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as ‘The Visiter’ and heavier why-oh-why pieces as ‘The Moralist’. Another alias was ‘The Occasional Spectator’. His greatest profile was as ‘The Inspector’ in the Advertiser, for which he began writing on March 5 1751, the day after the paper’s very successful launch. Initially a bi-weekly slot, the column went down so well that his 750 words appeared not just on Tuesdays and Fridays but also on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays too. He banged out 720 columns – a rate of 360 a year.


“The Advertiser was one of the first papers to shape its audience by appealing to the emerging middle class – not the working class and certainly not the aristocracy, which he attacked,” says Rousseau. He also had a thing about French


hairdressers and you didn’t want to get him started on long wigs. Rousseau identifies his three main


topics: “1. Marriage. 2. Women. 3. Morals. The me-too movement would have greatly interested him but I have no idea which side he would have been on.” And, supposing The Inspector were to be inspecting today? “I think he would have said our age had lost its morals.” Hill became a familiar figure about London as he strode around to carry out his inspection of its inhabitants. Much of his ‘research’ took place in coffee houses, those gathering places of 18th-century wits where conversations provided ‘a Rational Entertainment of the Mind’. Well, ideally they did. Those capital letters did not blind him to the fact that the Witless were allowed to come in as well for a dose of caffeine. He describes how one day he was quietly “smelling my coffee, when I was surprised by a violent blow on the legs”. This time the blow was accidental and turned


out to be an absolute gift, allowing him to hold forth about the fashion for absurdly long swords dangling low on the bodies of posers who couldn’t handle them. At this point, a ‘plain’ bystander – ie a sober, God-fearing sort of fellow – rebukes the ‘fop’, declaring that foolish, fashionable gear


did not make him a gentleman. Exit the poncy fool, pursued by mocking laughter – and followed too by the frenzied scribbling of The Inspector’s quill as he turned a bumped knee into the usual wordage by the deadline. Many of today’s columnists


must, when short of a theme on a slow news day, envy the lack of fashionable swords that could fill the gap in the page. Although he enthused


about the ‘newsmonger’ who floated around as ‘a moral agent’, The Inspector’s persona was rather different from that of the actual scribe behind the quill. He conducted several


vendettas, beginning with one against the Royal Society, which


had refused to elect him to join the ranks of his fellow scientists. His scurrilous attacks on fellow


writers in what became known as the Paper War resulted in many retorts and


he was a past master at suggesting secretly to another literary figure that the two of them


manufacture a fake feud. He started a publication named The Impertinent which ran to one issue. Christopher Smart, author of a marvellously deranged poem to his cat, penned a hostile mock epic entitled The Hilliad, which wasn’t as good. David Garrick (the actor, as in the club) was goaded into snapping that Hill’s farces were about as funny as a dose of medicine while his medical skills were a complete farce.


All this commotion among the quill pens puffed up his legend in his lunchtime but did not keep his reputation alive after his death. He made his mark in the history of botany but not in the chronicles of the printed word. Rousseau’s exhaustive biography led to


reviews and conferences when it came out but Sir John Hill, a striking character and valuable chronicler of his age, has now disappeared into the back numbers of literary history. The professor declares that a smart newspaper


ought to dig up and revive the image of The Inspector and he would be delighted to hear from any features editors who may be reading these words.


theJournalist | 19


Looking back to:


1751


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