stupendous, when there were many literary but few very learned men. His vigour of intellect imposed upon the multitude an opinion of his wisdom, from the solemn air and oracular tone in which he uniformly addressed them. He would have been of less consequence in the days of Elizabeth or of Cromwell.

JOHN ARMSTRONG.

JOHN ARMSTRONG, the son of a Scotch minister, was born in the parish of Castleton, in Roxburghshire. The date of his birth has not been ascertained, nor is there any thing known concerning the earlier part of his education. The first we hear of it is, that he took a degree in medicine at Edinburgh, on the fourth of February, 1732; on which occasion he published his Thesis, as usual, and chose De Tabe Purulentâ for the subject of it. A copy of a Latin letter, which he sent to Sir Hans Sloane with this essay, is said to be in the British Museum. In an advertisement prefixed to some verses which he calls

Imitations of Shakspeare, he informs the reader that the first of them was just finished when Thomson's Winter made its appearance. This was in 1726, when he was, he himself says, very young. Thomson having heard of this production by a youth, who was of the same country with himself, desired to see it, and was so much pleased with the attempt, that he put it into the hands of Aaron Hill, Mallet, and Young. With Thomson, further than in the subject, there is no coincidence. The manner is a caricature of Shakspeare's.

In 1735, we find him in London, publishing a humorous pamphlet, entitled An Essay for abridging the Study of Physic, which, though he did not profess himself the writer, Mr. Nichols says,* he can, on the best authority, assert to be his. In two years after he published a Medical Essay. This was soon followed by a licentious poem, which I have not seen, and the title of which I do not think it necessary to record. While thus employed, it was not to be expected that he should rise to much eminence in his profession. The dying man does not willingly see by his couch one who has recently disgraced himself by an open act of profligacy. In January 1741, he solicited Dr. Birch to use his influence with Mead in

* Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, Vol. ii. p. 307, &c.

recommending him to the appointment of Physician to the Forces which were then going to the West Indies. It does not appear that this application was successful; but in five years more, (February 1746,) he was nominated one of the Physicians to the Hospital for Invalid Soldiers behind Buckingham House; and in 1760, Physician to the Army in Germany. Meantime (in 1744) he had published his Art of Preserving Health, a didactic poem, that soon made its way to notice, and which, by the judiciousness of the precepts, might have tended to raise some opinion of his medical skill. At the beginning he addresses Mead: :

Beloved by all the graceful arts,

And long the favourite of the healing powers.

He had now become intimate with Thomson, to whose Castle of Indolence he contributed the three stanzas which conclude the first canto. One of the alterations made in them by Thomson is not for the better. He had written

And here the gout, half tyger, half a snake,
Raged with a hundred teeth, a hundred stings;

which was changed to

The sleepless gout here counts the crowing cocks,
A wolf now gnaws him, now a serpent stings.

When Thomson was seized with the illness of which he died, Armstrong was one of those who were sent for to attend him.

In 1751, he published Benevolence, an Epistle to Eumenes; and in 1753, Taste, an Epistle to a Young Critic. In the next year, he wrote the Forced Marriage, a tragedy, which Garrick did not think fitted for the stage. It was printed in 1770, with such of his other writings as he considered worthy of being collected.

In this book, which he entitled Miscellanies, in two volumes, first appeared the second part of Sketches or Essays on Various Subjects, by Launcelot Temple, Esq.; the former had been published in 1758. Wilkes was supposed to have contributed something to these lively trifles, which, under an air of impertinent levity, are sometimes marked by originality and discernment. His poem called Day, an epistle which he had addressed to Wilkes in 1761, was not admitted by the author to take its place among the rest. For the dispute which gave rise to this omission he was afterwards sorry; and in his last illness declared, that what he had got in the army he owed to the kindness of Wilkes; and that although he had been rash and hasty, he still retained a due sense of gratitude. In attacking Wilkes, he contrived to exasperate Churchill also, who was not to be provoked with impunity, and who revenged

himself in the Journey. In 1771, he published a Short Ramble through some parts of France and Italy. In the neighbourhood of Leghorn he passed a fortnight with Smollett, to whom he was always tenderly attached. Of his book I regret the more that I cannot speak from my own knowledge, because the journey which it narrates is said to have been made in the society of Mr. Fuseli, with whom it is not easy to suppose that any one could have travelled without profiting by the elegance and learning of his companion. I have no better means of bringing my reader acquainted with some Medical Essays which he published in 1773; but from the manner in which they are spoken of in the Biographical Dictionary,* it is to be feared that they did not conduce to his reputation or advancement. He died in September, 1779, in consequence, as it is said, of a contusion which he received when he was getting into a carriage. His friends were surprised to find he had laid by three thousand pounds, which had been saved chiefly out of his half-pay.

Armstrong appears to have been good-natured and indolent, little versed in what is called the way of the world, and, with an eagerness of ostentation which looks like the result of mortified vanity, a despiser of

*Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 486.

H