lf of the poem is a panegyric on a
Lord Treasurer in being, and the rest a compliment of condolance to an
Earl that has lost the Staff. In thirty lines his patron is a river, the
primum mobile, a pilot, a victim, the sun, any thing and nothing. He
bestows increase, conceals his source, makes the machine move, teaches
to steer, expiates our offences, raises vapours, and looks larger as he
sets; nor is the choice of his expression less exquisite, than that of
his similies. For commerce to run[4], passions to be poized, merit to be
received from dependence, and a machine to be serene, is perfectly
new. The Dr. has a happy talent at invention, and has had the glory
of enriching our language by his phrases, as much as he has improved
medicine by his bills.' The critic then proceeds to consider the poem
more minutely, and to expose it by enumerating particulars. Mr. Addison
in a Whig Examiner published September 14, 1710, takes occasion to rally
the fierce over-bearing spirit of the Tory Examiner, which, he says, has
a better title to the name of the executioner. He then enters into the
defence of the Dr's. poem, and observes, 'that the phrase of passions
being poized, and retrieving merit from dependence, cavilled at by the
critics, are beautiful and poetical; it is the same cavilling spirit,
says he, that finds fault with that expression of the Pomp of Peace,
among Woes of War, as well as of Offering unasked.' This general piece
of raillery which he passes on the Dr's. considering the treasurer in
several different views, is that which might fall upon any poem in
Waller, or any other writer who has diversity of thoughts and allusions,
and though it may appear a pleasant ridicule to an ignorant reader, is
wholly groundless and unjust.

Mr. Addison's Answer is, however, upon the whole, rather a palliation,
than a defence. All the skill of that writer could never make that
poetical, or a fine panegyric, which is in its own nature removed
from the very appearance of poetry; but friendship, good nature, or a
coincidence of party, will sometimes engage the greatest men to combat
in defence of trifles, and even against their own judgment, as Dryden
finely expresses it in his Address to Congreve, "Vindicate a friend."

In 1711 Dr. Garth wrote a dedication for an intended edition of
Lucretius, addressed to his late Majesty, then Elector of Brunswick,
which has been admired as one of the purest compositions in the Latin
tongue that