thumb|John Hill
Sir John Hill (1714 – 22 November 1775) was an English composer, actor, author and botanist. He contributed to contemporary periodicals and engaged in literary battles with poets, playwrights and scientists. He is remembered for his illustrated botanical compendium The Vegetable System, one of the first works to use the nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus. In recognition of his efforts, he was created a knight of the Order of Vasa in 1774 by Gustav III of Sweden and thereafter called himself Sir John Hill.
Biography
John Hill was the son of the Rev. Theophilus Hill and is believed to have been born in Peterborough: he was baptised on 17 November 1714 at St John the Baptist Church in that city. He was apprenticed to an apothecary and on the completion of his apprenticeship he set up in a small shop in St Martin's Lane, Westminster. He also travelled over the country in search of rare herbs, with a view to publishing a hortus siccus, but the plan failed.
He obtained the degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrews at a time when its fortunes were at a low ebb, and practised as a quack doctor, making considerable sums by the preparation of dubious herb and vegetable medicines. He was known for his "pectoral balsam of honey" and "tincture of bardana".
Work
His first publication was a translation of Theophrastus's History of Stones (1746). From this time forward he was an indefatigable writer. He edited The British Magazine (1746–1750), and for two years (1751–1753) he wrote a daily letter, "The Inspector," for the London Advertiser and Literary Gazette. He also produced novels, plays and scientific works; and was a major contributor to the supplement of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia.
From 1759 to 1775 he was engaged on a huge botanical work, The Vegetable System (26 folio volumes), illustrated by 1,600 copper-plate engravings and published (plain) at thirty-eight guineas, and (coloured) at one hundred and sixty guineas. Hill's botanical labours were undertaken at the request of his patron, Lord Bute, and he was rewarded by the Order of Vasa from the King of Sweden in 1774. Hill used the Linnean binomial system first in his <nowiki></nowiki>Flora Britannica<nowiki></nowiki> (1760) and then from his second volume of <nowiki></nowiki>The Vegetable System<nowiki></nowiki> in 1761. He thus became the first English writer to adopt it. He however did not follow the taxonomic system of Linnaeus who commented that his book was one with beautiful plates but making him feel like weeping for it lacked "botanical science". Hill however liked English named and invented them for plants that did not occur in the English-speaking world.
Of the seventy-six separate works with which he is credited in the Dictionary of National Biography, the most valuable are those that deal with botany. He is reputed to have been the author of the second part of The Oeconomy of Human Life (1751), the first part of which is by Lord Chesterfield, and Hannah Glasse's famous manual of cookery was generally ascribed to him (see Boswell, ed. Hill, iii. 285). Samuel Johnson said of him that he was "an ingenious man, but had no veracity."
John Hill's often provocative and scurrilous writings involved him in many quarrels, both in the field of science and that of literature.
Quarrel with the Royal Society, 1750–1751
During the 1740s, and especially in 1746–1747, Hill attended many meetings of the Royal Society, and there presented the results of several of his studies, both in the field of botany (on the propagation of moss), medicine (a surgical operation to remove a needle from the abdominal wall of a man), and geology-chemistry (on the origin of the sapphire's colour, on chrysocolla, on an alternative to Windsor loam for the making of fire-resistant bricks). His works On the manner of seeding mosses and On Windsor loam appeared in the Royal Society's journal, the Philosophical Transactions.
On the basis of these contributions, Hill apparently hoped to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society.