Note 286 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)
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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 illæ lachrymæ! 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 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.