domestic of the Earl of Dorset, and afterwards a schoolmaster, from whom
Campbell quotes one or two tolerable songs; and Dr Walter Pope, a man of
wit and knowledge, who was junior proctor of Oxford, one of the first
chosen fellows of the Royal Society, and who succeeded Sir Christopher
Wren as professor of astronomy in Gresham College. He is the author of
a comico-serious song of some merit, entitled 'The Old Man's Wish.'




SIR SAMUEL GARTH.


Of Garth little is known, save that he was an eminent physician, a
scholar, a man of benevolence, a keen Whig, and yet an admirer of old
Dryden, and a patron of young Pope--a friend of Addison, and the author
of the 'Dispensary.' The College of Physicians had instituted a
dispensary, for the purpose of furnishing the poor with medicines
gratis. This measure was opposed by the apothecaries, who had an obvious
interest in the sale of drugs; and to ridicule their selfishness Garth
wrote his poem, which is mock-heroic, in six cantos, copied in form from
the 'Lutrin,' and which, though ingenious and elaborate, seems now
tedious, and on the whole uninteresting. It appeared in 1696, and the
author died in 1718. We extract some of the opening lines of the first
canto of the poem.


THE DISPENSARY.

Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best canst tell