two or three words; and fifth and last, that as love sometimes makes people imprudent, and gets them excused for it, so this loving perusal of Pope and his volume has tempted us to publish a rondeau of our own, which was written on a real occasion, and therefore may be presumed to have had the aforesaid impulse. We must add, lest our egotism should be thought still greater on the occasion than it is, that the lady was a great lover of books and impulsive writers: and that it was our sincerity as one of them which obtained for us this delightful compliment from a young enthusiast to an old one.

"Jenny kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief! who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss'd me."

GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND LOVE-LETTERS. 37

GARTH, PHYSICIANS, AND LOVE-LETTERS.

Garth, and a Dedication to him by Steele.-Garth, Pope, and Arbuthnot. — Other physicians in connexion with wit and literature.-Desirableness of a selection from the less-known works of Steele, and of a collection of real Love-Letters.— Two beautiful specimens from the "Lover."

We never cast our eyes towards "Harrow on the Hill" (let us keep these picturesque denominations of places as long as we can) without thinking of an amiable man and most pleasant wit and physician of Queen Anne's time, who lies buried there,-Garth, the author of the "Dispensary." He was the

Whig physician of the men of letters of that day, as Arbuthnot was the Tory: and never were two better men sent to console the ailments of two witty parties, or show them what a nothing party is, compared with the humanity remaining under the quarrels of both.

We are not going to repeat what has been said of Garth so often before us. Our chief object, as far as regards himself, is to lay before the reader some

passages of a Dedication which appears to have escaped notice, and which beautifully enlarges upon that professional generosity which obtained him the love of all parties, and the immortal panegyrics of Dryden and Pope. It is by Sir Richard Steele, and is written as none but a congenial spirit could write, in love with the same virtues, and accustomed to the consolation derived from them.

"SIR,

To SIR SAMUEL GARTH, M.D.

"As soon as I thought of making the Lover a present to one of my friends, I resolved, without further distracting my choice, to send it to the Best Natured-Man. You are so universally known for this character, that an epistle so directed would find its way to you without your name; and I believe nobody but you yourself would deliver such a superscription to any other person.

"This propensity is the nearest akin to love; and good nature is the worthiest affection of the mind, as love is the noblest passion of it. While the latter is wholly occupied in endeavouring to make happy one single object, the other diffuses its benevolence to all the world.

"The pitiful artifices which empyrics are guilty of to drain cash out of valetudinarians, are the abhorrence of your generous mind; and it is as common with Garth to supply indigent patients with money for food, as to receive it from wealthy ones for physic.

"This tenderness interrupts the satisfactions of conversation, to which you are so happily turned; but we forgive you that our mirth is often insipid to you, while you sit absent to what

passes amongst us, from your care of such as languish in sickness. We are sensible that their distresses, instead of being removed by company, return more strongly to your imagination, by comparison of their condition to the jollities of health. "But I forget I am writing a dedication," &c. &c. &c.

This picture of a man sitting silent, on account of his sympathies with the absent, in the midst of such conversation as he was famous for excelling in, is very interesting, and comes home to us as if we were in his company. Who will wonder that Pope should write of Garth as he did?

"Farewell, Arbuthnot's raillery

On every learned sot;

And Garth, the best good Christian he,
Although he knows it not."

This exquisite compliment to Garth has been often noticed, as at once confirming the scepticism attributed to him, and vindicating the Christian spirit with which it was accompanied. But it has not been remarked, that Pope, with a further delicacy, highly creditable to all parties, has here celebrated, in one and the same stanza, his Tory and his Whig medical friend. The delicacy is carried to its utmost towards Arbuthnot also, when we consider that that learned wit had the reputation of being as orthodox a Christian in belief as in practice. The modesty of his charity is thus taxed to its height, and therefore as highly complimented, by the excessive praise bestowed on the Christian spirit of the rival wit, Whig, and physician.

The intercourse in all ages, between men of letters and lettered physicians is one of the most pleasing subjects of contemplation in the history of authorship. The necessity (sometimes of every description) on one side, the balm afforded on the other, the perfect mutual understanding, the wit, the elegance, the genius, the masculine gentleness, the honour mutually done and received, and not seldom the consciousness that friendships so begun will be recognised and loved by posterity,-all combine to give it a very peculiar character of tender and elevated humanity, and to make us, the spectators, look on, with an interest partaking of the gratitude. If it had not been for Arbuthnot, posterity might have been deprived of a great deal of Pope.

"Friend to my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song ;"

says he, in his Epistle to the Doctor. And Dryden, in the "Postscript" to his translation of "Virgil,” speaks, in a similar way, of his medical friends, and of the whole profession :

"That I have recovered, in some measure, the health which I had lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment. The whole faculty has always been ready to oblige me."

Pope again, in a letter to his friend Allen, a few