Katherine Blount’s copy of the second edition of Samuel Garth’s The Dispensary (1699)

by William Poole

Previous posts on this blog (see here and here) have revealed to us the book ownership of Katherine Blount (d. 1753), wife of Sir Thomas Pope Blount (1670–1731), the second baronet. The blog has so far traced eleven of her books—or rather evidence for ownership of eleven books, for four are known only through report. (All her inscriptions traced to date follow her marriage in 1695, as they employ her married name of Blount, rather than her maiden name of Butler.) I would like to add one more to this list, a copy of Samuel Garth’s celebrated mock-epic, The Dispensary (London, 1699), on the feud among London’s physicians and apothecaries concerning dispensing medicines gratis to the poor.

I acquired this book myself in June 2011 via the internet from a Los Angeles bookdealer. I have several early editions of this poem, because they are fairly commonly, even typically, annotated, the chief and pleasurably conspiratorial task of the reader being—as it had been with John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel—to identify which historical personages lie hidden under poetical ciphers (e.g. ‘Querpo’ for the physician Dr George Howe), as well as those sporting the customary libel-dodging fig-leaf dash (e.g. ‘Lord De——re’ for Lord Devonshire). Katherine Blount’s copy does not disappoint.

Katherine acquired this book, a copy of the second edition, very soon after its first appearance, as her inscription records that she received it from her cousin by marriage, Henry Blount, on 27 May 1699.

This is Henry of Blount’s Hall, born in the Strand in 1675. He was educated at Christ Church, went into the military, served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Foot Guards, but was killed young in 1704 in the Battle of Schellenburg, one of the engagements of the War of the Spanish Succession. Henry was the son of Charles, the famous Deist writer and younger brother of Thomas Pope Blount Sr, the first baronet, an equally famous if less notorious writer than brother Charles, who had preferred the genres of the essay and the biobibliography, and who had presented to Katherine a copy of the 1697, third edition of his Essays. So the Henry who gave Katherine this book was properly her husband’s first cousin, and she had already received at least one book from his father.[1]

The Dispensary was a publishing sensation: it went through three editions in 1699 alone, distinguished as such on their title-pages; by 1768 it had reached its eleventh. The first printed merely Garth’s poem, but the second and third sported various prefatory materials, including four commendatory poems, of which the final is by one ‘H. Blount’, almost certainly ‘our’ Henry Blount. Now Henry gave his cousin’s wife a copy of this second edition, presumably hot off the press, and so in effect he was presenting her with a modern classic in which he himself now proudly featured.[2]

Katherine’s copy is further distinguished by the amount of annotation it bears. Garth’s poem, as mock-epic, had allegorised its main protagonists by giving them entirely new names, a common tactic. The reader was invited to ‘crack the code’ of the poem, and to facilitate this manuscript ‘keys’ to the poem were circulated, eventually making it into print, and indeed thereafter often accompanying later editions of the poem. Garth himself probably initiated this process: a letter of his, of 1699 or just perhaps 1700, to Arthur Charlett of University College, Oxford, includes a key in his own hand.[3] Now there is a key in Katherine’s copy in the front end-papers, albeit the page was at some subsequent point too closely courted by candle, and is now rather damaged at the edges. Then, throughout the text, like many other readers, identifications of characters have been added where needed. Garth’s poem of course invited this sort of engagement; but this is still an impressively engaged copy.[4] What I would say is that the key does not seem to me to be in the hand of Katherine’s signature, but the annotations are probably in the hand of the key. Let the reader judge!

Here is the (damaged) manuscript key at the front of the book (the larger stains indicate that there was an original leather binding wrapped around; the copy is now elegantly rebound in modern quarter-calf), with a second picture with a tiny loose fragment restored:

And here are some characteristic annotated extracts:

What I would like to know is whether this hand can be identified with either the donor or with later figures associated with Katherine—or just possibly with Katherine herself when not writing ownership inscriptions. I doubt this book passed out of her hands within her lifetime. And I have fully collated neither key nor annotations against surviving keys and copies: so I would welcome further research into this matter.

Finally, of Katherine’s books traced so far, her ownership inscriptions are added to books often printed quite a long time ago: her 1656 Edward Reynolds was gifted to her in 1696; her 1662 Glanvill and 1673 Bacon were both acquired in 1697; her 1678 Willughby in 1738; her 1690 Pepys in 1701; her 1692 Ben Jonson was bought by her in 1699; her 1695 John Somers in 1705. A book by Basil Kennett published in 1721 was bequeathed to her in 1734. These are gaps of frequently decades. There have been two exceptions so far: we have seen that Blount Senior gave Katherine a book of his own presumably upon publication; and the final book noted by Sarah Lindenbaum in her post on this blog, a Xenophon of 1710, was a present from the Duchess of Marlborough in the year of publication. We know of so few of her books that it is rash to generalize, but on this evidence Katherine typically came into ownership of books that had already been in circulation for some time. Her copy of Garth is a further exception, and an interesting one, because we know that a very literary uncle by marriage had presented her with a book of his own writing; and now we have one from his son, containing a poem of his own composition. 

New College, Oxford

Source: book in private ownership. All images reproduced with permission.

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[1] For genealogical material I am indebted, like previous posters on this blog, to Lady Jane Van Koughnet’s A History of Tyttenhanger (London: Marcus Ward & Co., 1895).

[2] The poem has been edited in volume six of the Yale University Press series Poems on Affairs of State (1970, ed. by F. H. Ellis). Indispensable remain John F. Sena, ‘Samuel Garth’s The Dispensary’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15 (1974), 639–48, and C. C. Booth, ‘Sir Samuel Garth, FRS: the dispensary poet’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 40 (1985–6), 125–45; the bibliography of the poem was put on a proper footing by Pat Rogers, ‘The Publishing History of Garth’s Dispensary: Some ‘Lost’ and Pirated Editions’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 5 (1971), 167–77.

[3] Bodleian, MS Ballard 24, fols. 111r–112v (113r is another key, not in Garth’s hand); J. F. Sena, ‘The letters of Samuel Garth’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 78 (1974), 69–94, at 93–4.

[4] Just flipping through the Bodleian copies: the first edition in the library possibly once belonged to the great Greek scholar Humphrey Hody, as it is in a volume, 4^o P 19 Jur, with some titles that certainly did, but it is unannotated. A copy of the second edition, G. Pamph. 1594(1), is heavily cropped but sports dozens of identifications placed in the margins, and is followed by printed key. A copy of the third edition, Godw. Pamph. 1570(4), is particularly full, with all blanks filled in, many interlinear identifications, some giving alternative possibilities, and even a couplet on Garth at the end. Another copy of the third edition, at Gough London 257, is comparably annotated, the annotator being Samuel Bishop, Fellow of St John’s, Oxford 1753, whom Gough identifies as the headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ School of that name; he was a poet too.