Pope’s favourite physician was Dr. John Arbuthnot, and never was grateful affection better bestowed. He was the son of an Episcopal clergyman in Scotland, born in 1675, and went through a course of academical studies at Aberdeen, where he also took the degree of Doctor of Physic. On his arrival in London he supported himself as a teacher of mathematics, in which he was a great proficient, and became known to the world of letters by his examination of Dr. Woodward’s “Account of the Deluge,” and by an able treatise on the “Advantages of Mathematical Learning.” The first book of the memoirs of “Martinus Scriblerus” has also been attributed to him. An accident introduced him to Prince George of Denmark, and led the way to his appointment as Physician to Queen Anne; he retained the favour of the Court until the death of the Queen, when, being more than suspected of Jacobite proclivities, he was compelled to leave his quarters in St. James’s Palace, and retired to a small house in Dover Street. Pope dedicated to him the prologue to his satires, and thus gracefully mentions him:— “Friend to my life (which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song.”) The concluding stanzas are so full of tenderness that I venture to give them:— “Oh! friend, may each domestic bliss be thine, Be no unpleasing melancholy mine, Me, let the tender office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath, Make langour smile and smooth the bed of death. Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep a while one parent from the sky! On cares like these, if length of days attend, May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend, Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene, And just as rich as when he served a Queen.” About the time of his preferment he made the acquaintance of the great luminaries of art and learning, particularly Swift, (the mad parson as he was first designated) Pope, Gay, Parnell, Atterbury, Congreve, &c., and greatly assisted, with his ready and witty pen, the ambitious Bolingbroke. What is greatly to his honour, in the midst of an age of scoffers, he retained a deep sense of the importance of personal religion, and seems to have lived in the affectionate esteem and remembrance of his friends; Swift said of him, “Oh! if the world had a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my travels” (Gulliver’s); and on another occasion expresses himself thus, “Arbuthnot has more wit than all we have, and his humanity is equal to his wit.” For some time before his death he suffered from asthma and dropsy, and bore his affliction with characteristic fortitude and resignation. He died in 1734, leaving a son, who was one of Pope’s executors, and two daughters.