Jethro Tull : his Life, Times, and Teaching. 37 
Inatch for him, and 'tis much to he wondered at that Virgil's translator,^ 
who has so just a value for him, should let this great adept pass so long 
iinohserved. If wit be the case, he ought to have taken care at whom he 
level'd it, lest like Liquour that is squirted into other People's faces, it should 
recoil back upon his own, and make him the Ridicule of every Reader. A 
conceited envious critick (and such must that Author in this case be) is a 
sort of Viper who (being continually nibbling at every author that comes 
in his way) is one of the most pestiferous Mortals that is ; nor can he (as is 
visible in those ill-natured Remarks) escape the most admired Poet that 
ever wrote, though it be one who, like Steel, polishes every subject he 
touches, and whose metal is so hard as to break the teeth of all little 
carping Insects. 
The learned, obliging, and fortunate possessor of the unique 
little book from which this elegant extract is taken appends this 
just, if exclamatory note, " So much for honest, unselfish, patriotic 
Jethro ! ! " 
" Death and the Husbandman " is one of the spirited pictures 
in the series of the " Dance of Death : " there is the old 
husbandman holding a wheel-plough, to which four great 
horses are yoked, and all are vigorously engaged in drawing the 
last crooked furrow of the field : under the brow a village with 
smoke and life, and in the middle distance, glorified by the rays 
of the setting sun, there is a church : in order to finish 
off the furrow, Death, in a short shirt, skips merrily along, 
whipping up the leaders. Holbein, at " Prosperous," would 
probably have sketched Death as a mischievous agitator stand- 
ing in a cart haranguing poor TuU's ignorant labourers, " whose 
tongues were even more nimble than their hands," and inciting 
his besotted neighbours to strikes and opposition ; or otherwise 
as pouring additional gall and venom into the ink of his unjust 
critics ; or more probably still, Holbein would have depicted 
the only son of the house, John Tull, as being tempted by the 
enemy to more foolish adventures and bubble speculations. 
John Tull had the inventive faculty of his father without his 
stability of character. Probably through the influence of his 
father's friend, the Diarist, John obtained a commission in 
the artillery train, and it is said that at the Battle of Pontenoy 
he acted as aide-de-camp to General James Campbell, a lifelong 
friend of the Diarist, and that the General, being mortally 
wounded, died in John Tull's arms. Subsequently, and more 
than ever, he was afflicted by the madness of speculation, which 
then attacked all classes — a sort of reflex of the great South Sea 
wave. Scheme after scheme was proposed. Some of young 
' William Benson, 1682-1754, critic, politician, author, country gentleman, 
wrote Virgil's Umha^idry, or an Essay on the Qeoi'gics, First book trapsljited 
in English verse, — Diet. Nat. Biog, 
