"While _Jargon_ gave his titles on a _block_,
And styled him M.D. Acad. Budig. Soc."
His personal attacks on Martin Folkes, the president, are
caustic, but they may not be true; and on Baker, celebrated
for his microscopical discoveries, are keen. He reproaches
Folkes, in his severe dedication of the work, in all the
dignity of solemn invective.--"The manner in which you
represented me to a noble friend, while to myself you made me
much more than I deserved; the ease with which you had
excused yourself, and the solemnity with which, in the
face of Almighty God, you excused yourself again; when we
remember that the whole was done within the compass of a day;
these are surely virtues in a patron that I, of all men,
ought not to pass over in silence." Baker, in his early
days, had unluckily published a volume of lusory poems. Some
imitations of Prior's loose tales Hill makes use of to
illustrate _his_ "Philosophical Transactions." All is food for
the malicious digestion of Wit!
His anecdote of Mr. Baker's _Louse_ is a piece of secret
scientific history sufficiently ludicrous.
"The Duke of Montague was famous for his love to the whole
animal creation, and for his being able to keep a very grave
face when not in the most serious earnest. Mr. Baker, a
distinguished member of the Royal Society, had one day
entertained this nobleman and several other persons with the
sight of the peristaltic motion of the bowels in a louse, by
the microscope. When the observation was over, he was going
to throw the creature away; but the Duke, with a face that
made him believe he was perfectly in earnest, told him it
would be not only cruel, but ungrateful, in return for the
entertainment that creature had given them, to destroy it.
He ordered the boy to be brought in from whom it was procured,
and after praising the smallness and delicacy of Mr. Baker's
fingers, persuaded him carefully to replace the animal in its
former territories, and to give the boy a shilling not to
disturb it for a fortnight."--"A Review of the Works of the
Royal Society," by John Hill, M.D., p. 5.
[287] These papers had appeared in the London _Daily Advertiser_,
1754. At their close he gleaned the best, and has preserved
them in two volumes. But as Hill will never rank as a
classic, the original nonsense will be considered as most
proper for the purposes of a true collector. Woodward, the
comedian, in his lively attack on Hill, has given "a mock
Inspector," an exquisite piece of literary ridicule, in
which he has hit off the egotisms and slovenly ease of the
real ones. Never, like "The Inspector," flamed such a
provoking prodigy in the cloudy skies of Grub-street; and
Hill seems studiously to have mortified his luckless rivals
by a perpetual embroidery of his adventures in the "Walks
at Marybone," the "Rotunda at Ranelagh," spangled over with
"my domestics," and "my equipage." [One of his adventures
at Ranelagh was sufficiently unfortunate to obtain for him the
unenviable notoriety of a caricature print representing him
enduring a castigation at the Rotunda gate from an Irish
gentleman named Brown, with whose character he had made
far too free in one of his "Inspectors." Hill showed much
pusillanimity in the affair, took to his bed, and gave out
that the whole thing was a conspiracy to murder him. This
occasioned the publication of another print, in which he
is represented in bed, surrounded by medical men, who treat
him with very little respect. One insists on his fee, because
Hill has never been acknowledged as one of themselves; and
another, to his plea of want of money, responds, "Sell your
sword, it is only an encumbrance."]
[288] It is useful to remind the public that they are often played
upon in this manner by the artifices of _political writers_.
We have observed symptoms of this deception practised at
present. It is an old trick of the craft, and was greatly used
at a time when the nation seemed maddened with political
factions. In a pamphlet of "A View of London and Westminster,
or the Town-spy," 1725, I find this account:--"The _seeming
quarrel_, formerly, between _Mist's Journal_ and the _Flying
Post_ was _secretly concerted_ between themselves, in order to
decoy the eyes of all the parties on both their papers; and
the project succeeded beyond all expectation; for I have been
told that the former narrowly missed getting an estate by
it."--p. 32.
[289] Isaac Reed, in his "Repository of Fugitive Pieces of Wit and
Humour," vol. iv., in republishing "The Hilliad," has
judiciously preserved the offending "Impertinent" and the
abjuring "Inspector." The style of "The Impertinent" is
volatile and poignant. His four classes of authors are not
without humour. "There are men who write because they have
wit; there are those who write because they are hungry; there
are some of the modern authors who have a constant fund of
both these causes; and there are who will write, although they
are not instigated either by the one or by the other. The
first are all spirit; the second are all earth; the third
disclose more life, or more vapidity, as the one or the other
cause prevails; and for the last, having neither the one nor
the other principle for the cause, they show neither the one
nor the other character in the effect; but begin, continue,
and end, as if they had neither begun, continued, nor ended at
all." The first class he instances by Fielding; the second by
Smart. Of the third he says:--"The mingled wreath belongs to
Hill," that is himself; and the fourth he illustrates by the
absurd Sir William Browne.
"Those of the first rank are the most capricious and lazy of
all animals. The monkey genius would rarely exert itself, if
even idleness innate did not give way to the superior love of
mischief. The ass (that is Smart), which characters the
second, is as laborious as he is empty; he wears a ridiculous
comicalness of aspect (which was, indeed, the physiognomy of
the poor poet), that makes people smile when they see him at a
distance. His mouth opens, because he must be fed, while we
laugh at the insensibility and obstinacy that make him prick
his lips with thistles."
[290] Woodward humorously attributes Hill's attack on him to his
_jealousy_ of his successful performance of _Harlequin_, and
opens some of the secret history of Hill, by which it appears
that early in life he trod the theatrical boards. He tells us
of the extraordinary pains the prompter had taken with Hill,
in the part of Oroonoko; though, "if he had not quite
forgotten it, to very little purpose." He reminds Hill of a
dramatic anecdote, which he no doubt had forgotten. It seems
he once belonged to a strolling company at May-fair, where, in
the scene between Altamont and Lothario, the polite audience
of that place all chorused, and agreed with him, when dying he
exclaimed, "Oh, Altamont, thy genius is the stronger." He then
shows him off as the starved apothecary in _Romeo and Juliet_,
in one of his botanic peregrinations to Chelsea Garden; from
whence, it is said, he was expelled for "culling too many rare
plants"--
"I do remember an apothecary,
Culling of simples----."
Hill, who was often so brisk in his attack on the wits, had no
power of retort; so that he was always buffeting and always
buffeted.
[291] He was also satirised in a poem termed "The Pasquinade,"
published in 1752, in which the goddesses of Pertness and
Dulness join to praise him as their favourite reflex.
"Pertness saw her form distinctly shine
In none, immortal Hill! so full as thine."