ones for physic." And, hardly in accord with the story of the 
 consultation list related above, Steele says farther on, " This 
 tenderness interrupts the satisfaction of conversation, to which 
 you are so happily turned ; but we forgive you that our mirth 
 is often insipid to you, while j^ou sit absent to what passes 
 amongst us, from your oare of such as languish in sickness. 
 
 (31) 
 
We are sensible that their distresses, instead of being removed 
 by company, return more strongly to your imagination, by 
 comparison of their condition with the jollities of health. But 
 I forget I am writing a dedication * * * _" 
 
 The best of all of Steele's tribuies to his friend and physi- 
 cian I cannot help quoting still more at length. The genuine 
 and warm-hearted gratitude which it displays as well as the 
 gracefully indirect method in which this has been expressed 
 make it an acknowledgment of services such as even the most 
 deserving rarely receive. In the Tatler, No. 78, Saturday, 
 October 8, 1709, Isaac Bickerstaff records that he has received 
 the following letter : 
 " Sir, 
 
 I am just recovered out of a languishing sicltness by 
 the care of Hippocrates, who visited me throughout my 
 whole illness, and was so far from taking any fee, that 
 he inquired into my circumstances, and would have re- 
 lieved me also that way, but I did not want it. I know 
 no method of thanking him, but recommending it to you 
 to celebrate so great humanity in the manner you think 
 fit, and to do it with the spirit and sentiments of a man 
 just relieved from grief, misery and pain, to joy, satisfac- 
 tion and ease; in which you will represent the grateful 
 sense of your obedient servant, 
 
 I. B." 
 
 " I think the writer of this letter has put the matter in 
 as good a dress as I can for him; yet I cannet but add 
 my applause to what this distressed man has said. There 
 is not a more useful man in the commonwealth than a 
 good physician, and, by consequence, no worthier a per- 
 son than he that uses his skill with generosity even to 
 persons of condition, and compassion to those who are in 
 want: which is the behavior of Hippocrates, who shows 
 as much liberality in his practice, as he does wit in his 
 conversation, and skill in his profession. A wealthy doc- 
 tor, who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, 
 has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian who kills a 
 rich man to supply his necessities. It is something mon- 
 strous to consider a man of a liberal education tearing at 
 the bowels of a poor family, by taking for a visit what 
 would keep them a week. Hippocrates needs not the com- 
 parison of such extorsion to set off his generosity, but I 
 mention his generosity to add shame to such extorsion." 
 
 (32) 
 
Many years later when writing of Garth in his Lives of 
 the Poets, Johnson, as will be remembered, was led for simi- 
 lar reasons and in like vein, to pay the medical profession one 
 of the most appreciated bits of praise it has ever received. 
 " Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had 
 more learning than the other faculties, I will not stay to en- 
 quire ; but I believe every man has found in physicians great 
 liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusion of 
 beneficence and willingness to exert a lucrative art, where 
 there is no hope of lucre." " 
 
 Character and Private Life. 
 
 IT is regrettable that we have so little information, beyond 
 that conveyed by anecdote, of Garth's private life ; regret- 
 table too that much of what we know serves merely to in- 
 dicate the character of the day rather than of the individual. 
 The customs, the fashions, the morals were not our own and 
 our judgment upon them must be given with a light hand. 
 Tliere are some things held up against him — notably irreligion 
 and libertinism — which only the coarseness of the times en- 
 ables us to excuse as being less bad in him than in the company 
 he kept. Garth's own reflection upon Ovid's writings, we may, 
 however, appropriately turn u|)on his o^n character. He says. 
 
 "It Is interesting to note that Boswell quoted this paragraph 
 in the letters to Cullen, Munro and Hope of the Edinburgh School, 
 when he appealed to them for advice in Johnson's last illness. 
 To which letter and " its venerable object, all of them paid the 
 most polite attention " as would have been expected even without 
 the quotation. 
 
 Through the many illnesses of his life as well as in this last 
 one, had Johnson been considerately cared for by many distin- 
 guished medical men. " A few days after his departure. Dr. 
 Brocklesby and Mr. Cruikshank who with great assiduity and 
 humanity (and I must add generosity for neither they, nor Dr. 
 Heberden nor Warren, nor Dr. Butler would accept any fees) 
 had attended him, signified a wish that his body might be 
 opened." G. Birkbeck Hill; Johnsonian Miscellanies. 1897. Vol. II, 
 p. 136.) 
 
 (33) 
 
" It must be granted that when there appears an infinite 
 variety of inimitable excellences, it would be too harsh and 
 disingenuous to be severe on such faults, as have escap'd rather 
 thro' want of leisure, and opportunity to correct, than thro' 
 the erroneous turn of a deprav'd judgment." 
 
 During his early life in London, Garth is said to have 
 resided in hiunble quarters in the Haymarket — according to 
 the Rate Books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, ' on the East 
 side six doors from the top.' It was in a garret of this same 
 street that Addison lived when he wrote The Campaign, the 
 poem that started his political fortune rolling, and it is quite 
 probable tliat both of them were among the distinguished 
 company present at the laying of the corner .stone of the 
 Queen's Theatre — now the Haymarket Opera House — designed 
 by their friend Vanbrugh. Another bystander was the much 
 abused laureate Colley Gibber, who subsequently wrote, " of 
 this theatre I saw the first stone laid on which was inscribed 
 THE LITTLE WHIG in honor of a lady of extraordinary 
 beauty, then the celebrated Toast and Pride of that party." 
 This was Lady Sunderland, Marlborough's second daughter, 
 and it was to her and Vanbrugh that Garth refciTed in the 
 line, " By beauty founded and by wit designed," which occurs 
 in his Prologue, subsequently read at the formal opening of 
 this famous Opera House." 
 
 In the same year — 1705 — Garth removed to more fashion- 
 able quarters, to St. James in fact, where he resided near his 
 friends the Churchills, whose particular favor and esteem he 
 always enjoyed. Here he was married to Martha, the daugh- 
 ter of Sir Henry Beaufoy, and here, so far as is known, he 
 continued to dwell until later in life a country home at Har- 
 row-on-the-Hill was taken by him for Lady Garth and Martha, 
 his only daiighter. 
 
 Though his professional labors must have kept him much in 
 town, his affection for ' The Hill ' where many delightful 
 
 "■ The Haymarket Opera House opened April 9, 1705, with a 
 performance of Dryden's ' Indian Emperor.' 
 
social hours were passed with his friends, was such that he 
 determined it sliould be his final resting place and a vault was 
 prepared in the church for the purpose." 
 
 The visitations between neighboring country houses, then 
 as now, were many and Garth's companionship, whether as 
 guest or entertainer, must have been eagerly courted. " On 
 the morrow I am engaged to go to Harrow-on-the-Hill with 
 company," writes Pope in a note to Kneller, and in return we 
 find Garth at the Twickenham Grotto, whence Pope sends 
 word to Lady Mary Wortley Montague (October, 1717), who 
 is still in Constantinople and still an object of Pope's fickle 
 admiration, — " Dr. Garth makes epigrams in prose when he 
 speaks of j'ou." It is perhaps but another evidence of that de- 
 sirable quality for which Garth was so distinguished — his 
 good nature — that his friendships endured so long. It is a 
 quality to which so many allusions are made and with such a 
 unanimity of opinion that one would weary of it were it not 
 for the realization that two hundred years ago the designation 
 had a widely different meaning from that into which it has 
 now become corrupted — with a suggestion of complaisance and 
 the mental inactivity that accompany ready adjustment to the 
 moods of others, and that too often belong to a wearisome 
 though amiable personality. Of all his contemporaries not even 
 Addison seems to have been so universally liked. In Steele's 
 dedication, from which I have already so freely borrowed, he 
 says, " As soon as I thought of making the Lover a present to 
 one of my friends, I resolved without distracting my choice to 
 send it to the Best Natured Man. You arc so universally 
 
 ^' In Hay's Religio Philosophi the circumstances of Garth's 
 ordering a vault for himself and his wife in Harrow Church is 
 spolien of as the result of some accidental whim. His will is 
 dated 20th May 1717; and his property including Edgecott in 
 Bucks he bequeaths to his daughter, Martha Beautoy Boyle 
 (Cunningham). This will was made shortly after the death 
 (May 1st, 1717) of Lady Garth, he being himself in ill health at 
 the time. The daughter had become the wife of Col. William 
 Boyle, son of the Hon. Col. Henry Boyle, uncle of the last Earl 
 of Burlington of that name. 
 
 l35) 
 
known for this character, that an epistle so directed would find 
 its way to you without your name; and I believe nobody but 
 yourself would deliver such a superscription to any other 
 person." 
 
 The adulation of soft dedications of the 18th century must 
 of course be taken into account in this eulogy, though there 
 need be little doubt of the geniiineness of Steele's feeling; but 
 there were others notoriously of less kindly instincts who had 
 the same regard for Garth. Eminent among them was "he, 
 who hardly drank tea without a stratagem."' Garth's friend- 
 ship with Pope began when the latter w^as a mere boy and 
 althoUjgh Arbuthnot and Swift may at one time have been his 
 closer intimates, nevertheless cordial relations with Garth 
 were continued with a constancy which the younger man rarely 
 exhibited. The ease with which Pope's animosities were 
 aroused on seemingly the most trivial grounds makes it all 
 the more creditable that Garth remained among the few who 
 first or last sufi^ered in no way from the stings of the poet's 
 satire. His ' Pastorals ' were written by the stripling minstrel 
 of Binfield when only sixteen and the second of them — Sum- 
 mer — ^was dedicated to Garth." 
 
 So later, in his ' Epistle to Arbuthnot,' he refers to Garth's 
 early encouragement of his work in the lines — 
 
 '■ But why then publish? Granville the polite 
 And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; 
 Well natured Garth, inflamed with earthly praise: 
 And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd by lays." 
 
 Good reason indeed had he to feel gratitude toward this 
 patron of his youth, if we are to credit — as we should, for it 
 comes through the Eev. Jos. Spence from Pope's own lips — the 
 story of how Garth with Addison and Congreve brought him 
 before Lord Halifax for a reading of the first sections of his 
 translation of the Iliad, how his Lordship criticised several 
 
 " Of this, Wharton says, " It is unfortunate that this second 
 pastoral, the worst of the four, should be inscribed to the best of 
 all Pope's four friends to whom they were addressed " — to Sir 
 Wm. Trumbull, Garth, Mr. Wycherley and Mrs. Tempest. 
 
 136) 
 
passages, requesting that they be altered and how Garth, who 
 took Pope home in his chariot, laughed at his embarrassment 
 and told him to leave them as they were, but to thank his Lord- 
 ship and then go and read them again to him after a few 
 months, which he did to the gratification of Lord Halifax who 
 cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! 
 Nothing can be better." 
 
 During their town life they were found together at Button's 
 Coffee House, where they were immortalized by Hogarth's 
 pencil,"' and they continued to fraternize after Pope left the 
 dear, damn'd distracting town to pass the remainder of ' that 
 long illness, his life,' at Twickenham. And there Garth, no 
 longer needed as literary patron, probably did more to en- 
 courage the poet's feeble body than his verse. Indeed the 
 tables were so turned, that Pope became the advocate of his 
 friend's Muse, announcing to Richardson " that there was 
 hardly an alteration in The Dispensary of the innumerable 
 ones through every edition that was not for the better; and 
 that he took Garth to be one of the few truly judicious au- 
 thors." For Garth did not live up to his threat of writing no 
 more. The most pretentious as well as tlie last work iu 
 which he engaged was the editing of a beautiful great folio 
 of Ovid's Metamorphoses." Of this Wharton says, "About 
 this time it became fashionable among the mts at ' Button's,' 
 the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease, to translate Ovid. 
 Their united performances were published in form by Garth, 
 with a preface written in a flowery and lively style, but full 
 of strange opinions." And soon after its appearance Pope 
 wrote to Curyll, August 6, 1717,—" Dr. Garth has published 
 a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by several hands with 
 
 =•* I do not know, in this slietcti, who can be the third person 
 who stands by the table at the artist's right. Another similar 
 sketch, also atrributed to Hogarth, is reproduced in B. W. 
 Richardson's Disciples of Aesculapius. In this one a figure, un- 
 doubtedly Arbuthnot, appears sitting between Garth and Pope. 
 
 " You may know Arbuthnot because he can only sit," says 
 Swift, in the Journal to Stella. 
 
 "•Published by J. Tonson in 15 books, 1717. 
 
 (37) 
 
a preface and a dedication in a new fashion. Folio, price 30s. 
 I advise you to borrow it." Between The Dispensary, liis first, 
 and this, Garth's last literary venture, there appeared several 
 minor poems, one of which must needs be mentioned, aa an 
 incident arising from it seems to show how well the author 
 deserved his epithet of good nature. In 1710 when the Gov- 
 ernment changed hands, Garth wrote a short poem of kindly 
 address dedicated to Lord Godolphin on the reverse of his 
 political fortunes. In the Tory paper, the Examiner, No. 6, 
 tliis poem was attacked by Prior, not only for its sense but for 
 its versification and with all the outrage of party virulence. 
 Garth had poise enough not to retaliate, but his satisfaction 
 must have been great at the appearance of an unanswerable 
 defence made for him by Addison, who concluded by observing 
 that " the same person who has endeavored to prove that he 
 who wrote The Dispensary was no poet, will very suddenly 
 undertake to show that he who gained the battle of Blenheim 
 was no general." 
 
 With like restraint Garth had not deigned to reply to the 
 accusation of an earlier time that The Dispensary was really 
 the product of another's pen, a slander, raised by the envy of 
 authorship, that would now be forgotten were it not for Pope's 
 lines : 
 
 With him most authors steal their works, or buy; 
 Garth did not write his own Dispensary. 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 It was the lack of just such good nature that led to the sorry 
 breach between Addison and Pope, which arose out of the 
 Jealousies engendered by Pope's and Tickell's translations of 
 the Iliad. We find the fat, cringing Gay adding fuel to the 
 fire in a letter addressed to Pope, July 8, 1715 : — 
 
 " I have just set down Sir Samuel Garth at the Opera. 
 He bids me tell you that everybody is pleased with your 
 translation but a few at Button's; and that Sir Richard 
 Steele told him that Mr. Addison said Tickell's transla- 
 tion was the best that was ever in any language. He 
 treated me with extreme civility, and out of kindness 
 gave me a squeeze by the forefinger. I am informed that 
 
 (38) 
 
■^r^' 
 
 3 •♦ 
 
 o 
 
 te 
 
 ex, 
 
 c 
 
 ?1 
 
 ill 
 
 i^^ 
 
at Button's your character is made very free with as to 
 morals etc., and one Mr. A(ddison) says that your trans- 
 lation and Tickell's are both very well done, but the lat- 
 ter has more of Homer. I am etc." 
 
 The extreme civility Garth doubtless gave to all, but his 
 companion deserved it little more than the squeeze by the 
 forefinger. 
 
 I 
 
 Garth's Eeligion, Illness and Death. 
 
 T must have seemed odd to all who have interested them- 
 selves in Garth's life that, considering the scant notes 
 which are accessible, there is so much said on the subject 
 of his religion or irreligion. It naturally brings to mind the 
 sorry publicity thrust 150 years later upon the beliefs of 
 another a^ostic, to whom might also be applied the sentiment 
 in Pope's oft repeated statement that " if ever there was a good 
 Christian without knowing himself to be so it was Dr. 
 Garth." " His presumed hostility to every form of Christian 
 faith seems to have been due partly to the irregularity of the 
 exercises at Dryden's funeral, over which he presided, as well 
 as to an early epitaph on St. Evremond, accredited to him and 
 intended for Westminster Abbey, in which he commended him 
 for his indifference to all religion. It does not seem to have 
 been Garth's practice, however, to parade his personal beliefs 
 or disbeliefs, for the tale has come down to us that being one 
 day questioned by Addison upon his religious creed, he replied 
 that he was of the religion of wise men, and being asked to 
 explain himself further, he added that wise men kept their 
 
 " The same expression Pope put in verse when, shortly before 
 Garth's death, he wrote his farewell to London "Dear, damn'd 
 distracting town, farewell." 
 
 " Farewell Arbuthnot's raillery 
 On every learned sot; 
 And Garth, the best good Christian he, 
 Altho' he knows it not." 
 
 Here in the same stanza Pope links his two distinguished 
 medical friends — Tory and Whig. 
 
 (39) 
 
own secrets. Whatever may liave been these secrets, his friends 
 knew that, as his days became numbered, doubt and uncertain- 
 ties arose in his mind and as he neared the end Addison made 
 a futile effort to console him with the hope of a life here- 
 after, but was turned off with the reply that the doctrines of 
 Christianity were incomprehensible. If, however, we are to 
 believe the story which came from Mr. Blount, the father of 
 Pope's Martha, to Pope, and through him to be recorded 
 among the first of Spence's anecdotes, he repented this attitude 
 on his deathbed. " It was usual for him to say : ' That if 
 there was any such thing as religion 'twas among the Eoman 
 Catholics.' Probably from the efficacy we give the sacraments. 
 He died a Papist; as I was assured by Mr. Blount, who carried 
 the Father to him in his last hours." He did not take any 
 care of himself in his last illness; and had talked for three or 
 four years as though tired of life; in short, I believe he was 
 willing to go." 
 
 Indeed, not only did he take no care of himself in his last 
 illness, but he actually essayed to have his end hurried, if we 
 are to place further credence on the hearsay anecdotes of the 
 time. I cannot do better than quote again from Spence, who 
 says: 
 
 When Dr. Garth had been for a good while in a bad state 
 of health, he sent one day for a physician with whom he was 
 particularly intimate and conjured him by their friendship 
 and by everything that was most sacred (if there was any- 
 thing more sacred), to tell him sincerely whether he thought 
 he should ever be able to get rid of his illness or not. His 
 friend, thus conjured, told him that he thought that he might 
 struggle on with it perhaps for some years, but that he much 
 feared that he would never get the better of it entirely. 
 Dr. Garth thanked him for dealing so fairly with him, turned 
 the discourse to other things and talked very cheerfully all 
 the rest of the time he staid with him. As soon as he was 
 gone, he called for his servant, said he was a good deal out of 
 order and would go to bed; he then sent him for a surgeon 
 
 ■" On which Johnson observes that " a mind wearied with per- 
 petual doubt willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infalli- 
 ble Church." 
 
 (40) 
 
to bleed him. Soon after he sent for a second surgeon, by a 
 different servant, and was bled in the other arm. He then 
 said he wanted rest, and when everybody had quitted the 
 room, he took off the bandages and lay down with the design 
 of bleeding to death. His loss of blood made him faint 
 away, and that stopped the bleeding; he afterwards sunk into 
 a sound sleep, slept all the night, waked in the morning 
 without his usual pains, and said if it would continue so he 
 would be content to live on. 
 
 It was perhaps this acknowledged attempt to speed the end 
 of his svifferings, coupled with the playful remark accredited 
 to him that he was glad he was d3dng, for he was weary of 
 having his shoes pulled on and off, which led " ill tongues and 
 worse hearts," as Pope said, " to brand even his last moments 
 as wrongfully as they did his life with irreligion." Can we 
 not commiserate him? A physician who held not the lay- 
 man's fear of death ; wifeless, for Lady Garth had been buried 
 at Harrow the year before; not having the solace brought by 
 religious faith ; and doomed to linger on with a painful illness. 
 It was a Baconian saying that man fears not being dead, but 
 only the stroke of death; but to Garth and many others of his 
 kind, necessarily familiar with death, not even the event is 
 fearful — Garth's " friendly stroke." 
 
 To die is landing on some silent shore 
 
 Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar. 
 
 Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. 
 
 The Dispensary. 
 
 Memorable are the words of William Hunter to Dr. Combe. 
 " If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how 
 easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." 
 
 Beautiful as the view still remains, the pointed spire of 
 St. Mary's of Harrow-on-the-Hill no loUiger looks out, as in 
 Garth's day, on unbroken woodland and country side, but on 
 the smoke and roofs of approaching London, apart from whose 
 
 (41) 
 
oJT^ 
 
 strife and turmoil he had hoped forever to rest. Forgotten 
 and half hidden by some modem furnishings, in the corner 
 of the chancel one may find a large gray flag stone, on which 
 a part at least of this simple inscription may still be read : 
 
 IN THIS VAULT LIES TE BODY 
 
 OF TE LADY GARTH LATE WIFE 
 
 OF SAMUEL GARTH, KT. 
 
 WHO DYED TE 1 OF MAT, 
 
 IN YE TEAR 1717. 
 
 SIR SAMUEL GARTH 
 OBIIT JAN. THE 18, 1718. 
 
 (42) 
 
 LBAp'09 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Dale: March 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WOHLD LEADER IK COLLECTIONS PflESEHVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
 (724)779-2111