"So skilled in drugs and verse, 'twas hard to show it, Whether was best, the doctor or the poet." The ode continues:-- "Lament, ye damsels of our London city, (Poor unprovided girls) tho' fair and witty, Who, maskt, would to his house in couples come, To understand your matrimonial doom; To know what kind of men you were to marry, And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry; Your oracle is silent, none can tell On whom his astrologick mantle fell: For he when sick refused all doctors' aid, And only to his pills devotion paid! Yet it was surely a most sad disaster, The saucy pills at last should kill their master." EPITAPH. "Here lies the corpse of Thomas Saffold, By death, in spite of physick, baffled; Who, leaving off his working loom, Did learned doctor soon become. To poetry he made pretence, Too plain to any man's own sense; But he when living thought it sin To hide his talent in napkin; Now death does doctor (poet) crowd Within the limits of a shroud." The vocation of fortune-teller was exercised not only by the quacks, but also by the apothecaries, of that period. Garth had ample foundation, in fact, for his satirical sketch of Horoscope's shop in the second canto of "The Dispensary." "Long has he been of that amphibious fry, Bold to prescribe and busie to apply; His shop the gazing vulgars' eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestick toys. Here mummies lay most reverendly stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail. Not far from some huge shark's devouring head The flying fish their finny pinions spread; Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung, And near a scaly alligator hung; In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay'd, In that, dry'd bladders and drawn teeth were laid. "An inner room receives the num'rous shoals Of such as pay to be reputed fools; Globes stand by globes, volumes by volumes lye, And planetary schemes amuse the eye. The sage, in velvet chair, here lolls at ease, To promise future health for present fees. Then, as from Tripod, solemn shams reveals, And what the stars know nothing of reveals. "One asks how soon Panthea may be won, And longs to feel the marriage fetters on; Others, convinced by melancholy proof, Enquire when courteous fates will strike them off; Some by what means they may redress the wrong, When fathers the possession keep too long; And some would know the issue of their cause, And whether gold can solder up its flaws. . . . . . "Whilst Iris his cosmetick wash would try, To make her bloom revive, and lovers die; Some ask for charms, and others philters choose, To gain Corinna, and their quartans lose."