John Arbuthnot

Dr. John Arbuthnot, often known simply as Dr. Arbuthnot, (baptised April 29, 1667 – February 27, 1735), was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath in London. He is best remembered today for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club (where he inspired both Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels book III and Alexander Pope's Peri Bathos, Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus, and possibly The Dunciad), and for inventing the figure of John Bull.

As a Scribleran

In 1710, Jonathan Swift moved to London. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (who was then the secretary of the treasury and not a peer) and he produced the Tory The Examiner, and Arbuthnot made their acquaintance and began to provide "hints" to them. These "hints" were ideas for essays, satirical gambits, and facts, rather than secrets of any sort. From 1711 to 1713, Arbuthnot and Swift formed "The Brothers' Club," though Arbuthnot characteristically gave away his ideas and even his writings, never seeking credit for them.

Related Topics:
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford - Tory - 1711 - 1713

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In 1712, Arbuthnot and Swift both attempted to aid the Tory government of Harley and Henry St. John in their efforts to end the War of the Spanish Succession. The war had profited John and Sarah Churchill, and the Tory ministry sought to end it by withdrawing from all England's alliances and negotiating directly with France. Swift wrote The Conduct of the Allies, and Arbuthnot wrote a series of five pamphlets featuring John Bull. The first of these, Law Is a Bottomless Pit (1712), introduced a simple allegory to explain the war. John Bull (England) is suing Louis Baboon (i.e. Louis Bourbon, or Louis XIV of France) over the estate of the dead Lord Strutt (Charles II of Spain). Bull's lawyer is the one who really enjoys the suit, and he is Humphrey Hocus (Marlborough). Bull has a sister named Peg (Scotland). The pamphlets are Swiftian in their satire, in that they make all of the characters hopelessly flawed and comic and none of their endeavor worth pursuing (which was Arbuthnot's intent, as he sought to make the war an object of scorn), but it is filled with homespun humor, a common touch, and a sympathy for the figures that is distinctly unSwiftian.

Related Topics:
1712 - Henry St. John - War of the Spanish Succession - France - Allegory - Louis XIV of France - Charles II of Spain

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In 1713, Arbuthnot continued his political satire with Proposals for printing a very curious discourse... a treatise of the art of political lying, with an abstract of the first volume. As with other works that Arbuthnot would encourage, this systemizes a rhetoric of bad thinking and writing. He proposes to teach people to lie well. Similar lists and systems are in Alexander Pope's Peri Bathos and John Gay and Pope's Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. Also in 1713, Arbuthnot was made a physician of Chelsea Hospital, which provided him with a house. It was this house that hosted the meetings of the Scriblerus Club, which had as its members Harley (now Earl of Oxford), St. John (now Vicount Bolingbroke), Pope, Gay, Swift, and Thomas Parnell. According to all the members of the Club, Arbuthnot was the one who contributed the most in ideas, and he was the only source they could draw upon when satirizing the sciences, and his was the idea for the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, a hyperpedantic man who, like Arbuthnot's earlier opponent, Dr. Woodward, would read three or four lines of Classical literature and deduce a universal (and absurd) truth from them.

Related Topics:
1713 - Rhetoric - Alexander Pope - John Gay - Chelsea Hospital - Scriblerus Club - Thomas Parnell

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The Club met for only a year, for Anne died in July of 1714, and the Club met for the last time in November of that year. When Anne died, she had no will. Consequently, all her servants were left without positions and entirely at the mercy of the next administration -- an administration that would be chosen by the enemies of Arbuthnot and the other Scriblerans. When George I came to the throne, Arbuthnot lost all of his royal appointments and houses, but he still had a vigorous medical practice. He lived at "the second door from the left in Dover Street" in Piccadilly.

Related Topics:
1714 - George I - Piccadilly

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