England, deprived our young traveller of a kind friend and valuable patron. In 1709 Mr Hill commenced author by the publication of a 'History of the Ottoman empire.' This work was upon the whole well-received, although the author himself never liked to hear its name mentioned in after years. In this same year, Hill published some laudatory verses on the earl of Peterborough's exploits in Spain. They are entitled Camillus,' and possess little merit, although they found high favour with their hero himself, who immediately appointed Hill his secretary. Soon after the publication of these two pieces, Hill, at the instigation of Barton Booth, wrote a tragedy entitled Elfrid, or the Fair Inconstant.' It is said he produced this piece in the course of a single week, so that it is no wonder it should be, as he himself describes it, "an unpruned wilderness of fancy, with here and there a flower among the leaves, but without any fruit of judgment." He afterwards altered it considerably, and brought it out again under the title of Athelwold.' In 1710 he produced the opera of Rinaldo,' for which Handel composed music. Hill had now become director of the king's theatre in the Haymarket,—an office, the duties of which he appears to have discharged to the satisfaction of the public, although he was soon driven from it by one of those private cabals, of which the green room appears the fated region. Hill was a great projector. In 1715 he issued prospectuses for the formation of a joint-stock company for making oil from beech-nuts! The projector appeared quite sanguine of success, and ventured to predict that he would soon annihilate the importation of olive-oil into this country, by the produce of his beech presses; the subscription list too was soon filled up, but the directors quarrelled amongst themselves, and the beech-oil scheme was finally abandoned. He was next engaged with Sir Robert Montgomery, in planning an extensive colonial settlement in that portion of North America, now called Georgia. His limited funds, however, imposed such a restraint upon his colonization schemes that they were ultimately abandoned. Some years afterwards, he directed his attention to the timber-forests in the north of Scotland, and the practicability of turning them to account for naval purposes. In this enterprise he engaged for a time with great vigour and resolution, and exhibited no small command over the resources of engineering science; but the scheme failed for want of due support from the proprietors of the timber, and the unconquerable indolence of the native peasantry. His last project was that of making pot-ash. Mr Hill retired from London into the country about the year 1738, in the possession of a moderate competence, chiefly arising from his wife's handsome fortune. In his retirement he addicted himself chiefly to poetry, and produced several pieces which appear in the edition of his collected works in four volumes 8vo. His adaptation of Voltaire's tragedy of Merope,' was the last work he lived to complete. He died in 1750. Pope has introduced Hill into his 'Dunciad,' as one of the competi tors for the prize offered by the goddess of Dulness. He has done so, however, in a manner bordering more on compliment than satire surely. "Then Hill essayed: scarce vanished out of sight, He bears no token of the sabler streams, And mounts far off among the swans of Thames." Yet Hill felt somewhat aggrieved by his being introduced at all among the votaries of the Dull goddess, and retaliated in a poem entitled The Progress of Wit, a Caveat for the use of an eminent writer,' which begins thus : "Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side, The ladies' play-thing, and the muses' pride,- Easy though vain, and elegant though light,— Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays : Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves, And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves " William Cheselden. BORN A. D. 1688.-DIED A. D. 1751. THIS eminent surgeon and anatomist was a native of Leicestershire, and a pupil of the celebrated anatomists Cowper and Ferne. He began to read lectures himself at the early age of twenty-two, and was chosen a member of the Royal society when little more than twenty-three. In 1713 he published his Anatomy of the Human Body,' which immediately became the most popular text book in the English theatre of anatomy. 6 Cheselden's fame as an anatomical lecturer drew many students to the metropolis. He was elected head-surgeon of St Thomas's hospital on the retirement of Mr Ferne, and was also appointed consulting surgeon to St George's hospital, and the Westminster infirmary. He was particularly distinguished as a lithotomist; but his publication on the High operation for the stone,' involved him in much dispute with several of his professional brethren. In 1728 he performed a successful couching operation on a boy of fourteen, who is supposed to have been born blind. This celebrated case has been frequently referred to by writers on the theory and phenomena of vision. In 1729, Cheselden was elected a corresponding member of the Royal academy of sciences at Paris. In 1733 he published his Osteography, or Anatomy of the Bones.' This splendid publication was attended with a great pecuniary loss on the part of its author, besides being attacked in a very virulent manner by some of the profession. The encomiums of the foreign anatomists Haller and Heister, must however have amply consoled the author for any petulant criticisms from other quarters. He died in 1752. Cheselden's great merit was the simplicity and accuracy of his surgical practice. He laid aside the operose and unwieldy instruments which had been introduced from the French practice; and employed the simplest and most direct operations, to which his consummate anatomical skill rendered him in all cases perfectly competent. He was the friend and associate of Pope, who valued him highly for his literary as well as professional accomplishments. |