l Garth,
the physician, 'well-natured Garth,' as Pope called him. He won his fame
by his satire on the apothecaries in the shape of a poem called 'The
Dispensary.' When delivering the funeral oration over Dryden's body,
which had been so long unburied that its odour began to be disagreeable,
he mounted a tub, the top of which fell through and left the doctor in
rather an awkward position. He gained admission to the Kit-kat in
consequence of a vehement eulogy on King William which he had introduced
into his Harveian oration in 1697.[13] It was Garth, too, who
extemporized most of the verses which were inscribed on the
toasting-glasses of their club, so that he may, _par excellence_, be
considered the Kit-kat poet. He was the physician and friend of
Marlborough, with whose sword he was knighted by George I., who made him
his physician in ordinary. Garth was a very jovial man, and, some say,
not a very religious one. Pope said he was as good a Christian as ever
lived, 'without knowing it.' He certainly had no affectation of piety,
and if charitable and good-natured acts could take a man to heaven, he
deserved to go there. He had his doubts about faith, and is said to have
died a Romanist. This he did in 1719, and the poor and the Kit-kat must
both have felt his loss. He was perhaps more of a wit than a poet,
although he has been classed at times with Gray and Prior; he can
scarcely take the same rank as other verse-making doctors, such as
Akenside, Darwin, and Armstrong. He seems to have been an active,
healthy man--perhaps too much so for a poet--for it is on record that he
ran a match in the Mall with the Duke of Grafton, and beat him. He was
fond, too, of a hard frost, and had a regular speech to introduce on
that subject: 'Yes, sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, sir--very
wholesome weather, sir--kills trees, sir--very good for man, sir.'

Old Marlborough had another intimate friend at the club, who was
probably one of its earliest members. This was Arthur Maynwaring, a
poet, too, in a way, but more celebrated at this time for his _liaison_
with Mrs. Oldfield, the famous but disreputable actress, with whom he
fell in love when he was forty years old, and whom he instructed in the
niceties of elocution, making her rehearse her parts to him in private.
Maynwaring was born in 1668, educated at Oxford, and destined for the
bar, for which he studied. He began life as a vehement Jacobite, and
even supported that party in sund