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For more evidence that Arbuthnot in fact did write "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife," we must turn to the poem itself. I print it here in its entirety, I believe for the first time since 1730.[15]

The poem, obviously, is highly topical, in some instances so much so as to be obscure. But the four men mentioned in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" and the reasons for their inclusion in the poem suggest something about who may have written it. This internal evidence is not conclusive, but it does confirm that Arbuthnot is a likely candidate for the authorship of the poem.

Nicolson and Rousseau have identified two of the men in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife." The lord "Whose Name does end in Burrough," they suggest, is Charles Mordaunt, third Earl of Peterborough. The person referred to and the precise meaning of the joke in these stanzas are the most obscure in the poem, so our conclusions must be extremely tentative. Still, Nicolson and Rousseau are probably correct. No other lord "Whose Name does end in Burrough" fits the description of the lord here, but the references to monstrosity could point to any number of incidents in the life of the eccentric Peterborough. Nicolson and Rousseau suggest that the allusion is to his unconventional liaisons with Anastasia Robinson and Henrietta Howard. Perhaps. But the linking of "Lords" in the third stanza to the suggestion of impotence (monstrosity conventionally being explained as resulting from enervated sexual power) may point to Peterborough's notorious opinion that the House of Lords was almost utterly impotent.[16] Or the "Monsters" simply could be a more general reference to Peterborough's freakish, unpredictable, and often fruitless behavior—behavior that was the subject of affectionate joking among Arbuthnot and his fellow Scriblerians. Swift admitted that even those who knew Peterborough "have not known how well to describe him," and he acknowledged him to be "restless and capricious," "A fine Gentleman I vow to God, but he wants Probity."[17] Pope described him as a man who "will neither live nor die like any other mortal,"[18] and Arbuthnot, referring to his perpetual rambling as well as his quixotic personality, called him "a Knight errant."[19]

What is particularly odd is the fact that Peterborough should be mentioned in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" at all. He appears to have played no role in the Mary Toft incident, and he is not referred to in any of the other

Toft satires. If the lord in these stanzas is indeed Peterborough, his appearance here may suggest either that the author of "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" used the occasion of the poem to turn away from the incident itself for more private banter or that he was closely enough acquainted with Peterborough to know of something he did or some statement he made during the incident, perhaps alluded to here, but now lost to history.[20] If either of these is the case, such a gesture would not be inconsistent with Arbuthnot. Since "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" was not published until four years after it was written, the poem probably was meant for limited circulation only, and this, together with the clearly good-humored nature of the portrait of the lord, gives these two stanzas the air of an amiable private jest. Arbuthnot was particularly intimate with Peterborough at this time, and he was not averse to rallying his friends, much more pointedly than this, and in print.[21]

The second person Nicolson and Rousseau identify is the Whiston of the last stanza. He is, of course, William Whiston, scientist and religious controversialist. And when the author of "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" said that Whiston interpreted Mary Toft's rabbits as "Beasts in Scripture," he was stating a fact. Whiston argued that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Mary Toft truly had given birth to rabbits and thus had fulfilled the prophecy of 2 Esdras 5: 8 that "menstrous women shall bring forth monsters." He did not actually publish this opinion for the world at large until 1750, almost twenty-five years after the event, in Part III of his Memoirs, but it is clear that he was sharing his views among his acquaintances during the early weeks of December 1726: in his Memoirs, he reports that he had discussed them at the time with Samuel Molyneux, who had been involved in the Mary Toft incident from the beginning, regularly had visited the bagnio, and in the last week had helped bring about her confession; and Whiston's prophecy (or at least a garbled version of it) was well enough known to be lampooned in one other Toft satire besides "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife."[22]

Since Whiston was a highly controversial figure whose religious heterodoxy and intellectual eccentricity had created a large audience eager to criticize him,[23] it is a bit surprising to find his views mocked in only one of the Tolf satires besides "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife," and perhaps this implies that his millenarian prophecy was known only to those who frequented the bagnio, to people like Molyneux—or, like Arbuthnot. Whether or not this is the case, the satire on Whiston in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" is typical of the satires on him written by Arbuthnot and the Scriblerians. Indeed, Whiston was one of their favorite targets, and they mocked him at every opportunity. For instance, when Whiston and Humphrey Ditton proposed to help mariners determine the longitude by anchoring ships at each degree of the meridian and firing rockets at noon, the Scriblerians gleefully lashed out at him. The proposal was so patently foolish that Arbuthnot complained that it had spoiled a satire on Whiston he had planned, though in fact several versions of Arbuthnot's attack on Whiston's project ended up in the Memoirs

of Martinus Scriblerus.[24] The Scriblerians mocked the project again in "Ode, for Musick, of the Longitude," and Arbuthnot made fun of it one more time in his Humble Petition of the Colliers.

Arbuthnot's jibe at the longitude project in The Humble Petition reveals why he and the Scriblerians distrusted Whiston so much. In The Humble Petition, a group of lower-class artisans, believing that "certain virtuosi disaffected to the government" are "gathering, breaking, folding, and bundling up the sunbeams by the help of certain glasses" in order to create a monopoly and "throw the whole art of cookery into the hands of astronomers and glass-grinders," petition the government to prohibit all "catoptrical cookery." They except from their proposed ban "the commanders and crew of the bomb-vessels, under the direction of Mr. Whiston for finding out the longitude."[25] Arbuthnot is making fun of the project of the longitude here, of course, but by associating Whiston with a lower class which hysterically builds theories of catastrophe on a paucity of facts, he is accusing him of vulgar credulity: this is the charge he and the Scriblerians most frequently made against the man.

For the Scriblerians, Whiston's credulity was particularly evident in his two obsessions, scientific system-building and millenarianism. In 1696, in A New Theory of the Earth, Whiston had constructed an elaborate theory of the structure of the earth and claimed that the Flood had been caused by the collision of the earth with a comet, a theory which he augmented in subsequent editions of A New Theory and in other works. By 1714, he was asserting that the comet that had caused the Flood was the same one that had appeared over England in 1680, and he suggested that at its next appearance it would destroy the earth in a conflagration. Whiston had strong millenarian views which he expressed frequently, and he held numerous heterodox religious beliefs, which caused him to be banished from Cambridge and brought to trial for heresy, but it was this theory of the comet that the Scriblerians repeatedly turned to when they satirized him, for it epitomized for them his enthusiasm and credulity in both science and religion.[26] Arbuthnot was suspicious of these tendencies in Whiston quite early. In his 1697 Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge, he referred to him as an "ingenious Writer," but in spite of the politeness of the phrase Arbuthnot here ranked Whiston with Woodward and other system-builders who "exclud[ed] the Philosophy of Second Causes" and explained the phenomena of nature by appealing to the "wonderful" and the "miraculous."[27] Arbuthnot laughed at Whiston's millenarianism and his fascination with the "wonderful" again in a letter to Swift in which he claimed mock-seriously that he could not share Swift's political concerns because he was "convinc'd that a comet will make much more strange revolutions upon the face of our globe, than all the petty changes that can be occasiond by Goverts & Ministrys and yow will allow it to be a matter of importance to think of methods to save ones self & family in such a terrible shock when this whole earth will turn upon new poles & revolve in a new orbite."[28]

As Whiston's theories became more notorious, Arbuthnot and the Scriblerians ridiculed him more openly. Swift satirized him in his depiction of the Laputans' fear of comets in Gulliver's Travels.[29] He was attacked in two other Scriblerian works. God's Revenge Against Punning turns his millenarianism back on itself by claiming that recent national disasters, all foretold by eclipses and comets, are "the Chastisement of a Sinful People" for the "Socinianism, Arianism, and Whistonianism" which have "triumph'd in our Streets."[30] And he is mocked one more time in A True and Faithful Narrative when, at the appearance of a comet, he predicts "the Period of all things is at Hand."[31] Here, once again, his millenarianism is associated with the unthinking, enthusiastic gullibility of the lower classes.

Finally, in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, Whiston's theory is glanced at twice, once in Martin's invention of "Tide-Tables, for a Comet, that is to approximate toward the Earth," and again in the millenarian prophecy that "some Comet may vitrify this Globe on which we tread."[32] This last prophecy, delivered as part of an encomium to the monstrous Lindamira-Indamora, slyly identifies Whiston's theory with the kind of popular credulity that is attracted to wonders, monsters, and prodigies. Thus, it is similar to the criticism of Whiston's irrationalism in The Humble Petition and, for that matter, to the attack on his fondness for monsters and prodigies in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife." Indeed, the satire on Whiston in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife," with its emphasis on his millenarianism and his penchant for rushing to an irrational conclusion on the basis of wonders and portents, is perfectly consonant with the way he was treated satirically by Arbuthnot and the Scriblerians.

The other two men in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" can be identified, one with certainty, the other with a high degree of probability. Neither one irrefutably points to Arbuthnot as the author of the poem, but both suggest that whoever wrote it was probably, like Arbuthnot, present at the bagnio.

The "Sir Thomas" of the fourth stanza is, without question, Sir Thomas Clarges, Justice of the Peace. When the porter was caught trying to sneak a rabbit to Mary Toft, Clarges was called to the bagnio. He "strictly examined" Mary Toft, but she denied any guilt. Clarges was infuriated and wanted to put the woman in Bridewell immediately. Since both Douglas and Manningham wanted her under continual observation at the bagnio so that they could get irrefutable proof that she was a fraud, they "earnestly press'd Sir Thomas Clarges that she might not be sent to prison." Manningham spent much of the next two days trying to temper Clarges's wrath, and in his Diary he recorded enough of his maneuvering that we can get a good sense of how angry Clarges was and how he treated Mary Toft:

Clarges's behavior could have been known by the public at large after 12 December, the day Manningham's Diary was published, but the pointedness of the satiric portrait in "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" and the fact that Clarges is not mentioned in any of the other Toft satires may suggest that the portrait was drawn by someone who had witnessed Clarges's anger rather than by someone who had pieced it together from the scattered remark in Manningham's pamphlet.

Finally, the "Doctor" of the first stanza is, I think, Douglas himself. Whoever he is, the "Doctor" appears to be meant for someone who at first either disbelieved Mary Toft or who could find no evidence to support her claims (he "search'd both high and low, / And found no Rabbit there") and then, "peeping nearer," changed his opinion ("I'm sure I have found a Hare"). St. André, Howard, or Ahlers cannot be meant here, for they were all surgeons, not doctors, a distinction of title rigorously adhered to during this period. And, in any case, they did not behave at all like the doctor in the first stanza. St. André and Howard had believed Mary Toft from the outset, and they foolishly stuck to their opinion until she confessed. Ahlers, on the other hand, thought she was a fraud from the beginning, and he published a scathing attack accusing her and Howard of collusion. Ahlers rarely appeared in the Mary Toft satires, and he was never accused of credulity.[34]

Manningham's is a special, and rather strange, case, one that disqualifies him from being the "Doctor." When he went with St. André to bring Mary Toft to London, he examined her and found, as he admitted in his Diary, that the uterus seemed "to contain something of Substance in its Cavity." Throughout Mary Toft's pretended labor in the bagnio, he continued to insist that "something would soon issue from the Uterus."[35] What exactly he meant by "something," Manningham never made clear. He probably thought that she had found some way to convey parts of rabbits into her uterus, but judging from the satiric attacks on him, nearly everyone interpreted him to mean that from first examining her he had thought that her births truly were monstrous. Whatever his true beliefs, Manningham was seen as a man who had given, as one newspaper put it, "too much Credit to the Cheat,"[36] and who had done so consistently, from beginning to end. He was satirized in John Byrom's "A Horrid and Barbarous Robbery" and the anonymous "Mr. P--- to Dr. A-------t." In "St. A-d-é's Miscarriage," he was lumped together with the foolish St. André ("St. A-d-é, Sir Richard, who've made such a Pother, / What would you not give these Rabbits to smother"). All of these poems make fun of his credulity, and none suggests that at one time he disbelieved her and then changed his mind.[37]

Of all the medical men involved in the Mary Toft affair, Douglas tallies best with the "Doctor" of the first stanza. (The fact that Douglas transcribed "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" and that this copy is found among the materials he had gathered for writing his self-defense suggests that he, also, thought he was the doctor alluded to.) That Douglas was the butt of satire may seem surprising, for he had made known his disbelief before Mary Toft had been brought to London, and the whole time she was in the bagnio he had worked assiduously to expose the fraud and to make her confess. But Douglas's good reputation was stained by events that occurred on 4 December. By then, Mary Toft had been in London for five days. Although she had been in "labor" almost constantly, she had delivered nothing. The porter of the bagnio had been caught the previous evening. The hoax was about to collapse. On the morning of 4 December, however, the case developed in an unexpected direction, the details of which Manningham recorded in his Diary:

Having seen St. André, Howard, and even Manningham ridiculed because of their real or suspected credulity, Douglas was upset when he read this passage. Douglas thought that Manningham had misrepresented him, making him appear to have changed his mind, abandoning his initial disbelief and accepting the truth of Mary Toft's claims. He set about writing An Advertisement Occasion'd by Some Passages in Sir R. Manningham's Diary as a truculent defense of himself:

Douglas's self-defense had the predictable result. Within days of his publishing An Advertisement, he was made the target of the satiric poem "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement By way of Supplement, To what was published the 7th Instant. Or Dr. D--g--l--s in an Extasy, at Lacey's Bagnio, December 4th, 1726." And this poem portrayed Douglas in precisely the same way as the "Doctor" in the first stanza of "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" is portrayed: as the metaphor of religious conversion suggested by the "Extasy" of the title implies, the poem depicts Douglas as one who, seeing the swelling on 4 December, suddenly was converted from a skeptic to a true believer:

This attack on Douglas did not appear until after the excitement about the Mary Toft incident had died down and the public had shifted its attention elsewhere. Douglas published An Advertisement in early January 1727, and "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement" did not come out until the middle of the month.[40] The fact of the matter is that, before "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement," Douglas was not even alluded to in any of the Mary Toft

satires. He had, after all, let it be known early on that he thought she was a fraud. In the newspaper reports and factual accounts, which tended to concentrate on the early stages of the hoax and not its final days in the bagnio, he was rarely mentioned. The "accusation" in Manningham's Diary is mostly the product of Douglas's over-sensitivity; even had Manningham meant to imply that Douglas changed his opinion on 4 December, the charge was not made directly, and the insinuation (if such, indeed, existed) was lost in the midst of the more spectacular revelations Manningham made in his pamphlet. By not publishing An Advertisement until early January, Douglas had not made himself vulnerable to attacks until after most of the satires had been written and interest in the incident had nearly exhausted itself. For the general public, those who were not intimately acquainted with the details of what happened in the bagnio, Douglas simply never became a person to mention, let alone satirize.

But for those who were in the bagnio, Douglas's actions on that day were well-known. There was a nasty altercation. A witness accused Douglas of being a conspirator and swore out a deposition, a version of which Douglas recorded. It is clear that in the eyes of the accuser, and presumably in the eyes of others, on 4 December Douglas had acted like a true believer:

It is remarkable that these events of 4 December, which caused such a stir in the bagnio and which were so ripe for satire, never became known to the general public until well over a month after they occurred. Perhaps others there were less certain than the unnamed accuser that Douglas had come out in support of Mary Toft; perhaps Douglas was not seen as fair game until he published his self-defense in early January. Whatever the reason, Douglas's supposed "conversion" appears to have been known only within the circle of medical men and those who were present at the bagnio during the first week of December. The fact that the writer of "The Rabbit-Man-Midwife" was aware of the incident a month before it was revealed to the public in "A Shorter and Truer Advertisement" suggests once again that he was privy to the happenings in the bagnio, either as an eye-witness or as someone who was acquainted with those who were eye-witnesses. This does not point to Arbuthnot conclusively, though it makes him a plausible candidate for the authorship of the poem.