John Armstrong (poet)

John Armstrong
Dr. John Armstrong by Sir Joshua Reynolds (c. 1767), courtesy Figge Art Museum, Davenport, USA
Born	1709
Died	1779 (aged 69–70)
Nationality	Scottish
Occupation	poet, physician
Notable work	The Art of Preserving Health (1744)

Dr. John Armstrong (1709–1779) was a physician, poet, and satirist. He was born at Castleton Manse, the son of Robert Armstrong, minister of Castleton, Roxburghshire, Scotland John studied medicine and gained his MD at the renowned University of Edinburgh (being the first to graduate 'with distinction' in 1732) before establishing a successful medical practice in London.

John Armstrong is remembered as the friend of James Thomson, David Mallet, and other literary celebrities of the time, and as the author of a poem on The Art of Preserving Health, which appeared in 1744, and in which a somewhat unpromising subject for poetic treatment is gracefully and ingeniously handled. His other works, consisting of some poems and prose essays, and a drama, The Forced Marriage, are forgotten, with the exception of "The Oeconomy of Love" and the four stanzas at the end of the first part of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, describing the diseases incident to sloth, which he contributed. Under the pseudonym "Launcelot Temple, Esq", he published Sketches, or, Essays on Various Subjects in 1758.

The "Oeconomy Of Love" has been described as an eighteenth-century guide to sex and is particularly interesting in that the lines:

"To shed thy blossoms thro' the desert air, And sow thy perish'd offspring in the winds" are thought to be a possible inspiration for the more famous lines by Thomas Gray contained in his "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" as follows:

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

However John Armstrong's use of floral metaphor in the "Oeconomy of Love" refers to the unnecessary shedding of semen whilst the author cautions young men against sexual practices that he condemns in his role as poet and physician.

Strangely what must have been once the small town of Castleton, with a castle, church, manse, regular licensed markets and many homes has now totally disappeared. In the churchyard, however an obelisk stands to the memory of John Armstrong. It reads:

Of considerable note, also written on the same stone, in this deserted churchyard of a town or village of which nothing else remains, lies the further inscription: