John Arbuthnot (1667–1735)

The authorship of this book is somewhat confused, as it came out of an early 17th century literary club. The cover of my copy has the author as Alexander Pope, the title page has Pope and John Arbuthnot as joint authors, and Peter Ackroyd's Foreward says "A great part of this work may confidently be ascribed to Arbuthnot, but the voices of Pope and of Swift are also to be found here".

It is a satire on the pretentiousness of higly-educated people whose learning seems to have made them foolish rather than wise. Cornelius Scriblerus is so enamoured of the Ancient Greeks that he endeavours to raise his son Martinus like an Ancient Greek, to the despair of his wife. He even forbids Martinus from playing any children's games that weren't also played in Ancient Greece.

Martinus grows up as foolish as his father, but there is one piece of foolishness that does not seem so foolish in the early 21st century, his method of investigating latent distempers by the sagacious qulity of setting-dogs and pointers, as it has been found that dogs can smell some types of illness and predict epilectic seizures.

It was amusing enough to read once, but I won't be keeping it to re-read.… (more)

A charming Rabelasian squib, which also looks forward to Tristram Shandy, only written by a bunch of fabulous people instead of one fabulous person. The first few chapters (very proto-Shandyan) are satires on The Learned Man who has no idea what he's doing, and could be of interest to those who dislike mansplaining; Cornelius Scriblerus' advice to his wife and wet-nurse on the art of breast-feeding is particularly hilarious. We all know that guy, although our version of 'that guy' is probably less well read. There then follow the Rabelasian chapters on Scriblerus' education, in which he and his punning friend Crambe raise hell (the bad, and some very good, puns are combined with corpse humor) and pronounce on themes anatomical ("Ocular demonstration... seems to be on your side, yet I shall not give it up") with some asides against the eighteenth century editor/critics and on themes metaphysical (with rips on both Descartes and materialists). Finally, and less easy to get through, parodies on popular romance (in which Scriblerus discovers the love of his life, one of conjoined twins who share one set of sexual organs), then a parody of the legal profession (is Scriblerus a bigamist? an adulterer?) and finally some Swiftian nonsense, not as funny as Swift's own works, which ends the book on a down note. But wildly entertaining otherwise.… (more)