ARMSTRONG, JOHN, a physician, known for his po etry, and a poet known for writing on the difficult sub ject of physic, was the son of a clergyman at Castleton, in Roxburgshire, and born at that place about the year 1709. He was distinguished at Edinburgh, where he studied physic, before his twentieth year, by gaining a prize-medal for a prose composition, prescribed by a li terary society in that city, and by other promising marks of genius during his studies. His inaugural disserta tion, De Tabe Purulenta, gained him also some reputa tion, for being superior to the common bulk of produc tions of that nature, and for being believed to be his own, a circumstance still more rare than intrinsic merit in these inaugural dissertations.
After obtaining a medical degree at Edinburgh, he professed physic, but probably lived by writing in Lon don. To console himself for the want of practice, he published an essay for abridging medical study, with a dialogue between Hygeia, Mercury, and Pluto, relating to the medical practice, as it is managed by a certain il lust•ious society ; and an epistle from Usbeck the Per sian, to Joshua Ward, Esq. with a dedication to Ward, Moore, and the numerous sect of inspired physicians. This appeared anonymously in 1735, and, like all witty dialogues, was compared to Lucian. After publishing, in 1737, a history and synopsis of the cure of the vene real disease, he published an obscene poem, " The (Economy of Love," which has probably contributed to extend that pestilence as much as his synopsis has con tributed to cure it. At the distance of twenty years, he corrected this poem, betraying at the same time a consciousness of its impurity, and yet a hankering after its reputation.
The other dates of his publications are as follows : In 1774, he published his chief and truly meritorious work, " The Art of Preserving Health." In 1751, ap peared his poem " On Benevolence," in folio. In 1753, his poem " Taste," in an epistle to a young critic. In 1758, " Sketches on various subjects." by Launcelot Temple. In 1761. an epistle to John Wilkes of Ayles bury, entitled, " Day." A few lines in this last produc tion, which expressed cnntempt of Churchill, drew on him the anger of that satirist ; but it is his anger, not his ridicule, which Churchill vents in retaliation : he calls him a stiff and letter'd Scot, and taxes him with ingratitude to Wilkes. Armstrong could not recrimi nate on Churchill, that he was letter'd ; and • it would hardly have hurt his character, to have proved the sa tirist guilty of ingratitude ; but his own character passed undefended and uninjured, through the ordeal of satire which consumed meaner victims. The subject of poli tics divided Armstrong and Wilkes, though in the epis tle above mentioned, he concludes a pleasant letter with '" ever, ever yours ;" but it required a stronger friend ship than theirs to resist the menstruum of party-poli tics. In 1770, he published a collection of miscellanies,
in two volumes 8vo, containing the pieces he had pub lished separately, with imitations of Shakspcare and Spenser ; the universal Almanack, by Nouraddin All ; " The Forced Marriage," a tragedy ; and some Sketches, a publication on which he seems to have rest ed his hopes or immortality, and to have advanced his claims with an arrogance, affecting to lean on the im portance of his friends, but indirectly complimenting his own. He despised, he said, the opinions of the mobili ty, from the highest to the lowest ; and if it was true, as he had been sometimes told, that he had the best judges on his side, he desired no more in the article of fame and renown as a writer. This contempt of gene ral opinion would not be decorous from a much greater writer than Dr Armstrong : it is in subtance declaring, as Horace Walpole remarks, that the doctor and a half a dozen of his friends, were the only judges of litera ture in England ; it is an arrogance, as the mild and ju dicious Beattie also observes, which neither Virgil nor Horace ever ventured to assume. To the man whose ambition is satiated with his own applause, and that of a few friends, we may surely apply the saying of Voltaire, respecting a vain-glorious writer, who declared that he was cloyed with reputation, c‘ Surely the gentleman has got a very delicate stomach." In 1771, he published a short ramble through some part of France. In 1773, he gave the world a quarto pamphlet of medical essays, in one of which he explains the causes of his own want of practice as a physician. He could not stoop, by his Own account, to the mean arts of intrigue and gossiping, which conduct to medical popularity. This is his own splenetic account : his biographers have ascribed the failure to his dispositions, which were elegant and lite rary, but indolent. But, with all these habits of life, and disdain of vulgar arts, it is not to be supposed, but that consummate knowledge in his profession would have triumphed over many disadvantages. In physic, as in poetry, the doctor possibly imagined, that the ver dict of half a dozen friends ought to have been a passport to fame. During the remainder of his life, he does not ap pear to have converted the public to believe, that his prac tice ought to have been extensive ; for at his death, in 1779, it was a matter of surprise, that he left L3000 be hind him, his income having been generally very small.