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And both these expedients for surmounting the difficulty are exquisitely caricatured in the "Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," in a chapter which is justly described as "an inimitable ridicule on Collins' argument against Clarke, to prove the soul only a quality."
Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in an hospital, and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus Club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row.
His principal works are the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, partly by Pope, but to which he was the chief contributor, the History of John Bull , mainly against the Duke of Marlborough, A Treatise concerning the Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients, and the Art of Political Lying. He also wrote various medical treatises, and dissertations on ancient coins, weights, and measures.
What better philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney.
I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote which Warton relates of Bishop Berkeley, when he was preparing to leave England with his plan of planting the gospel among the American savages. "Lord Bathurst told me that the members of the Scriblerus club being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas.
Again, had not Pope, in conjunction with the Dean, his occasional unbending also as a farceur, in the wilder freaks and oddities of Martinus Scriblerus?
Long's large picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury of matrons at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I can arrive at no other conclusion. From the number of models engaged, this picture must have been designed quite regardless of expense. It is a study of the Antique, but I doubt if Smee would have called it High Art.
People laugh over his fun in the "Memoirs of Scriblerus," and are commonly satisfied to think it Pope's. Smollett insured his literary life in "Humphrey Clinker"; and we suppose his Continuation of Hume is still one of the pills which ingenuous youth is expected to gulp before it is strong enough to resist.
The learned Martinus Scriblerus well says: "The taste of the bathos is implanted by nature itself in the soul of man; till, perverted by custom or example, he is taught, or rather compelled, to relish the sublime."
Lord Shaftesbury's brilliant but indistinct treatises have also been the germ of many discussions in ethics. Bolingbroke wrote with great liveliness, but with equal shallowness of thought and knowledge. His idiomatic English style is not one of the least of his merits. The burlesque memoir of "Martinus Scriblerus" was the joint production of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot.
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