John Armstrong, physician and poet, was born about 1709 in Castleton manse, Liddesdale, Roxburgshire. He took the Edinburgh M.D., in 1732, and soon after commenced practice in London. In 1736 he published a nauseous poem, “The Œconomy of Love;” in 1744 his principal work, “The Art of Preserving Health,” a didactic poem in four books. In 1746 he was appointed physician to the London Soldiers’ Hospital, in 1760 physician to the forces in Germany, whence he returned on half-pay in 1763, to resume practice. With Fuseli, the painter, he made a continental tour (1771); and he died in London from a fall, 7th September 1779. The friend of Thomson, Mallet, Wilkes, &c. Armstrong seems to have been a reserved, indolent, and splenetic man, “who quite detested talk;” kind-hearted withal, and frugal.

Personal

  Armstrong, another poet and physician and not unworthy of either class for genius and goodness of heart, though he had the weakness of affecting a bluntness of manners, and of swearing, drew his last breath in this street. He is well known as the author of the most elegant didactic poem in the language,—the “Art of Preserving Health.” The affectations of men of genius are sometimes in direct contradiction to their best qualities, and assumed to avoid a show of pretending what they feel. Armstrong, who had bad health, and was afraid perhaps of being thought effeminate, affected the bully in his prose writings; and he was such a swearer, that the late Mr. Fuseli’s indulgence in that infirmity has been attributed to his keeping company with the Doctor when a youth.

Art of Preserving Health, 1744

  To describe so difficult a thing, gracefully and poetically, as the effects of distemper on a human body, was reserved for Dr. Armstrong, who accordingly hath executed it at the end of his third book of his “Art of Preserving Health,” where he hath given us that pathetick account of the sweating sickness. There is a classical correctness and closeness of style in this poem, that are truly admirable, and the subject is raised and adorned by numberless poetical images.

  Dr. Armstrong, in his “Art of Preserving Health,” has not aimed at so high a strain as the other [Akenside]. But he is more equal; and maintains throughout a chaste and correct elegance.

  His “Art of Preserving Health” is the most successful attempt, in our language, to incorporate material science with poetry. Its subject had the advantage of being generally interesting; for there are few things that we shall be more willing to learn, either in prose or verse, than the means of preserving the outward bulwark of all other blessings. At the same time, the difficulty of poetically treating a subject, which presented disease in all its associations, is one of the most just and ordinary topics of his praise. Of the triumphs of poetry over such difficulty, he had no doubt high precedents, to show that strong and true delineations of physical evil are not without an attraction of fearful interest and curiosity to the human mind; and that the enjoyment, which the fancy derives from conceptions of the bloom and beauty of healthful nature, may be heightened, by contrasting them with the opposite pictures of her mortality and decay. Milton had turned disease itself into a subject of sublimity, in the vision of Adam, with that intensity of the fire of genius, which converts whatever materials it meets with into its ailment: and Armstrong, though his powers were not Miltonic, had the courage to attempt what would have repelled a more timid taste. His Muse might be said to show a professional intrepidity in choosing the subject; and, like the physician who braves contagion (if allowed to prolong the simile), we may add, that she escaped, on the whole, with little injury from the trial. By the title of the poem, the author judiciously gave his theme a moral as well as a medical interest. He makes the influence of the passions an entire part of it. By professing to describe only how health is to be preserved, and not how it is to be restored, he avoids the unmanageable horrors of clinical detail; and though he paints the disease wisely spares us its pharmaceutical treatment. His course through the poem is sustained with lucid management and propriety.

  His sentences are generally short and easy, his sense clear and obvious. The full extent of his conceptions is taken at the first glance; and there are no lofty mysteries to be unravelled by repeated perusal. What keeps his language from being prosaic, is the vigour of his sentiments. He thinks boldly, feels strongly, and therefore expresses himself poetically. Where the subject sinks, his style sinks with it; but he has for the most part excluded topics incapable either of vivid description, or of the oratory of sentiment. He had from nature a musical ear, whence his lines are scarcely ever harsh, and are usually melodious, though apparently without much study to render them so. Perhaps he has not been careful enough to avoid the monotony of making several successive lines close with a rest or pause in the sense. On the whole, it may not be too much to assert, that no writer in blank verse can be found more free from stiffness and affectation, more energetic without harshness, and more dignified without formality.

  Has the rare merit of an original and characteristic style, distinguished by raciness and manly grace.

  Warton has praised the “Art of Preserving Health” for its classical correctness and closeness of style, and its numberless poetical images. In general, however, it is stiff and laboured, with occasional passages of tumid extravagance; and the images are not unfrequently echoes of those of Thomson and other poets. The subject required the aid of ornament, for scientific rules are in general bad themes for poetry, and few men are ignorant of the true philosophy of life, however they may deviate from it in practice.

  On the whole however the merits of “The Art of Preserving Health” far outweigh its defects. It may indeed be urged by a devil’s advocate that it is but a left-handed compliment to say that a man has done better than could be expected a task which, as sense and taste should have shown him, ought not to have been attempted at all. But Armstrong must always have, with competent judges, the praise which belongs to an author who has a distinct and peculiar grasp of a great poetical form.

  In the class of poetry to which it belongs, the “Art of Preserving Health” holds a distinguished place. No writer of the eighteenth century had so masterful a grasp of blank verse as is shown in parts of this poem. The powerful passage descriptive of the plague (book iii.) has been highly praised. As in all didactic poetry, the practical directions are of little interest; but those who value austere imagination and weighty diction cannot afford to neglect Armstrong’s masterpiece.

  A poem containing some powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical treatise than for poetry.

General

  On the whole, he is likely to be remembered as a poet of judicious thoughts and correct expression; and, as far as the rarely successful application of verse to subjects of science can be admired, an additional merit must be ascribed to the hand which has reared poetical flowers on the dry and difficult ground of philosophy.

  The “Œconomy of Love,” 1736, 8vo, was published anonymously; and it is indeed a production which not many men would care to claim. A more nauseous piece of work could not easily be found. When the author reissued the poem in 1768, he had the good sense to cancel some of the worst passages.

  Armstrong’s diction was absurdly tumid; he calls a wild briar-rose “a cynorrhodon,” and a cold bath “a gelid cistern.” But his merits of dignity and melody are at present underrated. The structure of Armstrong’s blank verse is excellent, and though founded upon Thomson’s, has a certain independent stateliness.

  Armstrong’s early imitation of Shakespeare and his critical panegyrics on the great dramatists reveal his true leanings. He was indeed indebted to Thomson, but only in a slight degree; and the influence of his country is rather seen in the independence of the fashionable mode which it helped him to maintain, than in positive features of his style. He was one of the earliest students of the Elizabethans who went so far as to make them his models, and acknowledge them as supreme masters of poetic art. He owes to the school in which he studied the daring of his sombre imagination, the manliness of his style, and the strength of his verse.

  No one now would write on Armstrong’s subjects in Armstrong’s manner, but his grasp of the peculiar Thomsonian diction and versification was extraordinary.