The modern fascination with John Hill is one commonly accorded the eighteenth-century denizens of Grub Street, that center of hack writing and opportunistic thought upon which respectable writers leveled their opprobrium. Hill was a favorite target and numerous writers, including Christopher Smart in his mock-epic The Hilliad (1753), sharpened their wit on his legendary dullness:

On mere privation [Nature has] bestow'd a fame,
And dignify'd a nothing with a name;
A wretch devoid of use, of sense and grace,
Th' insolvent tenant of encumber'd space!

The vitriol reserved for Hill, and there is a remarkable consensus in the attacks, seems to have been fomented not only by his dabbling in virtually every available means of expression--"novels, plays, operas, journalism, paper warfares ... a wide range of activities in biology, geology, botany, herbalism, pharmacy, and medicine"--but also, and more particularly, by the financial success with which his supposed charlatanism...