"TO THE MERRY POETASTER, AT SADLER'S HALL, IN CHEAPSIDE.
"Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse
With censures praise, with flatteries abuse;
To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art,
That ne'er mad'st any but thy school-boys smart.
Then be advised and scribble not again—
Thou'rt fashion'd for a flail and not a pen.
If B——l's immortal wit thou would'st decry,
Pretend 'tis he that wrote thy poetry.
Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong—
Thy poems and thy patients live not long."
Garth's death, as described by William Ayre, was characteristic. He was soon tired of an invalid's suffering and helplessness, the ennui and boredom of the sick-room afflicting him more than the bodily pain. "Gentlemen," said he to the crowd of weeping friends who stood round his bed, "I wish the ceremony of death was over." And so, sinking lower in the bed, he died without a struggle. He had previously, on being informed that his end was approaching, expressed pleasure at the intelligence, because he was tired of having his shoes pulled off and on. The manner of Garth's exit reminds one of the death of Rabelais, also a physician. The presence of officious friends troubled him; and when he saw his doctors consulting together, he raised his head from his pillow and said with a smile, "Dear gentlemen, let me die a natural death." After he had received extreme unction, a friend approached him, and asked him how he did. "I am going on my journey," was the answer—"they have greased my boots already."
Garth has, apart from his literary productions, one great claim on posterity. To him Dryden owed honourable interment. When the great poet died, Garth caused his body to be conveyed to the College of Physicians, and started a public subscription to defray the expenses of the funeral. He pronounced an oration over the deceased at the College in Warwick Lane, and then accompanied it to Westminster Abbey.
Of the stories preserved of Garth's social humour some are exquisitely droll. Writing a letter at a coffee-house, he found himself overlooked by a curious Irishman, who was impudently reading every word of the epistle. Garth took no notice of the impertinence, until he had finished and signed the body of the letter, when he added a postscript, of unquestionable legibility: "I would write you more by this post, but there's a d—— tall impudent Irishman looking over my shoulder all the time."
"What do you mean, sir?" roared the Irishman in a fury. "Do you think I looked over your letter?"
"Sir," replied the physician, "I never once opened my lips to you."
"Ay, but you have put it down, for all that."
"'Tis impossible, sir, that you should know that, for you have never once looked over my letter."
Stumbling into a Presbyterian church one Sunday, for pastime, he found a pathetic preacher shedding tears over the iniquity of the earth.