These verses, however they may express the gratitude, and candour of the author, and may contain no more than truth of the personage to whom they are addressed, yet, every reader of taste will perceive, that the verses are by no means equal to the rest of Dr. Garth’s poetical writings.  Remarks upon these verses were published in a Letter to the Examiner, September 7, 1710.  The author observes, ’That there does not appear either poetry, grammar, or design in the composition of this poem; the whole (says he) seems to be, as the sixth edition of the Dispensary, happily expresses it, a strong, unlaboured, impotence of thought.  I freely examine it by the new test of good poetry, which the Dr. himself has established.  Pleasing at first sight:  Has this piece the least title even to that? or if we compare it to the only pattern, as he thinks, of just writing in this kind, Ovid; is there any thing in De Tristibus so wild, so childish, so flat? what can the ingenious Dr. mean, or at what time could he write these verses? half 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.”