Dr. John Armstrong, littérateur, and associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and other celebrities / Lewis M. Knapp.
- Knapp, Lewis M. (Lewis Mansfield)
- Date:
- [1944?]
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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![clearly related in some degree to that stately old Jacobite and blue-blood, Andrew Lumisden,6 who fled from Scotland after Culloden and became the Pretender’s Secretary in Rome. Lumisden, in turn, was a cousin of the proud and influential Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, Midlothian, with whom Armstrong carried on a correspondence. Armstrong’s youth was spent on the banks of the Liddal in the parish of Castleton, Rox¬ burghshire, where his father, Robert Armstrong, was the minister from 1693-1733. Only a short distance away, grew up the poet Thomson, who was some nine years older than Armstrong. Their later friendship in Lon¬ don originated no doubt in the idyllic and romantic environment of which each cherished vivid memories. Born about 1709, Armstrong, according to his own statement, wrote “when he was very young,” verse in the styles of Shakespeare and Spenser. The theme of his first imitation, that of winter, was “just fin¬ ished when Mr. Thomson’s celebrated poem upon the same subject ap¬ peared” in 1726, Armstrong being then a lad of about fifteen. “Mr. Thomson, soon hearing of it, had the curiosity to procure a copy by the means of a common acquaintance,”7 and showed it to Mallet, Aaron Hill, and Dr. Young. Mallet promised to publish it, but failed to do so. It is easy to see, however, that the interest of this group must have been encouraging to young Armstrong, who went on to undertake a tragedy, never finished, on the story of Tereus and Philomela. But as there was the need of making a living, Armstrong, like young Smollett, decided to prepare himself for a medical career, and obtained his M.D. from Edinburgh in 1732, two years after Thomson had com¬ pleted The Seasons. Naturally enough then Armstrong went down to London, having dedicated his medical dissertation to that distinguished patron of learning, Sir Hans Sloane.8 9 He must have arrived there by 1735, for early in that year he read a medical article before the Royal Society and then published, also in 1735, a shilling pamphlet called An Essay For Abridging the Study of Physickf which contained, along with other sat- 6 For Andrew Lumisden, see D.N.B. and Robert Warnock, “Boswell and Andrew Lumis¬ den,” in M.L.Q., ii (1941), 601-607. Lumisden called Armstrong “my cousin” in a letter written to Sir Alexander Dick from Paris in 1770. 7 These “Imitations” together with Armstrong’s introduction were first published in his Miscellanies (1770), i, [145] ff. 8 Armstrong’s dedicatory letter in Latin to Sloane is preserved in the British Museum, MS. Sloane 4052, f. 62. For its text see the memoir of Armstrong in Lives of Scottish Poets with Portraits and Vignettes, 3 vols. (London, 1822), ii, 115-134. The subject of Armstrong’s thesis was De Tabe purulenta. 9 For some account of its contents, see Iolo A. Williams, Seven XVIIIth Century Bibliog¬ raphies (London, 1924), pp. 18-19. There is a reprint of it in The Repository: a select col¬ lection of fugitive pieces of wit and humour . . . 4 vols. (London, 1790-1793), iii, [121]—162.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30632018_0002.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
