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the writings of his contemporaries.COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Style, Miscellanies Esthetic and Literary, ed. Ashe, p. 180.

This old piece of legal biography, which has been lately republished, is one of the most delightful books in the world. Its charm does not consist in any marvellous incidents of Lord Guilford's life, or any peculiar interest attaching to his character, but in the unequalled naïveté of the writer in the singular felicity with which he has thrown himself into his subject and in his vivid delineations of all the great lawyers of his time. He was a younger brother of the Lord Keeper, to whose affection he was largely indebted, and from whom he appears to have been scarcely ever divided. His work, in nice. minuteness of detail, and living picture of motive, almost equals the auto-biographies of Benvenuto Cellini, Rousseau, and Cibber. He seems to be almost as intensely conscious of all his brother's actions, and the movements of his mind, as they were of their own. All his ideas of human greatness and excellence appear taken from the man whom he celebrates. There never was a more liberal or gentle penetration of the spirit. He was evidently the most human, the most kindly, and the most single-hearted, of flatterers. There is a beauty in his very cringing, beyond the independence of many. It is the most gentleman-like submission, the most graceful resignation of self, of which we have ever read. --TALFOURD, THOMAS NOON, 1820, North's Life of Lord Guilford, Retrospective Review, vol. 2, p. 238.

In compiling these affectionate memorials of his brothers, the writer appears to have been chiefly actuated by his regard and veneration for their memory. Having survived them all, he was distressed to find the names of those whom he had so loved and honoured, passing rapidly into oblivion. During their lives, his happiest moments were spent in their society; and after their death, he found his greatest consolation in recording their history. This he has done with a minuteness of detail, which to himself appeared to require an apology, but which, in fact, is one of the most attractive qualities of his style. His writings have the effect of introducing the reader, as it were, into

the presence of the party, so lively and natural are the touches of his pen.-RosCOE, H., 1826, ed., Lives of the Rt. Hon. Francis North, the Rt. Hon. Dudley North and Dr. John North, Preface, p. ix.

Roger North's "Life of the LordKeeper," which, like Boswell's "Life of Johnson," interests us highly, without giving us a very exalted notion of the author. Notwithstanding its extravagant praise of the hero of the tale, its inaccuracies, and its want of method, it is a most valuable piece of biography, and, with Roger's lives of his brothers, "Dudley and John," and his "Examen," ought to be studied by every one who wishes to understand the history and the manners of the reign of Charles II.-CAMPBELL, JOHN LORD, 1845-56, Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, vol. III, Life of Lord-Keeper Guilford.

One of the most entertaining books ["Life of Lord Keeper Guilford'] in our language.-KNIGHT, CHARLES, 1847-8, Half-Hours with the Best Authors.

The labour that North bestowed upon the lives of his brothers was extraordinary. The life of the lord keeper was written and rewritten again and again. Defaced though the style is by the use of some unusual words, there is a certain charm about it which few readers can resist, and the "Lives of the Norths" must always remain an English classic and a prime authority for the period with which it deals. JESSOPP, AUGUSTUS, 1895, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLI, p.

178.

The biographies and autobiography are very good literature, though Dr. Jessopp is hardly warranted in styling them English classics. They are neither planned with classic symmetry nor executed with classic elegance, but are charming from their artless loquacity and the atmosphere of fraternal affection in which they are steeped, as well as most entertaining from their wealth of anecdote and their portraits, partial, but not intentionally unfair, of remarkable men. Two elements in these books are sharply contrasted, the political and the anecdotic. The former affords a melancholy but useful representation of the factious unreason of political parties in that age, especially Roger's, and of the prejudices which kept

Englishmen apart until they learned toleration from Locke and Hoadly.-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1895, The Age of Dryden, p. 214.

The whole is written in a curious and very piquant style, strangely free from

any of the new classicism, but as strangely crossed between the older conceit and the new slang.North is Harrington plus L'Estrange. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 522.

John Arbuthnot

1667-1735

Born, at Arbuthnot, Kincardineshire, 1667; baptized 29 April. Educated at [Marischal Coll. ?] Aberdeen. Settled in London, 1691; taught mathematics. At University Coll., Oxford, as Fellow-Commoner, 6 Oct. 1694-96. Took M. D. degree, St. Andrew's University, 11 Sept. 1696. Married, about 1702. F. R. S., 30 Nov. 1704. Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne, 30 Oct. 1705; Physician in Ordinary, Nov. 1709. Fellow of Roy. Coll. of Physicians, 27 April 1710; Second Censor, 30 Sept. 1723; "Elect," 5 Oct. 1727; Harveian Orator, 18 Oct. 1727. Physician at Chelsea Hospital, 1713. Formed "Scriblerus Club" with Swift, Pope, Gay, and Parnell, 1714. Visits to France, 1714 and 1718. Il health in later years. Contrib. to "London Magazine," 1732. To Hampstead, 1734. Died, in London, 27 Feb. 1735. Buried in St. James's Church, Piccadilly. Works: "Of the Laws of Chance" (anon.), 1692; "Theses Medicæ de Secretione Animali," 1696; "An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge" (under initials: J. A., M. D.), 1697; "An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning," 1701; "Tables of the Grecian, Roman, and Jewish Measures" [1705;] "A Sermon Preach'd . at the Mercat

Cross" (anon.), 1706; "Proposals for printing a very curious discourse intitled Verdoλoyia Пoλiтekn” (anon.), 1712; "The History of John Bull" (anon. ; in six pamphlets: (i) "Law is a Bottomless Pit;" (ii.) "John Bull in his Senses;" (iii.) "John Bull still in his Senses; (iv.) "An Appendix" to preceding; (vi.) "Lewis Baboon turned Honest'), 1712; "Three Hours after Marriage" (with Gay and Pope), 1717; "Reasons humbly offer'd by the Company of Upholders" (anon.),

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1724; "Tables of Ancient Coins" (anon.), 1727; "Oratio Anniversaria Harvæiana, 1727; "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse" (3 vols.), 1727 (another ed., 4 vols., 172732); "An Essay concerning the Nature of Ailments" (2 vols.), 1731-32; "A Brief Account of Mr. John Ginglicutt's Treatise" (anon.), 1731; “An Essay concerning the Effects of Air," 1733; "Tvolt Zeavrov," 1734. [A further list of anonymous works attributed to Arbuthnot is given in Aitken's "Life and Works" of Arbuthnot, 1892.] Collected Works: In 2 vols., 1751 [1750]; enlarged ed., with memoir, 1770. Life: By G. A Aitken, 1892.-SHARP, R. FARQUHARSON, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 7.

PERSONAL

I think him as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1722, Letter to the Hon. Robert Digby, Sept. 1.

O if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my travels! but, however, he is not without fault: there is a passage in Bede highly commending the piety and learning of the Irish in that age, where, after abundance of praises, he overthrows them all, by lamenting that, alas! they kept Easter at a wrong time of the year. So our doctor has every quality and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful, but, alas! he hath a

sort of slouch in his walk!-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1725, Letter to Mr. Pope, Sept. 29.

I John Arbuthnott Doctor of Physick thus make my last Will and Testament. I recommend my soul to its mercifull Creator hoping to be saved by the Merits of Jesus Christ, and that I may be found in him not having on my own Righteousness but his which is of ffaith. I leave my body to be decently interred by my ffriends. I leave twenty pounds to each of my two sisters Elizabeth and Anne to Purchase Mourning. I leave my Greek Septuagint and Greek New Testament (the gift of my late Royal Mistress Queen Anne) to my dear son George. And I leave all the rest of my estate Goods and

Chattells to be equally divided amongst my three Children or the Survivors of them immediately after my-death in equal parts, reckoning amongst my goods what is owing unto me by my Son George; recommending unto them that mutual love and affection which I thank God I have hitherto observed amongst them. I appoint my Son George my sole Executor of this my last Will and Testament, and earnestly recommend to him the Care and Protection of his dear Sisters, and failing him (which God in his Mercy forbid) the Eldest of my surviving Daughters. I leave to my dearest and most affectionate Brother Robert my Watch.-Jo. Arbuthnott. Signed and Sealed the 5th of November1733 in the presence of Erasmus Lewis, John Bradshaw. ARBUTHNOT, JOHN, 1733, Will.

I regret the loss of Dr. Arbuthnot every hour of the day: he was the bestconditioned creature that ever breathed, and the most cheerful.-LEWIS, ERASMUS, 1737, Letter to Swift, June 30; Swift's Works, ed. Scott, vol XIX, p. 88.

Although he was justly celebrated for wit and learning, there was an excellence in his character more amiable than all his other qualifications. I mean the excellence of his heart. He has shewed himself equal to any of his contemporaries in humour and vivacity; and he was superior to most men in acts of humanity and benevolence; his very sarcasms are the satirical strokes of good nature: they are like flaps of the face given in jest, the effects of which may raise blushes, but no blackness after the blows. He

is seldom serious, except in his attacks upon vice, and then his spirit rises with a manly strength and a noble indignation.

No man exceeded him in the moral duties of life.-BOYLE, JOHN (LORD ORRERY), 1751, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Letter xx.

His imagination was almost inexhaustible, and whatever subject he treated, or was consulted upon, he immediately overflowed with all that it could possibly produce. It was at anybody's service, for as soon as he was exonerated, he did not care what became of it: insomuch that his sons, when young, have frequently made kites of his scattered papers of hints, which would have furnished good matter for folios. Not being in the least

jealous of his fame as an author, he would neither take the time nor the trouble of separating the best from the worst; he worked out the whole mine, which afterward, in the hands of skilful refiners, produced a rich vein of ore. As his imagination was always at work, he was frequently absent and inattentive in company, which made him both say and do a thousand inoffensive absurdities; but which, far from being provoking, as they commonly are, supplied new matter for conversation, and occasioned wit, both in himself and others. His social character was not more amiable than his moral character was pure and exemplary; charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said or did.

He indulged his palate to excess,

I might have said to gluttony, which gave a gross plethoric habit of body, that was the cause of his death. He lived and died a devout and sincere Christian.-CHESTERFIELD, LORD, 1763? Characters, ed. Bradshaw, vol. III, pp. 1411, 1412.

A man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active. imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Pope, Lives of the English Poets.

Arbuthnot was forgetful of himself; he was indifferent to the ambitions that prompted jealousy amongst the rest. He watched with the keenest interest the success of his brethren; he guided, suggested, helped; but he remained careless about his own fame. Convinced that amid the crowd of dunces, the best genius of the age was concentred in his own friends, he yet must have seen, as clearly as their detractors, the flaws in the charater of each. In the annals of our literature there are not a few men who have filled something of the part that he did: but none who has filled it with such complete. success of self-abnegation. It is a part that earns no wide or high-sounding fame: but it is something in an age of such envenomed detraction, and such vehemence

of party hate, to have lived revered and cherished by its men of "light and leading;" to have trained their talents, and to have condoned their faults: to have died without losing their esteem: and yet without one stain, in the midst of very general corruption, on which the keen. eyes of political partizans could fasten. -CRAIK, HENRY, 1882, The Life of Jonathan Swift, p. 371.

Arbuthnot's acts of kindness were incessant. He seems never to have wearied in doing good to those in distress, and every additional fact about him with which we are favoured serves to deepen the belief that in his character there was no trace of gall.-COURTNEY, W. P., 1892, The Academy, vol. 41, p. 415.

The manly, learned, lovable, genial, humane, and witty Dr. Arbuthnot, whose sweet face, if such an adjective be permissible in connection with the male sex, Iwould alone have drawn folk to him.WRIGHT, THOMAS, 1894, The Life of Daniel Defoe, p. 184.

THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL

1712

When I was first called to the office of historiographer to John Bull, he expressed himself to this purpose:-"Sir Humphry Polesworth, I know you are a plain dealer; it is for that reason I have chosen you for this important trust; speak the truth, and spare not." That I might fulfill those, his honorable intentions, I obtained leave to repair to and attend him in his most secret retirements; and I put the journals. of all transactions into a strong box, to be opened at a fitting occasion, after the manner of the historiographers of some Eastern monarchs.

And now,

that posterity may not be ignorant in what age so excellent a history was written (which would otherwise, no doubt, be the subject of its inquiries), I think it proper to inform the learned of future times that it was compiled when Lewis XIV. was King of France, and Philip, his grandson, of Spain; when England and Holland, in conjunction with the Emperor and the allies, entered into a war against these two princes, which lasted ten years, under the management of the Duke of Marlborough, and was put to a conclusion by the treaty of Utrecht under the ministry of the Earl of Oxford, in the year

1713.—ARBUTHNOT, JOHN, 1712, John Bull, Preface.

Dr. Arbuthnot was the sole writer of John Bull.-POPE, ALEXANDER, 1734-36, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 109.

It is an ingenious and lively attack upon the war policy of the whigs; and, if it wants the force of Swift's profounder satire, it is an admirably effective and still amusing party squib. It does not seem to be known whether Arbuthnot originated or only adopted the nickname, John Bull. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 11, p. 63. The story is told with great humour of the origin of the law-suit; of its success, which caused John Bull to contemplate leaving off his trade to turn lawyer; of the discovery that Hocus had an intrigue with John's wife; of the attorney's bill, which made John angry; and of the methods adopted by the lawyers to dissuade him from making an end of the lawsuit by accepting a composition. Arbuthnot appears to have been the first to apply the name of John Bull to the English people, and he drew the character, which has ever since been accepted as a type, of this honest, plain-dealing fellow, choleric, bold, and of a very inconstant temper. AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1892, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, p. 45.

"The History of John Bull" is not fitted to attain lasting popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and passing events. can be but vaguely imagined by readers. whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal.—DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 177. MEMOIRS OF MARTIN'S SCRIBLERUS

It has been little read, or when read, has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it.JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779-81, Pope, Lives of the English Poets.

The "Memories of Martinus Scriblerus" were first published in the quarto edition of Pope's works in 1741; they are mainly, if not exclusively, Arbuthnot's, and give the best specimen of his powers. The ridicule of metaphysical pedantry is admirable, though rather beyond popular appreciation. Other passages are directed

T

against the antiquarians and Arbuthnot's old opponent, Woodward, and his supposed discovery of an ancient shield. The account of Scriblerus's education clearly gave some hints to Sterne's "Tristram Shandy."-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. II, p. 63.

The "Memoirs of the extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus" seems to be almost entirely by Arbuthnot, but he was helped by Pope and others. We have only the first Book, and this was not printed until 1741, six years after Arbuthnot's death, when Pope included it in the volume he issued in that year. He told Spence that the design. was carried on much farther than had appeared in print; but it was stopped by the members of the club being dispersed after 1714, or being otherwise engaged.

The "Memoirs" are excellent in their kind, and the mock gravity is admirably maintained. Arbuthnot was the most learned of the wits of the time, and the piece is full of out-of-the-way knowledge. Many parts, too, involved an intimate acquaintance with medicine which he alone, of the members of the club, possessed. Most of the humour can be appreciated by any reader, but some of the ridicule poured upon philosophers and others can only be understood thoroughly by persons well read in the authors attacked. I cannot profess to agree with some critics who have placed the "Memoirs" above any other of Arbuthnot's works; they do not seem to me more interesting than the "History of John Bull," and they are marred by coarse touches not usually found in Arbuthnot's writings, though common enough in those of some of his friends. -AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1892, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, pp. 57, 58.

What Arbuthnot has left us is not only by far the best of his work, but shows how high was the range of his humour, which could unite the grave irony of Swift, in the travesty of an elaborate argument, with the dramatic characterisation of Sterne, who in "Tristram Shandy" has drawn not a little inspiration from the early chapters of Arbuthnot's fragment. The book was not published until 1741, six years after Arbuthnot's death.CRAIK, HENRY, 1894, English Prose, vol. III, p. 427.

GENERAL

Seignior Montpelier, who wrote not much but well. He seems to understand the difficulty to maintain an acquired reputation, and is therefore wiser than to hazard the losing of it by a new attempt. -MANLEY, MRS. MARY DE LA RIVIERE, 1709, New Atalantis.

The grating scribbler! whose untuned Essays
Mix the Scotch Thistle with the English Bays;
By either Phoebus preordained to ill,
The hand prescribing, or the flattering quill,
Who doubly plagues, and boasts two Arts to
kill!

-SMYTH, JAMES MOORE, 1730, One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope, occasioned by Two Epistles, lately published.

"Talking of the eminent writers in Queen Anne's reign, he observed, "I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.”JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1763, Life by Boswell.

The most distinguished collection of letters in the English language, is that of Mr. Pope, Dean Swift, and their friends; partly published in Mr. Pope's works, and partly in those of Dean Swift. This collection is, on the whole, an entertaining and agreeable one; and contains much wit and refinement. It is not, however, altogether free from the fault which I imputed to Pliny's Epistles, of too much study and refinement. In the variety of letters from different persons, contained in that collection, we find many that are written with ease, and beautiful simplicity. Those of Dr. Arbuthnot, in particular, always deserve that praise.-BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Letters, ed. Mills, Lecture xxxvii, p. 416.

Your sentiments of Dr. Arbuthnot agree entirely with mine. He had, I think, more wit and humour, and he certainly had much more virtue and learning, than either Pope or Swift.-BEATTIE, JAMES, 1785, Letter to Mrs. Montagu, Jan. 31; Beattie's Life by Forbes, vol. II, p. 357.

Satire was his chief weapon, and no man knew its value better: it was a true Highland broad-sword, calculated to cut and slash on each side; yet so keen was the instrument, that the wound soon healed, unless he meant to destroy, and not to correct.-NOBLE, MARK, 1806, A Biographical History of England, vol.111, p. 367,

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