GARTH, SAMUEL, eminent as a physician and a wit, during the reigns of William III. and Anne, was descended of a good Yorkshire family, received his academical education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and graduated as M.D. in 1691. Having settled in London, he rendered himself distinguished by hia conversational powers, which recommended and set off his professional skill, and aeon acquired very extensive practice. Being a zealous Whig, he became intimate with the wits and great men of the Whig party. At the accession of the house of Hanover he obtained his reward in the honour of knight hood, and in the offices of physician in ordinary to George I., and physician-geueral to the army. He died January 18, 1718.
Garth is known in our literary history as the author of a mock heroic poem called The Dispensary.' It arose out of a quarrel between the College of Physicians and the Corporation of Apothe caries, concerning the establishment of a (then) new charity, for the gratuitous distribution of advice and medicine to the poor. To this the apothecaries strongly objected, as being injurious to their business. Garth, a strong supporter of the dispensary, wrote his poem to satirise its opponents, and recommend the scheme to the public. It is written
with a competent share of spirit and elegance, and obtained popularity. But the introduction of the supernatural machinery of the ancient epic, and the imitation of Homer's battle-scenes, are ao extravagant and incongruous when pressed into the account of a medical squabble of the 17th century, that a poem of near 2000 lines, of which they form the staple, could not be expected to keep its ground when the temporary interest of its subject passed away : accordingly, it has long ceased to find readers. Garth's other original poems consist of occasional pieces, prologues, epilogues, and the like. He superintended a translation of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' by various hands, among whom were au unusual number of eminent men. Dryden contributed tho first, twelfth, and many portions of other books ; Addison, the wooed end third; Gay, Pope, Congreve, Rowe, and other less diatin guished moo were also ooneerned. Garth himself contributed the fourteenth and part of the fifteenth book, with a critical preface, slightingly noticed by Dr. Johnson.