Another member, almost as well known in his day, was Sir Samuel 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 sundry pieces; but like some others, he was easily converted, when, on coming to town, he found it more fashionable to be a Whig.  He held two or three posts under the Government, whose cause he now espoused:  had the honour of the dedication of ‘The Tatler’ to him by Steele, and died suddenly in 1712.  He divided his fortune between his sister and his mistress, Mrs. Oldfield, and his son by the latter.  Mrs. Oldfield must have grown rich in her sinful career, for she could afford, when ill, to refuse to take her salary from the theatre, though entitled to it.  She acted best in Vanbrugh’s ‘Provoked Husband,’ so well, in fact, that the manager gave her an extra fifty pounds by way of acknowledgment.