Among the distinguished guests of the Club are many celebrities. Here the chivalrous Sir Sidney Smith described the atrocities of Djezza Pasha; and here that cheerful baronet--Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin--by relating the result of his going in a jolly-boat to attack a whale, and in narrating the advantages specified in his proposed patent for fattening fowls, kept "the table in a roar." At this board, also, our famous circumnavigators and oriental voyagers met with countenance and fellowship--as Cook, Furneaux, Clerke, King, _Bounty_ Bligh, Vancouver, _Guardian_ Riou, Flinders, Broughton, Lestock, Wilson, Huddart, Bass, Tuckey, Horsburgh, &c.; while the Polar explorers, from the Hon. Constantine Phipps in 1773, down to Sir Leopold M'Clintock, in 1860, were severally and individually welcomed as guests. But, besides our sterling sea-worthies, we find in ranging through the documents that some rather outlandish visitors were introduced through their means, as Chet Quang and Wanga Tong, _Chinese_; Ejutak and Tuklivina, _Esquimaux_; Thayen-danega, the _Mohawk_ chief; while Omai, of Ularetea, the celebrated and popular savage, of _Cook's Voyages_, was so frequently invited, that he is latterly entered on the Club papers simply as _Mr._ Omai.
The redoubtable Sir John Hill dined at the Club in company with Lord Baltimore on the 30th of June, 1748. Hill was consecutively an apothecary, actor, playwright, novelist, botanist, journalist, and physician; and he published upon trees and flowers, Betty Canning, gems, naval history, religion, cookery, and what not. Having made an attempt to enter the Royal Society, and finding the door closed against him,--perhaps a pert vivacity at the very dinner in question sealed the rejection,--he revenged himself by publishing an impudent quarto volume, vindictively satirizing the Society.
Ned Ward, in his humorous Account of the Clubs of London, published in 1709, describes "the _Virtuoso's_ Club as first established by some of the principal members of the Royal Society, and held every Thursday, at a certain Tavern in Cornhill, where the Vintner that kept it has, according to his merit, made a fortunate step from his Bar to his Coach. The chief design of the aforementioned Club was to propagate new whims, advance mechanical exercises, and to promote useless as well as useful experiments." There is humour in this, as well as in his ridicule of the Barometer: "by this notable invention," he says, "our gentlemen and ladies of the middle quality are infallibly told when it's a right season to put on their best clothes, and when they ought not to venture an intrigue in the fields without their cloaks and umbrellas." His ridicule of turning salt water into fresh, finding a new star, assigning reasons for a spot in the moon, and a "wry step" in the sun's progress, were Ward's points, laughed at in his time, but afterwards established as facts. There have been greater mistakes made since Ward's time; but this does not cleanse him of filth and foulness.