JOHN ARBUTHNOT
(1667-1735)
rbuthnot's place in literature depends as much on his association with the wits of his day as on his own satirical and humorous productions. Many of these have been published in the collections of Swift, Gay, Pope, and others, and cannot be identified. The task of verifying them is rendered more difficult by the fact that his son repudiated a collection claiming to be his 'Miscellaneous Works,' published in 1750.
John Arbuthnot was born in the manse near Arbuthnot Castle, Kincardineshire, Scotland, April 29th, 1667. He was the son of a Scotch Episcopal clergyman, who was soon to be dispossessed of his parish by the Presbyterians in the Revolution of 1688. His children, who shared his Jacobite sentiments, were forced to leave Scotland; and John, after finishing his university course at Aberdeen, and taking his medical degree at St. Andrews, went to London and taught mathematics. He soon attracted attention by a keen and satirical 'Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge,' published in 1697. By a fortunate chance he was called to attend the Prince Consort (Prince George of Denmark), and in 1705 was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne. If we may believe Swift, the agreeable Scotchman at once became her favorite attendant. His position at court was strengthened by his friendships with the great Tory statesmen.
JOHN ARBUTHNOT
Arbuthnot's best remembered work is 'The History of John Bull'; not because many people read or will ever read the book itself, but because it fixed a typical name and a typical character ineffaceably in the popular fancy and memory. He is credited with having been the first to use this famous sobriquet for the English nation; he was certainly the first to make it universal, and the first to make that burly, choleric, gross-feeding, hard-drinking, blunt-spoken, rather stupid and decidedly gullible, but honest and straightforward character one of the stock types of the world. The book appeared as four separate pamphlets: the first being entitled 'Law is a Bottomless Pit, Exemplified in the Case of Lord Strutt, John Bull, Nicholas Frog, and Lewis Baboon, Who Spent All They Had in a Law Suit'; the second, 'John Bull in His Senses'; the third, 'John Bull Still in His Senses'; and the fourth, 'Lewis Baboon Turned Honest, and John Bull Politician.' Published in 1712, these were at once attributed to Swift. But Pope says, "Dr. Arbuthnot was the sole writer of 'John Bull'"; and Swift gives us still more conclusive evidence by writing, "I hope you read 'John Bull.' It was a Scotch gentleman, a friend of mine, that writ it; but they put it on to me." In his humorous preface Dr. Arbuthnot says:--
"When I was first called to the office of historiographer to John Bull, he expressed himself to this purpose:--'Sir Humphrey 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 Louis 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."