Sir Samuel Garth, 1661–1719. Born, in Yorkshire, 1661. At School at Ingleton. To Peterhouse, Camb., 1676; B.A., 1679; M.A., 1684. To Leyden to study medicine, 1687. M.D., Camb., 7 July 1691. Fellow of Coll. of Physicians, 26 June 1693; Gulstonian Lecturer, 1694; Harvey Orator, 1697. Censor, Oct. 1702. Mem. of Kit-Cat Club, 1703. Married Martha Beaufoy. Knighted, 1714. Physician in Ordinary to King, and Physician General to army. Died, in London, 18 Jan. 1719. Buried at Harrow. Works: “Oratio Laudatoria” (Harveian Oration), 1697; “The Dispensary: a poem” (anon.), 1699 (2nd and 3rd edns. same year); “A Prologue for the 4th of November,” 1711; “A Complete Key to the seventh edition of ‘The Dispensary,’” 1714; “Claremont” (anon.), 1715. He translated: Demosthenes’ “First Philippick,” 1702; Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” 1717. Collected Works: “Works,” 1769; “Poetical Works,” 1771; Life: in 1769 edn. of Works; by Dr. Johnson, in 1822 edn. of Poems.
As soon as I thought of making the “Lover” a present to one of my friends, I resolved, without further distracting my choice, to send it to the Best Natured-Man. You are so universally known for this character, that an epistle so directed would find its way to you without your name; and I believe nobody but you yourself would deliver such a superscription to any other person.
The best-natured of men, Sir Samuel Garth, has left me in the truest concern for his loss. His death was very heroical, and yet unaffected enough to have made a saint or a philosopher famous. But ill tongues and worse hearts have branded even his last moments, as wrongfully as they did his life, with irreligion. You must have heard many tales on this subject; but if ever there was a good Christian without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth.
When Doctor 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 anything more sacred), to tell him sincerely, whether he thought he should be ever able to get rid of his illness or not. His friend, thus conjured, told him; “that he thought he might struggle on with it, perhaps for some years; but that he much feared he could 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 stayed with them.—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 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 could be content to live on.”—In his last illness, he did not use any remedies, but let his distemper take its course. He was the most agreeable companion I ever knew.
Garth, we have reason to believe, was as universally liked as any private person of his day. He was mild and complacent, though a zealous party-man; and kind, though a wit. Pope, who certainly did not resemble him in those respects, always speaks of him with the most decided affection.
We never cast our eyes toward “Harrow on the Hill” (let us keep these picturesque denominations of places as long as we can) without thinking of an amiable man and most pleasant wit and physician of Queen Anne’s time, who lies buried there,—Garth, the author of the “Dispensary.” He was the Whig physician of the men of letters of that day, as Arbuthnot was the Tory: and never 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.
Garth is perhaps the most cherished by the present generation of all the physicians of Pope’s time. He was a whig without rancor, and a bon-vivant without selfishness. Full of jest and amiability, he did more to create merriment at the Kit-Kat club than either Swift or Arbuthnot. He loved wine to excess; but then wine loved him too, ripening and warming his wit, and leaving no sluggish humour behind. His practice was a good one, but his numerous patients prized his bon-mots more than his prescriptions. His enemies averred that he was not only an epicure, but a profligate voluptuary and an infidel. Pope, however, wrote of him after his death, “If ever there was a good Christian, without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth.”
The Kit-kat Poet. A nickname given to Samuel Garth, an English poet. He was a member of the Kit-kat Club, and extemporized most of the verses which were inscribed on the toasting-glasses of that society.
His portrait, of kit-cat size, by Kneller, hangs to the left of the fire-place in the censor’s room at the College of Physicians, and gives him a fresh complexion and a cheerful expression, in a flowing wig. A drawing by Hogarth represents him at Buttons’ coffee-house standing by a table at which Pope is sitting.
The Dispensary, 1699
This sixth canto of the “Dispensary,” by Dr. Garth, has more merit than the whole preceding part of the poem; and, as I am told, in the first edition of this work, it is more correct than as here exhibited; but that edition I have not been able to find. The praises bestowed 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.
His poetry has been praised at least equally to its merit. In the “Dispensary” there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary connection. Resnel, in his Preface to Pope’s Essay, remarks, that Garth exhibits no discrimination of characters; and that what any one says might, with equal propriety, have been said by another. The general design is, perhaps, open to criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or negligence. The author never slumbers in self-indulgence; his full vigour 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. It was remarked by Pope, that the “Dispensary” had been corrected in every edition, and that every change was an improvement. It appears, however, to want something of poetical ardour, and something of general delectation; and therefore, since it has been no longer supported by accidental and intrinsick popularity, it has been scarcely able to support itself.
Is only inferior in humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the “Rape of the Lock.”
It is an obvious imitation of the Lutrin. Warton blames the poet for making the fury, Disease, talk like a critic. It is certain however, that criticism is often a disease, and can sometimes talk like a fury.
The versification of this once-famous mock-heroic poem is smooth and regular, but not forcible; the language clear and neat; the parodies and allusions happy. Many lines are excellent in the way of pointed application; and some are remembered and quoted, where few call to mind the author. It has been remarked, that Garth enlarged and altered the “Dispensary” in almost every edition; and, what is more uncommon, that every alteration was for the better. This poem may be called an imitation of the Lutrin, inasmuch as, but for the Lutrin, it might probably not have been written; and there are even particular resemblances. The subject, which is a quarrel between the physicians and apothecaries of London, may vie with that of Boileau in want of general interest; yet it seems to afford more diversity to the satirical poet. 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.
The wit of this slight performance may have somewhat evaporated with age, but it cannot have been at any time very pungent.
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 respects it may be said that no advance in this peculiar model was ever made on “The Dispensary.” Its best lines are equal to any of Pope’s in mere fashion, and in it appear clearly enough the inherent defects of the form when once Dryden’s “energy divine” and his cunning admixture of what looked like roughness had been lost or rejected…. Except for its versification, which not only long preceded Pope, but also anticipated Addison’s happiest effort by some years, “The Dispensary” is not now an interesting poem. The dispute on which it is based is long forgotten, its mock heroic plan looks threadbare to our eyes, and the machinery and imagery have lost all the charm that they may at one time have had. But as a versifier Garth must always deserve a place in the story of English Literature.
In 1699 Garth published “The Dispensary, a Poem,” which is a record of the first attempt to establish those out-patient rooms now universal in the large towns of England. “The Dispensary” ridicules the apothecaries and their allies among the fellows. It was circulated in manuscript, and in a few weeks was printed and sold by John Nutt, near Stationers’ Hall. A second and a third edition appeared in the same year, to which were added a dedication to Anthony Henley, an introduction explaining the controversy in the College of Physicians, and copies of commendatory verses. A fourth edition appeared in 1700, a sixth in 1706, a seventh in 1714, and a tenth in 1741. The poem continued to be generally read for fifty years, and some of its phrases are still quoted.
General
| Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly song, | |
| Sense flows in easie numbers from his tongue; | |
| Great Phœbus in his learned son we see | |
| Alike in physick as in poetry. |
His works will scarce make a moderate volume, and though they contain many things excellent, judicious, and humorous, yet they will not justify the writer, who dwells upon them in the same rapturous strain of admiration, with which we speak of a Horace, a Milton, or a Pope. 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 fortune as his friends: Persons in these circumstances are seldom praised, or censured with moderation.
The fun has all faded out of “The Dispensary,” and Garth is no longer in the least degree attractive. But his didactic verse is the best between Dryden and Pope, though we see beginning in it the degradation of the overmannered style of the eighteenth century.
