3G Jethro Tall: his Life, Times, and Teachirl^, 
public meu are rendered, by endless conflicting newspapers and 
their attrition, completely pachydermatous. Tull appealed fear- 
lessly to Chief Justice Time, and that grandest of grand juries, 
Posterity, and the charge agreed with the verdict, and — without 
the possibility of reversion — it was, and it is, altogether in Tull's 
favour. By consequence the ears of his virulent maligners are 
nailed to the literary pillory of history : in the suggestive 
imagery of the Book of Job,' it may be said of these enemies of 
Tull's — " among the bushes they brayed : under the nettles they 
were gathered together." 
Chiefest in that bad eminence was one Stephen Switzer, a 
clever, well-educated man ; a gardener and seedsman, and himself 
a reformer in his own art. He was a Hampshire man by birth, 
but probably of a family of foreign extraction. His garden 
was at Millbank ; he had a stand bearing a sign of the flower- 
pot in Westminster Hall, close to the entrance to the Court of 
Common Pleas. He was the head of a Society which contained 
amongst others a writer whose pseudonym was " Equivocus," so 
that for brevity Tull called the whole gang of his tormentors 
the Equivocal Society, or otherwise the Secret Society. He 
says of them " they have blackened themselves all over with 
their own ink." It is not necessary for the present purpose, 
which is only to convey a just impression of Tull's manly life 
and surroundings, to do more than to cull from their writings a 
few beauties of literary and critical style. Tull says " the Secret 
Society — the Equivocal Society — likewise are not content with 
abusing my vegetable principles, and terming me an atheist, but 
also describe me by the similitude of the most odious, despicable, 
and pestiferous animals. They also usurp the power of the 
Inquisition of damning books because not their own. And 
again, they, the critics in question, seldom make use of any 
other logic than that of Billingsgate; they call me names — 
atheist, infidel, fool, mente captus, madman, ass, owl, viper, 
carping insect, &c., all feminine arguments of scurrility." 
The following extract is from a book supposed to be unique,' 
named TJte Practical llushandman and Planter : 
And now wbat is there that could induce this author — Tull — to fnll 
[in so unmannerly a manner as he has] on one of the best authors of 
antiquity [Virffil] and whose hushaudry has stood the tost of so many 
ages, but a too bii^h conceit of his own opinion above that of all the rest of 
nlankind. lie mif^lit indeed have attacked a Bradley or even a Woodward 
(as he has done) with pretty good success; but a Virgil is certainly an Over- 
' Job XXX. 7. 
= In the library of Mr. Kobert Hogg, LL.D., F.L.S,, to whom I am indebted 
for the extract.— C. 
