been published in 1695, and which, in Dr Arbuthnot's estimation, was irreconcilable with just philosophical reasoning upon mathematical principles. This publication, which appeared in 1697, laid the foundation of the author's literary reputation, which not long after received a large and deserved increase by his "Essay on the usefulness of Mathematical Learning." The favour which he acquired by these publications, as well as by his agreeable manners and learned conversation, by degrees introduced him into practice as a physician. Being at Epsom, when Prince George of Denmark was suddenly taken ill, he was called in, and had the good fortune to effect a cure. The Prince immediately became his patron, and, in 1709, he was appointed fourth physician in ordinary to the queen, (prince George's royal consort,) in which situation he continued till her majesty's death in 1714. In 1704, Dr Arbuthnot had been elected a member of the Royal Society, in consequence of his communicating to that body a most ingenious paper on the equality of the numbers of the sexes; a fact which he proved by tables of births from 1629, and from which he deduced the reasonable inference that polygamy is a violation of the laws of nature. In 1710, he was elected a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
This was the happy period of Dr Arbuthnot's life. Tory principles and tory ministers were now triumphant; he was in enjoyment of a high reputation, of a lucrative practice, and a most honourable preferment. He also lived in constant intercourse with a set of literary men, almost the greatest who had ever flourished in England, and all of whom were of his own way of thinking in regard to politics. This circle included Pope, Swift, Gray, and Prior. In 1714, he engaged with Pope and Swift, in a design to write a satire on the abuse of human learning in every branch, which was to have been executed in the humorous manner of Cervantes, the original inventor of this species of satire, under the history or feigned adventures. But the prosecution of this design was prevented by the queen's death, which lost Arbuthnot his situation, and proved a death-blow to all the political friends of the associated wits. In the dejection which befell them, they never went farther than an essay, chiefly written by Arbuthnot, under the title of the First Book of the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. "Polite letters," says Warburton in his edition of Pope's works, "never lost more than in the defeat of this scheme; in the execution of which, each of this illustrious triumvirate would have found exercise for his own particular talents; besides constant employment for those which they all had in common. Dr Arbuthnot was skilled in every thing which related to science; Mr Pope was a master in the fine arts; and Dr Swift excelled in a knowledge of the world. Wit they had in equal measure; and this so large, that no age perhaps ever produced three men to whom Nature had more bountifully bestowed it, or Art had brought it to higher perfection." We are told by the same writer that the Travels of Gulliver and the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk were at first intended as a branch of the Memoirs of Scriblerus. In opposition to what Warburton says of the design, we may present what Johnson says of the execution. "These memoirs," says the doctor, in his life of Pope, "extend only to the first part of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the design never was completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an event very disastrous to polite letters. If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned. He raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never felt. For this reason, this joint
