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FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 168 x 100 mms., pp. [viii], 266 '[267 - 268 Index], 24, contemporary calf, gilt rules on covers, dark red morocco label on spine; joints slightly cracked, corners very slightly worn, top and base of spine chipped. With a book in cipher on the front paste-down end-paper, motto "Nil in Vinj Minerva." John Hill, self-styled "Sir John Hill" (bap. 1714, d. 1775) published more books than almost anybody else in the 18th century; or at least his name is affixed to a number of books published anonymously. He was not one to suffer fools gladly and was often regarded as one of the fools himself. Garrick managed to sum him up in this epithet: "For Physick and Farces, his Equal there scarce is, His Farces are Physick, and his Physick a Farce is"; while Samuel Johnson remarked, "Dr Hill was … a very curious observer; and if he had been contented to tell the world no more than he knew, he might have been a very considerable man." In his (ODNB) article, Barry O'Connor notes that "Hill did not know when to temporize, nor did he suffer fools gladly. Slender, and close to 6 feet in height, Hill was a tall poppy ripe for cutting down, and the age in which he lived obliged. His reputation has been somewhat reclaimed since. At the end of the millennium, Hill was recognized as less of a quack and dilettante, and, to use George Rousseau's phrase, more 'a type of Renaissance man in the eighteenth century'." G. S. Rousseau, 'John Hill, universal genius manqué: remarks on his life and times, with a checklist of his works', in J. A. Leo and G. S. Rousseau, The Renaissance man in the eighteenth century (1978). Seller Inventory # 10042
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