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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    doctor, once confessed that Armstrong was so lazy that his soul could not turn itself in its bed.156 The Scottish novelist, Henry Mackenzie, glanced at another aspect of Armstrong in his Anecdotes and Egotisms: “He [Armstrong] was not quite temperate enough for a careful physician; yet notwithstanding his love for a friend and a bottle, he acquired con¬ siderable practice in London; as might be expected from his talents and disposition, he was in great favour with a circle of friends.”157 Besides being arrogant as a critic, extremely indolent, and somewhat devoted to Bacchus, Armstrong had a posthumous reputation of having been coarse in his speech, according to Leigh Hunt. In his Autobiography, Hunt com¬ mented on Armstrong’s influence over Fuseli: “The licences he took were coarse and had not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly they went a great deal beyond his friend Armstrong; to whose account, I believe, Fuseli’s passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic to swear like him.”158 But this gossip of Hunt, who was born after Armstrong’s death, amounts to very little. As a matter of fact there is nothing in the record of Arm¬ strong’s life to prove that he was ever addicted to serious vice in any form. He was, as we have seen, constitutionally lazy, romantically melan¬ choly, and very thin-skinned. Armstrong’s acute sensitiveness about his reputation as a doctor and writer is remarkably evident in the Medical Essays (1773), his last pub¬ lication, and what amounts to an apology or defense of his whole career. It contains the material, in fact, for a typical romantic piece of personal confession. The following passages are, therefore, a primary source of our understanding of Armstrong’s character. Meantime he does not send out these little Essays by way of a Quack’s bill— Upon honour he does not—For he has not the least inclination to extend his practice beyond the circle of a few friends and acquaintances; amongst whom he commonly finds sufficient employment to secure him from the melancholy lan- gour of idleness, and the remorse that in some minds must naturally haunt a life of dissipation—Tho’ he could neither tell a heap of impudent lies in his own praise, wherever he went; nor intrigue with nurses; nor associate, much less as¬ similate, with the various knots of pert insipid, lively stupid, well-bred imper¬ tinent, good-humoured malicious, obliging deceitful, washy, drivelling Gossips; nor enter into juntos with people that were not to his liking; it will not appear a mighty boast to any one that is but moderately acquainted with this overgrown town to say, that he might have done great things in physick—Most certainly he could—But that his ambition had a great many years ago received a fatal check 166 See James Boswell, Boswelliana (London, 1874), p. 255. 167 The Anecdotes and Egotisms of Henry Mackenzie, ed. Harold W. Thompson (Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 39. 168 See Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography (London, 1891), p. 173.
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