No rest that throbbing slave may ask, For ever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then kindling each decaying part Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. But warmed with that unchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master's own." There is an almost irresistible temptation to linger over Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' books, so intensely interesting is his personality and so fascinating is his work. But several other eminent poets of the profession demand attention. To Crabbe's connection with surgery I have already incidentally referred, and inasmuch as he early abandoned the calling for the ministry, little need be said except that his youthful experience may have aided him in writing a scathing denunciation of the Quack, who believed wholly in the potence of "oxymel of squills," and of the Parish Doctor, who "first insults the victim whom he kills." The poet was a severe castigator, and was never less forbearing with the lash than when these impostors of his day were under his hand for flagellation. In Mark Akenside we come to a better specimen of the class which we are considering. At the age of twenty he went to Leyden, and three years later became, (as Dr. Johnson writes) "a doctor of physick, having, according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thesis." In the same year he published "The Pleasures of the Imagination," his greatest work. This was followed by a collection of odes, but he still sought a livelihood as a physician. Little success attended him, however, and Dr. Johnson records that Akenside was known as a poet better than as a doctor, and would have been reduced to great exigencies but for the generosity of an ardent friend. "Thus supported, he gradually advanced in medical reputation, but never attained any great extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great city," his biographer continues musingly, "seems to be the mere play-thing of Fortune; his degree of reputation is, for the most part, totally casual; they that employ him, know not his excellence; they that reject him, know not his deficiency." Yet it was otherwise with Sir Samuel Garth, doctor and poet, of whom Johnson himself records that "by his conversation and accomplishments he obtained a very extensive practice." His principal poem was "The Dispensary," relating to a controversy of the time between the College of Physicians, who desired to give gratuitous advice to the poor, and the Apothecaries, who wished to keep up the high price of medicine. Garth was