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Five years elapsed before Armstrong again came forward, and then it was in prose, and under a borrowed name. His 'Sketches, or Essays on various Subjects, by Launcelot Temple,' appeared in 1758. In these sketches he more openly manifested those cynical feelings which he had occasionally betrayed in his poem on Taste. He could (he tells us) have given these little loose fragments much bolder strokes, as well as more delicate touches; but as an author's renown depends at present upon the mobility, he dreads the danger of writing too well; and feels the value of his own labour too sensibly to bestow it where, in all probability, it might serve only to depreciate his performance.' Such a petulant and absurd declaration as this, even if sincere, must provoke the smile of contempt. He was under no compulsion to publish; and if it were true that the renown of an author depended upon the mobility, why did he condescend not only to write for those whom he affected to despise, but even to sink his style to their level against his own better judgment, and with the certainty of incurring ridicule from men of taste?

The Sketches had a rapid sale, for which it has been imagined that they were in part indebted to a report that he had been assisted in them by the pen of Wilkes. The internal evidence of style does not give sanction to this report; for, as Mr. Chalmers has justly observed, Wilkes had a 'more chaste classical taste, and a purer vein of humour than we find in these sketches;' which, it must be owned, are also open to his censure of being deformed by a perpetual flow of affectation, a struggle to say smart things, and above all a most disgusting repetition of vulgar oaths and exclamations.' Yet they are not without merit. The remarks on florid writing, on the versification of tragedy, and on one or two other subjects, are judicious and not inelegantly expressed.

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In 1760, Armstrong received the appointment of physician to the army which Great Britain was then maintaining in Germany, for the preservation of Hanover. If confidence may be placed in the evidence of a letter, written by the widow of Dr. Armstrong's brother, this appointment was procured through the influence of Mr. Wilkes. Dr. Armstrong (says she) had always in his heart a very great regard for Mr. Wilkes, as a very pleasant companion, who had always been kind to him. In his last illness he said that Mr. Wilkes had got him into the army; and that, though he had been rash and hasty, he still retained a due sense of gratitude.'

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When he had been in Germany about four months, he addressed to Wilkes some familiar verses, which were soon after published in London, with the title of 'A Day; an Epistle to John Wilkes, of Aylesbury, Esq.' In a prefatory notice it was pretended that the poem was printed by the nameless editor from an imperfect copy, without the knowledge or consent of the author, or of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.' This, however, we may now believe to be one of those stratagems which authors sometimes employ. It appears to be ascertained', that Armstrong not only authorized, but even prompted the publication, and that the lines which were omitted by Wilkes were either such as were unfinished in their composition, or of a nature to give offence. Armstrong, we may suppose, was willing to take the chance of praise for his pleasantry and wit, provided that he could at the same time reserve the power of disavowing the work, should it happen to be treated with critical severity.

Two lines of this poem are erroneously imagined to have brought down on their author the bitter satire of Churchill, in the posthumous production intituled

See the Gentleman's Magazine for 1792.

'The Journey;' and biographers, without troubling themselves to inquire into the truth of the fact, have descanted on the vanity and irascibility of the satirist. The lines which are presumed to have given inexpiable offence, are the sixth and eighth of the following passage:

What news to day? I ask you not what rogue,
What paltry imp of fortune's now in vogue;
What forward blundering fool was last preferred,
By mere pretence distinguish'd from the herd;
With what new cheat the gaping town is smit;
What crazy scribbler reigns the present wit;
What stuff for winter the two booths have mixt,
What bouncing mimic grows a Roscius next.

If, under any circumstances, Churchill could in this have discovered a ground of quarrel, he must indeed have been the most vain and irascible of man kind. It would have even required in him a more than ordinary share of folly as well as of vanity, to construe the vague sixth line into a personal attack, and as to the eighth, it clearly applies to an actor and not to a poet. Besides, had he thought himself aggrieved, he would not have delayed to take vengeance. He was never slow to return the shafts of his enemies, and would scarcely have suffered Armstrong to escape during four years. This is, perhaps, conclusive. There remains, however, another argument, which is irrefragable. The story is destroyed by an appeal to dates. The epistle to Wilkes was not written in 1761, as some biographers have asserted; but, on the contrary, was sent from the press in the latter end of 1760. The Rosciad did not come out till March in the following year; and it must be remembered that, till this satire appeared, Churchill was unknown as a man of talent. To render the tale still more absurd, let it be added, that, nearly three years after the pretended deadly affront had been given by him, Armstrong was complimented by

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Churchill and Wilkes, in the dedication which they conjointly prefixed to the tragedy of The Fall of Mortimer.'

To the noxious influence of politics we must doubtless look for the cause which dissolved the friendship of Wilkes and Armstrong, and drew down upon the latter the hostility of Churchill. The torrent of ridicule and abuse, which Wilkes and his party daily poured forth upon Scotland and Scotchmen, could scarcely fail of exciting angry feelings in the bosom of Armstrong. The breaking up of their intimacy seems to have happened late in 1763, or early in 1764. Churchill, in The Journey,' accuses him of ingratitude, and is supposed to allude to his forgetfulness of pecuniary obligations which he owed to Wilkes. It is at least equally probable that the charge may refer to the kindness done to him, in procuring, or facilitating, his appointment of army physician. It is certain that they were never reconciled. So late as 1773, an interview, not in the spirit of friendship, took place between them, in which, though it was sought for by Armstrong, he appears to have had the worst of the argument. This meeting was occasioned by some letters in the Public Advertiser, which, in a manner not very pleasing to Armstrong, called the attention of the town to the circumstances connected with the publication of his Epistle to Wilkes.' On his death bed, however, he, by confessing that he had been 'rash and hasty,' acquitted his friend of being culpable with respect to their separation.

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After the peace of Paris he returned to England, and resumed his practice, which, however, never extended beyond a narrow circle. It was not till 1770 that he again came forward in the character of an author. He then collected his scattered works, with the exception of ' A Day,' and 'The Economy of Love,' and he added, ' Imitations of Shakspeare and

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Spenser;' 'The Universal Almanack, by Noureddin Ali;' The Forced Marriage,' a tragedy, rejected by Garrick in 1754, and a second part of his Sketches and Reveries.' The whole was published in two volumes, with the title of Miscellanies,' to which he prefixed a splenetic advertisement, apparently written for the sole purpose of making an opportunity to express his lofty contempt of 'the opinion of the mobility, from the highest to the lowest.' He did not, he declares, write for the public, he wished for the praise of only the best judges: he had consequently no ground for expecting that his book would be rapidly spread. Yet, with a strange inconsistency, in less than a month after his Miscellanies came out, we find him murmuring at the slowness of the sale. In a letter to Dr. Smollett, he says, though I admitted my operator to an equal share of profit and loss, the publication has been managed in such a manner, as if there had been a combination to suppress it; notwithstanding which, I am told, it makes its way tolerably at least. But I have heard to-day that somebody is to give me a good trimming very soon.'

That of which he professes to have been forewarned, did actually come to pass. For the vulgar and brutal language of some of his sketches he was severely chastised by the critics. It is in truth such as must excite disgust in every delicate and candid mind. The periodical critics did not stand alone in their censure of it. In a letter to Sir William Forbes, Beattie mentions it with reprobation, and, at the same time, gives a just character of The Forced Marriage,' and 'The Universal Almanack.' 'I know not (says he) what is the matter with Armstrong, but he seems to have conceived a rooted aversion against the whole human race, except a few friends, who it seems are dead. He sets the public opinion at defiance: a piece of boldness which neither Vir

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