PRIOR, GAY AND POPE.
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Steele has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was "all beauty," and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without knowing it; Arbuthnot,[1] one of the wisest, wittiest,
- ↑ Arbuthnot was the son of an episcopal clergyman in Scotland, and belonged to an ancient and distinguished Scotch family. He was educated at Aberdeen; and, coming up to London—according to a Scotch practice often enough alluded to—to make his fortune, first made himself known by "an examination of Dr. Woodward's account of the Deluge." He became physician, successively, to Prince George of Denmark and to Queen Anne. He is usually allowed to have been the most learned, as well as one of the most witty and humorous members of the Scriblerus Club. The opinion entertained of him by the humourists of the day is abundantly evidenced in their correspondence. When he found himself in his last illness, he wrote thus, from his retreat at Hampstead, to Swift:"Hampstead, Oct. 4, 1734."My dear and worthy Friend,—
"You have no reason to put me among the rest of your forgetful friends, for I wrote two long letters to you, to which I never received one word of answer. The first was about your health; the last I sent a great while ago, by one De la Mar. I can assure you with great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has a more warm heart towards you than myself. I am going out of this troublesome world, and you, among the rest of my friends, shall have my last prayers and good wishes.
. . . . "I came out to this place so reduced by a dropsy and an asthma that I could neither sleep, breathe, eat nor move. I most earnestly desired and begged of God that he would take me. Contrary to my expectation, upon venturing to ride (which I had forborne for some years), I recovered my strength to a pretty considerable degree, slept, and had my stomach again. . . . . . What I did, I can assure you was not for life, but ease; for I am at present in the case of a man that was almost in harbour, and then blown back to sea—who has a reasonable hope of going to a good place, and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad one. Not that I have any particular
friendly, convivial, able man. He was knighted by George I., with the Duke of Marlborough's sword. He died in 1718.
