SIR SAMUEL GARTH. [SAMUEL GARTH was born at Bolam in Durham about the year 1660. He was knighted at the accession of George I, and died on Jan. 18, 1718. The Dispensary appeared in 1699, and quickly ran through numerous editions. The short poem on Claremont came out in 1715, and in 1717 Garth edited a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Dryden's versions were completed by a great number of hands, he himself contributing the fourteenth book and parts of others.] 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. The monotony, the mannerism, and the other defects, emerge side by side with the polish and smoothness which are its great merits. 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. Claremont and his other minor works display the same faculty, but at their date it was already common enough. We therefore here give extracts from The Dispensary only, reminding the reader that the poem gives a burlesque account of the opposition made by some physicians and apothecaries to the plan of giving gratuitous advice and medicine to the poor. We may add that our selections form part of the 'descriptions and episodes' added by the author in the edition of 1703. GEORGE SAINTSBURY. FROM THE DISPENSARY.' [Dr. Horoscope flies to consult Fortune at Teneriffe.] The wondering sage pursues his airy flight, Aurora, on Etesian breezes borne, With blushing lips breathes out the sprightly morn: And bend beneath the burden of the skies; ; The vine undressed her swelling clusters bears, Where Flora treads, her zephyr garlands flings, Whilst birds from woodbine bowers and jasmine groves On high, where no hoarse winds nor clouds resort, Gives and resumes, and smiles and frowns by fits. Spells, philters, globes, and schemes of palmistry: * [Fortune speaks.] "Tis I that give, so mighty is my power, Spadillio, that at table serv'd of late, And owns the racers which he rubb'd before. Though blest Astrea's gone, some soil remains MATTHEW PRIOR. [MATTHEW PRIOR was born in 1664 near Wimborne Minster in Dorsetshire. He was educated at Westminster under Dr. Busby, and at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1686. In the following year he published, in connection with Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, a caricature of Dryden's Hind and Panther, under the title of The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. In 1707 he published a volume of poems, and another with additions in 1718. He died in 1721.] 'Dan Prior next, belov'd by every Muse.' So sings Gay in that welcome to Pope after his labours of the 'Iliad.' And indeed not every Muse, but all the world seem to have looked kindly on the fortunate young Horatian whom the noble Dorset had taken from the Rummer tavern to be successively a Secretary of Embassy, a Secretary of State, a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, a Member of Parliament, and, to crown all, an Ambassador. Among the subscribers to that stately folio of 1718, by which its author, happy man! cleared some £4,000, are numbered most of the illustrious names of the age, from Newton to Beau Nash,-to say nothing of lively maids of honour like 'the Honble Mrs. Mary Bellenden,' and bishops like his Right Reverence of Winchester. Bishops and maids of honour would, we imagine, be somewhat embarrassed now-a-days by much of the ingenuous verse which the tall volume contains. But readers under Anna Augusta were either not squeamish, or they confined themselves to the portentous poem of Solomon on the Vanity of the World which occupies its latter pages. When one looks to the general character of Prior's writings it is hard to understand how he could ever have penned this egregious didactic work. Yet he not only wrote it, but he hoped to live by |