Introduction

Abstract

If one imagines a triptych of science, letters and politics in Queen Anne’s England, few would have better claims than John Arbuthnot to be depicted on all panels – emphatically to the margins of each. In the world of science and formal learning he was a friend of Newton and of Hans Sloane, a correspondent of the chemist and physician Boerhaave.¹ In 1711 he was court intermediary in the acrimonious exchanges between Newton and Flamstead over the publication of the old astronomer’s mathematical calculations.² As befitted his status as one of Britain’s leading mathematicians, in the following year he helped adjudicate for The Royal Society as to who had primary responsibility for the invention of calculus, Leibnitz or Newton.³ Yet he was sufficiently casual about his own work for very little of it to have survived him.⁴ He was a patron of the young Berkeley who had the highest regard for Arbuthnot’s philosophical capacity, although he never did sufficient work to transform talent into achievement.⁵

‘How will the noble arts of John Overton’s Painting and sculpture now languish! where rich Invention, proper Expression, correct Design, divine Attitudes, and artful Contrast, heighten’d with the Beauties of Clar-Obscur, embellish’d thy celebrated Pieces to the Delight and Astonishment of the judicious Multitude! Adieu persuasive Eloquence! the quaint Metaphor, the poinant Irony, the proper Epithet, and the lively Similie, are fled to Burleigh on the Hill: Instead of these, we shall have I know not what –

John Arbuthnot, [Lewis Baboon Turn’d Honest. Pref. p. 95]