ave passed over these
words of Galileo without lessening their value or impugning their truth.
For this reason, it has been thought better rather to glance briefly at
the work of Laplace than to repeat the eulogies of his admirers.

JOHN ARBUTHNOT

(1667-1735)

Arbuthnot's place in literature depends as much on his association with
the wits of his day as on his own satirical and humorous productions.
Many of these have been published in the collections of Swift, Gay,
Pope, and others, and cannot be identified. The task of verifying them
is rendered more difficult by the fact that his son repudiated a
collection claiming to be his 'Miscellaneous Works,' published in 1750.

[Illustration: JOHN ARBUTHNOT]

John Arbuthnot was born in the manse near Arbuthnot Castle,
Kincardineshire, Scotland, April 29th, 1667. He was the son of a Scotch
Episcopal clergyman, who was soon to be dispossessed of his parish by
the Presbyterians in the Revolution of 1688. His children, who shared
his Jacobite sentiments, were forced to leave Scotland; and John, after
finishing his university course at Aberdeen, and taking his medical
degree at St. Andrews, went to London and taught mathematics. He soon
attracted attention by a keen and satirical 'Examination of Dr.
Woodward's Account of the Deluge,' published in 1697. By a fortunate
chance he was called to attend the Prince Consort (Prince George of
Denmark), and in 1705 was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne. If
we may believe Swift, the agreeable Scotchman at once became her
favorite attendant. His position at court was strengthened by his
friendships with the great Tory statesmen.

Arbuthnot's best remembered work is 'The History of John Bull'; not
because many people read or will ever read the book itself, but because
it fixed a typical name and a typical character ineffaceably in the
popular fancy and memory. He is credited with having been the first to
use this famous sobriquet for the English nation; he was certainly the
first to make it universal, and the first to make that burly, choleric,
gross-feeding, hard-drinking, blunt-spoken, rather stupid and decidedly
gullible, but honest and straightforward character one of the stock
types of the world. The book appeared as four separate pamphlets: the
first being entitled 'Law is a Bottomless Pit, Exemplified in the Case
of Lord Strutt, John Bull, Nicholas Frog, and Lewis Baboon, Who Spent
All They Had in a Law Suit'; th