10
(Letter lxv).
l. 17. -----
"No, no: I've other contests, etc." This couplet is
not in the first version. The old building of the College of
Physicians was in Warwick Lane; and the reference is to the
long-pending dispute, occasionally enlivened by personal
collision, between the Fellows and Licentiates respecting the
exclusion of certain of the latter from Fellowships. On this
theme Bonnell Thornton, himself an M.B. like Goldsmith, wrote a
satiric additional canto to Garth's 'Dispensary', entitled 'The
Battle of the Wigs', long extracts from which are printed in
'The Gentleman's Magazine' for March, 1768, p. 132. The same
number also reviews 'The Siege of the Castle of Aesculapius, an
heroic Comedy, as it is acted in Warwick-Lane'. Goldsmith's
couplet is, however, best illustrated by the title of one of
Sayer's caricatures, 'The March of the Medical Militants to the
Siege of Warwick-Lane-Castle in the Year' 1767.
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