the expedition returned home without result. Hill was made a major-general in 1712, and was appointed or proposed as lieutenant of the Tower of London in the room of Cadogan when Marlborough fell into disfavour. He was appointed to command the force sent to hold Dunkirk as security for the execution of the treaty of Utrecht. On the secession of the house of Brunswick he was deprived of his regiment, He is stated to have died in June 1732 (Haydn, Book of Dignities). He is frequejtly mentioned in the 'Journal to Stells,' and Swift wrote a letter to him when he was at Dunkirk (Works, 1814, xvi. 16).
'Jack' Hill, as his boon companions called him, is referred to by Marlborough and others as 'Mr.' Hill which has led to some later confusion with Richard Hill, the diplomatist [see Hill, Richard d. 1727].
[Mackinnon's Origin of the Coldstream Guards, vol. ii. Appendix; Cannon's Hist. Reg. 11th Foot; Abstracts of Musters, forming Addit. MS. 19023; Cal. Treas. Papers, 1702–14; Tindal's Continusation of Rapin's History, ii. 185, 186, 215, 280, Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs; Marlborough Despatches (where the index appears to confuse John Hill with Richard); Haydn's Book of Dignitaries.]
HILL, JOHN, M.D., calling himself Sir John, as member of the Swedish order of Vasa (1716?–1775), miscellaneous writer, the second son of the Rev. Theophilus Hill, is said to have been born at Peterborough in 1716. Early in life he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and after serving his term set up for himself in a small shop in St. Martin's Lane, Westminster. He tried to increase his profits by studying botany, and was employed by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Petre in the arrangement of their gardens and collections of dried plants. Hill travelled over the country in search of the rarer plants, specimens of which were to be dried by a particular process, and published by subscription with descriptive letterpress. Failing to increase his income sufficiently by these means, he went on the stage, but after several unsuccessful attempts, both at the ‘little theatre’ in the Haymarket and at Covent Garden, he resumed his business as an apothecary. In October 1738 he sent Rich a manuscript libretto of ‘Orpheus, an English Opera.’ It was not, however, accepted, and the production of Theobald's ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ by Rich at Covent Garden in the following year led to a prolonged controversy between them. At this time Hill appears to have kept an apothecary's shop in James Street, Covent Garden. Martin Folkes and Henry Baker, members of the Royal Society, introduced him to several men of letters, and in 1746, while holding ‘a trifling appointment of apothecary to a regiment or two in the Savoy,’ published a translation of Theophrastus's ‘History of Stones.’ In March of the same year the first monthly number of the ‘British Magazine’ appeared under his editorship. A supplement for January and February was published afterwards to complete the yearly volume, and the ‘Magazine’ was carried on until December 1750. In March 1751 he contributed a daily letter called ‘The Inspector,’ described by D'Israeli as being ‘a light scandalous chronicle all the week with a seventh-day sermon’ (Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, p. 367), to the ‘London Advertiser and Literary Gazette.’ The first number appeared on 5 March 1751, and the letters were continued for over two years. Hill was now kept fully employed by the publishers, and wrote on all kinds of subjects, compiling book after book with marvellous rapidity. He obtained a diploma of medicine from the university of St. Andrews, and picked up scandal for the ‘Inspector’ in the chief places of fashionable amusement. His satirical and scurrilous writings frequently involved him in squabbles. Failing to obtain the requisite number of names for his nomination to the Royal Society, he attacked the society in several satirical pamphlets, specially vituperating Folkes and Baker, his former patrons, and in 1751 published ‘A Review of the Works of the Royal Society,’ holding up to ridicule the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ to which he had himself contributed two papers a few years previously (Phil. Trans. Abr. ix. 200, 337). In 1752 he engaged in a paper warfare with Fielding, who attacked him in the ‘Covent Garden Journal,’ and in the following year, in ‘The Story of Elizabeth Canning considered,’ he censured Fielding's private treatment of this case. In the first and only number of ‘The Impertinent,’ published on 13 Aug. 1752, he grossly abused Christopher Smart, and renewed the attack in the ‘Inspectors’ for 6 and 7 Dec. 1752. Smart, on discovering Hill's authorship, retorted in ‘The Hilliad: an epic poem,’ in which he addresses Hill as ‘Pimp! Poet! Paffer! 'Pothecary! Player!’
Hill also squabbled with Woodward the comedian, and was publicly thrashed at Ranelagh by an Irishman named Brown. Because his farce called ‘The Rout’ was hissed off the stage he made a series of venomous attacks upon Garrick. Garrick replied in the well-known epigram:
For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is,
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.
