SIR JOHN HILL WITH THE ROYAL SOCIETY, FIELDING, SMART, &c. A Parallel between Orator HENLEY and Sir JOHN HILL-his love of the Science of Botany, with the fate of his "Vegetable System"-ridicules scientific Collectors; his "Dissertation on Royal Societies," and his "Review of the Works of the Royal Society "-compliments himself that he is NOT a Member-successful in his attacks on the Experimentalists, but loses his spirit in encountering the Wits-"The Inspector"-a paper-war with FIELDING -a literary stratagem-battles with SMART and WOODWARD-HILL appeals to the Nation for the Office of Keeper of the Sloane Collection-closes his life by turning Empiric.-Some Epigrams on HILL-his Miscellaneous Writings. In the history of literature, we discover some who have opened their career with noble designs, and with no deficient powers, yet unblest with stoic virtues, having missed, in their honourable labours, those rewards they had anticipated, they have exhibited a sudden transition of character, and have left only a name proverbial for its dis grace. tise on Gems," from Theophrastus, procured for him the warm friendship of the eminent members of the Royal Society. To this critical period of the lives of Henley and of Hill, their resemblance is striking; nor is it less from the moment the surprising revolution in their characters occurred. Pressed by the wants of life, they lost its decencies. Henley attempted to poise himself against the University; Hill, against the Royal Society. Rejected by these learned bodies, both these Cains of literature, amid their luxuriant ridicule of eminent men, still evince some claims to rank among them. The one prostituted his genius in his Our own literature exhibits two extraordinary characters, indelibly marked by the same traditional odium. The wit and acuteness of Orator HENLEY, and the science and vivacity of the versatile Sir JOHN HILL, must separate them from those who plead the same motives for abjuring all" Lectures;" the other, in his "Inspectors." moral restraint, without having ever furnished the world with a single instance that they were capable of forming nobler views. Never two authors were more constantly pelted with epigrams, or buffeted in literary quarrels. They have met with the same fate; covered with This orator and this knight would admit of a the same odium. Yet Sir John Hill, this despised close parallel; both as modest in their youth as man, after all the fertile absurdities of his literary afterwards remarkable for their effrontery. Their life, performed more for the improvement of the youth witnessed the same devotedness to study," Philosophical Transactions," and was the cause with the same inventive and enterprising genius. Hill projected and pursued a plan of botanical travels, to form a collection of rare plants: the patronage he received was too limited, and he suffered the misfortune of having anticipated the national taste for the science of botany by half a century. Our young philosopher's valuable "Trea *The moral and literary character of Henley has been developed in "Calamities of Authors." of diffusing a more general taste for the science of botany, than any other contemporary. His real ability extorts that regard which his misdirected ingenuity, instigated by vanity, and often by more worthless motives, had lost for him in the world t. + The twenty-six folios of his "Vegetable System," with many others, testify his love and his labour. It contains 1600 plates, representing 26,000 different figures of plants from nature At the time that Hill was engaged in several lagh ; was visible at routs; and sate at the theatre large compilations for the booksellers, his em- a tremendous arbiter of taste, raising about him ployers were desirous that the honours of an tumults and divisions *; and in his " Inspectors," F. R. S. should ornament his title-page. This a periodical paper which he published in the versatile genius, however, during these graver London Daily Advertiser, he retailed all the great works, had suddenly emerged from his learned matters relating to himself, and all the little garret, and, in the shape of a fashionable lounger, matters he collected in his rounds relating to rolled in his chariot from the Bedford to Rane- others. Among other personalities, he indulged his satirical fluency on the scientific collectors. The Antiquarian Society were twitted as medalscrapers and antediluvian knife-grinders; conchologists were turned into cockleshell merchants; and the naturalists were made to record pompous histories of stittle-backs and cockchafers. Cautioned by Martin Folkes, president of the Royal Society, not to attempt his election, our enraged comic philosopher, who had preferred his jests to his friends, now discovered that he had lost three hundred at once. Hill could not obtain three signatures to his recommendation. Such was the real, but, as usual, not the ostensible, motive of his formidable attack on the Royal Society. He produced his "Dissertation on Royal Societies, in a letter from a Sclavonian nobleman to his friend, 1751;" a humorous prose satire, exhibiting a ludicrous description of a tumultuous meeting at the Royal Society, contrasted with the decorum observed in the French Academy; and, moreover, he added a conversazione in a coffeehouse between some of the members. only. This publication ruined the author, whose widow (the sister of Lord Ranelagh) published "An Address to the Public, by the Hon. Lady Hill, setting forth the consequences of the late Sir John Hill's acquaintance with the Earl of Bute, 1787.”—I should have noticed it in the "Calamities of Authors." It offers a sad and mortifying lesson to the votary of science who aspires to a noble enterprise. Lady Hill complains of the patron; but a patron, however great, cannot always raise the public taste to the degree required to afford the only true patronage which can animate and reward an author. Her detail is impressive: "Sir John Hill had just wrote a book of great elegance-I think it was called Exotic Botanywhich he wished to have presented to the king, and therefore named it to Lord Bute. His lordship waived that, saying, that he had a greater object to propose ;' and shortly after laid before him a plan of the most voluminous, magnificent, and costly work that ever man attempted. I Such was the declaration of war, in a first act tremble when I name its title—because I think of hostility; but the pitched-battle was fought in the severe application which it required killed" A Review of the Works of the Royal Society, in him; and I am sure the expense ruined his for- eight parts, 1751." This literary satire is nothing tune- The Vegetable System.' This work was less than a quarto volume, resembling, in its form to consist of 26 volumes folio, containing 1600 and manner, the Philosophical Transactions themcopper-plates, the engraving of each cost four selves; printed as if for the convenience of guineas; the paper was of the most expensive members to enable them to bind the Review with kind; the drawings by the first hands. The the work reviewed. Voluminous pleasantry incurs printing was also a very weighty concern; and the censure of that tedious trifling, which it designs many other articles, with which I am unacquainted. to expose. In this literary facetia, however, no Lord Bute said, that the expense had been con- inconsiderable knowledge is interspersed with the sidered, and that Sir John Hill might rest assured ridicule. Perhaps Hill might have recollected the his circumstances should not be injured.' Thus successful attempts of Stubbe on the Royal Society, he entered upon and finished his destruction. who contributed that curious knowledge which he The sale bore no proportion to the expense. After 'The Vegetable System' was completed, Lord Bute proposed another volume to be added, which Sir John strenuously opposed; but his lordship repeating his desire, Sir John complied, lest his lordship should find a pretext to cast aside repeated promises of ample provision for himself and family. But this was the crisis of his fate- observes, was of no small service to him; as, he died." Lady Hill adds :-"He was a cha-without indulging in these respects, he could not racter on which every virtue was impressed." have undergone the fatigue and study inseparable The domestic partiality of the widow cannot alter from the execution of his vast designs."-Short the truth of the narrative of " The Vegetable Sys- Account of the Life, Writings, and Character, of tem," and its twenty-six tomes. the late Sir John Hill, M.D. Edinburgh, 1779. *His apologist forms this excuse for one then affecting to be a student and a rake :-" Though engaged in works which required the attention of a whole life, he was so exact an economist of his time, that he scarcely ever missed a public amusement for many years; and this, as he somewhere pretended the Royal Society wanted; and with this knowledge he attempted to combine the humour of Dr. King*. Hill's rejection from the Royal Society, to another man would have been a puddle to step over; but he tells a story, and cleanly passes on, with impudent adroitness t. • Hill planned his Review with good sense. He says:-" If I am merry in some places, it ought to be considered that the subjects are too ridiculous for serious criticism. That the work, however, might not be without its real use, an Error is nowhere exposed without establishing a Truth in its place." He has incidentally thrown out much curious knowledge; such as his plan for forming a Hortus Siccus, &c. The Review itself may still be considered both as curious and entertaining. In exposing their deficiencies, as well as their redundancies, Hill only wishes, as he tells us, that the Society may by this means become ashamed of what it has been, and that the world may know that he is NOT a member of it till it is an honour to a man to be so!-This was telling the world, with some ingenuity, and with no little impudence, that the Royal Society would not admit him as a member. He pretends to give a secret anecdote, to explain the cause of this rejection. Hill, in every critical conjuncture of his affairs, and they were frequent ones, had always a story to tell, or an evasion, which served its momentary purpose. When caned by an Irish gentleman at Ranelagh, and his personal courage, rather than his stoicism, was suspected, he published a story of his having once caned a person whom he called Mario; on which a wag, considering Hill as a Prometheus, wrote, "To beat one man great Hill was fated. What man?-a man whom he created!" We shall see the story he turned to his purpose, when pressed hard by Fielding. In the present instance, in a letter to a foreign correspondent, who had observed his name on the list of the Correspondents of the Royal Society, Hill said: "You are to know, that I have the honour NOT to be a Member of the Royal Society of London.”— This letter lay open on his table when a member, upon his accustomed visit, came in, and in his absence read it. "And we are not to wonder (says Hill), that he who could obtain intelligence in this manner could also divulge it. Hinc illa lachryma! Hence all the animosities that have since disturbed this Philosophic world." While Hill insolently congratulates himself that he is not a Member of the Royal Society, he has most evidently shown that he had no objection to be the Hill, however, though he used all the freedom of a satirist, by exposing many ridiculous papers, taught the Royal Society a more cautious selection. member of any society, which would enrol his name among them. He obtained his Medical Degree from no honourable source; and another title, which he affected, he mysteriously contracted into barbaric dissonance. Hill entitled himself Acad. Reg. Scient. Burd. &c. Soc. To which Smart, in the Hilliad, alludes"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. It could, however, obtain no forgiveness from the parties it offended; and while the respectable men whom Hill had the audacity to attack, Martin Folkes, the friend and successor of Newton, and Henry Baker, the Naturalist, were above his censure, his own reputation remained in the hands of his enemies. While Hill was gaining over the laughers on his side, that volatile populace soon discovered that the fittest object to be laughed at was our literary Proteus himself. The most egregious egotism alone could have induced this versatile being, engaged in laborious works, to venture to give the town the daily paper of "The Inspector," which he supported for about two years. It was a light scandalous chronicle all the week, with a seventh-day sermon. His utter contempt for the genius of his contemporaries, and the bold conceit of his own, often rendered the motley pages amusing. "The Inspector" became, indeed, the instrument of his own martyrdom; but his impudence looked like magnanimity; for he endured, with undiminished spirit, the most biting satires, the most wounding epigrams, and more palpable castigations". His vein of pleasantry ran more freely in his attacks on the Royal Society than in his other literary quarrels. When Hill had not to banter ridiculous experimentalists, but to encounter wits, his reluctant spirit soon bowed its head. Suddenly even his pertness loses its vivacity; he becomes drowsy with dulness, and, conscious of the dubiousness of his own cause, he sculks away terrified: he felt that the mask of quackery and impudence which he usually wore was to be pulled off by the hands now extended against him. A humorous warfare of wit opened between Fielding, in his "Covent Garden Journal," and Hill, in his "Inspector." The Inspector had made the famous lion's head, at the Bedford, which the genius of Addison and Steele had once ani 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." 46 mated, the receptacle of his wit; and the wits asserted, of this now inutile lignum, that it was reduced to a mere state of blockheadism. Fielding occasionally gave a facetious narrative of a paper war between the forces of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, the literary hero of the Covent Garden Journal, and the army of Grub Street: it formed an occasional literary satire. Hill's lion, no longer Addison's or Steele's, is not described without humour. Drawcansir's "troops are kept in awe by a strange mixed monster, not much unlike the famous chimera of old. For while some of our Reconnoiterers tell us that this monster has the appearance of a lion, others assure us that his ears are much longer than those of that generous beast." Hill ventured to notice this attack on his "blockhead ;" and, as was usual with him, had some secret history to season his defence with. "The author of Amelia, whom I have only once seen, told me, at that accidental meeting, he held the present set of writers in the utmost contempt; and that, in his character of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, he should treat them in the most unmerciful manner. He assured me he had always excepted me; and after honouring me with some encomiums, he proceeded to mention a conduct which would be, he said, useful to both; this was, the amusing our readers with a mock fight; giving blows that would not hurt, and sharing the advantage in silence t." Thus, by reversing the fact, Hill contrived to turn aside the frequent stories against him by a momentary artifice, arresting or dividing public opinion. The truth was, more probably, as Fielding relates it, and the story, as we shall see, then becomes quite a different affair. At all events, Hill incurred the censure of the traitor who violates a confidential intercourse. "And if he lies not, must at least betray." POPE. + 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 Townspy, 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. Q Fielding lost no time in reply. To have brought Inspector" were the same individual? The style down the Inspector from his fastnesses into the is a specimen of persiflage; the thin sparkling open field, was what our new General only wanted: thought; the pert vivacity, that looks like wit a battle was sure to be a victory. Our critical without wit; the glittering bubble, that rises in Drawcansir has performed his part, with his in- emptiness ;-even its author tells us, in "The different puns, but his natural facetiousness. Inspector," it is "the most pert, the most pretending," &c. "It being reported to the General that a hill must be levelled, before the Bedford coffee-house could be taken, orders were given; but this was afterwards found to be a mistake; for this hill was only a little paltry dunghill, and had long before been levelled with the dirt.-The General was then informed of a report which had been spread by his lowness, the Prince of Billingsgate, in the Grubstreet army, that his Excellency had proposed, by a secret treaty with that Prince, to carry on the war only in appearance, and so to betray the common cause; upon which his Excellency said with a smile: If the betrayer of a private treaty could ever deserve the least credit, yet his Lowness here must proclaim himself either a liar or a fool. None can doubt but that he is the former, if he hath feigned this treaty; and I think few would scruple to call him the latter, if he had rejected it.' The General then declared the fact stood thus: His Lowness came to my tent on an affair of his own. I treated him, though a commander in the enemy's camp, with civility, and even kindness. I told him, with the utmost goodhumour, I should attack his Lion; and that he might, if he pleased, in the same manner defend him; from which, said I, no great loss can happen on either side-'" Smart, in return for our Janus-faced critic's treatment, balanced the amount of debtor and creditor with a pungent Dunciad "The Hilliad.” Hill, who had heard of the rod in pickle, anticipated the blow, to break its strength; and, according to his adopted system, introduced himself and Smart, with a story of his having recommended the bard to his bookseller, "who took him into salary on my approbation. I betrayed him into the profession, and having starved upon it, he has a right to abuse me." This story was formally denied by an advertisement from Newbery, the bookseller. "The Hilliad" is a polished and pointed satire. 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 "The Inspector" slunk away, and never returned either by the one or by the other. The first are to the challenge. During his inspectorship, he invented a whimsical literary stratagem, which ended in his receiving a castigation more lasting than the honours performed on him at Ranelagh, by the cane of a warm Hibernian. Hill seems to have been desirous of abusing certain friends whom he had praised in the "Inspectors;" so volatile, like the loves of coquettes, are the literary friendships of the "Scribleri." As this could not be done with any propriety there, he published the first number of a new paper, entitled "The Impertinent." Having thus relieved his private feelings, he announced the cessation of this new enterprise in his "Inspectors," and congratulated the public on the ill reception it had given to the "Impertinent," applauding them for their having shown by this, that "their indignation was superior to their curiosity." With impudence all his own, he adds, "It will not be easy to say too much in favour of the candour of the town, which has despised a piece that cruelly and unjustly attacked Mr. Smart the poet." What innocent soul could have imagined that " The Impertinent" and "The 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." |