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.
5/40 page 1023
![For the next three years of Armstrong’s career all data have vanished, but it is known that in June, 1741, he asked for the Rev. Thomas Birch’s recommendation to the famous Dr. Richard Mead in order to be appoint¬ ed physician to the troops going to the West Indies.18 This appointment Armstrong failed, it seems, to receive. On July 20, 1741, he wrote to Birch from Rawthmell’s19 as follows: Dear Sir: I should be glad if it were convenient for you to carry me to Dr Mead again tomorrow morning. If it is please leave word at the Barr here and they will communicate it to me this evening. I shall make no apology to so good a Friend for this trouble, as it is a mere trifle to what you have submitted to on my ac¬ count. £ am Dear Sir Your most humble & obliged Serv* lohn Armstrong20 This letter shows that Armstrong was already on familiar terms with Birch, who by 1741 was in a position to help many friends less established than he.21 Another glimpse of Armstrong’s friendship with Birch appears in the following letter, unaddressed, but surely to Birch, written again at Rawthmell’s October 6, 1742: Dear Sir: If you are to be at Leisure next Friday Mr Spence22 and I shall be glad to meet you about two at Richard’s Coffee house within Temple Barr, from whence we shall adjourn to any Tavern you please to dine together. If Friday is not conven¬ ient for you please leave word at the Barr here at at [sic] meeting we shall agree upon some Day next Week I am Dear Sir Your most humble and obliged Servant John Armstrong23 18 See John Nichols, Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, F.S.A. (London, 1782), p. 583. See also Bullen’s account of Armstrong in D.N.B. 19 For Rawthmell’s Coffee-House in Covent Garden, see P. H. Ditchfield, Memorials of Old London (London, 1908), n, 138. 20 Printed from Br. Mus. MS. Sloane, 4300, f. 90. 21 For the Rev. Thomas Birch (1705-1766), see D.N.B. To that account it should be added that Birch was on the Committee of Managers of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning in 1736, along with Dr. Mead, the poet Thomson, and the latter’s friend, George Lewis Scott, the mathematician. Birch seems to have had boundless kindness and energy. For a lively account of his walking around London city in one day see the Political Magazine, xn (1787), 324. 22 Presumably the Rev. Joseph Spence. 23 From Br. Mus. MS. Sloane 4300, f. 90. This letter and that of July 20, 1741, are side by side in the MSS.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30632018_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
