HILL, JOHN (c. called from his Swedish honours, "Sir" John Hill, English author, edited the British Maga zine (1746-50), and for two years (1751-53) wrote a daily letter, "The Inspector," for the London Advertiser and Literary Gazette. He also produced novels, plays and scientific works.
He was involved in many literary quarrels. Henry Fielding attacked him in the Covent Garden Journal, Christopher Smart wrote a mock-epic, The Hilliad, against him, and David Garrick replied to his strictures against him by two epigrams, one of which runs : "For physics and farces, his equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, his physic a farce is." He had other literary passages-at-arms with John Rich, who accused him of plagiarizing his Orpheus, also with Samuel Foote and Henry Woodward. From to 1775 he was engaged on a huge botanical work—The Vegetable System (26 vols.)—adorned by 1,600 copperplate engravings. 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 He had a medical degree from Edinburgh, and he now practised as a quack doctor, making considerable sums by the preparation of vegetable medicines. He died in London on Nov. 21, 1775. He is said 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). Dr. Johnson said of him that he was "an ingenious man, but had no veracity." See a Short Account of the Life, Writings and Character of the late Sir John Hill 0779), which is chiefly occupied with a descriptive catalogue of his works; also Temple Bar (1872, xxxV. 261-266).