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written with moré ostentation than ability: his notions are halfformed, and his materials immethodically confused'.

He died Jan. 18, 1717-18, and was buried at

His personal character seems to have been social and liberal 3. He communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance; and though firm in a party, at a time when firmness included virulence, yet he imparted his kindness to those who were not supposed to favour his principles. He was an early encourager of Pope, and was at once the friend of Addison 5 and of Granville. He is accused of voluptuousness and irreligion';

and Pope, who says that if ever there was a good Christian without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth,' seems not able to deny what he is angry to hear and loth to confess'.

Pope afterwards declared himself convinced that Garth died 16 in the communion of the Church of Rome, having been privately reconciled. It is observed by Lowth3, that there is less distance than is thought between scepticism and popery, and that a mind wearied with perpetual doubt willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infallible church *.

His poetry has been praised at least equally to its merit 5. In 17 The Dispensary there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary connection. Resnel, in his Preface to Pope's Essay, remarks that Garth exhibits no discrimination of characters, and that what any one says might with equal propriety have been

Pope wrote this to Jervas in 1718. Works (Elwin and Courthope), (viii. 28). Three years earlier he had written:

'Farewell, Arbuthnot's raillery

On every learned sot;

And Garth, the best good Christian he,

Although he knows it not.'

Farewell to London, ib. iv. 482. In 1712 Swift wrote of Garth sarcastically:-'Yet I will be bold to say in his defence, that I believe he is as good a Christian as he is a poet.' Works, v. 418.

'Garth, being questioned by Addison upon his creed, is said to have replied that he was of the religion of wise men; and being urged to explain himself further, he added that wise men kept their own secrets.' Spence's Anec. p. 115 n.

'He died a Papist, as I was assured by Mr. Blount, who carried the Father to him in his last hours.' Ib. p. 2. For the same absurd assertion about Milton see ante, MILTON, 165 n.

Johnson may refer to William Lowth, a theological writer, father of Robert Lowth, Bishop of London, Warburton's adversary.

Ante, DRYDEN, 118; Boswell's Johnson, iv. 289. This paragraph is not in the first edition.

5 'On y trouve beaucoup plus d'imagination, de variété, de naïveté que dans le Lutrin. VOLTAIRE, Euvres, xxxiv. 263.

'Is not it extraordinary that two of our very best poets, Garth and Darwin, should have been physicians?' HORACE WALPOLE, Letters, ix. 372. 'Our approbation of The Dispensary at present is cooler, for it owed part of its fame to party.' GOLDSMITH, Works, iii. 437. See also ib. p. 432. For Garth's imitation of Denham see ante, DENHAM, 28.

• The finest lines are perhaps the following:

'To die is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never break nor tem

said by another1. The general design is perhaps open to criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or negligence. The author never slumbers in self-indulgence; his full vigour is always exerted; scarce a line is left unfinished, nor is it easy to find an expression used by constraint, or a thought imperfectly expressed. It was remarked by Pope that The Dispensary had been corrected in every edition, and that every change was an improvement. It appears, however, to want something of poetical ardour, and something of general delectation; and therefore, since it has been no longer supported by accidental and extrinsick popularity, it has been scarcely able to support itself.

' Johnson refers, I think, to Du Resnel's criticism, not in his Preface, but in a note on p. 219 of Les Principes de la Morale, &c., 1737, where he writes the poet's name first Garth and then Oarth. He thus begins a quotation from The Spectator, No. 419:-'Inglish are naturally fancifuls.' Ib. Preface, p. 29. See also post, POPE, 43, 181.

'Mr. Pope told me himself that

"there was hardly an alteration of the innumerable ones through every edition that was not for the better."" J. RICHARDSON, JUN., Richardsoniana, 1776, p. 195. For the versification see ante, BUTLER, 50 n. 2.

'Too much handling of verses is apt to wear off the natural gloss, as I could give many instances in Garth and Prior.' FENTON, Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 132.

N

ROWE'

ICHOLAS ROWE was born at Little Beckford 2 in Bedford- 1

shire in 1673. His family had long possessed a considerable estate with a good house at Lambertoun3 in Devonshire. The ancestor from whom he descended in a direct line received the arms borne by his descendants for his bravery in the Holy War. His father John Rowe, who was the first that quitted his paternal acres to practise any art of profit, professed the law, and published Benlow's and Dallison's Reports in the reign of James the Second, when, in opposition to the notions then diligently propagated, of dispensing power, he ventured to remark how low his authors rated the prerogative 5. He was made a serjeant,

"This Life,' wrote Nichols, 'is a very remarkable instance of the uncommon strength of Dr. Johnson's memory. When I received from him the MS. he complacently observed that the criticism was tolerably well done, considering that he had not read one of Rowe's plays for thirty years.' Johnson's Letters, ii. 132 n.

Johnson wrote to Nichols:-'In reading Rowe in your edition, which is very impudently called mine, I observed a little piece unnaturally and odiously obscene. I was offended, but was still more offended when I could not find it in Rowe's genuine volumes. To admit it had been wrong; to interpolate it is surely worse. If I had known of such a piece in the whole collection, I should have been angry. What can be done?' In a note, Mr. Nichols says that this piece has not only appeared in the Works of Rowe, but has been transplanted by Pope into the Miscellanies he published in his own name and that of Dean Swift.' Ib. ii. 158. For these Miscellanies see post, POPE, 141.

Johnson's chief authority is a brief account by James Welwood, M.D., prefixed to Rowe's Lucan's Pharsalia,

1720, p. 36.

2 Berkford. Ib. The name is Little Barford. He was baptized there on June 30, 1674. N. & Q. 7 S. xi. 105.

3 In the Villare, Lamerton. JOHNSON. Johnson refers to the Villare Anglicanum, or a View of the Cities, Towns and Villages in England, by Sir Henry Spelman, London, 1656, 4to.

The power by which the King, by remitting penalties, was 'competent to annul virtually a penal statute.' Macaulay's Hist. i. 32, 230, ii. 335; ante, MILTON, 4n.

5He durst do this in the late King James's reign, at a time when a dispensing power was set up as inherent in the Crown.' Rowe's Lucan, Preface, p. 37. It was in 1689, in the reign of William and Mary, that he published Les Reports de Gulielme Benloe, &c., and Les Reports colligées par Gulielme Dalison. In the Preface he writes :-'Some resolutions are here reported, the like whereof are to be found nowhere so exactly (as I could ever observe) which relate to the Crown and Royal Prerogative, which do show what moderate notions were enter

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3

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5

and died April 30, 1692. He was buried in the Temple Church.

Nicholas was first sent to a private school at Highgate'; and, being afterwards removed to Westminster, was at twelve years' chosen one of the King's scholars. His master was Busby3, who suffered none of his scholars to let their powers lie useless; and his exercises in several languages are said to have been written with uncommon degrees of excellence, and yet to have cost him very little labour.

At sixteen he had in his father's opinion made advances in learning sufficient to qualify him for the study of law, and was entered a student of the Middle Temple, where for some time he read statutes and reports with proficiency proportionate to the force of his mind, which was already such that he endeavoured to comprehend law, not as a series of precedents or collection of positive precepts, but as a system of rational government and impartial justice*.

When he was nineteen he was by the death of his father left more to his own direction, and probably from that time suffered law gradually to give way to poetry. At twenty-five he produced The Ambitious Step-mother, which was received with so much favour 5 that he devoted himself from that time wholly to elegant literature 6.

His next tragedy (1702) was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of Tamerlane, he intended to characterise king William', and Lewis the Fourteenth under that of Bajazet. The virtues of

tained by the Judges concerning those matters in a very critical time.' [Dalison was a judge of the Queen's Bench from about 1556-9. His Reports, in conjunction with Sergeant Bendlowes', which come down to 16 Eliz., are a valuable record of the cases of the time.' Foss's Biog. Jurid. p. 210.]

'The free-school built by Sir Roger Cholmondely.' HAWKINS, Johnson's Works, 1787, iii. 28.

He was not elected till 1688.' NICHOLS, Johnson's Works, 1825, vii. 407 n.

Ante, DRYDEN, 4.

This is Johnson's paraphrase of the following passage by Welwood, in Rowe's Lucan, Preface, p. 38: