his hero to the court of the heathen King Hoel, who takes the hospitable part of Dido; and he occupies two books in making Arthur describe to that monarch, after the latter has been miraculously converted, the Creation of the world and the Day of Judgment. In the fourth bookArthur having retired to bed-Hoel, who, as a listener, must have been unrivalled, hears from Lucius, the "fidus Achates" of the poem, the adventures of the Prince after the arrival of the Saxons in Britain; while, in the fifth, Arthur has a dream, suggested by the sixth book of the Eneid, in which his father, Uther, reveals to him the long succession of British Kings, leading up, of course, to a panegyric on the "brave Nassovian," and an allusion to the death of Queen Mary, imitated from Virgil's passage about the young Marcellus. But, except with regard to Virgil, Blackmore piques himself on his originality. "As I had not my eye," he says in his preface to King Arthur, "on any other model, so I am not conscious to myself of having used any author's thoughts or expressions." But though he never mentions the Gerusalemme Liberata or Paradise Lost, his King Arthur shows that he had read them both, and had directly copied from the former the episode of Armida and Rinaldo, and from the latter the debate in Pandemonium. Nevertheless, in the lower or didactic orders of poetry, when he is moving in a medium where he can observe and reason, his style is often lucid and forcible. His complimentary portraits of the Whig ministry under feigned names in King Arthur have much life: witness the following lines on Somers, written at a time when the character of that statesman stood out in brilliant contrast with the treachery of Marlborough and Godolphin: He with his wit could, when he pleased, surprise, But he suppressed it, choosing to be wise. None better knew the business of the State, Clear as the day, and as the night sedate, Favourite and patriot, he the secret knew How both to prince and people to be true : He made their interest one, and showed the way VOL. V E in a strictly classical form; and from his Lutrin Dryden derived the idea, which he embodied in Mac-Flecknoe, of using the mock-heroic as a vehicle for satire. So exclusively personal were the grounds of Dryden's quarrel with Shadwell that he had to provide almost the entire framework of his poem out of his own invention; and MacFlecknoe is justly liable to the reproach of celebrating a hero without an action. The honour of the first attempt to apply the mock-heroic form to an English subject ought, perhaps, therefore to be ascribed to another poet. Samuel Garth, the eldest son of William Garth of Bowland Forest, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was born in 1661. He was sent to school at Ingleton in his native county; and in 1676 was admitted to Peterhouse, Cambridge, whence he graduated as B.A. in 1679, and as M.A. in 1684. He studied medicine at Leyden, became M.D. on the 7th of July 1691, and was elected Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693. In 1694 he was appointed Gulstonian Lecturer, and in 1697 was chosen to deliver the Harveian Oration, which he dedicated to Montague. He took an active part in the conflict between the Physicians and the Apothecaries, being one of the forty members of the College who undertook to distribute medicines gratis to the poor, and he finally became the sacer vates " of the war which he celebrated in his Dispensary, published in 1699. The College of Physicians appointed him one of its censors in 1702. Garth early attached himself to the Whig Party, and constantly endeavoured to promote its fortunes. He was a member of the Kit-Kat Club, and author of several of the toasts inscribed on the glasses of that society. When Godolphin was deprived of his office in 1710, Garth addressed some verses to him comparing his disappearance from the world of politics to the splendour of the setting sun. His fidelity to the Whig cause was rewarded at the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714, when he was made Physician in Ordinary to the King, and Physician General to the Army, and was knighted with Marlborough's sword. In 1717 he undertook a CO operative translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a scheme which proved abortive, and which was satirised by Pope in one of his Miscellanies. His last composition was Claremont, a local poem, after the model of Cooper's Hill and Windsor Forest, on the house of Lord Clare at Esher. He died on the 18th of January 1718-19 and was buried beside his wife at Harrow. Johnson in his Life of Garth dates the conflict between the Physicians and the Apothecaries from the decree of the former, in 1687, for the gratuitous distribution of drugs, and speaks as if this had its origin in instincts of pure benevolence. There can be no doubt that the decree was the first overt act in the struggle between the faculties; but warnings of the approaching strife had been given years before, and a study of the early history of the subject shows that the war sprang mainly out of a collision of material interests. In the Middle Ages, when, as may be seen from Romeo and Juliet, the practice of medicine was largely determined by the knowledge and application of drugs, the apothecaries occupied perhaps a more important place in public estimation than any other branch of the faculty. They were one of the recognised companies of the city of London, where they had their College with its Warden, quite apart from the College of Physicians. The division of labour was sharp and well-defined. The physician prescribed the medicine to be used in each case of illness, but the drugs were in the hands of the apothecary, who, as a rule, alone understood how to prepare them for use. One of the great arguments employed by the apothecaries in the civil war was the with regard to practice. whole on the side of the story of the profession : ignorance of the physicians A pamphleteer, writing on the physicians, tells the following A celebrated physician, entering a druggist's shop in Cheapside, spied a great piece of a remarkable white, light, spongy drug, took it in his hand, and inquired what it was; to whom 1 Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 1. the fifth canto, when there is a kind of scuffling battle, ending in a single combat between Stentor (Goodall) and Querpo (Howe) founded, it is said, on a real incident. Celsus (Bateman), one of the leading heroes among the physicians, in the sixth canto, is despatched as a messenger to the Elysian Fields, where he finds the spirit of Harvey; and the latter ends the poem with a general exhortation to both parties to compose their quarrel in a spirit of harmony and benevolence. This is not very promising for the modern reader; still there can be no doubt that, in its own day, The Dispensary made a mark which entitles it to a permanent place in English poetry. It struck a new vein (for MacFlecknoe, as I have said, is so personal in its scope as hardly to fall within epic lines) and thus prepared the way for The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. Eleven editions of the poem, extending far into the second half of the eighteenth century, show that the public interest in the persons and things satirised was wide and deep. Garth spent great pains in the polishing of his verse; many excellent individual lines have become monumental as quotations, and some of the descriptive passages deserve to live. Of the latter the lines describing the College of Physicians have the true mock-heroic ring :Not far from that most celebrated place Where angry Justice shows her awful face, Where little villains must submit to fate, That great ones may enjoy the world in state; Horoscope's "shop strokes : "shop" is painted in strong and vivid Long has he been of that amphibious fry, 1 Dispensary, Canto i. operative translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a scheme which proved abortive, and which was satirised by Pope in one of his Miscellanies. His last composition was Claremont, a local poem, after the model of Cooper's Hill and Windsor Forest, on the house of Lord Clare at Esher. He died on the 18th of January 1718-19 and was buried beside his wife at Harrow. Johnson in his Life of Garth dates the conflict between the Physicians and the Apothecaries from the decree of the former, in 1687, for the gratuitous distribution of drugs, and speaks as if this had its origin in instincts of pure benevolence. There can be no doubt that the decree was the first overt act in the struggle between the faculties; but warnings of the approaching strife had been given years before, and a study of the early history of the subject shows that the war sprang mainly out of a collision of material interests. In the Middle Ages, when, as may be seen from Romeo and Juliet, the practice of medicine was largely determined by the knowledge and application of drugs, the apothecaries occupied perhaps a more important place in public estimation than any other branch of the faculty. They were one of the recognised companies of the city of London, where they had their College with its Warden, quite apart from the College of Physicians. The division of labour was sharp and well-defined. The physician prescribed the medicine to be used in each case of illness, but the drugs were in the hands of the apothecary, who, as a rule, alone understood how to prepare them for use. One of the great arguments employed by the apothecaries in the civil war was the ignorance of the physicians with regard to practice. A pamphleteer, writing on the physicians, tells the following whole on the side of the story of the profession : A celebrated physician, entering a druggist's shop in Cheapside, spied a great piece of a remarkable white, light, spongy drug, took it in his hand, and inquired what it was; to whom 1 Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 1. |