'The First Man Among Them'

Where would we be without literature’s faithful sidekicks? I mean those secondary figures who befriend better-known, more gifted writers, encouraging, perhaps inspiring them. Some are writers themselves, others not. Think of Richard Savage (1697-1743) and Dr. Johnson. Savage was a dissolute minor poet, twelve years Johnson’s senior, who befriended and served (with reservations) as a literary model for the young, provincial, aspiring writer. Johnson wrote Savage’s biography. Boswell -- too great a writer to be labeled a sidekick -- quotes Johnson as saying Savage “could write the Life of a Broomstick.” 

Likewise, John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) is an interesting figure whose literary accomplishments were modest, though he invented the figure of John Bull, the enduring personification of England. Born in Scotland, he was a mathematician, doctor, satirist and founding member of the Scriblerus Club, a gathering of Tory wits that included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and John Gay. Together, they eviscerated the hacks of their day.

 

Arbuthnot helped Swift with ideas for the third voyage in Gulliver’s Travels, to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan. In Laputa, where scientists labor to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, he pokes fun at England’s Royal Society, often the object of contempt among the Scriblerians. Arbuthnot insisted on not taking credit for his contributions. He likewise influenced Pope, who wrote in “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”: “O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!”

 

Arbuthnot survives as a footnote and the author of some pithy lines. In a scholarly vein, he writes in On the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning: “Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.” I plan to share that with several colleagues at Rice. And this, which sounds as though it had been written last week: “All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”

 

Arbuthnot died on this date, February 27, in 1735 at age sixty-seven. Speaking of the eminent writers during Queen Anne’s reign, Johnson told Boswell:

 

“I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.