Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/76

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Arbuthnot
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Arbuthnot

distinguish his share. After the death of Queen Anne he took part, with Pope and Gay, in the silly farce called 'Three Hours after Marriage,' in which his old enemy Woodward is once more ridiculed, and which, being unworthy of all the three authors, was deservedly damned in 1717. Another trifle, called 'A Brief Account of Mr. John Ginglicutt's treatise concerning the Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients,' is identified as Arbuthnot's by letters to Swift from Pulteney (9 Feb. 1731) and Pope (1 Dec. 1731); but Pope's view that it is of 'little vakie' seems to be better founded than Pulteney's admiration of its humour. Arbuthnot had published about 1707 a collection of 'Tables of Grecian, Roman, and Jewish Measures, Weights, and Coins reduced to the English Standard,' and dedicated to Prince George of Denmark. He republished these in 1727, with preliminary dissertations and with a dedicatory poem to the king by his son Charles, then a student of Christ Church, for whose benefit, he tells us, they were again printed. The death of this son in 1731 was a severe blow to Arbuthnot, and is mentioned with pathetic resignation in the father's letter to Swift, 13 Jan. 1732-3. Arbuthnot's health had long been uncertain. Swift notices, in the 'Journal to Stella' (4 Oct. 1711), that the doctor was suffering from symptoms of stone. In 1723 he tells Swift that he is as cheerful as ever on public affairs, 'with a great stone in his right kidney, and a family of men and women to provide for.' His characteristic cheerfulness seems to have declined under illness and domestic trouble, and some of his later letters express some sympathy with Swift's misanthropical views. In his last years he published three medical treatises: 'An Essay concerning the Nature of Aliments and the Choice of them' (1731); 'Practical Rules of Diet in the various Constitutions and Characters of Human Bodies' (1732); and an 'Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies' (1733). He retired for a time to Hampstead in 1734, to try the effect of the air, and there wrote touching letters to Pope (17 July) and to Swift (4 Oct. 1734), taking leave of them with affectionate goodwill. 'A recovery in my case and in my age,' he wrote, 'is impossible; the kindest wish of my friends is euthanasia.' He died peacefully, though in much suffering, 27 Feb. 1734-5.

Arbuthnot had two sons—Charles, mentioned above, and George, who became secondary in the Remembrancer's Office—and two daughters, who died unmarried. George, whose melancholy is contrasted with his father's cheerfulness by Swift's friend Erasmus Lewis, was one of Pope's executors; Pope left to him a portrait of Bolingbroke and a watch given by the King of Sardinia to Peterborough, and by Peterborough to Pope. He also bequeathed 200l. to George and 200l. to his sister Ann Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot's acknowledged works are given above. Two volumes, called 'The Miscellaneous Works of the late Dr. Arbuthnot,' were published at Glasgow in 1751. George Arbuthnot advertised that they were not his father's works, but 'an imposition upon the public' They were republished in 1770, with a few additional pieces and a life, the accuracy of which was admitted by George Arbuthnot (see Biog. Brit. 1778). The collection has no authority, but includes the following, which were clearly Arbuthnot's: the 'Usefulness of Mathematical Learning,' the 'Scolding of the Ancients,' the 'Examination of Woodward,' a sermon at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh (see Elwin's Pope, Letters, ii. 489), and a poem called Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, first printed by Dodsley in 1748, with Arbuthnot's name. The 'Masquerade,' a poem, is probably Fielding's, with whose 'Grubstreet Opera' it was printed in 1731, having first appeared (it is there said) in 1728. The letter to Dean Swift is attributed to Gordon of the 'Independent Whig' (Monthly Review, iii. 399). It is said in Chalmers's 'Biog. Dict.' that several of the pieces 'were written by Fielding, Henry Carey, and other authors.' They are for the most part worthless, and seem to have been taken at random on account of the subjects. 'Gulliver decypher'd' is attributed to Arbuthnot in the 'Biog. Brit.,' and by a writer in the 'Retrospective Review,' but it is a more than ostensible attack upon Swift, Pope, and himself; it deals with certain sore subjects for all three on which Arbuthnot was very unlikely to touch. The 'third part of John Bull' seems to be quite unworthy of him. Besides these, he has been credited with 'Critical Remarks on Capt. Gulliver's Travels by Dr. Bantley,' 'Don Bilioso de I'Estomac,' 'Notes and Memorandums of the six days preceding the Life and Death of a late Right Rev. —' (that is Bishop Burnet), and the 'Essay upon an Apothecary' in a 'Supplement to Dean Sw—t's Miscellanies,' all in the same collection. They are at best very doubtful. It appears, also, that Arbuthnot helped in the notes to the 'Dunciad' (Nichols, Illustrations, iii. 766, and Anecdotes, v. 586). He may probably have written the 'Virgilius Restauratus' appended to the same; and he is said to have written the 'Reasons offered by the Company