represented me to a noble friend, while to myself you made me
much more than I deserved; the ease with which you had
excused yourself, and the solemnity with which, in the
face of Almighty God, you excused yourself again; when we
remember that the whole was done within the compass of a day;
these are surely virtues in a patron that I, of all men,
ought not to pass over in silence." Baker, in his early
days, had unluckily published a volume of lusory poems. Some
imitations of Prior's loose tales Hill makes use of to
illustrate _his_ "Philosophical Transactions." All is food for
the malicious digestion of Wit!

His anecdote of Mr. Baker's _Louse_ is a piece of secret
scientific history sufficiently ludicrous.

"The Duke of Montague was famous for his love to the whole
animal creation, and for his being able to keep a very grave
face when not in the most serious earnest. Mr. Baker, a
distinguished member of the Royal Society, had one day
entertained this nobleman and several other persons with the
sight of the peristaltic motion of the bowels in a louse, by
the microscope. When the observation was over, he was going
to throw the creature away; but the Duke, with a face that
made him believe he was perfectly in earnest, told him it
would be not only cruel, but ungrateful, in return for the
entertainment that creature had given them, to destroy it.
He ordered the boy to be brought in from whom it was procured,
and after praising the smallness and delicacy of Mr. Baker's
fingers, persuaded him carefully to replace the animal in its
former territories, and to give the boy a shilling not to
disturb it for a fortnight."--"A Review of the Works of the
Royal Society," by John Hill, M.D., p. 5.

[287] These papers had appeared in the London _Daily Advertiser_,
1754. At their close he gleaned the best, and has preserved
them in two volumes. But as Hill will never rank as a
classic, the original nonsense will be considered as most
proper for the purposes of a true collector. Woodward, the
comedian, in his lively attack on Hill, has given "a mock
Inspector," an exquisite piece of literary ridicule, in
which he has hit off the egotisms and