of retiring from the stage: at first, he thought that on the last night he would play Richard III., but he dreaded the excitement of such a part at a time when he would have to husband all his nervous energy to keep himself from failing. He, therefore, selected Don Felix in the comedy of the Wonder, and on the 10th June, 1776, he took his leave of a profession which he had invested with a new dignity. After the curtain had fallen, he came forward, and said a few words in plain prose full of earnestness and beauty. It was too much for him, and he could hardly finish for weeping. He gave the whole of the receipts of the evening to the society for relieving distressed actors. He had formerly made it a present of two houses; and when the committee sold them, he purchased them, and afterwards by his will, again devoted them to the purpose for which he had formerly intended them. He did not live very long after his retirement; a disease of the kidneys had for sometime past afflicted him with the most excruciating pain, and it finally carried him off on the 20th January, 1779. He was buried with great magnificence in Westminster Abbey, close to the monument of Shakspeare. Criticism on his acting, to a generation which has not seen him, would be useless, supposing it were possible. All we can say of the man is, that his beautiful portrait, his works, the testimony of his friends and contemporaries show us a soul overflowing with humour and love, and a genius for abandonment which explains the echo of his fame which has been prolonged even down to our own day. It is to him we chiefly owe the restoration of our great national poet, and the purification of the stage from that filthy licentiousness with which it had been disgraced since the time of Charles II. As an author Garrick also acquired some reputation, although his productions are now almost entirely forgotten, with the exception of two or three farces, such as "The Clandestine Marriage," "Irish Widow," and "Miss in her Teens." He was happiest in his prologues and occasional pieces, some of his epigrams being very severe.—W. H. W.
GARRICK, Eva Maria, wife of the actor, was born at Vienna, February 29, 1725; her maiden name being Violetti. Before her marriage she was reckoned one of the best dancers of that period, and was greatly admired for the grace which she displayed in all her movements. She was patronized by Lord and Lady Burlington, who gave her a fortune of six thousand pounds. She survived till October 16, 1822, and was buried in the same vault with her husband.—W. H. W.
GARTH, Sir Samuel, was born at Golam, Yorkshire. His family was one of some rank in the vicinity. At Peterhouse, Cambridge, he appears to have resided for some years, at least a sufficient time for proceeding, July, 1691, to the degree of doctor in medicine. He then came to London, to study wit and Dryden's conversation at Button's coffee-house, and physic at the college of physicians in Warwick Lane, and on the 26th of June was admitted fellow of the college. At the period of his migration to town, the celebrated contest between the College of Physicians and the Apothecaries' Company had been for some time raging. It had originated in an apparently most benevolent attempt of the former body to make effectual an edict passed by them in 1689, that all belonging to their college should let themselves be consulted gratuitously by the poor. Subsequently, on the refusal of the Company of Apothecaries to supply medicine at a cheap rate, the physicians, by a subscription raised among themselves in 1696, established a dispensary on liberal terms. It was this dispute which has made Garth an English classic. His "Dispensary," a poem in six cantos in rhyming heroic verse, describes the conflict between the two corporations as a battle, after the same method as that pursued by Boileau, and also by Swift in the Battle of the Books; only that, in Garth, the weapons are caustics, emetics, cathartics, and many other instruments of torture which the imagination may supply, and the wounds of a corresponding character. It has certainly the merit of smoothness, and some burlesque dignity; but the plot is not well concerted, and a modern reader would probably think the work tame. The interest of the actual struggle in its own day lent it spirit; and probably many touches now escape our notice altogether. At all events, it passed through several editions in a few months from its first appearance in 1699; and in 1706 a sixth edition was printed. Additions and alterations were made in each, especially in the last, and, in every case, Pope told Richardson, for the better. The celebrity of the poem seems to have procured him practice as a physician, as a like reputation did for Arbuthnot; and in 1697 he gained fame in both characters by the Harveian Latin oration, full of sarcasms against quacks, and praises of King William III. In 1702 he served as censor of the college. In 1701 he had the honour to pronounce the funeral oration over the body of John Dryden. He was indeed always ready in this way to show his veneration for genius in men of any party; but he had long been a confirmed whig himself; and in 1703 the Kit Kat Club, formed in 1702 of all the great liberal statesmen and writers, adopted him as their poet, inscribing his extempore verses to the beauties of that party—Ladies Carlisle, Essex, Hyde, and Wharton—on the club glasses. He even showed the sincerity of his partisanship by panegyrizing his patron. Lord-treasurer Godolphin, on his overthrow by Harley and the tories in 1710, and his consequent retirement. The composition was furiously assailed by St. John's tory organ, the Examiner, as possessing neither wit, nor sense, nor grammar. The attack, believed to be by Prior, Addison retorted with some personality, in the Medley, or Whig Examiner. It was not long before Garth's fidelity to his friends was rewarded; for, on the accession in 1714 of King George I. he was knighted, and, as all his biographers add, with the sword of his favourite hero, the duke of Marlborough. He was then, too, appointed physician-in-ordinary to the king and physician-general to the army. He combined with remarkable assiduity in his profession a high degree of literary ambition. It was truly said of him—"No physician knew his art more, or his trade less." He did not, however, write much, the poem of "Claremouth" in 1715 on the house of Lord Clare, afterwards the intriguing duke of Newcastle, being his chief original effort after the "Dispensary." He also undertook a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, published in 1717, by various authors, among others by Addison, in which Garth himself rendered the fourteenth book and the story of Cippus, and prefixed a very eccentric preface to the whole, wherein he declares Ovid to be as sublime a writer as Moses. But these latter compositions of his were so inferior to his earlier works, that Pope's ironical line—
" Garth did not write his own Dispensary,"
alludes to a common rumour of that day. All the whigs, however, believed in him, and so did all the wits. Pope's gratitude for his quick appreciation of his merits—
" Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise"—
procured him the dedication of the Second Pastoral. The friendship between them lasted from 1703 to Garth's death. This occurred on the 18th January, 1719, after a general weakness of constitution, which so dissatisfied him with life that he confessed to a Mr. Townley that he had once attempted suicide. As it was, in his last illness he let the distemper take its course, saying, "he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on." As to his general kindness and vivacity there is perfect unanimity; there is less certainty as to his religious and moral principles. Pope declares that "if ever there was a good christian, without knowing himself to be so, it was he." In another place, he states that he was "rather doubtful and fearful than religious," and that he died a Roman catholic. Dr. Young reports that, when dying, he sent to Addison to ask him "whether the christian religion was true?" The same doubt exists as to his general morality. Sir Samuel Garth was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill. He left an only daughter, married to the Honourable Colonel William Boyle.—(Biographia Britannica; Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Spence's Anecdotes; Addison's Works; Pope's Poems and Correspondence.)—W. S., L.
GARVE, Christian, a distinguished German philosophical writer, was born January 7, 1742, at Breslau. He studied at Frankfort and Halle, and in 1769 was appointed professor-extraordinary of philosophy at Leipsic in succession to Gellert. A few years later, however, his delicate health and melancholy temper induced him to resign this office and to return to his native place, where till his death on the 1st December, 1798, he lived in literary retirement. Though neither the author of an original system, nor even a professed follower of any one philosophical school, Garve may nevertheless claim a place among the most esteemed philosophers of Germany. His system was a judicious eclecticism, supported by a sound and comprehensive learning, which he successfully endeavoured to popularize. He was a man of the highest integrity and the most amiable manners, and so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of what he taught, that from his very deathbed (he died of cancer in the face) he
