to what was called the Kit-cat Club. When Lord Godolphin was dismissed in 1710, he wrote him a poem; which was attacked in the Examiner, and defended by Addison. At the accession of the present family, he was knighted, made physician in ordinary to the king, and physician-general of the army. His last literary undertaking was an edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He died on the 18th of January, 1718; and was buried at Harrowon-the-Hill.

Garth belongs to that class of authors, who, without much poetical fire, will yet contrive to write verses, which must silence the critic, if they do not satisfy the reader. His thoughts are never magnificent, but always just; and, if his verses do not always reach superior excellence, they seldom sink to mediocrity. He is neither stagnant, nor precipitous; but smooth, easy, and gentle; neither very fluent, nor very forcible. His conceptions are always fully expressed; but they are never strong and intense enough to describe objects, or delineate character, with fidelity and discrimination. The Dispensary was popular, while its subject was in vogue; but the institution and the poem have shared nearly the same fate. The one is extinct; and the other is neglected.

DEDICATION.

TO

ANTHONY HENLEY, ESQ.

A MAN of your character can no more prevent a Dedication, than he would encourage one; for merit, like a virgin's blushes, is still most discovered, when it labours most to be concealed.

'Tis hard, that to think well of you, should be but justice, and to tell you so, should be an offence. Thus, rather than violate your modesty, I must be wanting to your other virtues; and to gratify one good quality, do wrong to a thousand.

The world generally measures our esteem by the ardour of our pretences; and will scarce believe that so much zeal in the heart can be consistent with so much faintness in the expression; but when they reflect on your readiness to do good, and your industry to hide it; on your passion to oblige, and your pain to hear it owned; they will conclude that acknowledgments would be ungrateful to a person, who ever seems to receive the obligations he confers.

But though I should persuade myself to be silent upon all occasions; those more polite arts, which,

till of late, have languished and decayed, would appear under their present advantages, and own you for one of their generous restorers: insomuch, that Sculpture now breathes, Painting speaks, Music ravishes; and as you help to refine our taste, you distinguish your own.

Your approbation of this poem is the only exception to the opinion the world has of your judgment, that ought to relish nothing so much as what you write yourself. But you are resolved to forget to be a critic, by remembering you are a friend. To say more, would be uneasy to you; and to say less, would be injust in

Your humble servant.

THE

PREFACE.

SINCE this following poem in a manner stole into the world, I could not be surprised to find it incorrect; though I can no more say I was a stranger to its coming abroad, than that I approved of the publisher's precipitation in doing it. For a hurry in the execution, generally produces a leisure in reflection; so when we run the fastest, we stumble the oftenest. However, the errors of the printer have not been greater than the candour of the reader: and if I could but say the same of the defects of the author, he would need no justification against the cavils of some furious critics, who, I am sure, would have been better pleased if they had met with more faults.

Their grand objection is, that the fury Disease is an improper machine to recite characters, and recommend the example of present writers; but though I had the authority of some Greek and Latin poets, upon parallel instances, to justify the design; yet, that I might not introduce any thing that seemed inconsistent or hard, I started this objection myself to a gentleman, very remarkable in

this sort of criticism, who would by no means allow that the contrivance was forced, or the conduct incongruous.

Disease is represented a Fury as well as Envy : she is imagined to be forced by an incantation from her recess; and, to be revenged on the exorcist, mortifies him with an introduction of several persons eminent in an accomplishment he has made some advances in.

Nor is the compliment less to any great genius mentioned there; since a very fiend, who naturally repines at any excellency, is forced to confess how happily they have all succeeded.

Their next objection is, that I have imitated the Lutrin of Monsieur Boileau. I must own I am proud of the imputation: unless their quarrel be, that I have not done it enough: but he that will give himself the trouble of examining, will find I have copied him in nothing but in two or three lines in the complaint of Molesse, Canto II. and in one in his first Canto; the sense of which line is entirely his, and I could wish it were not the only good one in mine.

I have spoke to the most material objections I have heard of, and shall tell these gentlemen, that for every fault they pretend to find in this poem, I'll undertake to show them two. One of these curious persons does me the honour to say, he approves of the conclusion of it; but I suppose it is upon no other reason, but because it is the conclusion. However, I should not be much concerned not to be thought excellent in an amusement I have very little practised hitherto, nor perhaps ever shall again.