HILL, JOHN (c. 1716-1775)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 465 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HIG-HOR

HILL, JOHN (c. 1716-1775) , called from his Swedish honours, " Sir " John Hill, English author, son of the Rev. Theophilus Hill, is said to have been born in

Peterborough

PETERBOROUGH

in 1.2a6 l He was apprenticed to an apothecary and on the completion of his apprenticeship he set up in a small shop in St Martin's Lane, Westminster. He also travelled over the country in search of rare herbs, with a view to publishing a hortus siccus, but the plan failed. His first publication was a translation of Theophrastus's History of Stones (1746). From this time forward he was an indefatigable writer. He edited the British Magazine (17461750), and for two years (1751753) he wrote a daily

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

, " The Inspector," for the London Advertiser and Literary

Gazette

GAZETTE

. He also produced novels, plays and scientific works; and was a- large contributor to the supplement of Ephraim_
Chambers's Cyciopaedia. His personal and scurrilous writings involved him in many quarrels. Henry

Fielding

attacked him in the Covent Garden Journal, Christopher Smart wrote a mock-epic, The Hilliad, against him, and David

Garrick

GARRICK, DAVID (1717-1779)

replied to his strictures against him by two epigrams, one of which runs:
" For physics and farces, his equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, his physic a farce is."
He had other literary passages-at-arms with John Rich, who accused him of plagiarizing his Orpheus, also with Samuel Foote and Henry Woodward. From 1759 to 1775 he was engaged on a huge botanical workThe Vegetable System (26 vols. fol.)adorned by 1600 copperplate engravings. Hill's botanical labours were underaken at the request of his patron, Lord Bute, and he was rewarded by the order of Vasa from the king of Sweden in 1974. He had a medical degree from Edinburgh, and he now practised as a

quack

QUACK

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

, making considerable sums by the preparation of vegetable medicines. He died in London on the 21st of November 1775.
Of the seventy-six separate works with which he is credited in the Dictionary of National Biography, the most valuable are those that deal with botany. He is said to have been the author of the second part of The Oeconomy of Human Life (1751), the first part of which is by Lord Chesterfield, and Hannah Glasse's famous

manual

MANUAL

of cookery was generally ascribed to him (see Boswell, ed. Hill, iii. 285). Dr Johnson said of him that he was " an ingenious man, but had no veracity."
See a Short Account of the Life, Writings and Character of the

late

LATE

Sir John Hill (1779), which is chiefly occupied with a descriptive catalogue of his works; also Temple Bar (1872,

xxxv

XXXV

. 261-266).

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