1748 [Sir] John Hill 29 



dinner, held on 315! March 1748, the name of " Mr. John 

 Wilkes " occurs. There is no evidence to show who he was. 

 But we know that the famous politician of that name was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on April I3th in 

 the following year, and it appears not unlikely that some 

 of his friends among the Royal Philosophers anticipated 

 his election by inviting him to their board. Among the 

 other guests who dined with the Club in the summer 

 and autumn of this year the name of Mr. Hill occurs 

 some half-dozen times, sometimes placed next to that of 

 the President in the list of the company. This was the 

 notorious "Sir John" Hill, M.D., who was then being be- 

 friended by Martin Folkes and Henry Baker, the founder 

 of the Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society. It was 

 probably to the President's kindness that he owed his first 

 introduction into the Society of the Royal Philosophers. 

 Clever, ambitious, and unscrupulous, he counted on being 

 elected into the Royal Society by the influence of his two 

 powerful patrons, but when the honour was not forthcoming 

 he employed his facile pen in writing a quarto volume of 

 some 265 pages in which, under cover of criticising papers 

 published in the Society's Philosophical Transactions, he 

 gave vent to his ill-humour in most offensive terms, directing 

 his abuse in unmeasured and contemptuous language against 

 the Society in general and Martin Folkes and Henry Baker 

 in particular. The volume seems to have been written with 

 energetic rapidity when he realised that his hope was not 

 to be fulfilled, for it was published in 1751, only three years 

 after he had been the guest of the Club. He was in his 

 youth an apothecary in London. Having some acquaintance 

 with botany he was employed by the Duke of Richmond 

 in the arrangement of his gardens and collection of dried 

 plants. He went on the Stage for a time with no success, 

 and returned to his business of apothecary. In 1746 he 

 published an English translation of Theophrastus' treatise 

 "Concerning Stones," and then embarked on the career of a 

 prolific author on all manner of subjects. His most ambitious 

 and costly work on " The Vegetable System," in twenty-six 



