S85 



ARBUTHNOT, JOHN. 



ARC, JOAN OF. 



288 



clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and is said to have 

 been born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose, in 1675. He was educated at 

 Aberdeen, and there took his degree as Doctor of Medicine. His father 

 lost hia church preferment through the changes of the revolution ; 

 and the young doctor had to push his way in the great world of Lon- 

 don. His common scholastic acquirements, in the first instance, gave 

 him bread. The future companion and correspondent of Swift and 

 Pope, of Harley and Bolingbroke, was for some time an obscure teacher 

 of mathematics. In that day the science of geology was built rather 

 upon bold speculation than systematic and patient observation. It 

 was an age of theories of the earth ; and the universal deluge was one 

 of the great points of disputation. In 1697 Dr. Arbuthnot took the 

 field against Dr. Woodward, by the publication of ' An Examination 

 of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge,' &c. The tract brought 

 him into notice. He gradually obtained some professional practice ; 

 and the circumstance of his being called in to attend Prince George of 

 Denmark in a sudden illness, he happening to be at Epsom at the 

 same time with the prince, led the way to court honours and rewards. 

 He was appointed physician in ordinary to Queen Anne in 1709 ; and 

 about the same time was elected a member of the London College of 

 Physicians. His attendance upon the queen probably led to his inti- 

 mate association with the Tory party at court. Never did a govern- 

 ment more actively employ the weapons of wit and sarcasm in the 

 direction of public opinion. The great party war of the last days of 

 Queen Anne was fought not more with parliamentary thunder than 

 with squibs and pamphlets 



"The light artillery of the lower sky." 



The ephemeral politics of the day have attained a permanent interest 

 through the talent displayed in these wit-combats. On the 10th of 

 March 1712, Swift writes to Stella, " You may buy a small two-penny 

 pamphlet called ' Law is a Bottomless Pit." It i very prettily written." 

 This two-penny pamphlet is now better known by its second title, 

 ' The History of John Bull.' A second, third, and fourth parts were 

 published in the same year. Swift again says, " I hope you read 'John 

 Bull.' It was a Scotch gentleman, a friend of mine, that wrote it ; 

 but they have put it upon me." The Scotch gentleman was Arbuthnot. 

 It is impossible to read this political jeu d'esprit even now without a 

 lively interest. There have been many subsequent attempts to make 

 the quarrtls of nations intelligible, and at the same time ridiculous, 

 by assimilating them to the litigations of individuals. Never was the 

 humour of such a design more admirably preserved than in Arbuth- 

 not's delineations of John Bull the Clothier, and Nick Frog the Linen- 

 draper, and Philip Baboon the successor of Lord Strutt, and Louis 

 Baboon, who " had acquired immense riches which he used to squander 

 away at back-sword, quarter-staff, and cudgel-play, in which he took 

 great pleasure, and challenged all the country." The summer of 171* 

 saw Arbuthnot living in the sunshine of court influence, soliciting the 

 Lord Treasurer for a place for one, persuading Bolingbroke to beitow 

 a benefice on another, and enlightening Lady Masham upon the claims 

 of his friend Swift to be historiographer to the queen. In a few months 

 the death of Anne put an end to all these prospects of ambition. The 

 party was ruined ; some impeached, some driven into exile, all crest- 

 fallen. Arbuthnot, of course, lost his appointment. For some time 

 his natural cheerfulness forsook him; but he soon found content in a 

 littlu house in Dover-street, in exchange for his residence at St. James'. 

 There is bitterness in the mode in which Arbuthnot first writes to 

 Swift, under the great change produced by the death of the queen : 

 " I have an opportunity calmly and philosophically to consider that 

 treasure of vileuess and baseness that I always believed to be in the 

 heart of man." But shortly after ho wrote to Pope, " This blow has 

 so roused Scriblerus that he ha* recovered hia senses, and thinks and 

 talks like other men." Arbuthnot appears to have taken to the pro- 

 ject of the Scriblerus Club with abundant heartiness ; and thus in his 

 misfortunes he looks around for opportunities to make merry with the 

 ignorance of the learned and the follies of the wise : " It is with some 

 pleasure that he contemplates the world still busy and all mankind at 

 work for him." The great project in which he engaged with Swift and 

 Pope, to write a satire on all the abuses of human learning, would 

 probably, under the most favourable circumstances, have been an 

 abortive scheme. Warburton thus speaks of its failure : " Polite 

 letters never lost more than by the defeat of this scheme, in which 

 each of this illustrious triumvirate would have found exercise for his 

 owu peculiar talent, besides constant employment for that they all held 

 in common. "For Arbulhoot was skilled in everything which related to 

 science ; Pope was a master in the fine arts ; and Swift excelled in a 

 knowledge of the world. Wit they had all in equal measure ; and 

 thin so large, that no age perhaps ever produced three men to whom 

 nature had more bountifully bestowed it, or art had brought it to 

 higher perfection." Arbuthnot contributed towards this project the 

 first book of the ' Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus;' and it is from this 

 contribution that we may principally estimate the correctness of the 

 praise which Warburton hus bestowed upon him. Nothing can be 

 moro perfect than this fragment. Its very extravagance is the result 

 of profound skill, contrasting and heightening the pungency of the 

 more subtle wit with which the merely ludicrous is clothed. And yet 

 a continuity of such irony and burlesque would probably have been a 

 failure, as far as regarded the success of a satire upon the abuses of 



human learning. ' Gulliver's Travels ' was intended as a portion of 

 this satire; yet who enters into the companionship of Mr. Lemuel 

 Gulliver with any desire to find out that beneath the surface of his 

 inimitable narratives is concealed an attack upon some book-man or 

 society of book-men ? Arbuthnot wrote to Swift : " Gulliver is in 

 every body's hands. Lord Scarborough, who is no inventor of stories, 

 told me that he fell in company with a master of a ship who told 

 him that he was very well acquainted with Gulliver ; but that the 

 printer had mistaken, that he lived in Wapping, and not in Rotherhithe. 

 I lent the book to an old gentleman, who went immediately to his 

 map to search for Lilliput." This, after all, is higher praise than if 

 Arbuthnot had written to his friend that the Royal Society was raving 

 against his description of Laputa. 



The reputation of Arbuthnot as a wit is in a great measure tradi- 

 tional. What he has left us is admirable in its kind ; but it can chal- 

 lenge no comparison with the more systematic labours of Swift and 

 Pope. We scarcely indeed know with certainty what Arbuthuot did 

 write. There is a collection entitled 'The Miscellaneous Works of 

 the late Dr. Arbuthnot,' which was published at Glasgow, in two 

 volumes, in 1751, but the genuineness of some of these pieces was 

 expressly denied by Arbuthnot's sou. It is probable, from the manner 

 in which he speaks of himself as Scriblerus, that he had a larger share 

 in the planning, if not in 'the execution, of the several parts of the 

 memoirs and pieces connected with them, than has usually been 

 assigned to him. Dr. Warton gives certain portions to Arbuthnot, 

 "as they contain allusions to many remote and uncommon parts of 

 learning and science with which we cannot imagine Pope to have been 

 much acquainted, and which lay out of the reach and course of his 

 reading." Arbuthnot continued his medical practice almost to the 

 last; and he published in 1731 'An Essay on the Nature and Choice 

 of Aliments,' and in 1733 'An Essay on the Effects of Air on Human 

 Bodies.' He died in February 1735, leaving a son, George, who held 

 an office in the Exchequer, and two daughters. His eon John died 

 two years before himself. Arbuthnot had many and warm friends, 

 whom he had won not more by his talents and acquirements than by 

 his benevolent and generous nature. His integrity was as universally 

 recognised as his wit. The fortitude displayed in his letters to Pope, 

 written almost on his death-bed, could have been inspired only by a 

 conscience void of offence, and the calm retrospect of a well-spent life. 

 Among the other works of Arbuthnot are the following : 1. ' Tables 

 of the Grecian, Roman, and Jewish Measures, Weights, and Coins,' &c. 

 London, 1705, 8vo., which is still a useful work.' It was republished 

 in 1727, in 4to. It was aho translated iuto Latin by Daniel Kb'nig, 

 and published at Utrrcht in 1756, with a preface by Reitz. 2. 'An 

 Argument for Divine Providence, drawn from the equal Number of 

 Births of both Sexes,' in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' There is a 

 list of Arbuthnot's works iu Watt's ' Bibliotheca.' 



(Miscellanies, by Pope, Swift and Arbuthuot ; Swift, Letters ; Pope, 

 Letteri.) 



ARC, JOAN or JEANNE OF, surnamed the ' Maid of Orleans,' 

 from her heroic defence of that city, was born about the year 1410 or 

 1411, in the little hamlet of Domremy, near the Meuse, and about 

 three leagues south from Vaucouleurs, on the borders of Champagne. 

 Her parents were humble and honest peasants. The district was 

 remarkable for the devout simplicity of its inhabitants, as well as for 

 those romantic superstitions which in a rude age are so often allied 

 with religion. It appears from the copious depositions of witnesses 

 from the neighbourhood of Domremy, examined at Joan's trial, that 

 she was unremitting iu her prayers, and other religious exercises, and 

 was strongly imbued, at a very early age, with the prevailing super- 

 stitions of her native place. 



During that period of anarchy in France, when the supremo power 

 which had fallen from the hands of a monarch deprived of his reason 

 was disputed for by the rival houses of Orleans and Burgundy, the 

 popular feeling was at first undecided ; but when, ou the death of 

 Charles VI., the crown fell to a young prince who adopted the 

 Armagnac side, whilst the house of Burgundy had sworn allegiance 

 to a foreigner (Henry V.) as king of Franco, then, indeed, the wishes 



