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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.

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[Dr. Horoscope flies to consult Fortune at Teneriffe.]

The wondering sage pursues his airy flight,
And braves the chill unwholesome damps of night:
He views the tracts where luminaries rove,

To settle seasons here, and fates above;
The bleak Arcturus still forbid the seas,
The stormy Kids, the weeping Hyades;

The shining lyre with strains attracting more
Heaven's glittering mansions now than Hell's before;
Glad Cassiopeia circling in the sky,

And each fair Churchill of the galaxy.

Aurora, on Etesian breezes borne,

With blushing lips breathes out the sprightly morn:
Each flower in dew their short-liv'd empire weeps,
And Cynthia with her lov'd Endymion sleeps.
As through the gloom the magus cuts his way
Imperfect objects tell the doubtful day:

Dim he discerns majestic Atlas rise,

And be beneath the burden of the skies;
Bistov ing brows aloft no tempests know,
Whilst ghtning flies, and thunder rolls below.
Distant from hence beyond a waste of plains,
Proud Teneriff, his giant brother, reigns;
With breathing fire his pitchy nostrils glow,
As from his sides he shakes the fleecy snow.
Around this hoary prince, from watery beds,
His subject islands raise their verdant heads s;
The waves so gently wash each rising hill,
The land seems floating, and the ocean still.
Eternal spring with smiling verdure here
Warms the mild air, and crowns the youthful year.
From crystal rocks transparent rivulets flow;
The tuberose ever breathes, and violets blow;

The vine undressed her swelling clusters bears,
The labouring hind the mellow olive cheers;
Blossoms and fruit at once the citron shows,
And, as she pays, discovers still she owes.
The orange to her sun her pride displays,
And gilds her fragrant apples with his rays.
No blasts e'er discompose the peaceful sky,
The springs but murmur and the winds but sigh.
The tuneful swans on gliding rivers float,
And warbling dirges die on every note.
Where Flora treads, her zephyr garlands flings,
And scatters odours from his purple wings;

Whilst birds from woodbine bowers and jasmine groves
Chant their glad nuptials, and unenvy'd loves.
Mild seasons, rising hills, and silent dales,
Cool grottos, silver brooks, and flowery vales,
Groves fill'd with balmy shrubs, in pomp appear,
And scent with gales of sweets the circling year.
These happy isles, where endless pleasures wait,
Are styl'd by tuneful bards—the Fortunate.

On high, where no hoarse winds nor clouds resort,
The hoodwink'd goddess keeps her partial court:
Upon a wheel of amethyst she sits,

Gives and resumes, and smiles and frowns by fits.
In this still labyrinth, around her lie

Spells, philters, globes, and schemes of palmistry:
A sigil in this hand the gipsy bears,

In th' other a prophetic sieve and sheers.

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"Tis I that give, so mighty is my power;
Faith to the Jew, complexion to the Moor,
I am the wretch's wish, the rook's pretence,
The sluggard's ease, the coxcomb's providence.
Sir Scrape-quill, once a supple smiling slave,
Looks lofty now, and insolently grave;
Builds, settles, purchases, and has each hour
Caps from the rich, and curses from the poor.

Spadillio, that at table serv'd of late,
Drinks rich tokay himself and eats in plate;
Has levees, villas, mistresses in store,

And owns the racers which he rubb'd before.
Souls heavenly born my faithless boons defy;
The brave is to himself a deity;

Though blest Astrea's gone, some soil remains
Where Fortune is the slave, and Merit reigns.
The Tiber boasts his Julian progeny,

Thames his Nassau, the Nile his Ptolemy.
Iberia, yet for future sway design'd,
Shall, for a Hesse, a greater Mordaunt find.
Thus Ariadne in proud triumph rode;
She lost a hero, and she found a god.

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

VOL. III.

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