The New International Encyclopædia/Garth, Samuel

GARTH, Sir Samuel (1661-1719). An English physician and poet. He was born at Bowland Forest, Yorkshire, in 1661, was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and studied medicine at Leyden. Obtaining the degree of M.D. from Cambridge in 1691, he settled in London, where he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians (1693), and was soon recognized as a wit and conversationalist. He was knighted in 1714, and appointed physician-in-ordinary to George I. and physician-general to the army. He died January 18, 1719. Garth gained deserved fame in his own time for a satirical poem entitled “The Dispensary” (1699), in which he ridiculed those physicians who opposed his plan for establishing a free dispensary for poor people. He also published “Claremont” (1715), a descriptive poem in imitation of Denham's “Cooper's Hill,” and two years later contributed to a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He was much admired by Pope and others. His verse is smooth but monotonous. Consult the sketch of Garth in Johnson's Lives of the Poets (London, 1854), and Chalmers, Works of the English Poets, vol. ix. (London, 1810).