Dr. John Armstrong, littérateur, and associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and other celebrities / Lewis M. Knapp.

  • Knapp, Lewis M. (Lewis Mansfield)
Date:
[1944?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dr. John Armstrong, littérateur, and associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and other celebrities / Lewis M. Knapp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for it in the Evening. Your praises make me more than an amends for all that the vulgar herd of Criticks at the Bedford George’s, &c. &c. &c., can ever say against me, and I thank you most heartily for your alteration of that flat Line in Benevo¬ lence;71 you have improved it greatly by two slight Strokes, and it shall be read so in all future Editions. I like your Translation of E. I’s Inscription much, and dare say Peggy must have approved of it greatly, at least at her heart; it is not verbum verbo to be sure but has all the Freedom of an Original, what few Trans¬ lations can boast of [.] D-n72 is gone to the Country for two or three weeks so you’ll probably see him as soon as I shall. I am just going to take the step you so very kindly push me on to, and which I should have ventured upon nine years ago if it had not been for that State of Spirits which has made me set about it with some reluctance now, as it is an attempt to plunge deeper into a Business which upon some Occasions fills me with insupportable Anxiety the Cause of a thousand Reveries and Blunders which you have often seen me ashamed of. Smollett imag¬ ines he and I may both make Fortunes by this project of his; I’m afraid he is too sanguine, but if it should turn out according to his hopes farewell Physick and all its Cares for me and welcome dear Tranquillity and Retirement.73 This correspondence is difficult to understand. What was Wilkes prais¬ ing which the coffee-house critics were condemning? As Armstrong had published nothing since his Taste (1753), perhaps Wilkes was praising some new and still unpublished piece as well as “improving” Of Benevo¬ lence. Of “E. I’s Inscription” there appears no record. Again, what was “the step” toward which Wilkes was so kindly urging his friend—a step he might have taken nine years previously? One point however is clear: Smollett’s “project” was either what he called “an extensive Plan which I last year [1755] projected for a sort of academy of the belles lettres; a Scheme which will one day, I hope be put in Execution to its utmost extent,”74 or it was what Smollett called a “small branch” of that plan, The Critical Review, initiated at the end of 1755, with its first number already in the press when Armstrong was writing his letter. In either case it is clear that Armstrong was one of the committee of projectors of which Smollett was chairman, and this means that Armstrong must be regarded as perhaps one of the “four gentlemen of approved abili¬ ties”75 who “conducted,” to use Smollett’s word, The Critical Review, in its beginnings at least. Armstrong at this period was doctoring Wilkes’ daughter, who, after the separation of Wilkes and his wife in 1756, was sent to a girls’ school in Chelsea. In an undated letter written about this 71 Of Benevolence, published 1751. 72 D—n was possibly Sir William Duncan, physician in ordinary to George III, and one of Wilkes’ physicians in 1763. 73 B.M. Add. MS. 30867, ff. 113-113a. 74 Quoted Smollett’s letter to Dr. John Moore, written Aug. 3, 1756. See The Letters of Tobias Smollett, M.D., ed. Edward S. Noyes (Harvard University Press, 1926), p. 39. 76 Idem.
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