Garth

Garth, SIR SAMUEL, an eminent physician and fair poet, was born at Bowland Forest in Yorkshire in the year 1661. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduated M.D. in 1691, and next year settled in London, where he soon became famous as a physician and conversationalist. In the year 1700 he did himself everlasting honour by providing burial in Westminster Abbey for the neglected Dryden, and pronouncing a eulogium over his grave. On the accession of George I. he was knighted and appointed physician in ordinary to the king, and physician-general to the army. He died in London, January 18, 1718. Garth is best known in our literary history as the author of The Dispensary (1699), a mock-heroic poetical satire on those apothecaries and physicians who opposed the project of giving medicine gratuitously to the sick poor. The poem was exceedingly popular, but has long since ceased to interest a reader. In 1715 he published his topographical poem entitled Claremont, in imitation of Denham's Cooper's Hill, and in 1717 he superintended and contributed to a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Addison, Pope, Gay, Congreve, Rowe, and other eminent contributors. Garth is now interesting chiefly for his versification as a connecting link between Dryden and Pope.