During the course of a long life, devoted early to im provement, Armstrong had an opportunity of being twice abroad ; once in his professional capacity, in 1760, as physician to the forces in Germany, the place from whence his epistle to Wilkes was dated ; and again, in 1771, when he seems to have travelled for amusement. From reading, from genius, and from travel, his mind is described by those who knew him best, as having been richly accomplished : and for the value of his conversa tion, as well as the strength of his friendships, he was deservedly beloved by those who enjoyed theta. That he bestowed the wealth of so valuable a mind less co piously on the public than might have been wished, seems to have arisen from two causes :—His propensi ty to deal in sarcastic, and, as he imagined, humorous prose, which was by no means his forte, and in which oddity and vulgarity are substituted for wit and pleasan try. his disposition, too, if we may judge from the portraiture given of him in " The Castle of Indolence," was morbidly misanthropic, and of course but ill adapted to labour for immortality It should not be forgotten, that Armstrong contribu ted the description of the diseases at the conclusion of the first part of this excellent poem, " The Castle of Indolence ;" diseases so finely personified, that they conduct that enchanting allegory to all the moral it re quires, and to all the effect it could admit of, from the contrast of grave and severe, with gay and voluptuous images.
The fame of Armstrong rests on his didactic poem, The 4rt cf Preserving Health. The well deserved ho nour which this poem enjoys, of being ranked among the best of modern didactic poems, makes it nothing invidious to remark, that creation of character, invention of story, and expression of feelings, which deeply affect us by sympathy, constitute alone the highest honours of poetry. Over the heart Armstrong has not a powerful sway, and over the imagination no vehement influence. He gives a classical and dignified aspect, however, to objects which, in common life, are not only humble, but repulsive. He enlarged the empire of pleasurable asso
ciation, by teaching us to associate, even by contrast, the bloom and loveliness of health with the paleness of dis ease. By touching at that fine hut (to blunt observation) almost invisible point at which the generalized views of poetry and philosophy see objects in the same light ; that point at which objects may be contemplated, neither too abstractedly for poetry, nor too fancifully for philo sophy, he has united the substance of truth with the colouring of imagination. His language is pure, per spicuous, and full of sober dignity. He could not be expected to rouse the passions where it was not his object to touch them : But he elevates the tone of the mind higher than its usual reflections ; and, by combi ning in one excellent instance the general traits of plague and death, he makes that sublime in description which is repulsive in detail. Something too much of scholastic allusion, and affectation of Greek and Roman phraseology, might perhaps be mentioned as detracting from that simplicity in his style which is otherwise uni form ; but custom might, perhaps, make it impossible to avoid such a tribute to classical learning, as to hail Health for the daughter of Pman, to speak of the Arca dian banks of the Liddel, or of learned retirement, with out noticing the groves of Epicurus. In general, he depends upon his sense for the power of his sentences ; and had it not been for the pagan idolatry, which has so long filled our poetry, from the gayest of love songs* to the gravest of philosophical poetry, we should not read in Armstrong such pedantic phrases as, " Thus the Coan sage opin'd ;"—" Glad Ainalthea pours her plen teous horn ;"—" Here buxom Ceres reigns,"—when he only means to inform us, that Hippocrates had a certain opinion, or that plenty reigns in certain climates.
It is not easy to find an instance of philosophical re flexion conveyed in a more dignified climax than in the following, which deserves to be written on the monu ment of Armstrong, as a specimen of the noblest po etry.