John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-century Sensibility in Practice 9780754663065, 9781409434184

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John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health Eighteenth-Century Sensibility in Practice

Adam Budd

John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health John Armstrong’s 2000-line poem The Art of Preserving Health was among the most popular works of eighteenth-century literature and medicine. It was among the first to popularize Scottish medical ideas concerning emotional and anatomical sensibility to British readers, doing so through the then-fashionable georgic style. Within three years of its publication in 1744, it was in its third edition, and by 1795 it commanded fourteen editions printed in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Benjamin Franklin’s shop in Philadelphia. Maintaining its place among more famous works of the Enlightenment, this poem was read well into the nineteenth century, with translations in French, German, and Italian. It remained a tribute to sustained interest in eighteenth-century sensibility, long after its medical advice had become obsolete and the nervous complaints it depicted became unfashionable. Adam Budd’s critical edition includes a comprehensive biographical and textual introduction, and explanatory notes highlighting the contemporary significance of Armstrong’s classical and medical sources, and social references. Included in this study are discussions of Armstrong’s innovative medical training in charity hospitals and his close associations with the poet James Thomson and the bookseller Andrew Millar, evidence for the poem’s wide appeal, and a compelling argument for the poem’s anticipation of sensibility as a dominant literary mode. Budd also offers background on the “new physiology” taught at Edinburgh, as well as an explanation for why a Scottish-trained physician newly arrived in London needed to write poetry to supplement his medical income. This study also includes annotated excerpts from the key literary and medical works of the period, including poetry, medical prose, and georgic theory. Readers will come away convinced of the poem’s significance as a uniquely engaging perspective on the place of poetry, medicine, the body, and the book trade in eighteenth-century cultural history.

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John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health Eighteenth-Century Sensibility in Practice

Adam Budd University of Edinburgh, UK

© Adam Budd 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Adam Budd has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Armstrong, John, 1709–1779. John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health: eighteenth-century sensibility in practice. 1. Health – Poetry. 2. Armstrong, John, 1709-1779. Art of preserving health. 3. Literature and medicine – Great Britain – History – 18th century. 4. Reason in literature. 5. Medicine in literature. 6. Medical education – Scotland – History – 18th century. I. Title II. Budd, Adam. 821.6-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armstrong, John, 1709–1779. John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health: eighteenth-century sensibility in practice / [John Armstrong]; by Adam Budd. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6306-5 (alk. paper) 1. Health—Poetry. 2. Armstrong, John, 1709–1779. Art of preserving health. 3. Literature and medicine—England—History—18th century. 4. Reason in literature. 5. Medicine in literature. I. Budd, Adam. II. Title. PR3316.A6A8 2011 821’.6—dc22 2010048259 ISBN: 9780754663065 (hbk) ISBN: 9781409434184 (ebk) II

Contents List of Figures   Preface   Textual Note and Abbreviations   Acknowledgements   General Introduction: Sensibility in Practice: Dr. John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health  

vii ix xix xxi 1

The Critical Text The Art of Preserving Health  

51

Contextual Documents Poetry Thomas Creech, “The Plague of Athens, from the Latin of Lucretius,” 1682  

131

[Anne Finch,] “A Nocturnal Reverie,” 1713  

139

James Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” 1748  

143

James Thomson, “Preface,” Winter. A Poem, 1726  

147

Edward Young, “Night the First,” 1742  

153

[Thomas Warton], The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem, 1747  

165

Theory of the Georgic Joseph Addison, “An Essay on the Georgics,” 1697  

173

Virgil, The Georgicks, trans. John Martyn, 1741  

185

Joseph Trapp, “Of Didactic or Preceptive Poetry,” 1711–9  

201

Medical Documents Richard Bradley The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d, 1720  

219

George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life, 1724  

223

[Anonymous], A Letter to George Cheyne, 1724  

233

[John Tristram], The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain, 1727  

239

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[John Armstrong], “Preface,” A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children, 1742  

251

Table 1: Selected Chronology of significant figures, events, and publications

255

Table 2: Chronology of Classical Texts

267

Bibliography   Index  

269 295

List of Figures 1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Armstrong, M.D. (1767), Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Mezzotint by E. Fisher reproduced with kind permission of the Trustees of the Wellcome Library, London.

47

2 [Armstrong, John]. The Art of Preserving Health. A Poem in Four Books. London: A. Millar, 1744. Title-page.

50

3

The Plague. London: F. Cogan, 1743. Title-page.

4 Thomson, James. Winter. A Poem. 2nd edn. London: J. Millan, 1726. Title-page. 5

[Warton, Thomas]. The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem. London: R. Dodsley, 1747. Title-page.

130 146 164

6 Virgil. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English Translation and Notes. Trans. John Martyn. London: R. Reily, 1741. Title-page.

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7 Trapp, Joseph. Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. Translated from the Latin. [1711–19.] Trans. W. Bowyer and W. Clarke. London: C. Hitch and C. Davis, 1742. Title-page.

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Bradley, Richard. The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d: with Remarks upon the Plague in General. London: W. Mears, 1720. Title-page.

218

9 A Letter to George Cheyne, M.D. F.R.S. Shewing, the Danger of laying down General Rules To those who are not Acquainted with the Animal Oeconomy, &c. For Preserving and Restoring Health. Occason’d by his Essay on Health and Long Life. London: J. Graves, 1724. Title-page.

232

10

[Tristram, John]. The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain: Truly Represented to all Lovers of Health, and of their Country. And An Apology for the Regular Physicians. London: J. Roberts, 1727. Title-page.

238

11

[Armstrong, John]. A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children. London: A. Millar, 1742. Title-page.

250

8

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Preface Measured by any standard, one of the most popular publications of the eighteenth century was a long didactic poem by a long-forgotten physician—and it remains a key document in the cultural, social, and medical history of the Enlightenment. This edition of John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health furnishes a critical text with a historical introduction to the poem and its author, edited texts selected from medical and literary documents of the period. This Preface explains why we should return to Armstrong, and indeed why we should do so with reference to the Contextual Documents that are featured in the pages that follow. The Art of Preserving Health largely remains overlooked, even by most students of the eighteenth century, a hardcover edition of 1979 notwithstanding. But for more than a century after its appearance in 1744 it was praised by critics, cited approvingly by physicians, pirated widely by booksellers, quoted by diarists, and celebrated by generations of readers in Britain, America, and on the Continent. It was reprinted, all 1,700 lines of it, in the various multivolume Libraries of British Poetry that filled the shelves of early nineteenth century homes and in turn defined the classics of British literature. The lucrative copyright for The Art of Preserving Health was coveted by the London-based Scottish bookseller Andrew Millar (who also published the great poems of James Thomson and Edward Young, and the bestselling novels of Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson), and in America it was for years the only work of literature or medicine to be sold by Benjamin Franklin. Readers commanded dozens of editions, printed on fine and cheap paper, bound in every format. Numerous translations were commissioned by publishers in France, Italy, and Switzerland. The changing tastes, interests, and education of readers help to explain why this poem has been neglected for so long, but they cannot detract from its historical importance. John Armstrong (1709–79) was the first to graduate insignitus (“with distinction”) from Edinburgh’s new medical school, in 1732. Following his friend James Thomson and encouraged by the entrepreneurial David Mallet (née Malloch), Armstrong arrived in London soon afterward. But London’s Royal College of Physicians judged Edinburgh a “foreign” university awarding inferior degrees—so Armstrong was denied a license to practice legally in Britain’s most lucrative medical marketplace. On the advice of his Scottish friends, Armstrong took up his pen to display his credentials and attract potential patients. But turning to print was risky, particularly for physicians, for it could initiate a damaging pamphlet-war. Even with Swift and Pope in declining health, poetry remained a 



For references not footnoted in the Preface, see the General Introduction.

Holmes indicates that “medicine was beyond comparison the most pamphlet-ridden



of the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century professions. From the avalanche of writings issuing from the leading polemicists among the physicians, apothecaries and surgeons of



John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health

powerful form of public expression that could make or break careers. Pope had recently made the chilling claim: Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God afraid of me. (“Epilogue to the Satires” 2: 208–9)

But Armstrong’s adoption of blank verse addressed potential patients directly, eliding critics whose attacks engaged only with prose, and escaping the “poetic warfare” of heroic couplets. His poem offers us a perfect merger of what Helen Deutsch has described as “[the] parallel processes of professionalization and popularization” required both of authors and physicians in Britain at this time. Armstrong’s welcome depiction of a sensitive doctor writing directly to his ailing patients marketed new thinking to English readers, cultivated at Edinburgh’s consumer-driven medical school, reflecting a new appreciation of the exchangebased relationship between those who provide and those who seek medical expertise. The Art of Preserving Health illustrates social and cultural reasons why the innovative course of training at Edinburgh threatened London’s medical elites. Armstrong’s evocation of emotional and physical experience displayed his professional manner to an increasingly literate public. Doing this through an imitation of Virgil’s Georgics was also culturally savvy. Readers were enjoying a resurgent enthusiasm for the Georgics among critics, translators, poets, and even scientists. Addison had explained why the georgic was the best model for didactic poetry: “where the Prose-writer tells us plainly what ought to be done, the Poet often conceals the Precept in a description, and represents his CountryMan performing the Action in which he wou’d instruct his Reader.” This meant that “the georgic mode,” coupled with sensitive description of emotional and Augustan England, one might well conclude that the pen was considered to be far mightier than the prescription, the powder and the poultice.” See G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (New York: Harper, 1982) 167.  On the metrical strictures of “poetic warfare,” see Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 135–72; 177–8.  See Helen Deutsch, “Symptomatic Correspondences: The Author’s Case in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Cultural Critique 42 (Spring 1999): 36. In Scotland, professorial physicians were paid by students through lecture fees, which was far more lucrative than writing books—especially books that put those lectures into cheap print. Since no formal medical lectures were offered at Oxford or Cambridge during the first half of the eighteenth century, and professors there were not paid on a per-student basis anyway, medical popularization through print carried very different professional consequences in England. This is the primary reason why Edinburgh’s greatest medical teachers, including Alexander Monro primus, Robert Whytt, and William Cullen were reluctant to see their lectures in print while they held professorial chairs.  For an overview of the range of related works catering to the georgic vogue of this period, see John Martyn, in Contextual Documents, note 1.

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physical feelings, allowed Armstrong to emphasize his subjective experience to an inclusive readership. Readers of popular poets such as Anne Finch would have been familiar with poetical attempts to refine emotional sensibility by focussing on sensory experiences that register beyond words, that lead to … silent Musings [that] urge the Mind to seek Something, too high for Syllables to speak. (“Nocturnal Reverie” 41–2)

More innovative was Armstrong’s attempt to cultivate his readers’ physical sensibility by teaching them to identify the anatomical meaning of particular sensations—that is, to cultivate a reflective corporeal sensibility. Lest readers be troubled by the terrifying imagery of plague and fire that Armstrong had borrowed from Virgil’s own model, Lucretius, he reassured them by adopting four of Galen’s moderating elements for healthy living, called the “non-naturals,” as titles for his poem’s four books: Air, Diet, Exercise, and The Passions. These same titles structured the medical writings of countless popular authors, from the enduring Luigi Cornaro and Nicholas Culpeper to the more recent George Cheyne. But only at a glance, and at a distance of some three centuries, does The Art of Preserving Health seem to iterate conventions. The Art of Preserving Health continues to pose challenges for historians, especially for its now-arcane classicism and its lexical peculiarities; likewise, the  For a reading of sensibility that suggests literary depictions of a “man of feeling” exclude women readers from them thus envisioning themselves, see Ann Jessie Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993) esp. 110–120. Armstrong frequently warns readers against “unmanly” habits and anticipates male readers who share his own distinctly masculine temptations, see APH 4: 350–370; 386. But participation in what Karen O’Brien has called “the georgic mode” invited subjective reflection without prescribing an exclusively male readership; indeed the poem was recommended by men to women readers. On the georgic mode as a kind of expansive self-understanding, see K. O’Brien, “Imperial Georgic: 1660–1789,” The Country and the City Revisited, ed. G. Maclean et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998) 161. For its recommendations, see Hugh Smith, Letters to Married Women, (London: G. Kearsley, 1767) 236–7.  By the mid-eighteenth century, Cornaro’s treatise, variably titled Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life, was among the most popular books ever published. For its high profile and strong praise; see Bacon, “A History of Life and Death” [1638] in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. P. Shaw (London: Knapton et al, 1733) vol. 3, 369; Addison, Spectator 195 (13 Oct. 1711). An elaborate subscription-list heads a new translation of 1742: see T. Smith, trans. Hygiasticon (London: C. Hitch, 1742); some thirty editions of Cornaro appeared before 1791 (rivaling APH). More than seventy editions of Culpeper’s The English Physician (1652) were published during the eighteenth century. On Cheyne, see prefatory note to his Essay of Health and Long Life, in Contextual Documents.  See, for example, Anita Guerrini’s speedy dismissal of the poem as a “poetic version” of Cheyne in Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 2000) 184.

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text misleads literary historians by referencing events of mainly contemporary concern. Indeed, Armstrong held no high ambitions for himself as a poet or as a commentator. He was writing urgently and only for readers of his time. Our historical distance risks simplifying the complexity of Armstrong’s classical address to his patron: Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, Had I the lights of that sagacious mind Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quel the deadly Python of the Nile. O Thou belov’d by all the graceful arts. Thou long the fav’rite of the healing powers, Indulge, O Mead! a well-design’d essay, Howe’er imperfect: and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share. (APH 1: 53–63)

Now the Oxford DNB indicates that Armstrong is appealing to Richard Mead, the great (“fav’rite”) London physician and philanthropist (“belov’d by all the graceful arts”) and it confirms Mead as the author of the enduringly popular Discourse on the Plague (that “taught to check the pestilential fire”). Less evident is the socially allusive force of these lines—for contemporary references to plagues and epidemics terrified potential patients, fellow physicians, and shook the highest levels of the British government.10 Armstrong’s very mention of “the deadly Python of the Nile” reminded readers of the alarming epidemic that ravaged Sicily only months before this poem was printed; the infection was understood to have reached Europe from Egypt. A pamphlet published within months of Armstrong’s poem refers to “the very great Apprehensions and Fears which possess our Nation on Account of the present Plague” in Calabria and Cueta.11 Richard Bradley’s  For example, Bruce Boehrer correctly identifies Armstrong’s many rhetorical debts to Milton, but he misunderstands Armstrong’s practical instructions to readers as an effort to reach Milton’s far more elevated purposes: “by appropriating patterns of digestive and excremental imagery from Paradise Lost, Armstrong invests solemnly in language that—as Michael Lieb has shown--operates for Milton himself largely on the level of ‘cosmic realism’ (128) … The apparatus of Milton’s vast metaphysical drama is brought to bear on phlegm and flatulence.” But Armstrong was not seeking to reach or to evoke literary greatness; his readers were seeking practical instruction provided through fashionable stylistic conventions. See B. Boeherer, “English Bards and Scotch Physicians: John Armstrong’s Debt to Paradise Lost and the Dynamics of Literary Reception,” Milton Quarterly 32 (Oct. 1998): 100. For an insightful discussion of Armstrong in the context of current poetic developments that also made innovative use of the georgic, see David Fairer, English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700–1789, (London: Pearson, 2003) 97–8. 10 Robert Walpole was forced to resign from the leadership of the government in February 1742, in part for his perceived failure to support the military in the wake of the disaster at Cartagena. See General Introduction, note 161. 11 See The Plague No Contagious Disease, (London: J. Millan, 1744) 3.

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Plague at Marseilles Considered provided reports that were typical in newspapers of the day, but it still passed through four editions between 1719 and 1721, and another in 1727—eight full years after that outbreak. In 1743, a new anthology of plague narratives combined classical reports with recent testimonies from Sicily; the second half of that book reprinted new Acts of Parliament intended to reassure British readers of their relative safety from Continental infections.12 Armstrong’s reference to pestilence would also have reminded his readers of the recent catastrophe at Cartagena, in South America, that stunned Britons with a humiliating military defeat far from home, “beyond th’ Atlantic foam,” as Armstrong would put it later (APH 3: 628). It was at this point that the colonial War of Jenkins’s Ear expanded into a far more bloody European conflict, the War of Austrian Succession (1739–48). But for Armstrong’s first readers, the reference to pestilential fire was the most alarming point. At least 7,500 of the 10,000-strong British naval and military contingent that landed at Cartegena were struck down by yellow fever before they could engage the Spanish, let alone return to fight Spain’s hostile allies in Europe. Armstrong’s readers would have worried that this disaster was an omen of the future for Britain’s military, for no physician could propose a cure or treatment to such fatal diseases—indeed Dr George Martine, who had also trained in Edinburgh and had attended the expedition, was killed in the epidemic. Like Armstrong, Martine had been denied a license to practice by the protectionist censors of the London College, which led to his posting on the illfated Cartagena expedition. So Armstrong’s possessive reference to “my country” (APH 1: 63) challenged lingering resentment of the Acts of Union (1707) that made London a shared capital only to relegate Scots to commercial peripheries. Armstrong exposes the prejudice of the London College in his gentle appeal to the views of sympathetic readers in England and back at home in Scotland.13 The popular resonance of The Art of Preserving Health, together with contextual documents that include John Tristram’s The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain, yields insights into the shared views of authors and their readers, which they articulated through the emerging commercialization of literature and medicine.14 London physicians saw that their control of the medical market was shrinking well before Scottish-trained students began to arrive during the 1730s. The anonymous pamphlet A Letter to George Cheyne was printed twice in 1724, and reflects local physicians’ anxiety about the popularization of medicine through print. For this anonymous author, the culprits were those physicians, like Cheyne, See The Plague (London: F. Cogan, 1743), in Creech, Contextual Documents. Unfortunately, in the wake of Jacobite rebellion of 1745, even normally restrained

12 13

journals such as the Gentleman’s Magazine would call for “the total extirpation” of all Jacobite citizenry, which Howard Weinbrot interprets as a thinly veiled attack on the Scottish people. See GM 16 (1746): 415; H. Weinbrot, Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993) 1. 14 On the scholarly importance of such study, see D. Harley, “Rhetoric and the Social Construction of Sickness and Healing,” Social History of Medicine 12 (1999): 407–35.

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whose popularity as authors enabled thousands of potential patients to pay just four shillings for his book and thus to forgo the typical one-guinea (or 21 shillings) charge for a medical consultation. The author makes the important point that, since every patient is constitutionally unique, “any general Rule laid down to any number of Men … must be destructive,” which is why it is medically safer for patients to retain a physician who will examine them and tailor his advice “on the conviction of his own Senses.” But the Letter resounds with fear of the economic threat that books such as Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long Life posed to London’s medical elite. Cheyne had claimed his book is “careful not to incroach on the Province of the Physician,” but surely this disingenuous slick-speaking offered cold comfort to his less entrepreneurial colleagues. For readers of Cheyne’s Essay of Health called for no less than six printings in the very year it was first published, with at least ten editions appearing by 1745, creating a vogue matched only by Richardson’s novel, Pamela (1740).15 The Essay reveals the degree to which Galen’s “non-naturals” were integrated into the teaching of one of the century’s most mathematically inclined Newtonian physicians. It also demonstrates a conventional intertwining of medical with religious and moral instruction, which Cheyne used to serve his purpose. Adopting Biblical rhetoric and visual cues for emphasis he preached: “He that wantonly transgresseth the self-evident Rules of Health, is guilty of Self-Murder.” Even the most charitable reader could assume this meant that not following Cheyne’s published advice will lead to moral and physical sin of truly theological proportions. Armstrong’s poetic instructions marked a strident departure from the period’s most popular text of its kind. His approach to the rules of health is far less pious, and indeed he shares its difficulty: ’Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse The best, and those of most extensive use; Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey (APH 1: 46–9)

Apart for Armstrong’s allusion here to Virgil, whose own uncertainty at the start of the Georgics only encourages sympathetic attention, these lines display Armstrong’s reverence for his patients. He does this by communicating his emotional vulnerability and proceeds by presenting his own physical weaknesses. Later in the poem, Armstrong goes so far to loosen assumptions about physicians’ immunity from temptations. Surely the following depiction of a sore head after a long night refers to personal knowledge:

15 See T. Keymer and P. Sabor, Pamela in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006).

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Soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom Shuts o’er your head: and, as the thund’ring stream, Swoln o’er its banks with sudden mountain rain, Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook; So, when the frantic raptures in your breast Subside, you languish into mortal man; You sleep, and waking find yourself undone. (APH 4: 177–83)

This degree of candid self-reflection constitutes a central element of Armstrong’s instruction, as well as his gestures to classical poets who wrote on similarly challenging topics; like them, he teaches by eliciting sympathy. Two years earlier, Armstrong had displayed the practical advantages of his self-effacing approach to medical knowledge. His pioneering pediatric treatise, A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children (published anonymously, 1742) was the first book of its kind intended for lay readers who care for sick children—“the Parents, but especially Mothers.” Right from the start, his Preface responds to the therapeutic worry raised by Cheyne’s anonymous critic: can general advice provide an effective substitute for personal consultation? Armstrong states that the women who consult his book can be confident that his advice “is altogether founded upon Practice.” In an observation that is characteristically sympathetic and practice, he points to the fact that “Children have not the Power of Speech to describe their Complaints,” and that physicians are “not so clear as they could wish” when recommending treatments. Armstrong will describe the cures that have too long been held by the specialists whose “fear of doing Mischief,” paradoxically, has prevented them from administering them. Referring to medical treatments, he announces, “It is entirely upon Account of those Female Practitioners, that I have put all the Formulae into English, and having set down all the Articles and their Doses at full Length.” For Armstrong, popularization of medical knowledge is a humanitarian and practical matter, one that reflects the demands of patients more than the commercial worries of physicians—whether they be authors or not. When James Boswell met with Hume in 1775, Hume said he admired “the truly classical” elements in Armstrong’s poem, and they concluded that “The Art of Preserving Health was the most classical Poem in the English Language.”16 These days, most of the popular literature of the eighteenth century that endures beyond classrooms, from the picaresque novels of Defoe and Fielding to the Romantic poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, can do so in part because its authors did not require a classical education of their readers. Indeed, the evocative immediacy (or the “writing to the moment”) that distinguishes the sentimental novels that appeared alongside The Art of Preserving Health continue to attract readers in part because they employ a distinctly emotional and psychological realism. Samuel Richardson, for example, expressly designed his novels as “a new species of writing” that could appeal to as many readers as possible by adopting 16 See The Private Papers of James Boswell, eds. Ralph Heyward Isham et al. (New York: W. E. Rudge, 1928–34) vol. 2, 27.

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the speech, thoughts, and feelings of real people—just one reason why he always refused to call his works novels or fictions.17 Armstrong’s sophisticated blending of realistic with obscure language and classical imagery, in a poem that seeks to depict physical feeling and also to evoke emotional and intellectual responses, seems at odds with the other great didactic works of its time, and contributes to its neglect even among specialists of this period. Armstrong’s contemporaries, including Thomas Gray, William Collins, and Samuel Johnson, published poems that displayed their command of the classics by referencing their ancient models in their subtitles and by adhering closely to Latin or Greek forms.18 Armstrong understated his debts to Virgil and Lucretius, partly because his primary concern was to win the approval of readers without classical training. At the same time, while his acute depictions of physical and visual perceptions at times suggest the “writing to the moment” familiar to readers of realistic novels, reading them as direct experience distorts their classical force: Thro’ every nerve A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o’er my frame. The forest deepens round; And more gigantic still th’ impending trees Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. (APH 2: 366–70)

Like Lucretius in De Rerum Natura and Virgil in his Georgics, Armstrong used verse to display both his learning and his expertise by blending the language of physical feeling with mythological visions: this “sacred horror” that “thrills” depicts the amazement felt by poets touched by the divine muses who shape or distort his inspired perception of the natural world.19 Yet these lines also depict a corporeal experience meant to teach readers to identify the first symptoms of infection; for sacred, according to a revived poetic convention that follows Virgil, also means “accursed”; horror means “shudder.”20 The sublime vision of trees extending themselves toward “the gloom” refers to other classical imitations familiar to readers of Anne Finch, whose “Nocturnal Reverie” emphasizes the imaginative consequences of acute auditory and visual sensitivity. Poems contemporary with The Art of Preserving Health, such as Thomson’s “On Solitude” and Thomas Warton’s “The Pleasures of Melancholy” required evocations of near-silence and solitude, for such conditions emphasize the poet’s own corporeal feeling. 17 See my “Why Clarissa Must Die: Richardson’s Tragedy and Editorial Heroism,” Eighteenth-Century Life 31 (Fall 2007) 1–28. 18 See, for example, Johnson’s learned imitations of Juvenal that include London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749); Collins’s closely Pindaric Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746); and Thomas Gray’s two famous Pindaric odes, “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard” (1748). 19 For a more recent example, see the lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s popular song “The Sisters of Mercy” in Stranger Music (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993) 109–10. 20 See APH 3: 506.

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Armstrong used classical conventions because he understood that they lent special didactic resonance: just like the practical instructions that contemporary scientists drew from Virgil (who followed Lucretius), these lines emphasize the dangers of moist air, and as Armstrong argues throughout his poem, it is this that transmits disease.21 And like recent medical publications that included classical and contemporary reports of disease, The Art of Preserving Health links current phenomena to ancient mystery—as he reveals at a particularly terrifying moment in the poem, “the salutary art was mute” as the sweating sickness raged in England (APH 3: 604). Only by preserving health in the present can we protect against diseases known even to the ancients. This combination of imaginative allusiveness and practical instruction comprises the classical manner that Hume and Boswell found distinctive in Armstrong.22 This poem’s illumination of contemporary social, cultural, and medical concerns retained its appeal long after it was first published, and long after it captured the attention of its lucrative first readers. This book includes two chronological timelines (Tables 1 and 2) that chart the careers and publications of related medical, literary, and classical authors; those printed in bold are featured in this book.

See F. de Bruyn, “Reading Virgil’s Georgics as a Scientific Text: The EighteenthCentury Debate between Jethro Tull and Stephen Switzer” ELH 71 (2004): 661–89. 22 For suggestive discussions of later developments in eighteenth-century poetry and criticism, that divided Greek and Roman “classicism” from antique “Gothicism,” see R. G. Terry, Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past, 1660-1781, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001) 286–323. 21

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Textual Note and Abbreviations A bibliographical reference cites each copy-text selected for this edition, along with a prefatory biographical footnote on the author and translator (when appropriate). Armstrong alludes frequently to Virgil’s Georgics and to Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”), and authors of the Contextual Documents gesture to a wide range of classical sources. References to Latin texts cite the Loeb editions (which appear in the footnotes and in the Bibliography), but references to Horace’s Odes and Virgil’s Georgics cite David Ferry’s recent dual-language editions (1997 and 2005). During the 1740s, readers could consult a number of reasonably-priced and frequently reprinted translations of Homer, Lucretius, and Virgil. By far the most popular were Alexander Pope (Iliad 1715–20; Odyssey 1726), Thomas Creech (1682), and John Dryden (1697): Creech, trans.

T. Lucretius Carus, 2nd edn (Oxford: Lichfield, 1683).

Dryden, trans.

The Works of Virgil in English, ed. W. Frost and V. Dearing. The Works of John Dryden (London: U of California P, 1987) vol. 5.

Pope, Iliad

The Iliad of Homer, 5th edn [1743], ed. S. Shankman (London: Penguin, 1996).

Pope, Odyssey

The Odyssey of Homer, ed. M. Mack (New Haven: Yale UP, 1967) 2 vols.

Further abbreviations include: Foxon D. F. Foxon, English Verse, 1701–50: A Catalogue of Separately Printed Poems (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) 2 vols. Johnson Samuel Johnson, ed. A Dictionary of the English Language (London: W. Strahan et al, 1773) 2 vols. Oxford DNB

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, updated regularly http://oxforddnb.com

OED

The Oxford English Dictionary, updated regularly http://oed.com

Spectator

J. Addison et al. The Spectator, ed. D. F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1965) 5 vols.

Complete citations appear in the footnotes and in the Bibliography.

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Acknowledgements The task of furnishing the biographical, social, and intellectual contexts that can illuminate a learned poem so long neglected as The Art of Preserving Health required research and advice that cannot be found in just one place—let alone in just one library or academic department. I am grateful to the colleagues, librarians, archivists, and friends, from Toronto to London to Edinburgh, who made such a challenging project so rewarding, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, for its support. At the earliest stages of this project, Roy Porter offered enthusiastic advice; Janice Thaddeus kindly promised me that the challenge would be worthwhile. Roy and Jan are sorely missed by a constellation of readers and friends. John Baird, Alan Bewell, Richard Greene, and Heather Jackson provided wise counsel at crucial stages. I also wish to thank my friends and colleagues, in particular Roseanne Carrara, Harold Cook, Jennifer Foy, Anna Greenwood, Craig Hanson, Gavin Kelly, Christopher Lawrence, Susan Manning, Juan Christian Pellicer, Beryl Pong, Richard Rodger, Lisa Rosner, Peter Sabor, Richard Sher, Jay Voss, Porterfield White, and Karina Williamson. I am grateful to archivists and librarians at the British Library, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto), the National Library of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Library, and the Wellcome Library. This book is for Nadine, Yael, and Sadie, the loves of my life.

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General Introduction

Sensibility in Practice: Dr. John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health During the early spring of 1764 James Boswell was lonely and miserable, forced by his father to leave his literary friends in London to study law in Utrecht. After days of wandering along the rainy streets, Boswell decided to focus his energies by translating a Scottish legal textbook into Latin. Writing in his journal, Boswell reflected on others who choose to continue to dwell on their unhappiness: They do not budge an inch to escape their woes. They fold their arms, they remain idle. Their blood becomes thick, their brains heavy, their thoughts dark. What a horrible situation! Dr. Armstrong, in his poem on The Art of Preserving Health, gives a description of that state which I have just described. He says,

The prostrate soul beneath A load of huge Imagination heaves. And all the horrors that the murderer feels With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast. (4:101–4)

It is impossible to translate into French his force of style, a force remarkable even in English. Rouse yourselves, wretched mortals!

These verses depict an imaginative poet sympathizing with his anxious reader— indeed its evocative power suggests that the poet himself was once thus frightened. By evoking sympathy and reflecting on its associated thoughts and feelings, Armstrong’s verse led Boswell to a therapeutic understanding: the source of his distress is ultimately imaginative and not physical. Boswell quoted these lines from memory, suggesting he had resorted to Armstrong’s poetical therapy before—and he would do so again in print, some years later. References to The Art of Preserving Health cite the first edition (London: A. Millar, 1744), as it appears in this edition; there are no significant variations among the many editions.  See Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGrawHill, 1956) 240. Boswell quoted these lines again in 1775, telling readers of the London Magazine that he “admires the expression very much,” because they suggest a fellowship among similarly afflicted readers: see The Hypochondriack, by James Boswell, ed. Margery Bailey, vol. 1, 2 vols (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1928) 139. The final line should read, “With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast.” 

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Challenging the Newtonian medical theory of the period, whose strictly physiological concerns have been described as “psychiatry without mind,” Dr. John Armstrong (1709–79) sought therapeutic effects when he published his fourpart poem, The Art of Preserving Health, in 1744. The intellectual historian Peter Gay has observed that the Scientific Revolution “was a voyage into abstraction and specialization” that many Enlightenment figures managed to resist. Indeed, by voicing his defiance of “the mathematical physic” characteristic of Newtonian medical theory, in a poetic style that was suited both to offering specific instruction and imaginative excursion, Armstrong’s masterpiece—which remained hugely popular throughout a particularly innovative century—should now be recognized as a key literary example of that resistance. This Introduction and indeed this book display Armstrong’s debts to contemporary interest in the period’s energetic rediscovery of Virgil’s Georgics, a rediscovery of a text that, particularly during the years immediately following the death of Alexander Pope, encouraged young poets to develop their readers’ associations between emotional experience and practical conduct. Armstrong skillfully integrates an innovative appreciation of his patient’s feelings with wider respect for Virgil’s classical model by placing the reader in the position of the honorable Roman farmer. He does this in ways that accord with David Fairer’s recent discussion of “the georgic mode” in contemporary poetry: “the ‘Nature’ with which the Georgic poet works is the same ambiguous power See Akihito Suzuki, “Psychiatry Without Mind in the Eighteenth Century: The Case of British Iatro-Mathematicians,” Archives internationales d’histoire de sciences 48 (1998): 120–146. See also A. Suzuki, Mind and Its Disease in Enlightenment British Medicine, PhD diss. University College London, 1992; Roy Porter, “Barely Touching: A Social Perspective on Mind and Body” in The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought, ed. G. S. Rousseau (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990): 45–79. On social aspects of the clinical dimension, see Wayne Wild, Medicine-By-Post in EighteenthCentury Britain: The Changing Rhetoric of Illness in Doctor-Patient Correspondence and Literature, PhD diss. Brandeis U., 2001.  See Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (New York: Norton, 1969) 128. On the dominance of Newtonian discourse in contemporary medical theory, see the following articles by Anita Guerrini: “Archibald Pitcairne and Newtonian Medicine,” Medical History 31 (1987): 70–83; “James Keill, George Cheyne, and Newtonian Physiology, 1690–1740,” Journal of the History of Biology 18 (1985): 247–66; and “The Tory Newtonians: Gregory, Pitcairne, and their Circle,” Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 288–311. See also T. Brown, “From Mechanism to Vitalism in Eighteenth-Century English Physiology,” Journal of the History of Biology 7 (1974): 179–216.  For a recent study of the particular suitability of georgic poetry for popularizing contemporary scientific concepts, see Frans de Bruyn, “Reading Virgil’s Georgics as a Scientific Text: The Eighteenth-Century Debate between Jethro Tull and Stephen Switzer,” ELH 71 (2004): 661–89.  For a recent survey of the prominence of georgic poetry among literary readers through the mid-eighteenth century, see Juan Christian Pellicer, “The Georgic,” The Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (London: Blackwell, 2008) 403–16. 

General Introduction



the workers have to confront, a changeable force which nurtures and tortures while it tracks the cycle of the seasons.” Further, by borrowing familiar rhetoric and structural principles from Galenic medicine throughout his poem, Armstrong retained a traditional view of nature as a force that both harms and heals. But his deliberate focus on volatile emotional states (or “passions,”) opens up a new view of literary experience as a therapeutic force. Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health adopts and then adjusts poetic evocations of powerful feelings, such as the vision of terror that Armstrong’s close friend James Thomson provided in his great poem Winter (1726); this literary practice had provided a therapeutic harnessing of sublime imagery that tested current somatic theories of the mind. Similar contemporary literary examples are significant because, together, they show that the Art of Preserving Health retains historical importance not only for its powerful depiction of the knowledgeable physician as a feeling patient, but also for the way it encouraged its considerable numbers of eighteenth-century readers to think critically about the emotional meaning and pedagogical significance of this poet’s clinical depictions. This reflectiveness on real and imagined encounters between patients and physicians, this book suggests, is just the most evident way in which this poem signals the sympathetic abilities of its readers, which has seemed more characteristic of contemporary novels than didactic poetry. The Art of Preserving Health has been neglected by later generations of readers, yet its characterization and reflectiveness was without precedent in both the medical and literary material of the early eighteenth century.10 The first part of this Introduction will pave the way for a closer reading of the poem by charting Armstrong’s earlier writing, medical training, and pioneering medicopoetic career, to show why this poem touches so tellingly on many important elements of professional, literary, and intellectual life in London and Edinburgh during the 1740s.  See D. Fairer, “Persistence, Adaptation, and Transformations in Pastoral and Georgic Poetry,” in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780, ed. J. Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005) 259–86. See also D. Fairer, English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700–89 (London: Longman, 2003) 79–101.  Thomson involved Armstrong in The Castle of Indolence; he provided the final three stanzas of Canto One that personify Lethargy, Hydropsy, Hypochondria, and Apoplexy. See Liberty, The Castle of Indolence, and Other Poems, ed. J. Sambrook (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1986) 197–8. For Armstrong’s close friendship with Thomson and other London-based Scots, see Mary Jane W. Scott, James Thomson: Anglo-Scot (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1988) 204–53.  In this respect, my discussion of the objective treatment of the subjective narrator will be indebted to Gabrielle Starr, Lyric Generations: Poetry and the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004). Starr does not mention John Armstrong nor any aspect of medical discourse. 10 For a suggestive discussion of reasons why so much Scottish poetry of this period remains neglected by readers and historians, see C. E. Andrews, “‘Almost the Same, but Not Quite’: English Poetry by Eighteenth-Century Scots,” The Eighteenth Century 47 (2006): 59–79.

John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health



Despite the thriving prejudices against Scottish physicians who took up practice in London in the years following Scotland’s political union with England (1707),11 John Armstrong’s innovative depiction of sympathy between ailing English patients and a wise Scottish physician and between a learned poet and receptive readers eventually won him a precious measure of patronage from the English medical establishment. Over the course of the next century, generations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century readers across Britain, Europe, and America celebrated the heightened and innovative display of emotional and physical sensibility in The Art of Preserving Health. As we will see in further detail, this poem’s publication history, as well as its open debts to stylistic, conceptual, and professional controversies of the time, attest to its author’s unique position in the mid-eighteenth century’s transitional political, literary, and medical contexts.12 Critical approaches to eighteenth-century literary culture make frequent reference to the coinage of “sensibility,” a neurological term which was introduced by the Edinburgh physiologist Robert Whytt in 1751—yet its cultural influence was limited by bibliographical history, for Whytt’s highly technical treatise addressed a very limited audience of specialists who did not call for a second edition until 1763.13 Armstrong’s medical training between 1728 and 1732 at the University See P. Langford, “South Britons’ Reception of North Britons, 1707–1820,” in T. Smout, ed. Anglo-Scottish Relations, from 1603 to 1900 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 143–69. 12 With regard to medical theory and practice, William Bynum has observed that “just as the intellectual origins of the French Revolution are sometimes traced from 1749, many of the concerns and attitudes of the late Enlightenment doctors seem to find a resting place around this date”: see W. F. Bynum, “Health, Disease, and Medical Care,” The Ferment of Knowledge, ed. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980) 220. 13 For suggestions that Whytt popularized the notion of sensibility beyond medical contexts, see G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1992); Geoffrey Sill, The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001); Ann Jessie Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993). Whytt coined this term to describe the actions of an immaterial “sentient principle” that directs purposeful but involuntary nervous reflexes: see An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (Edinburgh: Hamilton and Balfour, 1751). Whytt’s definition sparked a spirited debate with Albrecht von Haller over the relative nature of nervous “irritability,” which in Whytt’s view was constituted by neurological reflex rather than through local nervous sensitivity. See Roger French, Roger Whytt, the Soul, and Medicine (London: Wellcome Trust, 1969); Armstrong refers to “irritable nerves” twice in his poem, but he uses the term in the more general sense—for nerves were understood by nonspecialists to include muscles, ligaments, and neurological tissue (see APH 3: 448; APH 4: 447). Whytt discussed the controversy with Haller in his Physiological Essays of 1761; Haller’s side of the debate was not published in English until 1936. We should note that, as early as 1738, a regular contributor to Monro’s Medical Essays and Observations revised and Published by a Society in Edinburgh showed that involuntary actions (later termed reflexes) cast mystery rather than certainty on the mechanical relationship between mental will and physical experience, calling for further experiment and discussion. See William Porterfield, “An Essay concerning the Motions of Our Eyes, Part II” Medical Essays 4 (1738): 124–293. 11

General Introduction



of Edinburgh coincided with Whytt’s, and their shared course of study probably informed both men’s shared view that the mind responds both to internal (emotional) and external (physical) sensations.14 Literary and medical historians focus, sometimes exclusively, on the fashionable “nerve-doctor” George Cheyne when citing the scientific elements of sensibility’s moral dimensions—and it is true that after Cheyne’s death in 1743, one eulogist claimed that “his System has a peculiar Tendency to promote Virtue and Religion, to calm the Passions, refine the Mind, and purify the Heart.”15 But it is also important to note that despite the initial popularity of Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long Life (1724) and The English Malady (1733), the former was not reprinted between 1745 and 1787, nor the latter after 1735.16 If we date “the age of sensibility” from the publication of Richardson’s novel Pamela (1740) to the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s poems Lyrical Ballads (1798), then we should note that Cheyne’s and Whytt’s popularity among readers was quite muted throughout—keeping in mind that the social contacts of Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson, both of whom famously referred to Cheyne, were not representative of the wider reading public. Rather it was the conceptual program, humanitarian message, and unprecedented mode of cultural engagement achieved by Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health that allowed it to reach beyond the range of most if not all popular treatises on these subjects well into the nineteenth century, at which

See Edinburgh University Library MSS DC.595. See Dr. Cheyne’s Account of Himself and of His Writings (London: Wilford,

14

15

1744) 27. For major literary studies that focus on Cheyne, see Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1986), John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1988); C. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992). At a recent symposium celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, the medical historian Andrew Scull provided a keynote address that surveyed Scottish contributions to British psychiatry, citing Cheyne as the only worthy example. See A. Scull, “The Peculiarities of the Scots? Scottish Influences on the Development of English Psychiatry, 1700–1980,” unpublished paper, The History of Medicine in Scotland Symposium, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 10 October 2009. 16 Although The English Malady called for six editions in its first two years, the 1735 edition was its last. On Cheyne’s memoir of his fallen state before he underwent a religiospiritual conversion, which he appended to this work, see Anita Guerrini, “Case History as Spiritual Autobiography: George Cheyne’s “Case of the Author,” Eighteenth-Century Life 19 (May 1995): 18–27. Cheyne’s popular authority has waned well before he completed his Essay on Regimen (1740), for as Robert Schofield has shown, “he had to indemnify his publishers for losses suffered on the first edition”: see Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970) 61. See also Henry Fielding’s ridicule of Cheyne in his pamphlet, The Tryal of Colley Cibber …… and the Arraignment of George Cheyne, Physician at Bath, for the Philosophical, Physical, and the Logical Heresies Uttered in his Last Book on Regimen (London: n.p., 1740).



John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health

time the taste for didactic poetry met its fatal decline and the circulation of new discoveries turned the historical page.17 The Art of Preserving Health ranks among the most frequently reprinted books of the eighteenth century.18 In 1747, within three years of its release, The Art of Preserving Health entered its third edition and eighth impression. In the mid1760s, the poet laureate Thomas Warton translated 50 lines of it into Latin, with lengthy annotations on its classical allusions.19 The “public favour” that continued to celebrate Armstrong’s achievement was jealously noted with some bitterness by Thomas Chatterton as late as 1770, who associated the Art with the sensational and yet scandalous pan-European publication of the Ossian forgeries a few years earlier.20 By the time the distinguished physician and editor John Aikin published his edition of the Art in 1795, with lengthy scholarly apparatus, the poem had called for more than 13 editions and 27 impressions in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and notably at Benjamin Franklin’s shop in Philadelphia, where for some 20 years it was the only work of medicine or verse to carry his great American imprint.21 The Art was celebrated on the Continent, where it was translated into 17 On this decline, see K. Heinzelman, “Roman Georgic in the Georgian Age,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 33 (Summer 1991): 182–214. As Karina Williamson has noted, Thomas de Quincey considered didactic poetry an oxymoron. See K. Williamson, “West Indian Georgic,” rev. of The Poetics of Empire, by John Gilmore, Essays in Criticism 73 (Winter 2000): 80–89. 18 For a recent discussion of Armstrong’s poem in the context of eighteenth-century georgic poetry, see David Fairer, “Persistence, Adaptations and Transformations in Pastoral and Georgic Poetry,” J. Richetti, ed., The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660– 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005) 282–3. William J. Mahoney undertook a study of Armstrong’s life and work, but did not live to complete it: see his fragmentary George and John Armstrong of Castleton (Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1954). Lewis Knapp’s survey of Armstrong’s friendships, especially with Tobias Smollett and John Wilkes, does not discuss his writings: see “Dr. John Armstrong, Littérateur, and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities,” PMLA 59 (1944): 1019–58. The Art of Preserving Health has been noted as a historical curiosity in various medical journals. The first of these was Joseph Collins, “Literary Leanings of Eighteenth-Century Physicians,” Proceedings of the Charaka Club 4 (1916): 27–44; for the most recent, see William B. Ober, “John Armstrong, M.D.,” New York State Journal of Medicine 65 (1 Nov. 1965): 271–7. 19 See Thomas Warton, “De Ratione Salutis Conservandae,” The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Warton, vol. 2, 2 vols (Oxford: the University Press, 1802) 273–6. 20 See Chatterton’s “Kew Gardens” (1770): “Alas! I was not born beyond the Tweed!/ To public favour I have no pretence,/ If public favour is the child of sense:/ To paraphrase on Home in Armstrong’s rhymes,/ To decorate Fingal in sounding chimes,/ The self-sufficient Muse was never known,/ But shines in trifling dulness all her own” (388–94). See The Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton, ed. Donald S. Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1971). Chatterton is ridiculing Armstrong’s depiction of his childhood in the Scottish Borders; see Art of Preserving Health 3: 72–99. 21 Through the mid-1740s, Franklin was establishing The Pennsylvania Hospital, which opened in 1751. Armstrong’s didactic poem would have suited his taste as well as

General Introduction



German once, and into French and Italian twice.22 On his German tour of 1822, Wordsworth recalled that the sublimity of the Danube had been suitably expressed a century earlier in Armstrong’s juvenilia, indicating this major poet’s familiarity even with Armstrong’s collected ands rather mediocre verse—which by then had appeared in numerous editions.23 The nineteenth-century essayist George Gilfillan wrote that “we well remember to have heard [the poet] Thomas Campbell reading [from The Art of Preserving Health] in the Common Room of Glasgow College with great enthusiasm, as he proposed it to the students as the subject of a prize translation into Latin verse.” This must have been after 1826.24 In his lectures on rhetoric (1784), Hugh Blair had ranked Armstrong’s Art with Pope’s Essay on Man and Boileau’s Art of Poetry as “of the highest species, ancient or modern.”25 In 1819, the publisher Thomas Campbell claimed that “The Art of Preserving Health is the most successful attempt, in our language, to incorporate material science with poetry.”26 Suggesting a reconciliation between Romanticism and didactic poetry, William Hazlitt included all two thousand lines of the poem in his Select Poets of 1825, and the American educator and medical reformer William

his current interests, for as Walter Isaacson recently suggested, Franklin’s philosophical outlook as “more practical than abstract”: see Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) 150. No other medical work was printed by Franklin until 1750; the next book of poems from his press was an ephemeral poem by Thomas Letchworth of 1766. See C. William Miller, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766: A Descriptive Bibliography (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974). 22 For the German translation, see Die Kunst, die Gesundheit zu erhalten (Zürich: Füeßly, 1788); the Italian edition, Igea ovvero l’arte di conservar la salut (Livorno: Masi, Tommaso, 1806), by the great translator of Milton, Lazzaro Papi, was his only English translation beyond the Milton canon. A second translation was composed by T. J. Mathias, La salute o l’arte di conservarla poema in quattro canti (Naples: Nobile, Agnello, 1824). The two French translations are Fragment du Poème anglais intitulé «L’Art de conserver la santé», trans. A.-L. Marquis (Rouen: Baudry, 1818) and the complete L’Art de conserver la santé, trans. N. B. Monne (Paris: Goujon, 1827). 23 See Wordsworth’s Memorials of a Tour on the Continent: “Before this quarter of the Black Forest was inhabited, the source of the Danube might have suggested some of those sublime images which Armstrong has so finely described.” See “The Source of the Danube,” Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, ed. E. De Selincourt and Helen Darbishire, vol. 3 (Oxford: OUP, 1951) 170, 473. Armstrong wrote his Imitations of Shakespeare, to which Wordsworth refers, in 1726, when he was 15. 24 See G. Gillfillan, Introduction, The Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1880), xxii. Gillfillan entered his second year at the University of Glasgow when the poet Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) became Rector: see Oxford DNB. 25 See H. Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 1784, vol. 2 (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1993) 362. 26 See Specimens of the British Poets, vol. 6 (London: John Murray, 1819) 345.



John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health

Andrus Alcott provided explanatory notes for a Boston edition in 1838.27 A Scottish edition of Armstrong’s poems, printed in 1858 and again in 1880, continued the tradition of describing Armstrong as an “eminent” British poet, quoting the Monthly Review’s assessment of 1770, that “The Art of Preserving Health … on account of the reputation it has so justly acquired, precludes all criticism.”28 Such claims were made in every major anthology of the time, each promising to render John Nichols’s prediction, made some 15 years after Armstrong’s death in 1779, that “this poem will transmit his name to posterity as one of the first English writers.”29 Tastes and interests change, and this did not come to pass, despite the fact that a modestly priced hardcover edition was published in New York precisely 200 years after Nichols’s pronouncement.30 Armstrong’s Art remains an essential document of important social changes that affected literary style, the medical profession, and the requirements of readers in the mid-eighteenth century. Early Biography and Earliest Works On 6 February 1732, John Armstrong became the first student to graduate M.D. insignitus (“with distinction,”) from the University of Edinburgh’s newly established medical school (1726).31 Joining a wave of ambitious and educated Scots following 1707, who included Armstrong’s lifelong friends David Hume, Thomson, David Malloch (soon Mallet), and Tobias Smollett, Armstrong moved directly from Edinburgh to England; he sought a medical license from London’s Royal College of Physicians shortly after his graduation.32 Armstrong’s medical education was unique among London physicians, largely because Edinburgh’s training curriculum emphasized practical expertise at the bedside over the Newtonian calculating that 27 See The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem, in Four Books. With a Critical Essay by J. Aiken M.D. and Notes by Dr. Alcott (Boston: George W. Light, 1838) 210. 28 See the Preface to The Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green, ed. George Gillfillan (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1880). For an indication of the poem’s contemporary reception in America, see Poems of Established Reputation, Collected for the Use of the Colleges (Baltimore: Warner and Hannah, 1802). 29 See J. Nichols, Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer (London: Nichols, 1782) 279. 30 See The Art of Preserving Health, Aging and Old Age Collection, ed. Robert Kastenbaum et al. (New York: Arno P, 1979). 31 Armstrong graduated M.D. on 4 February 1732; he was the ninth to receive the M.D. at Edinburgh: see List of the Graduates in Medicine in the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Neill, 1867) 2. John Nichols recalled that “he took his degree with much reputation”: see Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2, 9 vols (London: J. Nichols, 1812) 307. 32 On Thomson’s wide circle of London-based Scottish expatriates, see Mary Jane W. Scott, James Thomson: Anglo-Scot (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1988) 204–53; for a cogent indication of London’s commercial attraction for Scots following the Union, see T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation, 1700–2007 (London: Allen Lane, 1999) 25–6.

General Introduction



then characterized medical training elsewhere in Britain.33 Edinburgh’s flexible but rigorous curriculum, which the new faculty had imported from the famous medical school at Leiden, had swiftly elevated the quality of Edinburgh’s medical training above and beyond its older rival schools at Cambridge and Oxford— doing so, in part, by teaching medicine as a practical skill and not as a theoretical subject.34 Although obtaining clinical experience was compulsory at Edinburgh and attending lectures was not, the range of available professorial expertise at the new school enabled it to feature “the most extensive selection of medical lectures offered at any university in Britain, a source of pride to the faculty and convenience to the students.”35 Unlike at the other British universities, students at Edinburgh did not need to matriculate to take lectures but only to pay for those they wished to take—and in return the professors were encouraged to make their lectures as relevant as possible for the students. The submission of the M.D. dissertation at Edinburgh demonstrated intellectual mastery of a subject on which the candidate had developed clinical expertise, emphasizing the importance of graduating physicians with demonstrably practical and marketable skills.36 And during the first part of the century, Edinburgh was the only British university to require medical students to treat patients as a precondition for graduating M.D.37 The arrival in 33 On the distinctively clinical elements of medical training at Edinburgh, see Christopher Lawrence, Medicine as Culture: Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment, PhD diss. University College London, 1984; John R. R. Christie, “The Origins and Development of the Scottish Scientific Community, 1680–1760,” History of Science 7 (1974): 122–41; Andrew Cunningham, “Medicine to Calm the Mind: Boerhaave’s Medical System, and Why It Was Adopted in Edinburgh,” in The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, ed. A. Cunningham and Roger French (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990) 50–66. Gay emphasizes Boerhaave’s “principled caution” in the midst of the contemporary “esprit de système” that characterized the medical adoption of Newtonian principles during the early eighteenth century: see Gay, The Enlightenment, 135. 34 In several articles, Christopher Lawrence explains that “the medicine that was taught at the new school was virtually a copy of that expounded by Hermann Boerhaave at Leiden” (“Ornate Physicians” 154). See also Guenter B. Risse “Clinical Instruction in Hospitals: The Boerhaavian Tradition in Leyden, Edinburgh, Vienna, and Padua” Clio Medica 21 (1987–88) 1–19. 35 See L. Rosner, Medical Education in the Age of Improvement: Edinburgh Students and Apprentices, 1760–1826 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991) 47. 36 See John D. Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine to 1860 (London: Wellcome Historical Museum, 1927), 197. 37 Oxford did not retain a professor of medicine until 1770, the more senior physicians appointed to lecture “were useless as teachers and seldom in Oxford,” and thus students had to pay for private tuition from junior physicians outside the university. See L. S. Sutherland, “The Curriculum,” The History of the University of Oxford: The Eighteenth Century, ed. L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford: OUP, 1986) 489; A. H. T. Robb-Smith, “Medical Education at Oxford and Cambridge Prior to 1850,” Evolution of Medical Teaching in Britain, ed. F. Poynter (London: Pitman, 1966) 40. See also Tristram, note 30. According to the single study of eighteenth-century medical teaching at Cambridge, “the first half century of the professorship was a period barren in regard to professing or discovery. I can see no

10

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London of newly trained physicians from Scotland would threaten the Royal College of Physicians’ dynastic hold over the London trade in wealthy patients, and not only because these physicians had experience that was tailored to respond to the needs of paying patients.38 Scornful and dismissive attitudes among London’s gentlemen physicians toward those they treated would be challenged in a widening marketplace that could now include doctors who Geoffrey Holmes calls the openly “hardworking and often well-loved physicians” who arrived on the Great North Road.39 Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, Edinburgh accepted students from more diverse social and religious backgrounds, including Dissenters and Catholics, barber-surgeons and Cowgate apothecaries.40 Now this diverse and skilled group would claim a share of the commercial territory long held by a traditional and largely English elite. While a medical student, Armstrong was a favorite of Alexander Monro primus,41 the celebrated anatomist who revolutionized medical teaching in Britain by championing the foundation of charity hospitals, lecturing at patients’ bedsides (in accessible English rather than exclusive Latin), teaching anatomy through dissection on cadavers (rather than through diagrams), and by tailoring the content of his clinical lectures to suit the professional needs of his students

traces of any research or of any teaching worthy of the name”; see Alexander Macalister, A History of the Study of Anatomy in Cambridge: A Lecture (Cambridge: n.p., 1891). RobbSmith remarks that “there is little doubt that a high proportion of the Cambridge medical undergraduates had all their training elsewhere” (42). Although Cambridge named Britain’s first Professor of Anatomy in 1707, local hostility toward anatomists was so severe that in 1728 the Senate was forced to recognize that its first appointee had quietly vacated his post “sometime in 1722”; his successor also resigned, in 1735, declaring that “attendance upon the lectures will be inconsistent with my practice.” See J. A. Fairfax Fozzard, Professors of Anatomy in the University of Cambridge …… 1707–1968 (Cambridge: Fosslia, 1983) 13. There is no mention of eighteenth-century medical education in Victor Morgan’s History of the University of Cambridge 1546–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004). 38 For a cogent introductory history of the College, its licensing policies, and hold over the medical trade in London, see Susan Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospitals Pupils and Practictioners in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 76–81; for the tensions immediately felt by its fellows, see Tristram, note 34. 39 Geoffrey Holmes mentions that it was largely due to the influx of Edinburgh graduates that, by 1740s, the traditional aristocracy of London physicians had largely disappeared from view. See G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State, and Society 1680–1730 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982) 235. On contemporary urban attitudes toward patients, see Joan Lane, “‘The Doctor Scolds Me’: The Diaries and Correspondence of Patients in Eighteenth Century England,” Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 205–48. 40 See J. B. Morrell, “The Edinburgh Town Council and its University, 1717–66,” The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School [1976] 56; 41 Armstrong’s name appears in Monro’s attendance record from 15 October 1728: see Edinburgh University Library MSS DC.595.

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who paid a set fee for attending each lecture.42 Over the course of Monro’s career at Edinburgh, an impressive 4,464 medical students trained under his direction, spending an astounding £300,000 in fees earned largely through the local medical trade.43 Armstrong was among the first. A detailed study of Monro’s anatomical technique and careful structuring of his “moral theatre” has led the historian Anita Guerrini to describe his teaching as “a virtuous performance” designed to cultivate the moral and emotional sympathy of his students as they studied in his anatomy theater and trained in Edinburgh’s charity hospital: in both contexts, “a discourse of compassion and sensibility formed the context of Monro’s lectures.”44 Armstrong was Monro’s first medical student whose own research was accepted for publication in Monro’s newly founded journal; Medical Essays and Observations was finding its way into libraries across Europe, further preparing Armstrong to ply his trade among lucrative patients in London.45 A recent study of the correspondence between patients and physicians of this period observes that “educated upper-class patients considered themselves on an equal footing in discussing medical matters with physicians and easily adopted the fashionable rhetorical conventions of the day.”46 Since students at Edinburgh developed their expertise through clinical encounters with its local urban population, Armstrong enjoyed further advantages over his London-based colleagues, whose training at Oxford or Cambridge was based on textual studies and took place in villagesized towns outside the country’s major population centers.47 Writing in 1727, an Oxford medical graduate wondered aloud whether his own professors were “very indifferent” to the relationship between their text-based instruction and “the See Anand C. Chitnis, “Provost Drummond and the Origins of Edinburgh Medicine,” The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1982) 88. 43 See G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State, and Society 1680–1730 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982) 180; J. B. Morrell, “The Edinburgh Town Council and Its University,” The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School, ed. R. G. Anderson and A. D. Simpson (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1976) 56. 44 See A. Guerrini, “Alexander Monro Primus and the Moral Theatre of Anatomy,” Eighteenth Century 47 (2006) 12. [1–18.] 45 See “An Essay of Penetrating Topical Medicines,” Medical Essays and Observations 2 (1734): 26–45. This was first article to be contributed by an Edinburgh student or graduate, and so suggests Armstrong’s standing among Monro’s coterie. On the founding of this journal and its function as the transactions of Monro’s “club,” see John Coakley Lettsom, ed., The Works of John Fothergill, vol. 2, 3 vols (London: C. Dilly, 1783–84) 367–8; on its reputation and importance, see R. Emerson, “The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh,” British Journal for the History of Science 18 (1979): 255–303. 46 See W. Wild, “‘Due Preparations’: Defoe, Dr Mead, and the Threat of Plague, Liberating Medicine, 1720–1835, ed. T. Connolly and S. Clark (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009) 57. 47 On the specific innovations that were incited by such geography, see P. Wood, The Aberdeen Enlightenment: The Arts Curriculum in the Eighteenth Century (Aberdeen: Aberdeen UP, 1993) 61–2. 42

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publick Exercises,” which has led to their “want of sufficient Salaries.”48 Such concerns were not likely to arise at Edinburgh, where the entrepreneurial faculty tailored the medical training curriculum in response to the needs of their paying patients. Between 1729 and 1736, Monro and his students co-managed a campaign to fund the new Hospital for the Sick Poor (later The Royal Infirmary), Britain’s first charitable (“voluntary”) hospital outside London, the first fee-free hospital in Europe to maintain a formal association with a university, and the only hospital in Britain that was maintained by its medical students rather than by contributions paid by patrons.49 Monro’s emphasis on the moral and practical lessons drawn through clinical interaction with needy patients was signified even by the school’s dress code, for Monro helped to define the character of the new school by abandoning the English custom of students and faculty wearing gowns defining their rank and social class.50 A Hospital report of 1730 describes the chaotic yet egalitarian mingling of students, apprentices, patients, and teachers on its ward, which was such that “it is Difficult to advise on any case or perform any operation without the utmost Confusion”—but soon the Hospital would play a central role “in the process of reshaping and redirecting Edinburgh’s intellectual life.”51 Monro’s successful campaign and the student-funded structure of his entrepreneurial school See Tristram, note 37. On Monro’s composition of the campaign pamphlet, which charged that “humanity

48 49

and compassion naturally prompt us to relieve our fellow creatures when in such deplorable circumstances,” see An Account of the Rise and Establishment of the Infirmary or Hospital for Sick Poor, Erected at Edinburgh (Edinburgh: n.p, ca. 1730); on the Hospital’s unique financial arrangements, see C. Stevenson, Medicine and Magnificence, 114. See also P. M. Eaves-Walton, “The Early Years in the Infirmary,” The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School, ed. R. G. W. Anderson and A. D. C. Simpson (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1976) 71–80; Guenter B. Risse, Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland: Care and Treatment in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) 25–33. See also G. Rosen, “An Eighteenth-Century Plan for a National Health Service,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 16 (1944): 429–36; A. E. Clark Kennedy, The London: A Study in the Voluntary Hospital System, 2 vols (London: Pitman, 1962). On the wider European context, see J. Reinarz, “Corpus Curricula: Medical Education and the Voluntary Hospital Movement,” Brain, Mind, and Medicine: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Neuroscience, eds. H. Whitaker et al. (New York: Springer, 2007) 43–52. 50 See Jan Golinsky, Science as Public Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992) 16; L. Rosner, Medical Education in the Age of Improvement (Edinburgh: EUP, 1991) 30; see also T. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997) 159. 51 See Minute Book of the Infirmary 1 (2 November 1730): 35, in the Archives of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh; C. Lawrence, “Ornate Physicians and Learned Artisans Edinburgh Medical Men, 1726–1776,” William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 153. See also P. M. Eaves Walton, “The Early Years in the Infirmary,” The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1976) 71–80.

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would have taught Armstrong that success in medicine could only be possible through hard work and cooperative relationships with patients. This system was admired by Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations ridiculed the socially irrelevant “nonsense” taught at Oxford and attributed this to the fact that professors in England were not rewarded for lecturing on topics their students needed to learn.52 Despite the recently recognized involvement of political patrons such as Archibald Campbell (later third Duke of Argyll) in the teaching appointments that comprised Edinburgh’s medical faculty, in post-1707 Edinburgh there were no governmentbased patrons or established networks that could guarantee a prosperous medical career on the basis of mere reputation or scholarly mastery—it was successful practice with paying patients that mattered.53 This lesson chimed in with new intellectual currents. As Theodore Brown has shown, “it became clearer and clearer as the eighteenth century progressed that the subject matter of medicine could only be discovered by careful attention at the bedside rather than by mathematical or even experimental excursions.”54 Another 40 years would pass before the Edinburgh medical professor John Gregory emphasized the signal importance of the patient enjoying a truly one-on-one relationship with his patient, doing so in moral and emotional terms: “sympathy produces an anxious attention to a thousand little circumstances that may tend to relieve the patient,” Gregory taught, “an attention which money can never purchase: hence the inexpressible comfort of having a friend for a physician.”55 But even by the time Armstrong had graduated he would have had to earn the trust of patients, since his modest roots in a rural Scottish manse meant that it was success in the local trade that paid for his training—Armstrong would have learned that medicine was a moral profession.56 Unfortunately, the only surviving evidence of Armstrong’s manner as a physician relates to the poet and playwright James Thomson, who had lain on his deathbed, terrified, and died refusing to see See A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1976) 773. 53 The situation for Edinburgh physicians was similar for Scotland’s civil architects— not one of whom found work through government patronage through the eighteenth century. See C. Stevenson, Medicine and Magnificence (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000) 111. On Argyll, see R. L. Emerson, “The Founding of the Edinburgh Medical School,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59 (2004): 183–218; and Emerson, Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008) 290–298. For an outline of Campbell’s political career and extensive influence in Scotland during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, see Oxford DNB. 54 See T. Brown, “Medicine in the Shadow of the Principia,” Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987): 648. 55 See John Gregory, Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London: T. Cadell, 1772) 19. 56 For students at Edinburgh seeing private patients to pay for their lectures, see J. Johnson, A Guide for Gentlemen Studying Medicine at the University of Edinburgh (London: J. Robinson, 1792) 32. 52

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any physician but Armstrong—who unfortunately arrived an hour late.57 One consequence of Armstrong’s eventual success in London was his acquaintance with Charles Burney, who retained Armstrong as the Burney family’s physician for some 30 years; the novelist Frances Burney was still telling affectionate anecdotes about him 50 years after his death.58 By 1762 Armstrong seems to have been on familiar terms with Sarah Fielding, for he publicly supported her campaign to produce her famous translation of Xenophon even beyond the likes of London’s most prominent literary patrons, including Ralph Allen, Hester Mulso, and Henry Wortly Montagu.59 Armstrong’s ventures into the literary marketplace, with his peculiar range of satires, poems, translations, and treatises, reveal an unusually keen sensitivity to the clinical and economic basis of what medical practice entailed for a talented but professionally unwelcome entrant into London’s medical world. When Armstrong arrived in London shortly after his graduation, he found that that the Royal College of Physicians, which had held the legal authority to regulate the practice of medicine in the capital since 1518, forbid Scottish-trained graduates from practicing within seven miles of the Tower.60 So although “the medical student 57 See A. D. McKillop, ed. James Thomson: Letters and Documents (Lawrence, KS: U of Kansas P, 1958) 204. It was also Armstrong who wrote to inform Thomson’s closest friends of his death; see D. Forbes, ed., Culloden Papers (London: T. Cadell, 1815) 306–8. 58 In 1795, nearly 20 years after Armstrong’s death, Dr. Burney wrote: “We knew Dr. Armstrong well …… those who were only acquainted with Armstrong’s taciturnity, and his great wig, formed an erroneous opinion of his intellectual powers …… but those who had enjoyed his company in social and convivial hours allowed him to have possessed an uncommon share of original wit, fancy, and pleasantry.” See Monthly Review 16 (1795): 71. Armstrong was the Burney family’s physician for more than 30 years: see Percy Scholes, The Great Dr. Burney, vol. 1, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP, 1958) 33; Roger Lonsdale, Dr. Charles Burney: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1965) 29–37. Frances Burney spoke with tenderness and affection for Armstrong throughout her life, recalling him when she herself was close to death, nearly 61 years after Armstrong had died: see F. D’Arblay, The Memoirs of Doctor Burney, vol. 1, 3 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1832) 85. When Frances Burney and Frances Brooke were asked to name a virtuous author, Brooke said, “for Dr Armstrong I have a very particular regard. I have known him more than twenty years.” See Lars Troide, ed., The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 2, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1988) 5. 59 Armstrong signed for 12 copies of Fielding’s Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, far more than any of the dozens of eminent supports indicated in the List of Subscribers. It is possible that Armstrong was among the physicians who treated Fielding through her various illnesses that delayed work on her translation (1758–62). Since each subscription copy was probably worth one guinea, Armstrong’s public level of support suggests some wealth and some ostentation. 60 Charles II’s mandate of 1676, that “no Person so presume to practice in any Part of the Kingdom, except Graduates at Oxford or Cambridge, under Penalty of five pounds per Month, with Imprisonment,” was designed to refuse Catholics entry into London’s respected community of physicians, and remained firmly in place during the 1740s. See An Address to the College (London: M. Cooper, 1747) 3. See also George Clark, A History

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getting the full course of study at Edinburgh would be well turned out to practice among an élite and cultured clientele,” as Christopher Lawrence has shown, Armstrong’s medical training was a liability in London as far as retaining regular patients was concerned.61 Before he had left Edinburgh, Armstrong had declared his ambitions for London by dedicating his M.D. thesis to the eminent and reputably generous President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Sir Hans Sloane; this was the first Edinburgh thesis to address anyone beyond Scotland.62 Within a year he read a paper before the Royal Society, possibly on Sloane’s invitation. But the event was not apparently successful, for although Armstrong’s manuscript numbers only several pages, the meeting adjourned before he finished speaking, and the paper was not printed in the Transactions (as was often the case).63 Roy Porter has explained that the previous generation of literary physicians who held “foreign” degrees, such as Richard Blackmore and George Cheyne “looked not to collective professional paths to glory, but to the personal favour of grandees.”64 But this avenue could not open for Armstrong. Unlike Blackmore, Armstrong was the first son of a minor Roxburghshire manse, whose family of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 2, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1966) 543–5; Geoffrey Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State, and Society, 1680–1730 (London: G. Allen, 1982) 170; Susan Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 76– 80. See also A Letter from a Physician in London to his Friend in the Country (London: A. Millar, 1753) 17, which attests to English efforts to ban Scottish physicians who attempt to acquire licenses to practice in London. 61 C. Lawrence, “Ornate Physicians and Learned Artisans Edinburgh Medical Men, 1726–1776,” 156. 62 Armstrong’s thesis, titled De tabes purulenta (“on the wasting of infected tissue”) was reprinted in Thesaurus medicus Edinburgensis novus: sive, dissertationem, ed. William Smellie, vol. 1, 4 vols (Edinburgh: C. Elliot and G. Robinson, 1785) 61–82. Other theses from Armstrong’s graduating class are dedicated either to members of the Edinburgh faculty or to physicians in nearby Scottish towns. By 1732 Sloane was the longest-serving President of the College, and stood out as among the most generous patrons of the various London hospitals, the London dispensary, and clinics for the poor: see George Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1964) 734; Oxford DNB. Oxford DNB. Monro’s annual journal Medical Essays and Observations, discussed above, was also dedicated to Sloane, suggesting a possible friendship between Sloane and Monro. 63 See the 3,000-word manuscript, BL Sloane MSS 4433.88. On the recto of the manuscript’s final page appears the following notation, dated 30 January 1734/5: “part of Dr Armstrong’s paper concerning alcalescent fluids was read. The remainder was deferred to another meeting.” The event was deemed of sufficient interest, however, for a full copy to have been recorded in the Society’s Register Book. 64 See R. Porter, “Laymen, Doctors, and Medical Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century: The Evidence of the Gentleman’s Magazine,” in Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-industrial Society (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 287. See also S. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).

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and friends held no connections to the court; unlike Cheyne, Armstrong was no socially mobile entrepreneur. Many years later, when Armstrong looked back over his lack of success in London during his early years there, he recalled with some bitterness that he “could never tell a heap of lies in his own praise, wherever he went, nor intrigue with nurses.”65 As Porter and others have shown, by the mideighteenth century “medicine was fundamentally a market-place trade, and the success and rank of individual practitioners and of medicine as an occupation depended immediately as well as ultimately on public esteem.”66 Armstrong cleverly realized that by writing medical works on various topics, in a range of styles that ranged from the nearly profane to the formally polite, he might earn public attention and hopefully collegiate esteem, balancing popular tastes with more elevated conceptual innovations. His various productions reveal a tangible ambivalence toward the views of the medical establishment, possibly because the College had the power to arrest him for practicing without a license. But as Wayne Wilde has shown, “[since] patients were indifferent to the institutional affiliations of the physician, a doctor’s professional stature with patients finally depended on his professional demeanor and skill in matching his rhetoric to prevailing social expectations.”67 A survey of Armstrong’s literary attempts to attract a clientele therefore suggests the tastes and expectations of contemporary medical patients. By the time Armstrong published his first London work, a satire titled An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick in December 1734, Armstrong seems to have sought two goals: to ingratiate the London medical establishment and to extend, at least in appearance, the pedagogical mission of a notable institution he had joined back in Scotland.68 The Medical Society of Edinburgh, which was founded by Monro and a small group of his students, sought to streamline medical knowledge by providing “more Authors, and fewer Books, to the greater advancement of Learning”; it was an important early contribution to the progressive social and intellectual goals of what became known as the Scottish Enlightenment.69 Armstrong’s pamphlet was a sarcastic celebration of extortionate quacks such as Joshua Ward who argued for methodical training and tested expertise in medical practice, and it did this through mock panegyric, classical allusion (primarily to Lucian) and witty dialogue. It was a daring production too, since at the time Ward 65 See Armstrong, Medical Essays (London: T. Cadell, 1773) 37; M. Pelling, “Medical Practice in the Early Modern Period: Trade or Profession?” The Professions in Early Modern England, ed. W. Prest (New York: Methuen, 1987) 90–128. 66 R. Porter, introduction to Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. R. Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 12. 67 See W. Wild, Medicine-By-Post: The Changing Voice of Illness in EighteenthCentury British Consultation Letters and Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006) 10. 68 An Essay for Abridging the Practice of Physick (London: for J. Wilford, 1735) was announced in the London Magazine 3 (Dec 1734): 671, and in Gentleman’s Magazine 4 (1734): 708. 69 See Medical Essays and Observations 1 (1733): vi. See also Davis D. McElroy, Scotland’s Age of Improvement: A Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literary Clubs and Societies (Washington State UP: Pullman, WA, 1969); J. R. R. Christie, “The Origins and Development of the Scottish Scientific Community, 1680–1760,” 132.

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was Physician to the King.70 Two generations earlier, Armstrong might have gained entry into the London profession by petitioning for an English doctorate by royal mandate, but this practice had largely disappeared,71 and so satirizing the King’s faith in those who believe “Learning is no more necessary to a Physician than to a Fiddler” was more likely to please the College censors than offend anyone holding real power.72 At the same time, this tract’s title alluded to John Bellers’s An Essay towards the Improvement of Physick, a powerful pamphlet of 1714 that was among the first to link London’s staggering morality statistics to the physicians’ apparent lack of interest in treating the poor; in one among many pamphlets that Bellers wrote between 1703 and 1724, he argued that half of the city’s hundred thousand deaths each year could be prevented, “for want of timely advice and suitable medicines.”73 Armstrong’s formal exclusion from the profession enabled him to attack quackery in a way not available to those members of the establishment whom he sought to impress, yet to retain his implied commitment to treating those who required urgent care. Its wit and its values stood a fair test of time, for An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick was reprinted in 1790.74 In 1736, Armstrong’s enterprising Scottish bookseller and lifelong friend Andrew Millar published The Oeconomy of Love, a sex manual in blank verse, which skillfully imitated Ovid’s Ars amatoria—an worthy classical model for learned readers but probably a hazardous one for a supplicating physician.75 It is 70 This pamphlet also illustrates Armstrong’s close attention to current medical controversies; his Essay was a swift response to Ward’s recent boast in the Grub Street Journal that he had cured 20,000 patients in the previous three years. See The Grub-Street Journal 257 (28 Nov. 1734): 1–2; see the notices of Armstrong’s Essay in the London Magazine 3 (Dec. 1734): 671; Gentleman’s Magazine 4 (1734): 708. The medical response to Ward’s boast of 1734 was sustained for at least two years: see A True and Candid Relation of the Good and Bad Effects of Joshua Ward’s Pill and Drop, Exhibited in Sixty-Eight Cases (London: J. Wilford, 1736). Further, the ironic style follows a very similar line of argument that Pieter Burman provided in his actual and sarcastic Oration …… against the Studies of Humanity, Shewing that the Learned Languages, History, Eloquence, and Criticick [sic] are not only Useless, but also Dangerous to the Studies of Law, Physick, Philosophy, and above all of Divinity (London: J. Roberts, 1721 and 1722). Burton gave this lecture in Leiden on 8 February 1720, upon his retirement from the position of Rector of the University. Armstrong refers to Burman as a human parable of fatal devotion to academic study in his poem (4: 54). 71 See C. Webster “The Medical Faculty and the Physic Garden,” The History of the University of Oxford: The Eighteenth Century, ed. L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford: OUP, 1986) 687. 72 See An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick (London: J. Wilford) 10. 73 See An Essay towards the Improvement of Physick. In Twelve Proposals (London: J. Morphew, 1714) 3. 74 See The Repository: A Select Collection of Fugitive Pieces of Wit and Humour (London: Dilly, 1790) vol. 3, 125–64. 75 See Clive Hart and Kay Gilliland Stevenson, “John Armstrong’s The Oeconomy of Love: A Critical Edition with Commentary,” Eighteenth-Century Life 19 (Nov. 1995): 38–69. It was noted in the Gentleman’s Magazine 6 (1736): 172, and London Magazine 5 (March 1736): 164, at one shilling.

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tempting to read The Oeconomy of Love, like the learned work on venereal diseases that Armstrong was composing at the same time, as a speedy attempt to turn a profit from the capital’s astoundingly lucrative sex trade. Dan Cruickshank has shown that “a staggering one London woman in five was involved in one way or another with the sex industry,” whose economic importance rivaled brewing, construction, and the London docks: during the mid-eighteenth century, prostitution and its economic spin-offs “generated an estimated gross turnover of around £20 million per annum,” whereas the entire value of trade through the London docks in 1792 was worth £27 million.76 Armstrong’s publications sought to make the best from market forces, yet Oeconomy of Love is notable because it anticipates the sensitive relationship between the poet-physician and reader-patient that Armstrong promotes in The Art of Preserving Health. The didactic force of The Oeconomy of Love derives from its sympathetic evocation of shared experience in a clinical context, to which its salacious imagery and painful depictions constantly return. To discourage visits to brothels, Armstrong presented syphilis by its revealing its torments: Nor from the holy Marriage-Bed Refrain’d his loose Embraces, when the Wife Of wrong’d Urias he seduc’d; nor stopt Till Murder crown’d his Lust. Hence him the Wrath Of righteous Heaven, awaking, long pursu’d With sore Disease, and fill’d his Loins with Pain. All day he roar’d, and all the tedious Night Bedew’d his Couch with Tears; and still his Groans Breathed musical in sacred song. (150–158)

Armstrong was hardly alone in his choice of blank verse to address such matters; for as John Butt has observed, “it was thought to lend an extraneous dignity to the inescapable vulgarities of a largely attractive theme.”77 Such subjective depictions of disease (and especially this particularly unmentionable disease), from the patient’s point of view, cannot be found among the books written by Armstrong’s fellow physicians. Not only does this sympathetic treatment of the suffering patient suggest an affinity with the physician, but it also implies an increasing moral acceptance of a disease that had long been invoked as sinful by physicians and moralists alike.78 Unfortunately for Armstrong, The Oeconomy of Love was so evocative of his medical knowledge and clinical abilities that it was censured as indecent and condemned for its licentiousness. The son of Armstrong’s friend Richard Davenport recalled that this poem “doubtless injured his practice among the reputable part of See D. Cruickshank, The Secret History of Georgian London (London: Random House, 2009) 135, x. 77 John Butt, The Augustan Age (London: Hutchinson, 1950) 92. 78 See A. M. Brandt, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, ed. W. Bynum and R. Porter (London: Routledge, 1993) 561–83; R. Porter, Bodies Politic: Death, Disease, and Doctors in Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2001) 130–142. 76

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mankind; for what husband or father would not hesitate to call in a physician whose chief fame arose from his having perverted his genius to rouse the passions and corrupt the morals of youth?”79 Like other vigorous expressions of sensibility, The Oeconomy of Love was misunderstood by readers who cited its impolite imagery rather than its dramatic depiction of sympathy across social divides.80 Toward the end of his life, Armstrong described The Oeconomy of Love as “a Poem upon a subject of no inconsiderable consequence to the health of mankind … some say, [it was] sufficient alone to have ruined [me] as a Physician.”81 Stylistically, the poem’s classical imagery and its Miltonic phrasing has left twentieth-century readers disagreeing whether this didactic poem is a parody or a treatise in its own right.82 More characteristic of a learned physician seeking professional recognition, and perhaps some redemption from his jeu d’esprit, Armstrong then produced two substantial translations of Latin medical texts. Armstrong’s first translation was the Continental anthology Aphrodisiacus, which Armstrong titled A Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases (1737).83 Shortly after the original Latin edition was printed in 1728, the scholarly physician William Cockburn had declared that “this Book has changed the Notions, as well as the Practice, of Physicians Davenport, R. A. “The Life of John Armstrong, M. D.” The British Poets. Vol. 67 (Chiswick: J. Whittingham, 1822) 16. On contemporary links between polite rhetoric and moral character, see C. McIntosh, The Evolution of English Prose, 1700–1800: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). 80 For other instances, see Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1992). Armstrong’s professional alienation following the publication of this poem illustrates the inverse of Hammond’s claim that “politeness …… is to a large extent the executive arm of the novelization project …… which had a liberating, class-surpassing agenda that brought into being the ‘public sphere,’ within which access to political and cultural involvement was granted to greater numbers.” See Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997) 305. 81 Medical Essays (London: T. Cadell, 1773) 39. 82 See Armstrong’s preface to the 1768 edition, in which he attempted to distance himself from sincere imitation. He noted that “this little juvenile Performance was chiefly intended as a Parody upon some of the didactic Poets; and, that it might be still more ludicrous, the Author in some Places affected the stately language of Milton”: see Preface, The Oeconomy of Love (London: T. Cadell, 1768). Knapp believed that “its seeming lack of humour has suggested to others that his intention was at least partly didactic.” See “John Armstrong: Littérateur and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities,” PMLA 59 (1944): 1021; See also The Oeconomy of Love, eds Hart and Stevenson, Eighteenth-Century Life 19 (Nov. 1995): 69. Bruce Boehrer argues simply that the poem is a failed adaptation of Paradise Lost; see “English Bards and Scotch Physicians: John Armstrong’s Debt to Paradise Lost and the Dynamics of Literary Reception,” Milton Quarterly 32 (1998): 98–104. 83 It was announced in London Magazine 6 (Feb. 1737): 112, and Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (1737): 30, 128. A large notice appears in The Craftsman 561 (2 April 1737): 3, suggesting Millar’s considerable investment in the publication. 79

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all over Europe.”84 In his edition, Armstrong included a long introduction, notes, and commentary, displaying both his medical and lexical abilities. That this book brought the best available knowledge of familiar yet fatal diseases to lay readers expressed both the pragmatic and humanitarian ethos of his old Medical Society and training under Monro. Andrew Millar marketed Armstrong’s book by using language reminiscent of the Medical Society of Edinburgh (editors of the Medical Essays and Observations): “the substance of all these Writers is preserved in whatever is material, only by contracting Things of little Moment, and avoiding useless repetitions.”85 The Synopsis was clearly designed to appeal both to specialists and to lay readers, anticipating the broad pedagogical aims of William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine by 30 years.86 This volume reveals Armstrong’s scholarly ambitions too, since it was among the very few books to have brought the voice of Europe’s most famous physician to English readers unversed in Latin.87 For those British readers who knew of Hermann Boerhaave, “the Dutch Hippocrates,” it was likely as a paragon of genius and virtue; shortly after Boerhaave’s death in 1739, Samuel Johnson eulogized him in the Gentleman’s Magazine by pleading that “may those who study his writings, imitate his life; and those who endeavour after his knowledge, aspire likewise to piety!”88 Such praise was also sung by patients as pedestrian as the impoverished versifier Mary Barber as early as 1734.89 Armstrong dedicated his 519-page octavo to Alexander Stuart, “who had indisputable right to judge severely of the performance presented to him.”90 A fellow Scot, Stuart was among See William Cockburn, The Danger of Improving Physick (London: J. Wilford, 1730) 18. 85 See the notice printed in the List of Books on the final page of Armstrong’s Full View of All Diseases Incident to Children (London: A. Millar, 1742). 86 See C. Lawrence, “William Buchan: Medicine Laid Open,” Medical History 19 (1975): 20–35. 87 Armstrong’s Synopsis was the first to translate Boerhaave’s long preface from Aphrodesiacus sive de lue venerea, 3 vols (Leiden: J.A. Langerak, 1728). The preface was partially translated in 1729, but despite its title did not include any part of the treatise itself: see A Treatise on the Venereal Disease and Its Cure in All Its Stages and Circumstances. Englished by J.B. M.B, of Christ-Church College (London: T. Cox, 1729). Whereas this anonymous edition numbers 80 pages, Armstrong includes the Latin preface and texts in their entirety, with notes, glossary, his own introduction, and index, totaling 519 octavo pages. 88 Samuel Johnson, “The Life of Dr Hermann Boerhaave,” The Major Works, ed. Donald Greene (Oxford: OUP, 1984) 70. Apart from “the Dutch Hippocrates,” Boerhaave was known throughout the century as, in the words of the Swiss anatomist Albrecht von Haller, communis Europae praeceptor. See G. A. Lindeboom, Herman Hoerhaave, The Man and His Work (London: Methuen, 1968). 89 When Barber pined for a cure for gout in the early 1730s, she recorded her vision of Boerhaave as the bedside-physician par excellence. See her short poem “Written at Tunbridge-Wells,” Poems on Several Occasions (London: C. Rivington, 1735) 223. 90 J. Armstrong, A Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases (London: A. Millar, 1737) iv. 84

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those Fellows of the Royal College who voted on new licentiates.91 Armstrong chose an opportune time to address the causes and treatments of these diseases in such a public and serious manner: the establishment of the Lock Hospital for Venereal Cases in 1746 would signal, in a highly public way, the decline of moralistic attitudes toward these diseases among physicians and their patrons. By the late-1730s, these were increasingly recognized as physical rather than moral disorders.92 Drawing on Kevin Siena’s social history of venereal complaints and treatments from this period, it is likely that Armstrong designed his extensive and informative book not only to educate his readers but also to introduce himself as a trustworthy, compassionate, and widely knowledgeable physician worthy of gaining the confidence, privacy (and business) of infected patients.93 No evidence suggests that Armstrong received any encouragement from his London colleagues during this time; it is impossible to discern whether this scholarly book annoyed or impressed his colleagues. Numerous literary works of the mid-eighteenth century sought to provide readers with an elevated sense of the their own moral conduct, yet their purchase yielded little or no benefit to worthy social causes.94 Indeed, Thomas Keymer has shown that “the eager celebration of charity and sensibility goes hand in hand with a market reticence about what real effect these sources of good will achieve.”95 Yet Armstrong’s next book, A Full View of the Diseases Incident to Children (1742) addressed “Nurses and old Women” explicitly, asked readers to attend to the sound of their child’s cough, and thus achieved a milestone in British medical history: Armstrong’s Full View was the first scholarly medical book that was explicitly intended for domestic use by women practitioners.96 In his Preface, Armstrong articulated both pragmatism and affection, remarking that “very young Children have not the Power of Speech to describe their Complaints” and so “most Physicians, either through Indolence or the Fear of doing Mischief … have commonly resigned 91 See G. Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1964) 554. By sending a copy of his M.D. thesis to Sloane in 1732, Armstrong had followed Stuart’s own example—he had done the same upon his graduation in 1711. See A. Guerrini, “‘A Scotsman on the Make’: The Career of Alexander Stuart,” The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation, ed. Paul Wood (Rochester: Rochester UP, 2000) 96–175. 92 See David Innes Williams, The London Lock: A Charitable Hospital for Venereal Disease, 1746–1952 (London: Royal Society of Medicine P, 1995). 93 See K. P. Siena, “The ‘Foul Disease’ and Privacy: The Effects of Venereal Disease on the Medical Marketplace in Early Modern London,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (2001): 199–224. 94 For one notable example, see my “Merit in Distress: The Troubling Success of Mary Barber,” RES 53 (2002): 24–7. 95 See T. Keymer, “Sentimental Fiction: Ethics, Social Critique, and Philanthropy,” 588; ed. G. F. Still, The History of Paediatrics (London: Dawsons, 1965) 370–371. 96 Medical care for children during the first part of the century was desperately inadequate: see G. Rosen, “A Slaughter of Innocents: Aspects of Child Health in the Eighteenth-Century City,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, ed. R. C. Rosbottom, vol. 5 (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1976) 293–316.

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those little Patients to the Nurses and old Women” (v). Armstrong’s book marks a new level of meaningful encouragement to literate parents who were starting to realize that their children were more likely to survive infancy than they had done: as Lawrence Stone has shown, childhood mortality among the wealthy and literate in England dropped by more than 30 percent after 1750.97 And as Fernand Braudel has emphasized, the prolonged increase in the populations of Western Europe after 1750 was the first ever to have sustained itself beyond two centuries.98 This was due in part to the rapid spread of improved midwifery techniques among midwives after 1730, along with better nutrition and the disappearance (but not the lingering fear) of plague. These improvements in survival and longevity may have been due, in part, to the newly improved medical and social practices that enabled Armstrong’s pioneering book—which, in turn, characterizes an essential means by which new ideas and new practices spread: from reader to reader. Indeed, intellectual and commercial interests find a suggestive intersection in the joint wish of Andrew Millar and Armstrong to promote (and tap into) popular concern for children’s health, supporting the view that “the age of sensibility” ought to be defined by a new social acceptance of outward affection toward children.99 Armstrong’s Preface observes that “it is intirely upon Account of those Female Practitioners, that I have put all the Formulae into English, and have set down all the Articles and their Doses at full Length” (x).100 Roy Porter has remarked that “physicians had too See L. Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England: 1500-1800 (Harmondwoth: Penguin, 1977) 56–9. 98 See F. Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, trans. S. Reynolds (London: Collins, 1981) 33. Braudel allows for the catastrophic effects of the two great European wars of the twentieth century; the consequential short-term drop in population was the result of explicit human intervention and not famine or disease. 99 See Stone, 59; on affection for children, the rise of the family as a loving unit, and the popularity of breastfeeding as historical examples of eighteenth-century sensibility, see R. Perry, “Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2 (1991): 204–34. For scientific reasons for this social shift, see A. Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1770 (London: U College London P, 1995). For a study that links demographic and social changes to changes in literary taste and moral concerns, see F. Donnalee, Speaking in Hunger: Gender, Discourse, and Consumption in “Clarissa,” (Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1988). 100 Both John Armstrong and his younger brother George (1719–89) took an unusually strident and sustained interest in pediatrics: In 1767, George Armstrong, a London pediatrician [but not a formal MD], published An Essay on the Diseases Most Fatal to Infancy, which passed through thee editions (1771, 1777, 1778), enlarged by A. P. Buchan in 1808. In 1769, Armstrong established the first pediatric hospital in England, a Dispensary for Poor Children, which was discontinued in 1781, from lack of financial support. It was the only institution in which the children of poor parents were received without letters of admission, in cases of desperate illness. During the twelve years of its activity, 35,000 children were admitted and treated. Armstrong published an account of his Dispensary in 1772, but his philanthropy went unrewarded. He died in obscurity. See Arthur Abt, History of Pediatrics (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1965) 77. 97

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long cynically monopolized medicine as a mystery, a closed shop whose shop-talk was a dead tongue,” yet following Monro’s example at Edinburgh’s charitable Hospital for the Sick Poor, Armstrong’s Full View translates the Latin sources into vernacular terms to include complete instructions for remedies that parents and nurses can dispense at home.101 Like his earlier Synopsis, which signaled a progressive change of attitude toward patients who suffered the corporeal scars of allegedly moral missteps, the Full View was intended to enable women to care for their children both at home and in consultation with physicians, using the best medical knowledge. Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital, the country’s largest charitable orphanage, had opened in 1741, only months before A Full Account was first sold in Millar’s shop.102 Armstrong’s first attempts at recognition through print were not evidently successful, and his prolific literary output between 1734 and 1742 suggests a lack of success in regular trade. Moreover, promptly upon the completion of his Synopsis, the better-known English physician William Barrowby (FRCP from 1718) translated Jean Astruc’s treatise on venereal diseases, which had long been acclaimed on the Continent, now subsuming Armstrong’s readership.103 The longestablished English surgeon Daniel Turner (FRCP from 1711) had issued his own shorter edition of the Aphrodisiacus just months earlier.104 Armstrong’s pediatric anthology is of interest today for its progressive delivery of elite treatises for lay readers, but in the very year that it was printed, the prolific physician John Martyn, a longtime Fellow of the Royal Society, usurped the market with a full and revised translation of the set-piece of Armstrong’s anthology—including a new dissertation on venereal diseases.105 Thirty-two years later, the Full View R. Porter, “Spreading Medical Knowledge: The Popularization of Medicine in Georgian England”, The Popularization of Medicine, 1650–1850, ed. Roy Porter (London: Wellcome Trust, 1992) 218. 102 See Ruth K. McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); see also W. H. McMenemey, “The Hospital Movement of the Eighteenth Century and Its Development,” The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain, ed. F. N. L. Poynter (London: Pitman, 1964), 43–71. 103 Jean Astruc’s De morbis venereis (Paris: n.p., 1737) appeared in London as A Treatise of the Venereal Disease in Six Books …… Now Translated into English by William Barrowby (London: W. Innys and R. Manby, 1737). 104 While he was at work on his edition, Armstrong learned that his project might be preempted by others: “I had gone too far in it to desist, before I knew that Dr. Turner was engaged in the same Design”: see the preface to A Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases (London: A. Millar, 1737). Turner’s Aphrodisiacus. Containing a Summary of the Ancient Writers on the Venereal Disease (London: John Clarke, 1736) is less than half the length of Armstrong’s edition. 105 See J. Martyn, trans. A Treatise of the Acute Diseases of Infants (London: T. Astley), 1742. Armstrong devoted more than half of his 263-page Full View to a translation of Walter Harris’s On the Diseases of Infants, the basis of Martyn’s work. G. F. Still has pointed out that, “in England, none of the writers already mentioned obtained such vogue in the seventeenth [sic] century as Walter Harris …… De Morbis Acutem Infantem seems to have 101

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remained in stock at Millar’s shop, selling for a slightly higher price. Like all of Armstrong’s works of this period, though its medicine remained sound, it never sold well.106 Looking back at this period in his career, Frances Burney recalled that “Dr. Armstrong was as high, then, in the theory of his art, medicine, as he was far from lucratively prosperous in its practice.”107 By 1741, Britain being now at war, Armstrong sought to follow other Scottish physicians by petitioning, unsuccessfully, for a position in the army. That year Armstrong’s well-connected friend Thomas Birch accompanied him on three visits to Richard Mead, one of London’s wealthiest and most important physicians, indicating Armstrong’s ambition, some desperation, and the modest progress he had made among the capital’s medical establishment since his arrival 12 years earlier.108 Armstrong did not receive the commissions he sought, but he did not give up on Mead either; he would soon dedicate The Art of Preserving Health to him. Why was this newly trained physician forced to plead for his abilities by resorting to the kinds of supplication normally associated with those whose skills can be valued only on the basis of taste? Why did Armstrong and his fellow Scottish graduates not simply prove the superiority of their training by demonstrating success at curing diseases, managing illnesses, and by presenting evidence of their patients’ recovery and survival? This is because the medical theory that informed professional practice in mid-eighteenth century London was much the same everywhere else in Western Europe. What differed was the style by which it was practiced and promoted. Cheyne’s enormous wealth and prominence among his English patients illustrates the importance of canny self-promotion rather than any special efficacy from the treatments he recommended; the same is true for Barrowby, Martyn, Mead, and Turner. Indeed, although Edinburgh brought its students into close acquaintance with patients, its actual training in medical become the standard textbook of the period, and remained so for about fifty years.” See The History of Paediatrics (London: Dawsons, 1965) 189. Harris’s book passed through seven Latin editions between 1689 and 1720. 106 The endpaper advertisement listed in the second London edition of John Gregory’s Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician (London: T. Cadell, 1772) indicates that Armstrong’s Full View was still offered at its 1742 price of three shillings. But a contemporary list shows it selling for four shillings. See A New and Correct Catalogue of All the English Books (London: n.p., 1767) 4. 107 F. Burney, ed., Memoirs of Doctor Burney, Arranged from His Own Manuscripts, vol. 1, 3 vols (London: E. Moxon, 1832) 18. 108 In a note written on 20 July 1741, Armstrong asked Birch “if it were convenient for you to carry me to Dr Mead’s again …… it is a mere trifle to what you have submitted to on my account,” and more than a year later he wrote to Birch once more, this time in the company of Joseph Spence (BL. Add. 4300.f.90). Porter has shown that “Georgian medicine worked less by professional rules than by patronage,” and Mead occupied a central place in the market for positions; see R. Porter, Body Politic Death, Disease, and Doctors in Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2001) 111. See also J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2, 9 vols (London: J. Nichol, 1812) 715.

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therapeutics probably made little difference in terms of its graduates’ abilities to cure ailments—leaving aside the powerful influence of the placebo effect among their appreciative patients.109 It is helpful to note that placebo, in this particular context, was the term used to describe anything offered to please the patient. Even for those physicians who were thoroughly versed in the advanced conceptual developments of the Scientific Revolution (those hailing from the Oxford of Sydenham and his medical disciple Locke, and from the Cambridge of Newton and his medical disciple Archibald Pitcairne),110 major conceptual shifts did not affect clinical practices.111 Roy Porter and David Wootton have shown that medical practice, even in the wake of great Newtonian discoveries, remained remarkably similar to the crude humoralist bloodletting and purging that was taught by Hippocrates, Galen, and Celsus, and which was largely retained by Western physicians until the mid-nineteenth century.112 Even though Monro was probably the most progressive teacher of anatomy in Britain, including historical Based on studies of Monro’s manuscripts and related documents, Christopher Lawrence has shown that the faculty and students at Edinburgh agreed “that anatomy could be learned only from a master and not by dissection guided by a book,” but nonetheless “secrecy normally surrounded anatomical skills”—these could not be gleaned by observing the physician in clinical practice, nor did such observers seem to address those skills. See C. Lawrence, “Alexander Monro Primus and the Edinburgh Manner of Anatomy,” Bulletin of Medical History 62 (1988): 198. 110 On Locke’s relationship to Sydenham, see G. G. Meynell, “John Locke and the Preface to Thomas Sydenham’s Observationes Medicae,” Medical History 50 (1 January 2006): 93–110; on Newton and Pitcairne, see A. Guerrini, “Isaac Newton, George Cheyne and the Principia Medicinae,” The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, ed. R. French and A. Wear (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 222–45. 111 See David Wootton Bad Medicine (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006) 19–20 and passim. This was largely due to the fact that, even in the fields of moral and natural philosophy, the English university curricula resisted any changes to what Thomas Miller calls “its classical tradition embodied in a well-defined corpus of texts from which one could deduce all that that was worth knowing.” Some 50 years after Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding appeared, Cambridge and Oxford continued to exclude his inductive epistemology and experimental logic in favor of “the logic of the Schools.” Indeed Cambridge censured Locke’s logical theory in 1703, while Locke was taught and in some ways emulated in Scotland. See T. Miller, The Formation of College English (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997) 67. 112 For the last medical defense of therapeutic phlebotomy on Hippocratic principles, which was argued by an eminent American physician (a former President of the Carnegie Academy of Medicine and advisor to the International Congress on Tuberculosis), see W. F. Button, A Brief Summary of the Practical Value of Venesection in Disease (Philadelphia: Davis and Co.; London: S. Phillips, 1916). Button provides thorough references to the nineteenth-century medical literature, but venesection had become an eccentric medical practice in America and Britain by the 1870s, even though Hippocrates remained a respected figure among professors of medicine during the early twentieth century. See W. F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994); C. M. Smith, “Origin and Uses of Primimum Non Nocere [do no harm],” Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 45 (2005): 371–8. 109

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surveys of his art to encourage his students to think critically about the role of anatomical knowledge in medical training, he nevertheless held Aristotle’s view that the human fetus arrives preformed within male sperm.113 As we will see, Armstrong’s own first lines in his Art of Preserving Health pay tribute to the ancients by name, including Hippocrates and then Celsus, and his descriptive terms for various diseases (including tertian and quartan fevers), internal fluids (including lymph and vital spirits), and disease-inducing winds (including the ancient names Eurus and Zephyr) are more than mere references to the classics, for they reveal a contemporary understanding of disease that had not changed significantly since the Greeks.114 Even though the Edinburgh manner of training physicians was innovative and appealing for its students and their patients, its conceptual basis and therapeutic system remained firmly Hippocratic.115 Reading Armstrong’s eighteenth-century imitation of Virgil entails developing an acquaintance with the very same medical terms and concepts that predate even the Roman poet’s own time. The Oxbridge-trained London physicians who were alarmed by the immigration of Edinburgh graduates to their economic territory expressed their outrage by pointing to what they saw as the inferior quality of Scottish training, and not by referring to examples of poor practice. This is plainly evident in John Tristram’s energetic attack Scottish-trained doctors in his emblematic polemic, The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain (1727), included in this book. Similarly, Armstrong countered such national prejudice not by arguing for the relative efficacy of his 113 See J. Blackman, “Popular Theories of Generation: The Evolution of Aristotle’s Works: The Study of an Anachronism,” in J. Woodward and D. Richards, eds, Health Care and Popular Medicine in Nineteenth-Century England: Essays in the Social History of Medicine (London: Croom Helm, 1977) 56–88; C. Lawrence, “Alexander Monro primus and the Edinburgh Manner of Anatomy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 62 (1988): 215. See also Trapp, note 59 and Young, note 10. 114 See R. Porter, “Barely Touching: A Social Perspective on Mind and Body,” The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought, Ed. G. S. Rousseau (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990) 45–79. 115 Herman Boerhaave, who trained the founding professors of the Edinburgh medical school, gave his inaugural lecture at Leiden (1701) under the title “In Praise of Hippocrates,” see E. Kegel-Brinkgreve and A. M. Luyendijk-Elsout, eds, Boerhaave’s Orations (Amsterdam: Brill, 1983) 58; A. Cunningham, “Medicine to Calm the Mind: Boerhaave’s Medical System and Why It was Adopted in Edinburgh,” The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990) 54. Armstrong’s contemporary, William Cullen, described his studies under Monro in 1735–36: “I learned the system of Boerhaave …… I heard of no other names or writers on physic; and I was taught to think the system of Boerhaave to be very perfect, complete and sufficient”: see John Thompson, An Account of the Life, Lectures, and Writings of William Cullen, M.D., vol. 1 (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1859) 118. See also Whytt’s transcription of “Physiological lectures by Mr Alexr Monro, Lect. 1st Monday March 13 1732,” composed one month after Armstrong’s graduation: “I shall as much as I can follow Mr Boerhaave’s method as being ye most regular and which perhaps may be of more use to you that attend, and to those that are to attend his Institutiones”; see Wellcome Library MSS. 6860.

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technique or education, but simply by stating a political and therefore moral fact that touched on a newly sensitive point concerning Scottish entitlement to a shared British patriotism: “permit that I/ My little knowledge with my country share” (1: 60–61). Armstrong’s claim to a right to practice in Scotland’s newly created national capital rested on a view of politics and not therapeutics. Indeed, Armstrong’s tender description of the hills and dales in which he enjoyed his Scottish childhood makes a clear point of emphasizing his national origins and professional ambitions. Unlike his friend Thomson, whose nostalgia for the Scottish Borders suggests what Dustin Griffin has called “a patriotism [that] is at bottom a love of the green and pleasant homeland, to which the poet returns after every distant excursion,” Armstrong’s patriotism leads him directly to claim a professional career in London, with ready access to patients residing in English neighborhoods that include Hampstead, Epsom, and Greenwich.116 Both the Scots who sought a legitimate practice in their newly established capital, and the Englishtrained physicians who sought to exclude them, reduced themselves to ideological and territorial feuding, largely ignoring issues concerning medical efficacy or their patients’ interests. Since physicians had no recourse to scientific evidence of their skills, many sought cultural authority through London’s expanding print culture, as suggested by Elizabeth Furdell’s study of the close proximity of booksellers’ shops to medical sites in London throughout the early modern period.117 The social historian Nicholas Jewson has shown that during the early to mid-eighteenth century, “the clinical encounter was a delicate process of negotiation” in which “physicians had no choice but to tailor their theories and remedies to meet the expectations and requirements of their genteel clients.”118 Such haggling over medical knowledge, which trained physicians had to offer to their untrained patients, overlapped with the more familiar tales of Grub Street hacks who modified their writing to suit the demands of London booksellers: despite Pope’s memorable branding of hired 116 See D. Griffin, Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 79. Griffin is referring to Thomson’s nostalgic depiction of rural life in The Seasons (1726–30); his study does not refer to Armstrong. It is important to consider Thomson’s notions of “liberty” and “freedom” as they embody his patriotism—which include depth and dimension that are not in evidence in Armstrong’s poetry of this period. On these crucial aspects of Thomson’s patriotism, see Annabel Patterson, Nobody’s Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002) 159–62. The poem lists these and a dozen other assumed residential areas for Armstrong’s readers at various point; see 1: 312–14, passim. 117 See E. L. Furdell, “Location, Location, Location: Bookshops in London and Medical Controversy,” Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (Rochester, NY: U of Rochester P, 2002) 113–34; S. Shapin, “Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77 (2003): 263–97. 118 Nicholas Jewson, “Medical Knowledge and the Patronage System in 18th Century England,” Sociology 8 (1974): 376.

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authors as an “idle trade,” its highly pressured market forced writers to respond quickly and ingeniously to their readers’ demands.119 Helen Deutsch has suggested that “medicine and literature underwent parallel processes of professionalization in the eighteenth century,” but in Armstrong’s case these processes were united.120 Armstrong’s first London works attempt to apply the social subtleties of the clinical encounter to an even more delicate relationship between an unlicensed Scottish physician and the censors of the Royal College—all the while seeking the attention of potential patients through print. Armstrong’s most successful publication probably deals with the preservation of health rather that the treatment of disease because the former offers the appealing promise of success in all three areas (commercial, professional, literary) while the latter, at this point in medical history, risks obvious failure. In 1742, the formerly anonymous Oeconomy of Love appeared in its fifth edition, and it now included the incriminating subtitle A Poetical Essay by Dr. Armstrong.121 Armstrong’s medico-literary projects of this period represent each of the genres through which academic medical ideas found their way into print during the early eighteenth century. But their failure to win support sufficient to let Armstrong develop a legitimate medical career led him to perceive, correctly, that a wider circle of readers would be willing to consume medical instruction by couching it in the ornamented but cogent dress of neoclassical poetry, touching on morally benign matters of immediate social relevance. Only now did Armstrong seem to realize that he required a wealthy but not necessarily learned clientele. It was time to drop his concern for ingratiating his resentful colleagues, informing or entertaining his venereal patients, and expressing his pediatric worries, and to focus instead on winning the larger prize: affluent and reasonably healthy readers who sought confirmation of their conventional medical beliefs and reassuring depictions of emotional states that had been long neglected by physicians but which played an increasingly prominent role in the poetry and novels of this period.122 119 See A. Pope, Epistle to Arbuthnot l.126. See also B. Hammond, Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997) and Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998). 120 See H. Deutsch’s suggestive article on ways through which “the male body served as a site upon which authorship was suffered, proven, and displayed as a disease” in “Symptomatic Correspondences: The Author’s Case in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Cultural Critique 42 (Spring 1999): 35–80. 121 See the title page to the fifth albeit unauthorized edition (Dublin: n.p., 1742). Later in the century, more discretion seems to have been required: “The character of a physician ought to be that of a gentleman,” a later contemporary remarked, “he who undertakes to be a physician, must be chastity itself!” See Anne Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine 1720–1911 (Cambridge, CUP, 1994) 172. 122 The classic studies of this material include: J. Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988); J. Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1986); Anne Jessie Van Sant, EighteenthCentury Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993). More recent studies include D. Lawlor, Consumption and Literature: The

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Retaining his friendship with Andrew Millar, whose gift for scenting and then serving the tastes of readers enabled him to work as the sole publisher of the hugely successful novelist Samuel Richardson and his rival and satirist, the equally popular Henry Fielding. Millar remained at the centre of a brilliant circle of “anglo-Scots” that had included Armstrong for two decades.123 It is likely too that Hill, Mallet, and Edward Young, all seasoned authors who had encouraged Armstrong years earlier, gave him good examples of how to adapt one’s literary talents to suit the fickle market for books.124 Armstrong’s joint career as a physicianpoet illustrates the essential affinity between literary style and medical treatment. The success of both relied on the agent’s responsiveness to a paying clientele and not on the objective superiority of any demonstrable therapeutics. For this reason, his skilled manipulation of classical and fictional modes entailed developing a uniquely reverential yet forceful didactic style. When a young English doctor had considered taking up writing as a means to attract patients, Mead instructed him to “choose the subject by which you think you will get most money … but above all things, take particular care … that the language be well chosen, since you will have ten to one that [your patients] mind the language more than the ideas”—and he may have given this advice to Armstrong, too.125 Armstrong duly returned to poetry, but this time he adopted the elevated georgic mode, which as Ralph Cohen and others have observed, had “become a literary genre for exploring man’s experience, and leads to prose works such as the novel”126 (5). Yet unlike sentimental novels of this period that stressed Making of the Romantic Disease (London: Palgrave, 2007); D. Shuttleton, Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 1660–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007). 123 See Breane S. Hammond, Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670– 1740 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997) 48; Ruthe and Martin Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (London: Routledge, 1989) 325. 124 See Thomas Cadell’s prefatory note to the first edition of Armstrong’s Miscellanies (London: T. Cadell, 1770): “Thomson showed [the poems] to his poetical friends, Mr Mallet, Mr Aaron Hill, and Dr Young, who, it seems, did great honour to [them]; and the firstmentioned Gentleman wrote to one of his friends at Edinburgh, desiring the author’s leave to publish it; a request too flattering to youthful vanity to be resisted. But Mr Mallet altered his mind” (vii). On professional authorship, see B. Hammond, Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997); Pat Rogers, Hacks and Dunces: Pope, Swift, and Grub Street (London: Methuen, 1972); Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998); Clifford Siskind, The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700–1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998); Sandro Jung, David Mallet: Anglo-Scot (Newark, DE: U of Delaware Press: 2008). 125 Quoted in Harold J. Cook, The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986) 54. 126 See R. Cohen, The Art of Discrimination: Thomson’s “The Seasons” and the Language of Criticism (London: Routledge, 1964) 5. For a more recent elaboration, see April London, “Clarissa and the Georgic Mode,” Women and Property in the EighteenthCentury English Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) 17–27.

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their ambiguous relation to reality, Armstrong’s readers understood and valued this poem’s practical value. As Paul Hunter has suggested, during the 1740s “poetry, even when it was luxurious, lascivious, or occasional, was thought to be ‘serious’ and demanding in a way that new novels were not.”127 The Art of Preserving Health was a guide to conduct on a theme of universal interest, properly suited to attracting professional advancement, popular attention, and hopefully some redemptive admiration. Like its classical model, the Art provided directions on practical matters such as where to build one’s house and which of the coldest winds to avoid, but also like Virgil’s Georgics the Art’s most important lessons were more subtle and probably more important: as Paula Backscheider has pointed out, “in this environment, poetry went far beyond bestowing cultural capital to purport to offer cultured ways to feel, think, and respond.”128 Armstrong designed his readers’ poetic responses to be therapeutic, too. Georgic Poetry and Edinburgh Medicine Eighteenth-century physicians had written poems on health before Armstrong, but none had offered medical advice in verse.129 Armstrong’s combination of clinical expertise and extensive experience with the London book market is evident in the sympathetic qualities of the poet-physician persona who narrates The Art of Preserving Health. Openly wondering whether his poem will persuade his reader to attend his theme, Armstrong proposed that the very act of composition affects him physically: To you, ye delicate, I write; for you I tame my youth to philosophic cares, And grow still paler by the midnight lamps. (3: 7–10)

Study has long been associated with illness.130 But this representation of a physically vulnerable physician suggests that readers might have welcomed a 127 See P. Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Context of Eighteenth-Century Fiction (New York: Norton, 1990) 87. 128 See P. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005) 9. 129 These include Samuel Garth’s Dispensary (1699), an allegorical satire on disputes among fellows of the Royal College of Physicians; Blackmore’s long poem The Creation (1712) reached a sixth edition in 1727: cantos 6 and 7 include brilliant depictions of pulmonary anatomy, but without instruction. Edward Baynard’s doggerel Health, A Poem (London: J. Roberts, 1716) reached a seventh edition in 1742; Henry Baker’s Invocation of Health (London: the Author, 1723) is not didactic. Malcolm Flemyng printed a dissertation on hypochondria in Latin verse Neuropathia (York: C. Ward, 1730), thus without any popular pretence. 130 For an entertaining survey, see R. Porter, “Reading: A Health Warning,” Medicine, Mortality, and the Book Trade, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 1998) 131–52.

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medical authority who is himself susceptible to the very environment they share.131 This was a shrewd and characteristically audacious approach for a supplicant seeking preferment from established physicians, since at first it seemed to validate proverbial notions that doctors are uncaring and insensitive; as an abidingly popular polemic called Health Restor’d … To Those that would Preserve Health, exclaimed: “A Patient that rejoyceth at the sight of a Physician is sicker in Mind than in Body, and every Patient that willingly takes what his Physician prescribes to him, if he be not his own Murderer, he is at least accessory to his own Death.”132 Armstrong then reshapes these prejudices by seeking to cultivate the reader’s own sensibility as a means to maintain health, doing so in place of prescribing or advertising specific regimens. Offering professional advice through verse gave readers the benefit of foregoing the customary one-guinea consultation fee, while its overtly literary style and self-characterization helped to avoid a costly pamphlet-war over its therapeutics.133 It also meant that patrons could support his ambitions without engaging in related or pedantic controversy. Similarly, the Art’s dedication revealed Armstrong’s professional vulnerability in a style more characteristic of a poet seeking patronage than a physician seeking patients: Indulge, O Mead! a well-design’d essay, Howe’er imperfect: and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme. (1: 59–63)

The uneasy fact that this physician must please, instruct, and impress his readers defines the practical requirements of this poem. Learned readers might have admired Armstrong’s “having to suit himself to his Readers, instructing them while he entertains them,” as a tutor of the previous year described Virgil’s didactic 131 George Cheyne and Francis Fuller described their own ailments, but they relegated their confessional “Author’s Cases” to appendices, assuring both themselves and their readers that their medical authority derived from their having been cured. See G. Cheyne The English Malady (London: J. Leake, 1733); F. Fuller, Medicina Gymnastica (London: R. Knapton, 1705). Both Fuller and Cheyne follow the medico-spiritual model of the best-selling Treatise of Temperance and Sobrietie by the self-described centenarian Luigi Cornaro, who insisted on a clear distinction between past “Errours” and current practice to testify to his regimen’s success. 132 Health Restor’d. or the Triumph of Nature over Physick, Doctors, and Apothecaries (London: J. Torbuck etc., 1740) 56–7. It was first published as The Doctor’s Physician (London: Joseph Hindmarsh, 1685). 133 For an overview of Georgian medical fees, see Anne Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine 1720–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 185–96. On the fact that “medicine was beyond comparison the most pamphlet-ridden of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century professions,” see G. Holmes, Augustan Professions, 167–9.

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posture.134 Others might have been intrigued and perhaps endeared by the prospect of a knowledgeable physician who requests rather than expects their attention. In fact this conventional poetic supplication to a potential patron expressed Armstrong’s real anxiety; years later, Armstrong told Frances Burney that “he had never been happy till he was able to live Independent of his Business, for that the pain and the anxiety attendant upon it were inconceivable.”135 Three months after the Art was published, James Thomson described his friend’s apprehension that Mead remained unwilling to assist him, characterizing it as Armstrong’s “Python of ill-Fortune, whose particular Delight is to feed on Men of Merit.”136 The poem’s four-book structure would have been familiar to many contemporary readers, and not only for its conventional division into Galen’s “non-natural” elements of Air, Diet, Exercise, and The Passions, or for invoking the four-book structure of Virgil’s Georgics.137 During the 1740s, translations, popularizations, and scholarly editions of Virgil were enjoying a renaissance among London readers. As Fran de Bruyn and Andrew Wallace have shown, the Georgics had long since established itself as a scientific and rhetorical model for instructors teaching subjects that ranged from agriculture to linguistics to statistical graphs.138 Reading Virgil for imaginative pleasure and reading Virgil for practical instruction was nothing new for British readers—for as early as the mid-sixteenth century, when English translations of Virgil’s Georgics first found their way into the hands of

See The Works of Virgil … for Use in the Schools (London: J. Davidson, 1743) vi. Another contemporary study of Virgil’s Georgics describes this posture according to a formula suited to Armstrong’s actual and textual position: “Virgil understands very well that it depended on the Success of the Work to shew that he deserv’d the Honour that was being done to him in being singled out by so great a Judge,” wrote an anonymous commentator in 1725, “this is the Tremor Oratoris of the Antients.” See William Benson, Virgil’s Husbandry, or an Essay on the Georgics (London: William and John Innys, 1725) ii. 135 See Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, ed. Lars E. Troide, vol. 2, 4 vols (Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1988–2003) 39. 136 See Thomson’s letter to their mutual friend John Sargent, dated 24 July 1744, in A. D. McKillop, ed., James Thomson: Letters and Documents (Lawrence, KS: U of Kansas P, 1958) 172. 137 See Antionette Emch-Deriaz, “The Non-Naturals Made Easy,” in The Popularization of Medicine 1650–1850, ed. R. Porter (New York: Routledge, 1992) 134–59; and William Coleman, “Health and Hygiene in the Éncyclopedie: A Medical Doctrine for the Bourgeoisie,” Journal of the History of Medicine 29 (Oct. 1974): 399–421. On the nonnaturals, see Peter H. Niebyl, “The Non-Naturals,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971): 486–92; L. J. Rather, “‘The Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase,” Clio Medica 3 (1968): 337–47. 138 See F. de Bruyn, “Reading Virgil’s Georgics as a Scientific Text: The EighteenthCentury Debate between Jethro Tull and Stephen Switzer,” ELH 71 (2004): 661–89; F. de Bruyn, “From Georgic Poetry to Statistics and Graphs: Eighteenth-Century Representations and the ‘State’ of British Society,” Yale Journal of Criticism, 17 (2004): 107–39; A. Wallace, “Virgil and Bacon in the Schoolroom,” ELH 71 (2006): 161–85. 134

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agricultural improvers, his poetic word was treated as literal advice.139 In his own georgic poem, Armstrong had taken his pedagogical cues directly from Boerhaave’s recently published Academical Lectures, which Monro had quoted extensively in his Edinburgh lectures: “the whole art of preserving Health is comprised of those Rules … directing us how to apply and adapt the several necessary Particulars of the Non-naturals.”140 Evoking the structure, tone, and imagery of Virgil with the rhetoric of Boerhaave and Galen, Armstrong combined familiar and powerful didactic models. Their enduring prestige among professional and lay readers my be partly responsible for the poem’s continued success, for the basic principle that physicians should moderate and balance those elements external or “non-natural” to the body continued to be taught in European medical schools well into the nineteenth century.141 Although eighteenth-century patients were likely to have expected their physician to attend to this ancient doctrine,142 Armstrong’s unusual depiction of the relevant symptoms and treatment from the patient’s point of view represented an advance that was uniquely in line with his training at Edinburgh. The progressive philosophy that energizes The Art of Preserving Health holds that evocative representations of physical and emotional sensibility should enable readers to attend to their own symptoms before they overwhelm them as disease. This brings together the moral elements of his Edinburgh training with his need to cater to his patients complaints in London, through the literary style reminiscent of the Georgics. Armstrong professed this advice by advising readers to “fly, if you can, these violent extremes/ Of air, the wholesome is nor moist nor dry” (1: 185–6); on diet, he counseled them to “avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid/ The full repast … Learn a juster taste;/ And know that temperance is true luxury” (2: 54–5, 158–9). However, unlike typical Galenic treatises, Armstrong showed throughout that he too is subject to changes in external and internal nature.143 Armstrong counseled 139 See J. Thirsk, “Making a Fresh Start: Sixteenth-Century Agriculture and the Classical Inspiration,” Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England (Leicester: Leicester UP, 1992) 19. 140 See Dr Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures, vol. 6, 6 vols (London: J. Rivington, 1743–57) 239. 141 Virginia Smith concludes that “nothing occurred until the late nineteenth century to disturb this macro-biological patter of inter-linked universal elements”; see “Prescribing the Rules of Health: Self-Help and Advice in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985): 258. See also Lester King, The Philosophy of Medicine: The Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1978) 15–20; A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1936) 227–41. 142 The popular Bibliotheca Technologica: or, a Philological Library of Literary Arts and Sciences (London: J. Hodges, 1740) 419, defines “Physick” solely in terms of the nonnaturals and the physician’s responsibility to modify them. 143 Cheyne’s An Essay concerning Health and Long Life (London: G. Strahan, and J. Leake, 1724) was divided into six sections, each dedicated to prescriptions relating to a non-natural element.

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the importance of refreshing the body with water in an apostrophe to the naiads, who by the mid-1740s had become familiar classical features in Augustan verse.144 Like a mythological hero, Armstrong invoked the water-nymphs who then enable his digressive expression of sensory experience: Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Now let me wander thro’ your gelid reign. I burn to view th’ enthusiastic wilds By mortal else untrod. I hear the din Of waters thund’ring o’er the ruin’d cliffs. With holy rev’rence I approach the rocks Whence glide the streams renown’d in ancient song. (2: 352–8)

This reverential and solitary encounter with imaginary classical figures is, for Armstrong, as instructive for his readers as it is conventional in classical poetry. This evocative encounter with nature links the poet’s sensory imagery with the patient’s corporeal sensibility, showing that Armstrong maintains only a cursory adherence to conventional medical theory. Rather than merely following Galen’s rules concerning the non-naturals, readers of this poem learn to appreciate their own responses to the natural environment. For Armstrong, readers already possess the sensibility they require to preserve health, which is why his georgic is devoted to cultivating feeling through evocative imagery rather than teaching mere precepts that implies a fundamental numbness to feeling. Like Virgil’s narrator who is both a working farmer and a polished poet, Armstrong constructs and then breaks though this mythological guise, showing that he too is subject to the elements that he describes, indeed that his own thirst is animated by the psychological associations aroused by the poem’s natural setting. Such combinations of physical and emotional feelings brings him within reach of a physiological sublime: What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades Enwrap these infant floods! Thro’ every nerve A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o’er my frame (2: 365–8)

By describing the glittering rivulet and the quality of light, the poet’s vision reflects his delight in emotional and corporeal sensibility. Armstrong’s practical intention, of course, is to encourage positive reactions to healthy impulses by communicating the very feelings associated with disease and healing. Twenty lines later, his poetic vision seems to enable physical touch, constituting a decidedly therapeutic event:

144 See John Byrom’s burlesque on “Dryads, Naiads, Nymphs, and Fauns” (1757) in “Remarks on a Pamphlet,” Miscellaneous Poems, vol. 2, 2 vols (Manchester: J. Harrop, 1773) 213.

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O comfortable streams! With eager lips And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins. No warmer cups the rural ages knew … (2: 386–9)

Anatomical imagery had earlier referred to the physician, but now Armstrong’s ambiguous diction allows for an ascription of feeling to the reader as well as to the stream. This shift is tempered by a gesture to a mythical world which is conventional enough—indeed in his essay on health, Francis Bacon instructed his reader to enjoy pleasing prospects and not suffer through painful reading— Armstrong’s evocative instruction operates through emotional modeling. Armstrong did not dismiss the Newtonian language of mechanical physiology entirely. Indeed, he adopted its hydraulic imagery in his depiction of the patient’s “gross corporeal frame”: By subtle fluids pour’d thro’ subtle tubes The natural, vital, functions are perform’d. (4: 29–30)

By the mid-1740s, however, such hydraulic language had become a meaningless cliché; it is the emotionally dynamic nature of Armstrong’s imagery which revealed his attempt to refine his reader’s self-consciousness by representing his own state of mind. Looking back on this period 30 years later, Armstrong would ridicule “those mechanical physicians [who] very ingeniously discovered, that the various secretions performed by the different glands, were owing to the different angles at which their arteries were detached from the Aorta.”145 Armstrong’s rather more diplomatic poem teaches healthy behaviour through the evocation of his reader’s own reflections, tactfully revising contemporary Newtonian principles. In subsequent verses, Armstrong counsels that … ’tis not Thought (for still the soul’s employ’d) ’Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay. All day the vacant eye without fatigue Strays o’er the heaven and earth; but long intent On microscopic arts its vigour fails. Just so the mind … (4: 35–40)

J. Armstrong, Medical Essays (London: T. Cadell, 1773) 3. Armstrong was probably referring to the Oxford anatomist James Keill’s Anatomy of the Human Body Abridg’d (London: W. Keblewhite 1698), a standard textbook throughout the century, passing through 20 English editions and providing a source for physiological medical teaching as late as 1774: see Robert Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970) 54. It provided a notoriously confident formula for calculating the volume of certain glandular secretions, whose surplus was believed to cause disease, by determining the velocity of aortic force. 145

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Armstrong then presents concluding digressions on diet, loneliness, and other topics, which attempt to lead his reader to experience the diverse visions that he counsels. The previous generation of physicians counseled adjusting the non-naturals to counterbalance certain passions, but Armstrong sought to cultivate his reader’s sensitivity to the non-naturals by practicing a form of poetical inoculation. He used emotional modeling to personify and then to anatomize melancholy itself, which entailed appreciating the very experience of its affliction. It was these lines which inspired Bowell: … the dim eye’d Fiend, Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale; A mournful visionary light o’erspreads The chearful face of nature: earth becomes A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above. Then various shapes of curs’d illusion rise, Whate’er the wretched fears, creating Fear Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems Unknown in hell. (4: 92–101)

This calculated appeal to terror intends to raise the passions, even “those fatal guests” “the Demon Fear,” so that readers can identify them as their own reification of therefore harmless anxiety (4: 120). Of interest here is not only Armstrong’s attention to subjective experience, and his subtle transition from defining melancholy as an abstract characterization to locating it as a powerful internal state of mind. Also, by recognizing and envisioning psychological aspects of anxiety, Armstrong encouraged readers to understand disease in a way that focused their attention beyond its visible, physical, effects. This was a therapeutic advance and subtle challenge to those physicians who still maintained the ancient belief that fear and anxiety could themselves cause plague which, as we will see, remained a significant domestic threat to Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century.146 Mead himself once wrote that “Fear, Despair, and all Dejection of Spirits, dispose the Body to receive the Contagion, and give it a great Power, where it is received, as all Physicians agree they do”: see A Discourse of the Plague (1720; London: A. Millar, 1744) 102. Even the noted precursor of Whytt, the anatomist Georgio Baglivi, whose “fundamental research concerning the fibres made him one of the most important students of muscle physiology,” wrote that “in the beginning of a Plague, many are seiz’d with it, and die of it, because they contract the Illness rather tho’ Fear and Concern for the Public Calamity, rather than by Contagion”: see The Practice of Physick (London: Bell, 1704), 179. See C. C. Gillespie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Scribner, 1970–80) vol. 1, 392. See also Andrew Wear, “Fear, Anxiety and the Plague in Early Modern England,” Religion, Health and Suffering (London: Kegan Paul, 1999): 339–63; W. Bynum, “Fear,” Lancet 359 (9 Feb. 2002): 535; Margaret Healy, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 146

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Perhaps the most medically innovative episode in the Art takes place in the final lines of the third book, at the precise structural point in Virgil’s own fourbook Georgics, where Virgil emulated Lucretius’s famous attempt to teach his materialist philosophy by terrifying his reader.147 Lucretius closed his treatise in apparent mid-sentence, in a graphic retelling of the Plague of Athens during the Peloponnesian War; one scholar has described this technique as “committing philosophy on the reader.”148 Armstrong designed the final pages of his third book to evoke an even more powerful episode by combining details of two memorable epidemics—one of which, it was then believed, could return. Armstrong seems to have agreed with the Augustan physician William Charleton, who wrote that “they who are more naturally most apt to be moved by passions are more exposed to drink of the gall and wormwood of pain and remorse,” and he sought to use that sensibility as a means of achieving a kind of poetical inoculation against terror.149 Cultivating emotional sensibility by evoking the experience of suffering may have proved unsettling for more sensitive readers, but by adopting a powerful version of Lucretius’s device, such evocation would teach readers to distinguish urgent signs of infection from the imagery of more easily managed emotion. In his detailed reading of a memorable scene in Thomson’s Winter, where the shepherd is overwhelmed by a snowstorm, Timothy Fulford remarks that “in Thomson’s poems the reader is comfortably insulated from nature’s cruelty.”150 This is partly due to the unlikely kinds of natural forces that Thomson’s poems depict, and also because its characterization of the authoritative narrator and passive peasant “neither disturbs the social hierarchy within which rural hardship was present.”151 It retains an aesthetic and emotional distance between the genteel reader and his suffering rustic. But Armstrong wants to arouse troubling emotions in his readers so that they can learn to manage their reactions to nature’s real dangers, and he will do so by bringing current and real sources of anxiety into his verse, reminding readers of current political events that would level and unite all British readers, and then by depicting death itself—the ultimate social leveler. Perhaps no pairing of two catastrophes could upset readers more than those Armstrong chose for the Lucretian conclusion to his third book. Armstrong began Virgil’s debt to Lucretius had been discussed at length during this period, from Addison (see Addison, note 30) onward. See also Monica Gale, Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius, and the Didactic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000). 148 See Phillip Mitsis, “Committing Philosophy on the Reader: Didactic Coercion and Reader Autonomy in De Rerum natura,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 31 (1993): 111–28. 149 See W. Charleton, The Natural History of the Passions (London: R. Wellington and E. Rumball, 1701) 169. 150 See T. Fulford, Landscape, Liberty, and Authority: Poetry, Criticism, and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 26. 151 See T. Fulford, Landscape, Liberty, and Authority, 26. 147

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by referring to the legendary sweating sickness, and his national allusion grounds it in an explicitly historical past: Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent Their ancient rage, at Bosworth’s purple field; While, for which tyrant England should receive, Her legions in incestuous murders mix’d, And daily horrors; (3: 534–8)

The outbreak of 1485 may not have seemed so distant to readers in 1744, since “The Sweat” had resurfaced in England as recently as 1718.152 There was widespread panic across Europe when bubonic plague killed half the population of Marseilles and some 242 localities in Provence between 1720 and 1722,153 keeping dozens of English works on plague in print for decades, including Mead’s Discourse on the Plague (1720), Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (1722), and dozens of urgent pamphlets.154 The plague had extinguished itself by the summer of 1722, only to terrorize correspondents across Europe again during a resurgence during the following winter.155 By 1736, readers of the widely circulated Gentleman’s Magazine would have to learn to immune themselves from such news, for it would report for government officials and eyewitnesses that between 11 February and 11 March, “100,000 Persons dy’d of the Plague at Grand Cairo; (7000 daily for some days).”156 A new outbreak of plague arrived in England shortly before the publication of Armstrong’s poem: Salisbury, and parts of London, were terrorized by local epidemics in 1740 and 1741—leading to medical publications on the topic printed, unusually, at Sarum.157 By 1743, British readers learned of a greater 152 See K. F. Kiple and K. C. Ornelas, “Sweating Sickness: An English Mystery,” Plague, Pox, and Pestilence: Diseases in History, ed. K. F. Kiple (London: Phoenix, 1997) 159. 153 The outbreak in Provence killed 119,811 from a population determined at 394,368; this is a higher number and higher mortality rate than those who died in the London epidemic of 1665. See M. Signoli et al., “Paleodemography and Historical Demography in the Context of an Epidemic: Plague in Provence in the Eighteenth Century.” Population 57 (Nov.-Dec. 2002): 837. [829–54]; A. Hardy, “The Medical Response to Epidemic Disease during the Long Eighteenth Century,” Epidemic Disease in London, ed. J. A. I. Champion (London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 1993): 65–70. Local memory of the catastrophe remains current in Marseille; in 1973 the Merseille Bibliothèque Municipale held an exhibition of 203 separately printed documents relating to the outbreak. See F. Cotton, La peste à Marseille (Marseille: Bibliothèque Municipale, 1973). 154 On the many London publications that document the event, see A. Zuckerman, “Plague and Contagionism in Eighteenth-Century England: The Role of Richard Mead,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78:2 (2004): 273–308. See also Bradley, note 3. 155 See M. Signoli, “Paleodemography,” 838. 156 See GM 6 (May 1736) 292. 157 See, for instance, John Barker’s Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the Present Epidemick Fever of 1740–2 (Sarum: Collins and Easton, 1743). See also B. W. Alexander, “The Epidemic Fever (1741–42),” Salisbury Medical Bulletin, 11 (1971) 24–9.

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threat from Italy. In addition to separately published pamphlets and European newspapers circulating in London, the Gentleman’s Magazine reported from Sicily on 19 June that The Plague continued to rage there in a most dreadful Manner, so that the Confusion and Terror of the People were not to be described; the dead Bodies lay in the Streets mangled by the Dogs for want of People to bury them … No Servants, Surgeons, nor Chaplains were left in the Hospitals.158

One eminent physician and friend of Mead, John Quincy, published a pamphlet that went so far as to argue that “a Fever from some Faults in the Non-naturals … [is] capable of exciting the like fementative Motions into a proper Subject, as gave Rise to the Fever of the first person seized” with the plague.159 Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health offered timeless advice at a particularly frightening moment in British history, and it did so by deploying innovations in emergent literary and medical discourses concerning sensibility. This episode in the Art addresses the consequences of epidemics for national identity, which is particularly salient given Armstrong’s exclusion from the capital’s highest medical institution for ultimately national reasons—English prejudice against Scots, as John Tristram tellingly revealed.160 The book closes with a powerful reference to the traumatic Carthagena Expedition, in which yellow fever and malaria killed 7,400 of the 10,000 British soldiers who landed there in April 1741—only three years before the Art went to press:161 … in the West, beyond th’ Atlantic foam, Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have died The death of cowards and of common men: Sunk void of wounds, and fall’n without renown. (3: 628–31)

C. F. Mullett, “The English Plague Scare of 1720–23,” Osiris 2 (1936): 484–516. For an eyewitness report on this neglected chapter in English medical history, see J. Barker, An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the Present Epidemick Fever (London: T. Astley, 1742). A second edition appeared in 1743. 158 See GM 13 (July 1743): 391. See also London Gazette 8298 (31 Jan. 1743) 1. For extensive reports from Italy on the spread of plague at Messina, in European newspapers circulating in London, see The Annals of Europe for the Year 1743 (London: T. Astley, 1745) 170–172; 319–23. 159 See J. Quincy, An Essay on the Different Causes of Pestilential Diseases, and How they Become Contagious, 3rd edn (London: E. Bell, 1721). 160 See John Tristram, passim, later in this volume. 161 See David Chandler, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford: OUP, 1994) 112–13; Richard Harding, Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies 1740–2 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991) 83–120.

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The ensuing outcry in Britain marked every genre of print during the early 1740s, sparking a vicious pamphlet war between critics and defenders of the commanding Admiral Edward Vernon, ultimately concluding with the collapse of Robert Walpole’s administration in February 1742.162 Yet the psychological consequences were probably more subtle and profound than those that created visible changes in government; as Priscilla Wald has observed, during periods of epidemic, “the interactions that make us sick also constitute us as a community … it is a contradictory but compelling story of the perils of human interdependence and the triumph of human connection and cooperation.”163 For Armstrong the connectedness that this particular plague evokes moved beyond the social, for he may have realized just how close he came to dying from yellow fever. The military commission that he had sought from Mead in 1741 had been awarded to George Martine, also a Scottish student of Monro’s, who died of yellow fever in the Cartagena outbreak later that year.164 Similarly, although Armstrong’s depiction of plague closely follows Lucretius, its meaning departs from Lucretius’ doctrine on tragedy, which was fundamental to contemporary aesthetic theory.165 For Lucretius, we enjoy depictions of suffering because the very act of apprehension reminds us, comfortingly, that we are only beholding and not experiencing it. Readers of the Art knew they were vulnerable to infection. Abandoning the gently evocative style of previous episodes, and remaining pointedly silent on the event’s political importance, Armstrong’s depiction of the physical experience of infection culminates in worrying if prudent advice:

162 For a list of contemporary books and pamphlets relating to the disaster, see Cyril Hughes Hartmann, The Angry Admiral: The Later Career of Edward Vernon (London: Heinemann, 1953) 221–3. For a characterization of a survivor of the epidemic composed ten years afterward, see Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote, ed. Margaret Dalziel (Oxford: OUP, 1989) 275. On Smollett’s role in the dissemination of news concerning the catastrophe upon his own return from Carthagena, see Louis L. Martz, “Smollett and the Expedition to Carthagena,” PMLA 66 (1941): 428–46. Smollett devoted eight chapters of Roderick Random to the expedition, including “An Account of the Expedition against Carthagena” in his Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages (1756) and a detailed depiction of the event in his Complete History of England (1757–58); see L. Knapp, Tobias Smollett: Doctor of Men and Manners (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949) 33–7. On Fielding’s mock-epic celebration of Vernon’s triumph at Porto Bello in 1739 (achieved despite Walpole’s failure to send sufficient reinforcements), see J. Fuchs, “Postcolonial Mock-Epic: Abrogation and Appropriation,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 32 (2000): 23–44. 163 See P. Wald, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2008) 2, 11. 164 See Martine in Oxford DNB. 165 See B. Hathaway, “The Lucretian ‘Return Upon Ourselves’ in Eighteenth-Century Theories of Tragedy,” PMLA 62 (1947): 672–89. Fulford discusses Thomson’s debts to John Dennis’s view that tragedy both shelters and reveals suffering to readers, but does not refer to Lucretius. See Landscape, Liberty, and Authority 24.

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Soon as a not unpleasant horror glides Along the spine, tho’ all your torpid limbs; When first the heart throbs, or the stomach feels A sickly load, a weary pain the loins; Be Celsus call’d: The fates come rushing on; The rapid fates admit of no delay. (3: 505–10)

This warning, and its gesture to mythical figures, quickly seems to depict a real threat when Armstrong adopts an ironic characterization of his reader to underline a troubling fact: While willful you, and fatally secure, Expect to morrow’s more auspicious sun, The growing pest, whose infancy was weak And easy vanquish’d, with triumphant sway O’erpow’rs your life. For want of timely care Millions have died of medicable wounds. (3: 511–16)

This shift from the readers of the Art to the dead victims of recent infections does not lead Armstrong to depict the merely visual imagery of suffering. Emphasizing again the value of associating physical sensibility with the ability to interpret symptoms, Armstrong proceeds by describing suffering from the infected patient’s point of view, focusing on the futility of their struggle to survive: Thro’ all the yielding pores the melted blood Gush’d out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag’d The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev’d The stomach’s anguish. With incessant toil, Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain, They toss’d from side to side. In vain the stream Ran full and clear, they burnt and thirsted still. (3: 551–7)

The reassuring georgic prelude to this episode had suggested attending to thirst as a means of managing the non-naturals, implying that a modest degree of selfconsciousness will be sufficient to prevent disease. Armstrong now shows that the sweating sickness brought, and could yet bring, a fatal insatiability of natural appetites. He then emphasizes the social meaning of suffering, focusing on the personal consequences of watching others die: that sight brings only a horrific silence from the physicians, questioning the value of their expertise: Thick and pantingly The breath was fetch’d, and with huge lab’rings heav’d. At last a heavy pain oppress’d the head, A wild delirium came; their weeping friends Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs. (3: 560–563) ...... Where find relief? The salutary art Was mute; and, startled at the new disease,

John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health

42

In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave. To Heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray’rs; Heav’n heard them not. Of every hope depriv’d; Fatigu’d with vain resources; and subdued With woes resistless and enfeebling fear; Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow. (3: 604–11)

This depiction of the helpless physician was audacious, for it referred back to Nicholas Culpeper’s famous reflection, made in the Preface to his enduring Pharmacopaeia (1649): “Send for them into a Visited House, they will answer They dare not come … Send for them to a poor Mans house, who is not able to given them their Fee, then they will not come.”166 Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, readers had long been suspicious of the physician’s real motives, let alone his abilities, when tested with mortal infection. Writing as a distinctly sympathetic physician who feels illness too, Armstrong uses his poem to orchestrate therapeutic instruction through emotional evocation, providing a meaningful challenge to the clinical distance imposed by Newtonian medical theory. This particular vision of medical paralysis heightens the reader’s aesthetic response to the rest of the poem, a response which can only be consoled by enacting a therapeutic distinction of powerful imaginary impressions from those actual sensations that may eventually overwhelm as disease. Armstrong’s suggestion that a troubled imagination could itself be the source of its own healing contradicted the teaching of Boerhaave and of other Newtonians from earlier in the century: indeed their focus on changing the nonnatural “environment” was taken up by disciples whose lack of psychological empathy (let alone concern for the patient’s mental state) was so extreme that it led to treatments that included the patient’s immersion in water until a state of apparent death is reached, or the use of the spinning chair, along with other treatments designed to weaken the imagination by inducing real terror through physical punishment; today, reading the glorious descriptions of the apparatus designed by physicians to induce extreme fear is itself terrifying.167 Boerhaave See “The Translator to the Reader,” N. Culpeper, A Physicall Directory, or A Translation of the London Dispensary (London: Peter Cole, 1649). Variant editions of this book appeared throughout the next two centuries, and indeed editions of Culpeper’s Herbal remain in print in 2011. One could argue that this book was the first model of medical popularization through print, for by translating the authorized medical recipes of the Royal College of Physicians from Latin into the English, Culpeper was extending their learning to those with sufficient means to purchase medications but not a medical consultation. See F. N. L. Poyner, “Nicholas Culpeper and His Books,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 17 (1962): 152–67. 167 See B. P. M. Schulte, “The Concepts of Boerhaave on Psychic Function and Psychopathology,” Boerhaave and His Times, ed. G. A. Lindeboom (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970) 93–101. For a candid depictions of medical treatments that are now indistinguishable from torture see, among the others in the following collection, Patrick Blair’s “Cure of Mad Persons by the Fall of Water” (1725) in A. Ingram, ed. Patterns of Madness in the Eighteenth Century: A Reader (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1998) 73–5. Blair’s “cataratick way of cold 166

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himself had cautioned against “making faces or grimacing at children” because the sight of the distortion could cause convulsion.168 In striking contrast, by seeking to replicate the subjective visions of his readers by depicting the imagery of his own mind, Armstrong participated in a therapeutic and humanizing “community of artist and audience” which, as Howard Weinbrot has argued, “is one of the bases of eighteenth-century psychology of response across the century and across genres”—that is, across what were literary and not medical genres until the publication of The Art of Preserving Health.169 Social Reception and Critical Legacy Publication of The Art of Preserving Health in April 1744 initially brought Armstrong the success he sought; only four months after the Art was printed, his friend Patrick Murdoch reported that “the Doctor has got great reputation by his Poem.”170 Finally, in February 1746, Armstrong was appointed Physician to the newly founded Duke of Cumberland’s Hospital for injured soldiers, on Mead’s recommendation.171 He served there with three of the most distinguished medical men of the time, including William Cheselden, “the prince of Augustan surgeons” Bathing” was emblematic of treatments ordered by respected physicians, supported by current scientific theory, imposed on unwilling patients through the eighteenth century from London to Edinburgh to America. As Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine have pointed out, Blair’s method was an “improvement” on the “ducking treatment” recommended by the great medical reformer and disciple of Sydenham, Jan Baptist von Helmont (1580–1644), and Blair read his description to the Royal Society in 1725. The important Edinburgh medical professor and clinician William Cullen recommended Blair’s therapy as late as 1784, and it was taken up by Cullen’s great American pupil Benjamin Rush (signatory of the Declaration of Independence, whose image and name appears on the seal of the American Psychiatric Association); in 1796, Rush ordered the construction of a three-foot square chamber for the Pennsylvania Hospital, designed “to subject the patient to any degree of impression required, by directing the water to be thrown from the height of one, two, or three stories,” directly onto the restrained patient’s face. See R. Hunter and I. Macalpine, eds, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 1535–1860 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1963) 325–6. Incidentally, Blair’s sole manuscript survives in the British Library’s archives of the papers belonging to his friend John Martyn (see Contextual Documents), Banksian MSS. no. 103. 168 See Antonie Luyendijk-Elshout, “Of Masks and Mills: The Enlightened Doctor and His Frightened Patient,” Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought, ed. G. S. Rousseau (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990) 203. 169 See Howard Weinbrot, “Northrop Frye and the Literature of Process Reconsidered,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 24 (1991): 180. 170 Duncan Forbes, ed., Culloden Papers (London: T. Cadell, 1815) 306. 171 Armstrong’s appointment was announced in the Gentleman’s Magazine 16 (1746): 108 and the Scots Magazine (Feb. 1746): 98. See also J. Nichol, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 3, 144. Armstrong’s appointment under Cumberland’s patronage, to care for his soldiers, should not be interpreted as an indication of his views concerning the Jacobite rebellion of 1745: Charles Burney had always maintained that Armstrong was the author of “The Tears of Scotland” (now attributed to Smollett), a moving condemnation

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John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health

who had himself trained Alexander Monro, and who along with Mead attended Newton and later Pope on their deathbeds.172 Sir John Pringle, who also held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, was a physician to the hospital— and was said to have respected Armstrong until the poet’s death in 1779.173 This was the first London hospital appointment of an Edinburgh graduate.174 It had the potential of proving extremely useful for Armstrong, for although hospital staff did not receive a salary, “hospital appointments proved valuable career ‘legups’ for ambitious practitioners, who could expect, through the hospital, to hobnob with the governors and gentry, and thereby gain powerful patrons and wealthy private patients.”175 The appointment also suggests Armstrong’s entry into a select intellectual coterie: “hospital wards were not simply symbols. They were concrete places where people generated, accepted, criticized, and disseminated particular kinds of knowledge, along with all the values, expectations, and rituals associated with what made “good” knowledge and practice.”176 But Armstrong’s selfof Cumberland’s brutality. See The Monthly Review 16 (1795): 72; also John D. Short, “Smollett v. Armstrong,” Notes and Queries 213 (December 1968): 453–6. 172 The epithet is taken from G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State, and Society 1680–1730 (London: G. Allen, 1982) 311. For Monro’s education, see the transcription of Monro’s manuscript memoir in H. D. Erlam, “Alexander Monro, primus,” University of Edinburgh Journal 17 (1953–54): 81–4. In the years leading to Newton’s death, “he placed himself in the care of Richard Mead and William Cheselden, two of the most prominent physicians in London;” see R. S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980) 866. See Pope’s First Epistle of the First Book of Horace: “I’ll do what Mead and Cheselden advise,/ To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes” (51–2); see also Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven: Yale UP, 1985) 805–11. 173 On Pringle’s admiration for Armstrong, see J. Nichols, Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer (London: Nichols, 1782) 282. In his memoirs, the Duke of Cumberland lists the hospital’s staff as “Doctor Pringle, Doctor Barker, and Doctor Armstrong: the surgeons were Mr Ranby, Mr Cheselden, and Mr Andrews”: see Historical Memoirs of … the Duke of Cumberland (London: T. Waller, 1767) 466. Dr. John Barker was a close friend of Henry Fielding and, like Armstrong, wrote a topical medical treatise, An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the Epidemic Fever of 1740–2 (1742), in a bid to obtain a license from the College, which he received in 1746. See William Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, vol. 2, 3 vols (London: Royal College of Physicians, 1878) 158; M. C. Battestin and Clive T. Probyn, eds, The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1993) 49. 174 London teaching hospitals did not admit Scottish graduates until the second half of the century: see “Physicians, Hospitals and Career Structures in Eighteenth-Century London,” in William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge, CUP, 1985) 114. 175 R. Porter, Disease, Medicine and Society in England, 1550–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 33. 176 See S. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London 216; 217–20. According to Lawrence’s “Table of London Hospital Men, 1700–1815,” Armstrong did not hold another hospital post in London: see Lawrence, 217–20. No studies of the Duke’s Hospital have been published.

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described refusal “to tell a heap of impudent lies in his own favour … nor intrigue with nurses” crippled his ability to prosper in London’s medical marketplace.177 Although there were no journals devoted to reviewing poetry during the mid1740s,178 and surviving clinical reports from this period are scarce,179 evidence survives that readers respected Armstrong’s poetic authority and followed his advice. The Art of Preserving Health received serious consideration from physicians as well as from critics: in Dr. James Mackenzie’s magisterial History of Health and the Art of Preserving It (1758) and in Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity (1808), The Art of Preserving Health takes a central place among eighteenth-century touchstones.180 Dr. Hugh Smith, Physician to the prestigious Middlesex obstetrical Hospital, frequently quoted “the ingenious and learned Dr Armstrong,” notably in his Letters to Married Women (1774), observing that the Art’s evocative depictions match the exemplary force of Samuel Richardson’s heroines.181 As late as 1795, Charles Burney declared that “The Art of Preserving Health is one of the most agreeable and instructive poems in our language” (his emphasis).182 These views were evidently shared by more common readers, for a monument to Armstrong’s “learning, worth, and genius” was erected by subscription in his native Scottish village of Castleton in 1821.183 Today this poem is of interest for the humanitarian pedagogy that it adapted, as well as for its unique mode of cultural engagement with the nascent literary and scientific culture of sensibility. Recently, The Art of Preserving Health has been dismissed merely as “a poetic version” of Cheyne, but by depicting a sympathetic physician who himself remains tenuously subject to the very diseases he describes, Armstrong presented a leveling of medical knowledge unprecedented in the medical literature of the period—in a work whose popularity among readers and See J. Armstrong, Medical Essays (London: T. Cadell, 1773) 38. The Present State of the Republick of Letters (1728–36), and The History of the

177 178

Works of the Learned (1737–43), the only British journals which featured reviews, had folded before Armstrong’s poem went to press. See Alvin Sullivan, ed. British Literary Magazines (London: Greenwood P, 1983) xix. See also Frank Donoghue, The Fame Machine: Book Reviewing and Eighteenth-Century Literary Careers (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996); A. Forster “Review Journals and the Reading Public,” Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays, ed. Isabel Rivers (Leicester: U of Leicester P, 2002) 171–90. 179 See William LeFanu, “The Lost Half-Century in English Medicine, 1700–1750,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46 (1972): 319–48. 180 On the importance of Sinclair’s Code of Health, see Virginia Smith, “Prescribing the Rules of Health: Self-Help and Advice in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 249–82. 181 See H. Smith, Letters to Married Women (London: G. Keasley, 1774) 246. 182 See Monthly Review 16 (1795): 71. 183 See W. A. Somerville, “Dr. John Armstrong, Poet and Physician,” Border Magazine 31 (April 1926): 49–51.

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acclaim among colleagues was more extensive than anything that had appeared previously.184 That its poetical form enabled a greater measure of success from the medical establishment than Armstrong’s previous scholarly works, and that The Art of Preserving Health remained popular among readers well into the nineteenth century, suggests that this poem should be recognized as among the earliest and most enduring expressions of eighteenth-century sensibility across social strata. The Art of Preserving Health seeks to evoke an aesthetic experience that itself cultivates a refined sensibility, associating corporeal feeling with social concern, realizing an immediate vision of the moral medical project to which Armstrong contributed as a student in Edinburgh. Unfortunately for Armstrong, however, the very forcefulness of his medicoliterary method sapped the raison d’être of his professional career, leaving us with a sad biographical example of sensibility’s ultimate incompatibility with the Georgian medical world. By sharing his expertise so cheaply and expansively, it is possible that Armstrong may have discouraged patients from retaining him as a paid physician. In his topographical poem The Isle of Wight (1766), Henry Jones observed that Armstrong could not sustain the dual career of a physician-poet: Armstrong to rules of health here sweet perswade, Dispense his learning and destroy his trade.185

After all, if the physician effectively circulates his art of preserving health, what trade will be left? In September 1767, not long after Jones’s poem appeared, the Scottish banker Thomas Coutts commissioned Joshua Reynolds to paint a portrait of his friend, and the painting depicts an exhausted and sullen figure; only seven years later, Frances Burney wrote that “he must be very old–& looks very ill,” but Armstrong was 65 at the time.186 Slouching in his chair, the physician-poet of Reynolds’s portrait gazes slightly upward, emphasizing his fatigue.187 Its epigraph, excerpted from The Art of Preserving Health, seems an attempt to justify Armstrong’s professional failure: “The Suffrage of the Wise,/ The Praise that’s worth Ambition is attain’d/ By Sense alone, and Dignity of Mind.” Ironically, the literary success of this medico-georgic poem might itself have condemned its See A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000) 184. 185 See H. Jones, Vectis. The Isle of Wight (London: W. Flexney, 1766) 2: 267–8. 186 See Lars Troide., ed., The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1988) 39. 187 See David Manning, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven: Yale, 2000), vol. 1, 65 and vol. 2, fig. 910; the portrait currently hangs in the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. The commission by Coutts is noted by Lewis Knapp, “John Armstrong: Littérateur and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities,” PMLA 59 (1944): 1056. R. Burgess lists five different mezzotints of the portrait; see Portraits of Doctors and Scientists in the Wellcome Institute, London (London: Wellcome Trust, 1973) 105. 184

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This figure has intentionally been removed for copyright reasons. To view this image, please refer to the printed version of this book

Fig. 1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Armstrong, M.D. (1767), Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Mezzotint by E. Fisher reproduced with kind permission of the Trustees of the Wellcome Library, London.

poet to professional recognition but ultimately to commercial neglect by the very readers who he hoped would double as paying patients. In a letter reporting the death of a mutual friend, Armstrong once suggested that the delicate sensibility celebrated in his Art reflects a vulnerability in his own character: “I have often been tempted to wish, that nature had made me a little more callous; but then we should lose sensations too that give perhaps the most

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exquisite pleasures.”188 The Art of Preserving Health, read in the context of Armstrong’s dual career, presents these emotional and corporeal qualities in a body of work which sought to realize the virtuous social ambitions that novelists of sensibility could merely depict. Armstrong’s groundbreaking popularizations of medicine, which addressed the very readers who lacked access to medical expertise, also signify the complex professional, scientific, as well as literary context that brought The Art of Preserving Health to a dramatic, if now obscure, fruition.

188 See Armstrong’s letter to John Forbes of 3 Sept. 1748, in Culloden Papers (London: T. Cadell, 1815) 307.

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Fig. 2

[Armstrong, John]. The Art of Preserving Health. A Poem in Four Books. London: A. Millar, 1744. Title-page.

THE A R T OF PRESERVING

HEALTH. book i. A I R.

DAUGHTER of Pæon, queen of every joy, Hygeia; whose indulgent smile sustains  Copy-text for this critical edition is the first edition of The Art of Preserving Health. A Poem, as it was printed by William Strahan and entered into Stationer’s Register by the bookseller Andrew Millar on 10 April 1744. There are no signficant variants among the dozens of editions that appeared throughout the eighteenth century; minor stylistic changes are indicated in the notes, below. Strahan printed 1250 coarse and 50 fine copies, all in quarto format; copies with the less expensive paper were sold for four shillings sewn. Another impression on fine paper (probably 50 copies) was made later that same year; a pocket-sized duodecimo pirated edition also was made in 1744, in Dublin. On 30 April 1745, the Daily Advertiser announced a second London edition; for this, Strahan printed 1000 copies in the less-expensive octavo format and six fine “presentation” copies, with a second impression on fine paper. In 1747, Strahan printed 200 further copies in quarto, indicating sustained demand for expensive editions of the poem. The third edition was printed by Strahan, 1,000 copies in octavo, in Nov. 1747. So a total of 3,550 copies were printed, excluding Irish piracies. See Foxon, 28–9. Line numbering follows the first edition, but corrects numbering in Book 2, where a printer’s error has 450 in place of 440. For instances where Armstrong’s rhetoric draws on the text of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, see B. Boehrer, “English Bards and Scotch Physicians: John Armstrong’s Debt to Paradise Lost and the Dynamics of Literary Reception,” Milton Quarterly 32 (Oct. 1998): 98–104. For my reservations on Boehrer’s analysis of such debts, see the Preface, note 9.  Paeon Physician of the Greek and Roman gods, and a term used for songs addressed to Apollo and Aesculepius, the healing divinites associated with Paeon.  “Hygeia the goddess of health, was, according to the genealogy of the heathen deities, the daughter of Esculapius [also Aesclepius]; who, as well as Apollo, was distinguished by the name of Pæon” [-JA-]. See APH 3, note 98.The initial sentence of the Hippocratic oath, traditionally recited by physicians, includes Hygieia’s name immediately after Hippocrates; they appear together in numerous other classical and neoclassical dedications. On the oath, see H. Markel, “‘I Swear By Apollo’: On Taking the Hippocratic Oath,” New England Journal of Medicine 350 (2004) 2026–9. See W. D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1979).

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various varying The various race luxuriant nature pours, essences substances And on th’ immortal essences bestows 5 Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! Thou, chearful guardian of the rolling year, wanton’st plays sportively Whether thou wanton’st on the western gale, pinions high walls, i.e., icebergs Or shak’st the rigid pinions of the north, tracts territorial expanses Diffusest life and vigour thro’ the tracts 10 Of air, thro’ earth, and ocean’s deep domain. When thro’ the blue serenity of heav’n wasteful host consuming Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host manifestations Of pain and sickness, squallid and deform’d, Confounded sink into the loathsome gloom, Erebus mythic darkness involv’d 15 Where in deep Erebus involv’d the Fiends entangled Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death, profane morally unclean Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe, hideous terrifically large Swarm thro’ the shuddering air: whatever plagues Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings meager emaciating 20 Rise from the putrid watry element, waste forest uncultivated The damp waste forest, motionless and rank, wilderness That smothers earth and all the breathless winds, breathless lifeless inhuman field bloody battlefield Or the vile carnage of th’ inhuman field; baneful poisonous south i.e.,  25 Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south ; southerly winds Whatever ills th’ extremes or sudden change Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce; They fly thy pure effulgence: they, and all The secret poisons of avenging heaven, heaven climate pale tribes sickly classes halting  And all the pale tribes halting in the train

30 Of vice and heedless pleasure: or if aught

limping train habits heedless oblivious aught it should pass that

race Proverbial “progress through life.” O descend! Compare with Milton, “Il Penseroso” 37–9, passim.  pinions of the north Armstrong is most likely referring to icebergs (see also APH 2: 301–2), but he may also be pointing to the longstanding myth that the Arctic regions were distinguished by “abundance of Ice and Snow … and three burning Mountains … the Chief and most remarkable is Hecla. This hath its Head always cover’d with Snow, and its belly always fill’d with Fire; and these are so strong in their Kind, and equally Powerful, that they cannot destroy one another.” See Thomas Burnet, The Sacred Theory of the Earth, vol. 2 (Glasgow: R. Urie, 1719) 82. 7 See APH 3: 523.  Possibly a reference to famous phrase in Horace, “raro antecedentem scelestum/ deseruit pede Poena claudo (Odes 3: 2: 31–2): Retribution is always slow of foot, but it catches up. See The Odes of Horace, ed. D. Ferry (London: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997) 131.  

The Art of Preserving Health

The comet’s glare amid the burning sky, Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin’d, Portend disastrous to the vital world; Thy salutary power averts their rage, 35 Averts the general bane: and but for thee Nature would sicken, nature soon would die. Without thy chearful active energy No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings, No more the maids of Helicon10 delight. 40 Come then with me, O Goddess heavenly-gay! Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow, And let it wisely teach thy wholesome laws: “How best the sickle fabric to support Of mortal man; in healthful body how 45 A healthful mind the longest to maintain.” ’Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse The best, and those of most extensive use; Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey.11 50 Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace Of nature, and with daring steps proceed Thro’ paths the muse never trod before.

53

portend disastrous predict disaster vital living rage violence bane poison but, i.e., were it not

rapture delight

sickle fabric sickly body

strife contest

Dry unfeeling philosophic learned secret, i.e., exclusive wilds wilderness

 Although comets had been interpreted as a prophetic sign of divine vengeance or natural catastrophe since ancient times, similar ideas had been given scientific credence by the recent publications of William Whiston (1667–1752). A friend of Newton’s, Whiston used Newtonian mathematics to argue, influentially and prolifically, that a divinely guided comet had reoriented the Earth’s axis and caused the catastrophic flood (described in Genesis 6–9)—and could do so again. For an historical overview, see S. S. Schechner, See “Halley’s Comet Theory, Noah’s Flood, and the End of the World,” Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999) 156–78. 10 Helicon Classical source of poetic inspiration. 11 Compare with Georgics 3: 289–90; in Dryden, Georgics 3:455–8: Nor can I doubt what oil I must bestow, To raise my subject from a ground so low; And the mean matter, which my theme affords, To embellish with magnificence of words. (224) Also Georgics 1: 76–7; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 256–7: I could be long in precepts; but I fear So mean a subject might offend your ear. (163) See also Addison, “[The georgic] makes the dryest of its Precepts look like a Description” (“Essay on the Georgicks”); also Martyn’s praise for Virgil: “a writer less animated with a spirit of Poetry, would have contented himself with dryly telling us” (see page 190).

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Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, Had I the lights of that sagacious mind 55 Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quel the deadly Python of the Nile.12 O Thou belov’d by all the graceful arts,13 Thou long the fav’rite of the healing powers, 60 Indulge, O MEAD! a well-design’d essay, Howe’er imperfect: and permit that I My little knowledge with my country14 share, Till you the rich Asclepian15 stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme.

essay attempt

graces gracefulness

YE who amid this feverish world would wear cares a mind [Scot.] cares of mind 65 A body free of pain, of cares a mind; Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; chaos disorder eternal perpetual Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke volatile diffusive And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickning, and the living world

sagacious mind … Python of the Nile Richard Mead (1673–1754), one of the most famous and successful British physicians of the early eighteenth century. Mead was Physician to George II (from 1727), attended Newton and Pope in their final illnesses, and served as a Censor of the Royal College of Physicians in 1716, 1719, and 1724. He was Governor of three major London hospitals (from 1720), and earned what was probably the largest medical income of any physician in Europe. His celebrated treatise A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion was published in 1720, following news of a catastrophic outbreak of bubonic plague (the Python) in Marseilles in July 1719—Europe’s primary port from and to Africa (i.e., Nile) and Asia (see also APH 3, note 79). Mead’s Discourse reached seven editions within one year and was credited with quelling local panic about an outbreak in Britain; shortly afterward, Mead’s recommendations for preventing infection led to his appointment, by the King’s Privy Council, to plan new measures to prevent an outbreak in Britain. It has since been recognized as a pioneering work in the history of public health policy, particularly for its attempt to calm readers by providing information and advice on an admittedly terrifying contagion. See A. Zuckerman, “Plague and Contagionism in Eighteenth-Century England: The Role of Richard Mead,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78 (2004): 273–308. See also Martyn, notes 1–4. 13 O Thou … graceful arts Mead was a respected a patron of the arts—including painting, poetry, printing, engineering, and translation. See “Mead, Richard (1673–1754)” in Oxford DNB. 14 my country Referring to the 1707 political union of Scotland with England and Wales, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Armstrong solicited Mead’s advice twice in 1741. See General Introduction, note 108; Martyn, note 1. 15 Asclepian Reference to the healing god Asclepius, whose temples were built throughout ancient Greece. 12

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70 Exhal’d, to sully heaven’s transparent dome With dim mortality. It is not air That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine, Sated with exhalations rank and fell, The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw 75 Of nature; when from shape and texture she Relapses into fighting elements: It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things. Much moisture hurts16; but here a sordid bath, 80 With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immur’d in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows 85 With sickly rest: and (tho’ the lungs abhor To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)17 Did not the acid vigour of the mine, Roll’d from so many thundring chimneys, tame The putrid steams that overswarm the sky; 90 This caustick venom would perhaps corrode Those tender cells that draw the vital air,18

55

dim gloomy reeks emits fell fierce spoil destructive effect

but that sordid filthy rancour bitterness relaxes, i.e., weakens frame body simple pure sullen sluggish slumbring deep unmoving depth dun fuliginous gloomy and sooty acid piercing mine, i.e., coal-mine

cells vessels

16 Galenic theories of disease rested on the basic premise that health is a result of balance—amongst both the fluids and solids that comprise the human body. In the Galenic tradition, excessive moisture in the body causes mindlessness and painful disorientation; excessive dryness causes an excessive of understanding, or paranoia. See Galen, “Of the Soul’s Dependence on the Body,” Selected Works, trans. P. N. Singer (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997) 156–7. 17 This reference to dark and mysterious waters that flow deep underground is a gesture to biblical cosmologies that envisioned a great oceanic abyss at the centre of the earth, from which habitable land first appeared upon the violent collapse of erupting volcanoes. For a popular contemporary explanation, that passed through 14 editions between 1684 and 1753, see Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth, vol. 1, 85–92. 18 Armstrong is voicing the contemporary belief that air-borne toxins are in fact moisture-based and are cleansed from the air by smoke from coal. By the mid-1740s, rapidly expanding British industries were increasing their dependence on domestic coalmining and firing—leading to important innovations (such as Thomas Newcomen’s steampowered draining pump). See A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (London: Routledge, 1969) 393–427. At the same time, following Marcello Malpighi’s recent discoveries using the light microscope, eighteenth-century anatomists described the air-filled sacs within the lungs, leading to the discovery that inhaled air mixes with circulating blood. The word cell was a non-specific term referring to any cavity in the body, as large as the stomach or as small as these pulmonary “alveoli” (or little sacs). See William Cheselden, The Anatomy of the Human Body, 5th edn (London: W. Bowyer, 1740) 172–5.

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In vain with all their unctuous rills19 bedew’d; bedew’d stained by through drunken saturated Or by the drunken venous tubes,20 that yawn pervious permeable In countless pores o’er all the pervious skin, balsamic restorative 95 Imbib’d, would poison the balsamic blood, And rouse the heart to every fever’s rage. While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales; The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze 100 That fans the ever undulating sky; A kindly sky! whose fost’ring power regales Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign. Find then some Woodland scene where nature smiles Benign, where all her honest children thrive. wants lacks Seat place to live 105 To us there wants not many a happy Seat! Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise numbers groups of [good] things fix choose We hardly fix, bewilder’d in our choice. See where enthron’d in adamantine state, Proud of her bards,21 imperial Windsor sits; 110 There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove Fast by the slowly-winding Thames;22 or where Broader she laves fair Richmond’s green retreats,23 (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise gay showy rage fervor Rural or gay). O! from the summer’s rage 115 O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides These rills are the stream-like bronchi that conduct and condition air into the lungs, where they reach the alveoli (pulmonary tissue). They are unctuous because they have been stained by urban pollution; bedew’d because this pollution was believed to consist of moisture. 20 venous tubes the glands in the skin that secrete perspiration (like veins conduct blood); like bleeding, sweating was then understood as an important means of elimination. See 1: 161. 21 The poet most closely associated with the region around Windsor was Alexander Pope (1688–1744), but this verse is also a nod to Armstrong’s close friend James Thomson (1700–48), who lived at Kew Green. See Mary Jane W. Scott, James Thomson, Anglo-Scot (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988). Windsor is 27 miles west of the City of London. 22 For Virgil’s extensive catalogue of places familiar to his original readers, see his passage on cultivating trees and vineyards in Georgics 2: 83–107; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 128–53 (186). 23 Richmond An affluent village seven miles upstream from London, Richmond had been the site of at least one royal palace since 1497. In 1728 Frederick, Prince of Wales, began cultivation of a 170-acre public garden, and its association with parkland extends at least one century before the founding of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew Green (1759). See K. Courlander, Richmond, from Kew Green to Ham Common (London: Batsford, 1953). 19

The Art of Preserving Health

Umbrageous Ham!24 –But if the busy town Attract thee still to toil for power or gold, Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess In Hampstead,25 courted by the western wind; 120 Or Greenwich,26 waving o’er the winding flood; Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds Of Dulwich,27 yet by barbarous arts unspoil’d. Green rise the Kentish hills in chearful air; But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads28 125 Build not, nor rest too long thy wand’ring feet. For on a rustic throne of dewy turf, With baneful fogs her aching temples bound, Quartana29 there presides: a meagre Fiend Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force 130 Compress’d the slothful Naiad of the Fens.30 From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest With fev’rish blasts subdues the sick’ning land: Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest, Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains 135 That sting the burden’d brows, fatigue the loins, And rack the joints, and every torpid limb; Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats O’erflow; a short relief from former ills.

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Umbrageous sheltered with foliage gold, i.e. money

barbarous ruthless

Eurus the east-wind

Ham Ham Common, a secluded park slightly further upstream from Richmond. Hampstead Fashionable spa from the early eighteenth century, the village extended over two hills including its ancient Heath, five miles north of the City. 26 Greenwich A resort town with longstanding aristocratic associations, Greenwich (literally “the village on the green”) lies six miles down the Thames from the Tower of London. 27 Dulwich For centuries an affluent hamlet on the South side of the Thames. Dulwich was newly famous in the 1740s for its recently discovered medicinal waters. Since no high road passed through it, Dulwich retained its small size and sense of isolation from the larger London towns. 28 The 1770 edition, the last published in Armstrong’s lifetime, has “Lincoln” in place of “Essex.” An ancient cathedral town surrounded by marshy agricultural lowlands, Lincoln lies 144 miles north of London. Essex is the low-lying county directly east of London. 29 Quartana Poetic personification of quartan febris, a fever believed to affect the patient every four days. Since its symptoms affect the head and limbs, the quaratan was considered a nervous disease, residing in the spine once the disease passed through the lungs and entered the bloodstream: “they are very epidemic in marshy Places, where the Air is impregnated with a large Quantity of acrid Recrements [organic waste].” See Robert James, “Quartana febris,” A Medicinal Dictionary (London: T. Osborne, 1743–45). 30 Naiad A mythic spirit or nymph that presides over a river or stream. Armstrong seems to have invented the mythic origin of this fever being the result of the east-wind combining violently with English marshland. 24 25

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Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine; 140 The vigour sinks, the habit melts away; The chearful, pure, and animated bloom Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy Devour’d, in sallow melancholy clad. And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath, 145 Resigns them to the furies of her train; The bloated Hydrops,31 and the yellow Fiend32 Ting’d with her own accumulated gall.33 In quest of Sites, avoid the mournful plain Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake; 150 Where many lazy muddy rivers flow: Nor for the wealth that all the Indies34 roll Fix near the marshy margin of the main. For from the humid soil and watry reign Eternal vapours rise; the spungy air 155 For ever weeps: or, turgid with the weight Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. Skies such as these let every mortal shun Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout,35 Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh;36 160 Or any other injury that grows From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung,

habit appetite

train attendants

osiers willows

main expanse of land spungy humid

raw-spun exhausted and thus lax fibres muscular or nervous tissue

31 Hydrops Original Latin source for dropsy, a catch-all term for any illness involving the retention of fluid, from diabetes (involving swollen ankles) to constipation. 32 yellow Fiend Personification of bile, produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder, corresponding to choler among the four humors. Profusion of bile was characterized by yellowish complexion and angry outbursts. 33 gall Colloquial term for bile, i.e., fluid containing inhaled, absorbed, or ingested toxins. 34 Indies Both the Indian subcontinent and Britain’s colonies in the Caribbean. 35 dropsy See note 121; palsy any illness involving numbness; gout Metabolic illness causing severe pain and swelling in the joints: variably defined during the eighteenth century as regular gout (which affected the wrists and toes), irregular gout dangerously affected the extremities and then the vital organs, flying gout when swelling and pain moved randomly through the body. See Roy Porter and G. S. Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000). 36 tertian dangerous fever thought to recur every three days (see note 29, above); scurvy cluster of symptoms characterized by weakness and bruising, understood from 1754 as a specific disease caused by vitamin C deficiency; see K. Carpenter, ed. History of Scurvy and Vitamin C (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986). Catarrh discharge from the eyes and nose.

The Art of Preserving Health

Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple37 flood In languid eddies loitering into phlegm. Yet not alone from humid skies we pine; 165 For Air may be too dry. The subtle heaven, That winnows into dust the blasted downs, Bare and extended wide without a stream, Too fast imbibes th’ attenuated lymph Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales.38 170 The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay Their flexible vibrations; or inflam’d, Their tender ever-moving structure thaws. Spoil’d of its limpid vehicle, the blood A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide 175 That slow as Lethe39 wanders thro’ the veins; Unactive in the services of life, Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro’ The secret mazy channels of the brain. The melancholic fiend (that worst despair 180 Of physic), hence the rust-complexion’d man40 Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain Too stretch’d a tone: and hence in climes adust So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves, And burning fevers glow with double rage.

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lymph coagulating fluid in the blood

thaws breaks down lees sediments

adust scorched

185 Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of Air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. But as the power of chusing is deny’d Armstrong uses purple variously to describe noncirculating blood. See also APH 2: 37; APH 3: 197, 535. 38 Contemporary physiologists believed that lymph, “a fine fluid separated in the Body from the Mass of Blood,” was stored in the lymphatic vessels (or glands) and its purpose was to aid in digestion: “its chief Use is to dilute and perfect the Chyle, before it mixes with the Blood.” Armstrong is warning that dry air dilutes the lymphatic fluid by thinning the blood—leading to poor digestion and then weakness. See R. James, “Lympha,” Medicinal Dictionary. A notable controversy would emerge at Edinburgh on the structure and role of the lymphatic system between its most prominent physicians, William Hunter and Alexander Monro secundus. See N. B. Eales, “The History of the Lymphatic System with Special Reference to the Hunter-Monro Controversy,” Journal of the History of Medicine 29 (1974): 280–294. 39 In Greek and Roman mythology, Lethe refers variously to the river or waters of forgetfulness; in Ovid’s Metapmorphoses 11, Lethe is the murmuring river that swirls around the Cave of Sleep, inducing sleepiness in everyone who hears it. 40 rust-complexioned Reflecting the humoral association of melancholy with dryness and corrosion. 37

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To half mankind, a further task ensues; How best to mitigate these fell extremes, 190 How breathe unhurt the withering element, Or hazy atmosphere: Tho’ Custom moulds To ev’ry clime the soft Promethean41 clay; And he who first the fogs of Essex breath’d (So kind is native air) may in the fens 195 Of Essex from inveterate ills revive At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught.42 But if the raw and oozy heaven offend: Correct the soil, and dry the sources up Of watry exhalation; wide and deep 200 Conduct your trenches thro’ the quaking bog; Sollicitous, with all your winding arts, Betray th’ unwilling lake into the stream; And weed the forest, and invoke the winds To break the toils where strangled vapours lie; 205 Or thro’ the thickets send the crackling flames. Mean time at home with chearful fires dispel The humid air: And let your table smoke With solid roast or bak’d; or what the herds Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds 210 Yield to the toilsome pleasures of the chase. chase hunt Generous your wine, the boast of rip’ning years; But frugal be your cups: the languid frame, Vapid and sunk from yesterday’s debauch, Shrinks from the cold embrace of watry heavens. 215 But neither these, nor all Apollo’s43 arts, Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky, Unless with exercise and manly toil You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood. The fat’ning clime let all the sons of ease 220 Avoid; if indolence would wish to live. Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch Promethean In Greek myth, Prometheus is a divine figure who created humans from clay and is responsible for providing human skills and knowledge. See Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 442–525 and Horace, Odes 1.16.13–6. Armstrong’s view mirrors longstanding common sense: see Creech, lines 18–19. 42 Montpellier Spa town in southern France, close to the St. Clément spring, renowned for its elaborate fountains and ancient medical school. Bermuda subtropical island and territory of the British crown. The adjectival reference to “catching” may be a gesture to Bermuda’s reputation as a home for privateers loyal to the British navy. 43 Apollo Greek god of healing. 41

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The skin and lungs, and bake the thickening blood; Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat, 225 Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate the rapid stream. Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The moist relaxing vegetable store 230 Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied By bleeding life, be gently wasted down, decoction digestion By soft decoction and a mellowing heat, To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass boiling wave action of the stomach You chuse, tormented in the boiling wave; 235 That thro’ the thirsty channels of the blood A smooth diluted chyle44 may ever flow. The fragrant dairy from its cool recess Its nectar acid or benign will pour To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl mantling creamy 240 Of keen Sherbet45 the fickle taste relieve. simple stream plain water For with the viscous blood the simple stream Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups Oft dissipate more moisture than they give. Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls horrors causing trembling 245 His horrors o’er the world, thou may’st indulge (physical) and fear (emotional) In feasts more genial, and impatient broach The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air mellow cask beer or ale Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts keener tougher Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme. 250 Steep’d in continual rains, or with raw fogs raw unclotted; penetratingly cold Bedew’d, our seasons droop: incumbent still incumbent weighty A ponderous heaven o’erwhelms the sinking soul. ponderous dense Lab’ring with storms in heapy mountains rise Th’ imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian46 shades shades spirits 255 Had left the dungeon of eternal night, Till black with thunder all the South47 descends. Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge Scarce only ever chyle Intestinal fluid transiting through the small intestine. sherbet Icy lemon juice mixed with water 46 Stygian Infernal, after the River Styx, the boundary encircling the underworld in Greek myth. 47 South Milton used a very similar phrase to denote the decadence and tyranny associated biblically with Egypt or southern Palestine. See Paradise Lost 1.354; Barbara Riebling, “Milton on Machiavelli: Representations of the State in Paradise Lost,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996) 591. 44 45

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Our melting clime; except the baleful East48 Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks 260 The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene. Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes This dismal change! The brooding elements49 Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath, 265 Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? Or is it fix’d in the Decrees above That lofty Albion melt into the main? Indulgent Nature! O dissolve this gloom! Bind in eternal adamant the winds 270 That drown or wither: Give the genial west To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north: And may once more the circling seasons rule The year; not mix in every monstrous day.

melting hot sourly severly fancy whims

This the present’s

lofty Albion proud Britain main sea

Give allow west west-wind north north-wind

moist malignity malignant moisture Mean time, the moist malignity to shun to, i.e., in order to 275 Of burthen’d skies; mark where the dry champaign champain open countryside cheerful rich with moderate weather Swells into chearful hills;50 where Marjoram And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air; And where the Cynorrhodon51 with the rose For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil 280 Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes. tribes species of plants There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires. And let them52 see the winter morn arise, The summer evening blushing in the west; 285 While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind O’erhung, defends you from the blust’ring north, peevish east [Scot.] chilling east wind And bleak affliction of the peevish east. East Reference to the east-wind, proverbially cold and unhealthy. Armstrong’s contemporaries understood the east-wind to cause blight and other diseases in plants. See E. Chambers, “Blight,” Cyclopaedia (London: Midwinter et al, 1738) vol. 1. See also line 286, below. 49 Brooding figurative use of brooding hatching, thus precipitating: see Milton, PL 7.235, “on the watery calm/ His brooding wings the Spirit of god outspread,/ And vital virtue infused.” Yet here the stillness of a serene sky precipitates the arrival of diseases that the winds would blow away. 50 The sense is: To shun the malignant moisture of heavy skies, settle where the dry land becomes rich with sunny and moderately watered hills. 51 “The wild rose, or that which grows upon the wild briar” [-JA] 52 Presumably those who would live with the familiar reader (variably “thy” and “you’) under his described roof. 48

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O! when the growling winds contend, and all The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm; 290 To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o’er the steady battlements, delights Above the luxury of vulgar sleep. The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain Of waters rushing o’er the slippery rocks, 295 Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest. fancy imagination To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th’ harmonious frame. sportive playful 300 Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill, From vale to mountain, with incessant change Of purest element,53 refreshing still seat home Your airy seat, and uninfected Gods. 305 Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides ethereal billows laves heavenly winds Th’ etherial deep with endless billows laves. contagious susceptible to contagion His purer mansion nor contagious years Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy. 310 But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain, Involve my hill! And wheresoe’er you build; Whether on sun-burnt Epsom,54 or the plains Wash’d by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low, Or high Blackheath55 with wintry winds assail’d; 315 Dry be your house: but airy more than warm. Else every breath of ruder wind will strike Your tender body thro’ with rapid pains; Fierce coughs will teize you, hoarseness bind your voice, Gravedo congested sinuses Or moist Gravedo load your aching brows. 320 These to defy, and all the fates56 that dwell 53 element Contemporary chemistry understood all material things to be reducible to water, air, oil, salt, or earth. 54 Epsom Elegant spa town 14 miles south of London; Lee river that flows south through Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, to join the Thames at Bow Creek at the theneastern edge of London; Chelsea fashionable village in London, beyond Westminster, on the north bank of the Thames. See Martyn, note 6. 55 Blackheath Hillside five miles west of London. 56 fates Throughout this poem, Armstrong seems to use “fate” and “fates” as a personification of destiny; he also uses “Fates” in the strict classical sense, referring to the three mythical figures in Greek, Roman, and Celtic mythology, who communicate the will

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In cloister’d air tainted with steaming57 life, Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms; And still at azure noontide may your dome At every window drink the liquid sky. 325 Need we the sunny situation here, And theatres open to the south, commend? Here, where the morning’s misty breath infests More than the torrid noon? How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales 330 That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigour of the sun! While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows 335 The tender lily, languishingly sweet; O’er every hedge the wanton woodbine roves, woodbine climbing vine And autumn ripens in the summer’s ray. Nor less the warmer living tribes demand The fost’ring sun: whose energy divine 340 Dwells not in mortal fire; whose gen’rous heat Glows thro’ the mass of grosser elements, And kindles into life the ponderous spheres. Chear’d by thy kind invigorating warmth, thy, i.e., the sun’s We court thy beams, great majesty of day! 345 If not the soul,58 the regent of this world, First-born of heaven,59 and only less than God!

of those capricious gods who define human destiny. See B. C. Dietrich, Death, Fate, and the Gods (London: Athlone P, 1965). See APH 2: 500, 533; APH 3: 273, 483, 510–511, 579, 623; APH 4: 437. 57 Samuel Johnson refers to poets, including Milton and Dryden, who used steaming to suggest the passing of life into vapor; for example: “See, see my brother’s ghost hands hovering there,/ O’er his warm blood, that steams into the air.” See John Dryden, “The Indian Emperor,” Dryden and Howard, 1664–68 ed. D. Arundel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1929) 168. See Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn, vol. 2 (London: W. Strahan et al, 1777) 1893. 58 i.e., if it is not the sun who we court as the great majesty of day, then we court the soul—understood here as that immortal and vital element unique to humanity among living things. 59 i.e., man, which the Old Testament describes as made in God’s image. See Genesis 1: 26–7.

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THE A R T OF PRESERVING

HEALTH. book ii. D I E T.

ENough of Air. A desart subject now, Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight. A barren waste, where not a garland grows To bind the Muse’s brow60; not even a proud 5 Stupendous solitude frowns o’er the heath, To rouse a noble horror in the soul: But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads Thro’ endless labyrinths the devious feet. Farewel, etherial fields! the humbler arts 10 Of life; the Table and the homely Gods, Demand my song. Elysian gales adieu! The blood, the fountain whence the spirits61 flow, The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigour, and warm life conveys 15 To every particle that moves or lives; This vital fluid, thro’ unnumber’d tubes Pour’d by the heart, and to the heart again Refunded; scourg’d for ever round and round; Enrag’d with heat and toil, at last forgets 20 Its balmy nature; virulent and thin It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates Are open to its flight, it would destroy The parts it cherish’d and repair’d before.

devious roving, rambling etherial airy, heavenly, celestial Elysian of mythical paradise spirits animating forces

tubes blood vessels

enraged inflamed balmy soothing virulent damaging but that, i.e., if not that

60 bind the Muse’s brow, i.e., in a garland of flowers, distinguishing poets in classical Greece and Rome. 61 Although William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood by the heart through the arteries (1616) was understood and accepted by eighteenth-century physicians, the medieval language of “vital spirits” (very subtle fluids that mysteriously animate the body) remained in use.

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Besides, the flexible and tender tubes 25 Melt in the mildest most nectareous tide That ripening nature rolls; as in the stream Its crumbling banks; but what the vital force Of plastic fluids hourly batters down, That very force, those plastic particles 30 Rebuild: So mutable the state of man. For this the watchful appetite was giv’n, Daily with fresh materials to repair This unavoidable expence of life, This necessary waste of flesh and blood. 35 Hence the concoctive powers, with various art, Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle; The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide To liquors, which thro’ finer arteries To different parts their winding course pursue; 40 To try new changes, and new forms put on, Or for the public, or some private use. Nothing so foreign but th’ athletic hind Can labour into blood. The hungry meal Alone he fears, or aliments too thin; 45 By violent powers too easily subdu’d, Too soon expell’d. His daily labour thaws, To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass That salt can harden, or the smoke of years62; Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue, 50 Nor that which Cestria sends,63 tenacious paste Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay, Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day! Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid 55 The full repast; and let sagacious age Grow wiser, lesson’d by the dropping teeth.64

nectareous sweet, fragrant

plastic sculpting, fashioning

purple bloody liquors fluid created by chemical change forms, i.e., sculpted shape Or, i.e., either Nothing so foreign but, i.e., even the familiar hind skilled farm laborer can labour into blood must create blood hungry meager thaws breaks down rebellious solid gorge throat rue upset Cestria Cheshire solid milk, i.e., cheese clay flesh

lesson’d taught

salt … smoke, i.e., used to preserve meat. In the eighteenth century Cheshire was England’s leading dairy region, and from the Domesday Book was recognized as the source of Britain’s oldest cheeses. 64 Sign of the body’s increasing age and thus experience. In the early eighteenth century, diseases affecting the teeth were normally associated with specific ailments (usually venereal disease and scurvy) rather than with general health, as they are today. Medically trained physicians in Britain rarely attended to the dental health of their patients; teeth requiring removal would be treated by a surgeon or “empiric.” Thus Armstrong’s reference to the lessons taught by “the dropping teeth” simply refers to the inevitable effects of time. 62

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subtiliz’d refined (by digestion) Half subtiliz’d to chyle, the liquid food Readiest obeys th’ assimilating powers; And soon the tender vegetable mass 60 Relents; and soon the young of those that tread green (adj.) shallow sea The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss, Or pathless sky. And if the Steer must fall, In youth and sanguine vigour let him die; Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails, 65 Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke. Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease, Indulge the veteran Ox; but wiser thou, From the bald mountain or the barren downs, Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed; 70 A race of purer blood, with exercise Refin’d and scanty fare: For, old or young, The stall’d are never healthy; nor the cramm’d. Not all the culinary arts can tame, growth, i.e., fat To wholesome food, the abominable growth 75 Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste Rejects like bane such loathsome lusciousness. lusciousness excessive sweetness The languid stomach curses even the pure Delicious fat, and all the race of oil: For more the oily aliments relax its, i.e., the stomach’s 80 Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph (Fond to incorporate with all it meets) Coily they mix, and shun with slippery wiles woo’d embrace digestion The wooed embrace. Th’ irresoluble oil, late lately blandishing enticing So gentle late and blandishing, in floods 85 Of rancid bile o’erflows: What tumults hence, were, i.e., would be What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate. jovial make jolly constitution Chuse leaner viands, ye of jovial make! Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life Your cumbrous clay; nor on th’ infeebling down, down, i.e., blanket 90 Irresolute, protract the morning hours. But let the man whose bones are thinly clad, With chearful ease and succulent repast habit, i.e., diet Improve his habit. Each extreme mean of sanity healthy balance From the blest mean of sanity departs. 95 I could relate what table this demands, complexion, i.e., mix of humors Or that complexion; what the various powers Of various foods: But fifty years would roll, And fifty more, before the tale were done. Besides there often lurks some nameless, strange, 100 Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display’d,

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Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen; Which finds a poison in the food that most The temp’rature affects. There are, whose blood Impetuous rages thro’ the turgid veins, Ind East Indian spices 105 Who better bear the fiery fruits of Ind,65 Than the moist Melon, or pale Cucumber.66 Of chilly nature others fly the board Supply’d with slaughter, and the vernal powers For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore. 110 Some even the generous nutriment detest Which, in the shell, the sleeping Embryo rears. Shell, i.e., eggshell Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts Pales Roman god of livestock Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign: quintessence, i.e., purest extract The balmy quintessence of every flower, 115 And every grateful herb that decks the spring; The fost’ring dew of tender sprouting life; refection refreshment The best refection of declining age; The kind restorative of those who lie Half dead and panting, from the doubtful strife doubtful uncertain 120 Of nature struggling in the grasp of death. Try all the bounties of this fertile globe, There is not such a salutary food As suits with every stomach. But (except, Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl, 125 And boil’d and bak’d, you hesitate by which You sunk oppress’d, or whether not by all;) Taught by experience soon you may discern cates finely prepared foods What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates lull deceive sicken’d wearied That lull the sicken’d appetite too long; 130 Or heave with fev’rish flushings all the face, Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue; Or much diminish or too much increase oeconomy system Th’ expence, which nature’s wise oeconomy, 65 The geographical area defined by the Indus river (“Ind”) was noted in British newspapers and reports from 1739 through the 1740s for the successful invasion of Nader Shah, whose conquest of all lands west of the Ind created a hugely wealthy and extensive new empire. Armstrong’s reference to the exotic fruits and spices of the area may have resonated with contemporary news of exotic lands and imperial adventure. See M. Axworthy, Iran: Empire of the Mind (London: Penguin, 2008) 158–9. 66 With the new enthusiasm for kitchen-gardening in London during the 1720s, fruits and vegetables that notably included melons and cucumber were increasingly available in London. Their appearance was also felt in poetic perceptions of the urban landscape. See R. Crawford, “The Kitchen-Garden Manual,” Poetry, Enclosure, and the Vernacular Landscape, 1700–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 194–223.

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Without or waste or avarice, maintains. 135 Such cates abjur’d, let prouling hunger loose, And bid the curious palate roam at will; They scarce can err amid the various stores That burst the teeming entrails of the world. sagacious (adj.) acute sense of smell Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king 140 Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives; The Tiger, form’d alike to cruel meals, Would at the manger starve: Of milder seeds, The generous horse to herbage and to grain Confines his wish; tho’ fabling Greece resound 145 The Thracian steeds67 with human carnage wild. Prompted by instinct’s never-erring power, Each creature knows its proper aliment; But man, th’ inhabitant of ev’ry clime, With all the commoners of nature feeds. 150 Directed, bounded, by this power within, Voluptuous seeking sensory Their cravings are well-aim’d: Voluptuous Man gratification Is by superior faculties misled; Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy. Sated with nature’s boons, what thousands seek, 155 With dishes tortur’d from their native taste, And mad variety, to spur beyond Its wiser will the jaded appetite! Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste; And know that temperance is true luxury. luxury indulgence 160 Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim. Dismiss your parasites, who praise for hire; And earn the fair esteem of honest men, Whose praise is fame.68 Form’d of such clay as yours, The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates. 165 Even modest want may bless your hand unseen, 67 Thracian steeds Mythological white horses that Odysseus stole from Rhesus, the Thracian king, referred to in Iliad 10 and in Euripides Rhesus. Armstrong is associating the horses with the gratuitous violence by which Odysseus murders their Tracian riders in their sleep; but in Homer’s poem the horses themselves are not only innocent of the carnage, but they stand out by virtue of their lack of preparedness for battle: “The milk-white coursers studious to convey/ Safe to the ships, he [Ulysses] wisely cleared the way;/ Lest the fierce steeds, not yet to battles bred,/ Should start, and tremble at the heaps of dead” (Pope, trans. Iliad 10: 572–5). 68 For Virgil’s own association between compliance with his teaching and his moral conduct in other realms of public and private life, see Georgics 2: 490–510; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 639–67.

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Tho’ hush’d in patient wretchedness at home.69 Is there no70 virgin, grac’d with every charm But that which binds the mercenary vow? No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom 170 Unfoster’d sickens in the barren shade; No worthy man, by fortune’s random blows, Or by a heart too generous and humane, Constrain’d to leave his happy natal seat, And sigh for wants more bitter than his own? 175 There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust.

virgin state of virginity But that except that

natal seat place of birth

disgust nauseous aversion

ambiguous uncertain in direction But other ills th’ ambiguous feast pursue, lascivious gluttonous 180 Besides provoking the lascivious taste. Such various foods, th’ harmless each alone, Each other violate; and oft we see What strife is brew’d, and what pernicious bane, innoxious, i.e., innocuous From combinations of innoxious things. 185 Th’ unbounded taste I mean not to confine To hermit’s diet needlessly severe. But would you long the sweets of health enjoy, Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal Exhaust not half the bounties of the year, 190 And of each realm. It matters not mean while How much to-morrow differ from to-day; So far indulge: ’tis fit, besides, that man, obnoxious to be subject to To change obnoxious, be to change inur’d.71 But, i.e., therefore But stay the curious appetite, and taste 195 With caution fruits you never tried before. want lack For want of use the kindest aliment Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage Of poison to mild amity with life.

So heav’n has form’d us to the general taste 200 Of all its gifts; so custom has improv’d This bent of nature; that few simple foods, i.e., even though the needy are not present with you, your sympathy and thus modesty increases your own power. 70 164–71 “is there no … but”: this series of ironic questions asserts that while there appears to be no virtue without wealth, in fact the opposite is true. 71 To be resistant to change, one must be accustomed to change. 69

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Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield, But by excess offend. Beyond the sense Of light refection, at the genial board 205 Indulge not often; nor protract the feast To dull satiety; till soft and slow A drowzy death creeps on, th’ expansive soul Oppress’d, and smother’d the celestial fire. The stomach, urg’d beyond its active tone, 210 Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues The softest food: unfinish’d and deprav’d, owns, i.e., functions as The chyle, in all its future wanderings, owns turbid thick, cloudy not unless Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams but then So to be clear’d, but foulness will remain. 215 To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt Th’ unripen’d grape? Or what mechanic skill From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold? 72 Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund Of plagues:73 but more immedicable ills 220 Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows How to disburden the too tumid veins,74 Even how to ripen the half-labour’d blood: But to unlock the elemental tubes, Collaps’d and shrunk with long inanity,

riot extravagance plagues illnesses physic medical science laboured produced

No refinement or skill can improve the quality of fundamental elements. To emphasize this point, Armstrong adjusts typical word order, emulating a Latinate style that makes more expressive use of blank verse. 73 In the previous stanza Armstrong only hinted at the moral significance of luxury, lascivious, and voluptuous while pointing to their direct effects on health. But his references to wealth and treasure at the opening of this new stanza emphasize their moral or cosmological significance. This rhetoric points to traditional and thus familiar associations between riotousness (which could mean immoral conduct, violence, or simply extravagance) and of the arrival of plagues (which could refer to infectious epidemics or to less significant ailments). Defoe pointed to this particular association in his Journal of the Plague Year (1722); his depiction of bubonic plague in London refers to widespread understanding that London “is the second Nineveh.” See Defoe, Journal, ed. L. Landa (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969) 28; Jonah 3: 8, where the promise of divine vengeance can be broken only through repentance and turning away from riotousness (i.e., wickedness and violence). The reference to plagues anticipates the more powerful focus on epidemic diseases in APH 3. 74 disburden the too tumid veins: the practice of venesection or phlebotomy. Galenic medicine had long argued for bleeding patients as a means of evacuating excess or toxic humors, and the practice remained mainstream through to the mid-nineteenth century. Armstrong is suggesting the dangers that can accompany a body that cannot be bled— whose elemental tubes cannot be unlocked. 72

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225 And with balsamic nutriment repair habit physical body The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid Old age grow green, and wear a second spring; green young Or the tall ash, long ravish’d from the soil, Thro’ wither’d veins imbibe the vernal dew. 230 When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain: For the keen appetite will feast beyond What nature well can bear; and one extreme Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse. 235 Too greedily th’ exhausted veins absorb recent fresh The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers vital flame heart Oft to th’ extinction of the vital flame. To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege And famine humbled, may this verse be borne; 240 And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds Long toss’d and famish’d on the wintry main; shook off, i.e., its service completed The war shook off,75 or hospitable shore Attain’d, with temperance bear the shock of joy; Nor crown with festive rites th’ auspicious day: 245 Such feast might prove more fatal than the waves, Than war or famine. While the vital fire green fuel raw, unprepared food Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on; spark, i.e., appetite But prudently foment the wandering spark With what the soonest feeds its kindred touch: 250 Be frugal ev’n of that: a little give At first; that kindled, add a little more; Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame Reviv’d, with all its wonted vigour glows. But tho’ the two (the full and the jejune) 255 Extremes have each their vice; it much avails Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow From this to that: So nature learns to bear Whatever chance or headlong appetite May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues 260 The cruder clods by sloth or luxury

jejeune fasting

clods clots

75 Britain was at war with Spain and thus its ally France from 1739 to 1748 (in the War of Jenkin’s Ear and the War of Austrian Succession). This neutral reference to war suggests a general support for the ongoing campaigns on the Continent, for example the recent Battle of Dettingen (June 1743), where the British fought successfully against the French army under the personal command of George II. This neutrality contrasts sharply with Armstrong’s depiction of the catastrophic expedition to Cartagena (April-May 1741) in APH 3: 631–4.

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unloads frees Collected, and unloads the wheels of life. Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast lours lies in wait Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lours; Then is a time to shun the tempting board, Were, i.e., even if it were 265 Were it your natal or your nuptial day. Perhaps a fast so seasonable starves The latent seeds of woe, which rooted once labour a struggle Might cost you labour. But the day return’d Of festal luxury, the wise indulge 270 Most in the tender vegetable breed: Then chiefly when the summer beams inflame Sirius the brightest star in the sky The brazen heavens; or angry Sirius sheds gulph deep pocket A feverish taint thro’ the still gulph of air. The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup 275 From the fresh dairy-virgin’s liberal hand, Will save your head from harm, tho’ round the world The dreaded Causos76 roll his wasteful fires. Pale humid Winter loves the generous board, The meal more copious, and a warmer fare; 280 And longs with old wood and old wine to chear His quaking heart. The seasons which divide Th’ empires of heat and cold; by neither claim’d, Influenc’d by both; a middle regimen Impose. Thro’ autumn’s languishing domain 285 Descending, nature by degrees invites To glowing luxury. But from the depth Of winter when th’ invigorated year Favonius the west-wind Emerges; when Favonius flush’d with love, Toyful and young, in every breeze descends 290 More warm and wanton on his kindling bride; Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks; spare use sparingly And learn, with wise humanity, to check The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits lust of hunger for various variety A various offspring to th’ indulgent sky: 295 Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand The prone creation; yields what once suffic’d Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young; dainty particular Ere yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seiz’d The human breast. Each rolling month matures 300 The food that suits it most; so does each clime.

“The burning fever.” [-JA]

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horrid rough Far in the horrid realms of Winter, where Th’ establish’d ocean heaps a monstrous waste establish’d frozen Of shining rocks and mountains to the pole: There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants 305 Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother, iron unyielding Regards not. On the waste of iron fields, Untam’d, intractable, no harvests wave: Pomona goddess of tree-grown Pomona hates them, and the clownish God fruit clownish rustic Who tends the garden. In this frozen world 310 Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal Is earn’d with ease; for here the fruitful spawn Of Ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board With generous fare and luxury profuse. These are their bread, the only bread they know; 315 These, and their willing slave the deer that crops The shrubby herbage on their meagre hills. Girt by the burning Zone, not thus the South Zone area between the tropics Her swarthy sons in either Ind, maintains: either Ind West or East Indies Or thirsty Libya; from whose fervid loins 320 The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams Th’ affrighted wilderness. The mountain herd, Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords; Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce, main sea So perfect, so delicious, as the shoals shoals schools of fish 325 Of icy Zembla77. Rashly where the blood Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain Its tumid fervour and tempestuous course; Kind nature tempts not to such gifts as these. But here in livid ripeness melts the Grape: 330 Here, finish’d by invigorating suns, Thro’ the green shade the golden Orange glows: Spontaneous here the turgid Melon yields A generous pulp: the Coco swells on high Coco coconut With milky riches; and in horrid mail horrid bristling mail armor 335 The soft Ananas wraps its poignant sweets. Ananas pineapple Earth’s vaunted progeny: In ruder air ruder wilder Too coy to flourish, even too proud to live; Or hardly rais’d by artificial fire To vapid life. Here with a mother’s smile 340 Glad Amalthea78 pours her copious horn. Here buxom Ceres reigns: Th’ autumnal sea Ceres Roman goddess of growth Zambla The arctic. Amalthea Mythological goat associated with the cornucopia, or horn of plenty.

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In boundless billows fluctuates o’er their plains. their, i.e., these tropical What suits the climate best, what suits the men, Nature profuses most, and most the taste 345 Demands. The fountain, edg’d with racy wine racy pungent Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls. The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs Supports in else intolerable air: While the cool Palm, the Plaintain, and the grove Lebanon mountains in biblical 350 That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage Lebanon The torrid hell that beams upon their heads. Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Naiads water-nymphs Now let me wander thro’ your gelid reign. gelid refreshingly cool I burn to view th’ enthusiastic wilds wilds wilderness 355 By mortal else untrod. I hear the din mortal else, i.e., other morals Of waters thund’ring o’er the ruin’d cliffs. With holy reverence I approach the rocks Whence glide the streams renown’d in ancient song. Here from the desart down the rumbling steep 360 First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po79 Euphrates longest river in In angry waves; Euphrates80 hence devolves Mesopotamia A mighty flood to water half the East; Gothic primitive, unpolished And there, in Gothic solitude reclin’d, The chearless Tanais81 pours his hoary urn. 365 What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades shades spirits Enwrap these infant floods! Thro’ every nerve sacred cursed horror shudder A sacred82 horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o’er my frame. The forest deepens round; And more gigantic still th’ impending trees 370 Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. extravagant extending athwart across Are these the confines of some fairy world? Genii intervening demons or fairies A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds What unknown nations? If indeed beyond Aught anything Aught habitable lies. And whither leads, 375 To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain, maids, i.e., muses That subterraneous way? Propitious maids, Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread This trembling ground. The task remains to sing Po The longest river in Italy. Euphrates The longest river in Mesopotamia. 81 Tanais Major river dividing Europe from Asia, now in southern Russia. 82 sacred Following Virgil’s “auri saca fames”; sacred lust for gold (in Aeneid 3.57), a sense employed by Dryden and by Thomson. See OED “sacred,” def. 6. 79 80

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Your gifts (so Pæon, so the powers of health crystal element heavenly spark 380 Command) to praise your crystal element: The chief ingredient in heaven’s various works; flexile genius versatile spirit Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem, fugitive evanescent Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine; The vehicle, the source, of nutriment 385 And life, to all that vegetate or live. O comfortable streams! With eager lips And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff in, i.e., from New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins. ages past No warmer cups the rural ages knew; 390 None warmer sought the sires of human kind. equal balanced Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days Felt not th’ alternate fits of feverish mirth, And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas’d They knew no pains but what the tender soul 395 With pleasure yields to, and would ne’er forget. Blest with divine immunity from ails, Long centuries they liv’d; their only fate Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.83 Oh! could those worthies from the world of Gods 400 Return to visit their degenerate sons, How would they scorn the joys of modern time, With all our art and toil improv’d to pain! Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury, And luxury on sloth begot disease. 405 Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain Coan sage Hippocrates The choice of water. Thus the84 Coan sage Opin’d, and thus the learn’d of every School. What least of foreign principles partakes Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch 410 Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air; The most insipid; the most void of smell. rude uncultivated Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides These lines recall the Greek myth of a so-called Golden Age, referring to a primitive race of human ancestors who lived without any cares, existing happily by enjoying the fruit and the honey that dripped from plentiful trees. See Hesiod, Work and Days 109–26; for a survey of this imagery and its implications for theories of pre-Christian civilization during the early-eighteenth century, see A. O. Aldridge, “Primitivism in the Eighteenth Century,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener, vol. 3 (New York: Scribners, 1973– 74) 598–605. 84 “Hippocrates.” [-JA] 83

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Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale For ever boil, alike of winter frosts 415 And summer’s heat secure. The crystal stream, Through rocks resounding, or for many a mile O’er the chaf’d pebbles hurl’d, yields wholesome, pure And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws, And half the mountains melt into the tide. 420 Tho’ thirst were e’er so resolute, avoid drowsy slow-moving The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods As fill from Lethe Belgia’s85 slow canals; (With rest corrupt, with vegetation green; Squalid with generation, and the birth 425 Of little monsters;) till the power of fire Has from prophane embraces86 disengag’d lymph clear stream The violated lymph. The virgin stream In boiling wastes its finer soul in air. Nothing like simple element dilutes 430 The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow. But where the stomach indolent and cold animate, i.e., animates Toys with its duty, animate with wine Th’ insipid stream: Tho’ golden Ceres87 yields A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught; active, i.e., outwardly expressive 435 Perhaps more active. Wine unmix’d, and all abyss mysterious source The gluey floods that from the vex’d abyss spirit alcohol Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught, And furious with intoxicating fire; Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw’d 440 Th’ embodied mass. You see what countless years, Embalm’d in fiery quintescence of wine, The puny wonders of the reptile world, The tender rudiments of life, the slim Unravellings of minute anatomy, 445 Maintain their texture, and unchang’d remain.88 85 Lethe Belgia Neologism, combining the classical river whose murmuring induces sleep with the Latin term for Belgium. 86 i.e., grip of the given pollutant, or foreign principles (2.404). 87 Ceres Roman goddess of growth, was celebrated along with Liber Pater, god of fertility and of wine—together they yielded the celebratory wine to which Armstrong refers. See B. S. Spaeth, The Roman Goddess Ceres (1996). 88 quintescence of wine The distillate of wine (ethanol) had long been used to preserve biological specimens for study or exhibition. In Robert Boyle’s famous chemical and biological experiments, he normally referred to ethanol as spirit of wine. See P. Shaw, “The Usefulness of Philosophy,” The Philosophical Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 1 (London: W. and J. Innys, 1725) 30–39.

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We curse not wine: The vile excess we blame; More fruitful than th’ accumulated board, Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught Faster and surer swells the vital tide; 450 And with more active poison, than the floods Of grosser crudity convey, pervades The far-remote meanders of our frame. Ah! sly deceiver! Branded o’er and o’er, Yet still believ’d! Exulting o’er the wreck 455 Of sober Vows!—But the Parnassian Maids Another time perhaps shall sing the joys, The fatal charms, the many woes of wine; Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers.

vital bloody

meaders winding courses Branded stigmatized Parnassian Maids muses

Mean time, I would not always dread the bowl, bowl, i.e., punch bowl 460 Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife, Rous’d by the rare debauch, subdues, expells The loitering crudities that burden life; And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears Th’ obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world 465 Is full of chances, which by habit’s power To learn to bear is easier than to shun. Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold, Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine suffrages those who seek to help To moisten well the thirsty suffrages; 470 Say how, unseason’d to the midnight frays Comus personification of revelry Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend Centaurs those of two natures With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur’d? Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees: liberal, i.e., gentlemanly By slow degrees the liberal arts are won; 475 And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth Hercules celebrated son of Zeus The brows of care, indulge your festive vein least your bane insufficient to poison In cups by well-inform’d experience found The least your bane: and only with your friends. There are sweet follies; frailties to be seen 480 By friends alone, and men of generous minds. Oh! seldom may the fated hours return Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste, Except when life declines, even sober cups. Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, 485 With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, sapless habit withered body The sapless habit daily to bedew, And give the hesitating wheels of life

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Gliblier more smoothly Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys: And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows, reliefs contours 490 To squander the reliefs of age and pain! goal scope What dextrous thousands just within the goal Of wild debauch direct their nightly course! Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days, No morning admonitions shock the head. 495 But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace, And that incurable disease old age, In youthful bodies more severely felt, More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime: Except kind nature by some hasty blow 500 Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate’er Beyond its natural fervour hurries on The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, High-season’d fare, or exercise to toil Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir’d life, And sows the temples with untimely snow.89 505 When life is new, the ductile fibres feel The heart’s increasing force; and, day by day, The growth advances: till the larger tubes, Acquiring (from their90 elemental veins, Condemn’d to solid chords) a firmer tone, 510 Sustain, and just sustain, th’ impetuous blood. Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse And pressure, still the great destroy the small; Still with the ruins of the small grow strong. Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force 515 Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes; Its various functions vigorously are plied By strong machinery; and in solid health The man confirm’d long triumphs o’er disease. But the full ocean ebbs: There is a point, 520 By nature fix’d, whence life must downward tend. For still the beating tide consolidates untimely snow, i.e., prematurely gray hair. “In the human body, as well as in those of other animals, the larger blood-vessels are composed of smaller ones; which, by the violent motion and pressure of the fluids in the large vessels, lost their cavities by degrees, and degenerate into impervious chords or fibres. In proportion as these small vessels become solid, the larger must of course grow less extensile, more rigid, and make a stronger resistance to the action of the heart, and force of the blood. From this gradual condensation of the smaller vessels, and consequent rigidity of the larger ones, the progress of the human body from infancy to old age is accounted for.” [-JA] 89

90

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The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still To the weak throbs of th’ ill-supported heart. This languishing, these strengthning by degrees 525 To hard unyielding unelastic bone, Thro’ tedious channels the congealing flood Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on; It loiters still: And now it stirs no more. This is the period few attain; the death 530 Of nature; Thus (so heav’n ordain’d it) life Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang’d, Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate91; And Homer live immortal as his song. What does not fade? The tower that long had stood 535 The crush of thunder and the warring winds, Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o’er its base. And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass, Descend: the Babylonian spires92 are sunk; moulder crumble 540 Achaia93, Rome, and Egypt moulder down. Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight. rush collapse violently This huge rotundity we tread grows old; And all those worlds that roll around the sun, 545 The sun himself, shall die94; and ancient Night involve enwrap, envelop Again involve the desolate abyss: Till the great FATHER thro’ the lifeless gloom FATHER, i.e., Christian God Extend his arm to light another world, And bid new planets roll by other laws.95 91 In Iliad 11, Homer depicts Nestor as a respected elder statesman, valiant even in old age, always ready with advice. There is no Homeric or other Greek tradition about his death. 92 Following reference to “the great whore” of “Babylon the Great” in Revelation 17: 4–8, the ancient city and empire of Babylon had long been associated by Protestants with the Roman empire and with the Roman Catholic Church; its sunken spires refer to its physical, moral, and imperial collapse. 93 Achaia Roman name for Athens, thus Greece under Roman rule. 94 Armstrong has adapted this cyclical but apocalyptic vision from Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth (see above APH, note 6). Based on Christian scripture, combined with interpretations of Descartes and Aristotle, Burnet’s influential treatise teaches that the Earth and all the planets will eventually collapse into themselves and that the sun will burn itself out before emerging again (see vol. 2, chapter 10). 95 Armstrong’s vision echoes the opening lines of Genesis 1, professing that life emerged (and could again emerge) from an abyss, and that this emergence responded to

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550 For thro’ the regions of unbounded space, Where unconfin’d omnipotence has room, BEING, in various systems, fluctuates still Between creation and abhorr’d decay: It ever did; perhaps and ever will.96 555 New worlds are still emerging from the deep; The old descending, in their turns to rise.

the voice of a paternal God. Joseph Warton offered a similar vision: “Creation started from the gloomy vault/ Of dreary Chaos”; see “The Enthusiast,” [1744] A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (London: R. Dodsley, 1748) 103. See A. Santesso, “Aesthetic Chaos in the Age of Reason,” Disrupted Patterns: On Chaos and Order in the Enlightenment, ed. T. Braun and J. McCarthy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000) 37–50. 96 Descartes’s Principia Philosophia (1644) argued the persistent view that the universe contained a plurality of worlds, with the possibility that each included life forms similar to those on Earth. See S. J. Dick, “Plurality of Worlds,” ed. N. S. Hetherington, Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1993) 515–31.

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THE A R T OF PRESERVING

HEALTH. book iii. E X E R C I S E.

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HEALTH. book iii. E X E R C I S E. THro’ various toils th’ adventurous Muse has past; But half the toil, and more than half, remains.97 Rude primitive Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song; Plain, and of little ornament; and I 5 But little practis’d in th’ Aonian arts. Aonian musical Yet not in vain such labours have we tried, lays poetic song If aught these lays the fickle health confirm. To you, ye delicate, I write; for you I tame my youth to philosophic cares, 10 And grow still paler by the midnight lamps. timorous intimidating Not to debilitate with timorous rules A hardy frame; nor needlesly to brave Unglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength; Unglorious obscure proud possessed Is all the lesson that in wholesome years 15 Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow’d Who would with warm effeminacy nurse The thriving oak which on the mountain’s brow Bears all the blasts that sweep the wintry heav’n. Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils glebe soil, land 20 In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies; Save but the grain from mildews and the flood, Nought not at all Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend. He knows no laws by Esculapius98 given; This four-book structure follows Virgil’s Georgics. Esculapius Distinguished physician of antiquity, celebrated by Celsus for bringing speculative and theoretical knowledge to medical practice; see APH, note 2; Tristram, note 15. See also Samuel Johnson, “Aesclepius” in Medicinal Dictionary, ed. R. James (London: T. Osborne, 1743). Although Aesclepius was challenged by Galen for his internally disconnected theory of the body, his emphasis on non-invasive medical treatments— including bathing and adjusted diet—are consistent with therapies described by Armstrong. 97 98

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He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs 25 Infest, nor those envenom’d shafts that fly When rabid Sirius fires th’ autumnal noon. His habit pure with plain and temperate meals, Robust with labour, and by custom steel’d To every casualty of varied life; 30 Serene he bears the peevish Eastern blast, And uninfected breathes the mortal South.99

nor, i.e., neither shafts spears, i.e., insects

rude simple Such the reward of rude and sober life; Of labour such.100 By health the peasant’s toil Is well repaid; if exercise were pain 35 Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like these Laconia101 nurs’d of old her hardy sons; And Rome’s unconquer’d legions urg’d their way, Unhurt, thro’ every toil in every clime.

Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves 40 Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone; The greener juices are by toil subdu’d, Mellow’d, and subtiliz’d; the vapid old Expell’d, and all the rancor of the blood. Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms 45 Of nature and the year; come, let us stray Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk: Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm, And shed a charming languor o’er the soul. 50 Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus’ blasts This way and that convolve the lab’ring woods.

greener raw, unrefined vapid weak, inert rancor bitterness

roving wandering

Nor, i.e., neither ether air convolve contort, twist

See J. T. Vallance, The Lost Theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1990). 99 mortal South, i.e., fatal winds from the South. This may refer to the “humid South” (see APH 3: 496) consistent with the proverbial dangers of humidity or, more likely, to winds presumed to carry plague from infected regions in the South (see APH 3: 523). 100 This adage repeats the common-sense advice familiar to generation of readers, from the frequently reprinted and variably titled Of the Benefits of a Sober Life by the Renaissance patron Luigi Cornaro, praised and quoted by Addison in Spectator 195 (13 Oct. 1713) 2: 266–7. through to Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long Life (1724). See Cheyne, passim: for Armstrong’s observation on the dangers of the inverse (late nights wasted with cardgames), see APH 3: 443. 101 Laconia principal region of Sparta, famous for its military prowess.

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My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain 55 Or fogs relent, no season should confine Or to the cloister’d gallery or arcade. Go, climb the mountain; from th’ ethereal source Imbibe the recent gale. The chearful morn Beams o’er the hills; go, mount th’ exulting steed. 60 Already, see, the deep-mouth’d beagles catch The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport Intent, with emulous impatience try Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer; 65 And thro’ its deepest solitudes awake The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

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liberal unrestrained relent, i.e., turn to showers Or, i.e., otherwise gallery walk ethereal heavenly Imbibe absorb Steed horses, i.e., for hunting tainted mazes exhausted hares emulous greedy for praise

But if the breathless chase o’er hill and dale Exceed your strength; a sport of less fatigue, Not less delightful, the prolific stream 70 Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o’er A stony channel rolls its rapid maze, Swarms with the silver fry. Such, thro’ the bounds fry young fish Of pastoral Stafford,102 runs the brawling Trent103; brawling crashing Such Eden,104 sprung from Cumbrian105 mountains; such 75 The Esk106, o’erhung with woods; and such the stream On whose Arcadian107 banks I first drew air,

Town in the largely rural country of Staffordshire, 180 miles northwest of London. Major English river, running 185 miles northeast from Staffordshire to the North Sea (at Hull). 104 Minor river that flows through the Lake District in the northwest corner of England. 105 During the eighteenth century, Cumbria was an informal geographical area that now encompasses Cumbria, northern Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and southeastern portions of the Scottish Borders. The area is mountainous and hilly throughout; strictly speaking the Cumbrian Mountains are those ranges in the west of the Lake District. 106 Minor river flowing through the southeastern corner of Scotland down to Cumbria. 107 Arcadian Rural paradise. Following Virgil’s Eclogues Arcadia has been understood as an imaginary pastoral retreat, but strictly speaking, the geographical Arcadia in Greece resembles Armstrong’s native Roxboroughshire in various ways: bordered by mountains, it is shaped by hills and valleys, and accesses the sea only at its southwest corner. See M. Owen Lee, Death and Birth in Virgil’s Arcadia (Albany: SUNY P, 1989). This autobiographical hymn to the landscape of childhood follows Virgil’s widely celebrated O fortunitos nimium passage (see Martyn 44). 102 103

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Liddal108; till now, except in Doric109 lays Tun’d to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,110 Unknown in song: Tho’ not a purer stream, Thro’ meads more flowery or more romantic groves, romantic suited to enchantment Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred flood! western main, i.e., Irish Sea May still thy hospitable swains be blest In rural innocence; thy mountains still Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay With painted meadows, and the golden grain! Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new, Sportive and petulant, and charm’d with toys, lav’d bathed In thy transparent eddies have I lav’d: fairy enchanted Oft trac’d with patient steps thy fairy banks, With the well-imitated fly to hook The eager trout, and with the slender line sollicite draw out And yielding rod sollicite to the shore The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds And tepid gales obscur’d the ruffled pool, And from the deeps call’d forth the wanton swarms.

Form’d on the Samian111 school, or those of Ind, Ind, i.e., vegetarian Hindus in India There are who think these pastimes scarce humane. relentless, i.e., pitiless Yet in my mind (and not relentless I) 100 His life is pure that wears no fouler stains. But if thro’ genuine tenderness of heart, want lack Or secret want of relish for the game, You shun the glories of the chace, nor care To haunt the peopled stream; the Garden yields 105 A soft amusement, an humane delight. To raise th’ insipid nature of the ground; Or tame its savage genius to the grace Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems 108 Liddal Water is a minor river that runs through villages along the Scottish side of the English border in the northeast corner of Cumbria. 109 Like Armstrong’s reference to Arcadia, this gesture to Doric points readers toward further associations between southern Scotland and ancient Greece: Doric refers to the dialect spoken in southern areas of Arcadia; it also referred to a dialect of English spoken in the Scottish Borders. In Addison famous essay on Virgil’s Georgics, he explicitly associated the pastoral poems with the Doric dialect, which in his view was most appropriate to their subject-matter. See Addison, note 5. 110 Shepherds, traditionally the speakers in pastoral poetry. 111 Pythagoras, native of Samos, was among the most esteemed intellectuals of Greek antiquity; he was vegetarian. See J. Barnes, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers vol. 1 (1979).

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The amiable result of happy chance, 110 Is to create; and gives a god-like joy, Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain To check the lawless riot of the trees, mould loose soil To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould. O happy he!112 whom, when his years decline, 115 (His fortune and his fame by worthy means Attain’d, and equal to his moderate mind; His life approv’d by all the wise and good, Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves Of Epicurus113, from this stormy world, 120 Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares Absolv’d, and sacred from the selfish crowd. Happiest of men! if the same soil invites A chosen few, companions of his youth, Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends; rakes libertines, normally aristocratic 125 With whom in easy commerce to pursue Nature’s free charms, and vie for sylvan fame: sylvan of woods or planting A fair ambition; void of strife or guile, Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone. Who plans th’ enchanted garden, who directs visto narrow prospect of a scenic view 130 The visto best, and best conducts the stream; Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend; Whom first the welcome spring salutes; who shews The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms Of Flora114; who best gives Pomona’s115 juice 112 This is an adaptation of Virgil’s celebrated aphorism, O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas (Georgics 2: 480), translated by Dryden as “Happy the Man, who, studying Nature’s Laws,/ Thro’ known Effects can trace the secret Cause” (Georgics 2:698–9). See also Martyn, note 45. 113 Epicurus’ followers, including Lucretius, had been associated throughout antiquity with a devotion to living in accordance with natural cycles in a rural setting; his most famous literary and philosophical description is of “the happy man,” to which Armstrong may refer by framing this passage with distinctive exclamatory apostrophes, five lines earlier and three lines later, followed by a gesture to sexual libertinism mellowed into comfortable rural retirement—for Epicureanism was associated with the immoral pursuit of corporeal pleasures. For Epicurus (in a literal translation from Plutarch), “the stable condition of the flesh and the confident expectation of its continuance contains the supreme and most certain joy for men who can work [that] out [as the] truth.” Variations on this particular Epicurean teaching can be found in Cicero, Lucretius, and in other classical Latin writers. See J. M. Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972) 120. See also prefatory note to Creech. 114 Flora Roman goddess of flowering plants. 115 Pomona Roman goddess of tree-grown fruit.

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genius unique character 135 To match the sprightly genius of champain. business, i.e., activity Thrice happy days!116 in rural business past: Blest winter nights! when as the genial fire Chears the wide hall, his cordial family With soft domestic arts the hours beguile, 140 And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame, timorous fame frightening rumors With witless wantonness to hunt it down117: Or thro’ the fairy-land of tale or song fates destinies Delighted wander, in fictitious fates Engag’d, and all that strikes humanity: 145 Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve bless unbid, i.e., spontaneously bless His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid festal festive roof, i.e., home His festal roof; while, o’er the light repast, And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy; 150 And, thro’ the maze of conversation, trace Whate’er amuses or improves the mind. Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste flavour of the fruit, i.e., effect of The native zest and flavour of the fruit, things Where sense grows wild and takes of no manure) takes of no manure needs no 155 cultivation The decent, honest, chearful husbandman Should drown his labours in my friendly bowl; And at my table find himself at home.118

Whate’er you study, in whate’er you sweat, Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils; foils fencing 160 The tennis some; and some the graceful dance. Others more hardy, range the purple heath, range, i.e., on horseback purple, i Or naked stubble; where from field to field The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight; coveys brood of partridges Eager amid the rising cloud to pour 165 The gun’s unerring thunder: And there are Whom still the meed119 of the green archer charms. 116 136–57: this depiction of the happy peasant’s contentment with domestic life imitates the celebrated O fortunatos nimimum episode in Georgics 2: 458–70; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 698–709 (203); 738–48 (204). 117 hunt it down, i.e., to work something out. The sentence might be glossed as “with modest [not boastful or accusative] talk that works out the truth” of something, facilitating companionship. 118 find himself at home: imitation of Georgics 1: 299–301 (omitted by Dryden). 119 “This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and signifies Reward or Prize.” [-JA] These include Spenser, Fairie Queene (1.2.37); Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (1.1.280); Milton, Lycidas (14 and 84), Odyssey (3.14.177). Green archer, i.e., whose arrows bring down fruit from trees.

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He chuses best, whose labour entertains His vacant fancy most: The toil you hate Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs. 170 As beauty still has blemish; and the mind The most accomplish’d its imperfect side; Few bodies are there of that happy mould But some one part is weaker than the rest: The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load, 175 Or the chest labours. These assiduously, But gently, in their proper arts employ’d, Acquire a vigour and springy activity To which they were not born. But weaker parts Abhor fatigue and violent discipline. 180 Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire. The prudent, even in every moderate walk, At first but saunter; and by slow degrees Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise 185 Well knows the master of the flying steed. First from the goal the manag’d coursers play On bended reins: as yet the skilful youth Repress their foamy pride; but every breath The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells; 190 Till all the fiery mettle has its way, And the thick thunder hurries o’er the plain. When all at once from indolence to toil You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock Are tir’d and crack’d, before their unctuous coats, 195 Compress’d, can pour the lubricating balm. Besides, collected in the passive veins, The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls, O’erpowers the heart and deluges the lungs With dangerous inundation: Oft the source 200 Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood, Asthma and feller120 Peripneumony, Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

nerves, i.e., muscles

flying steed horseracing bended, i.e., relaxed tempest, i.e., competitive storm thunder, i.e., of hooves fibres tendons and ligaments coats surfaces balm, i.e., blood purple, i.e., thickened

minings hollowing out hectic consumptive fire fever

Th’ athletic Fool, to whom what heav’n deny’d Of soul is well compensated in limbs, 205 Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels “The inflammation of the lungs.” [-JA]. feller, i.e., devastating.

120

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His vegetation and brute force decay. The men of better clay and finer mould Know nature, feel the human dignity; And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes. 210 Pursu’d prolixly, even the gentlest toil Is waste of health: repose by small fatigue habit, i.e., constitution Is earn’d; and (where your habit is not prone thaw, i.e., intolerance to heat To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows. spirits essential vital fluids The fine and subtle spirits cost too much profus’d squandered roscid dewy 215 To be profus’d, too much the roscid balm. But when the hard varieties of life chace, i.e., hunt You toil to learn; or try the dusty chace, warm, i.e., difficult Or the warm deeds of some important day: Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs 220 In wish’d repose; nor court the fanning gale, Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires, Forbear! No other pestilence121 has driven irremeable inescapable Such myriads o’er th’ irremeable deep. 225 Why this so fatal, the sagacious Muse Thro’ nature’s cunning labyrinths could trace: But there are secrets which who knows not now, Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps Of Science; and devote seven years to toil.122 patient punning with the clinical term 230 Besides, I would not stun your patient ears boots helps With what it little boots you to attain. He knows enough, the mariner, who knows shelves shallows Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil, What signs portend the storm: To subtler minds 235 He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause 121 Dropsy, which is not infection (that is, a pestilence per se), was a prevalent disease characterized by painful swelling—believed to inhibit appetite and thus to create a fatal imbalance in major organs. Boerhaave taught that dropsy was caused by subjecting any heated body to cold substances—such as cold water, cool breezes, or a chill that can arise from sleep following exercise. See G. F. van Swieten, ed. and trans., “Of the Dropsy,” The Commentaries upon the Aphorisms of Dr. Hermann Boerhaave, vol. 12 (1744; London: Horsfield and Longman, 1765) 376–9. 122 Such toil of seven years refers to the number of years that Armstrong himself had spent at Edinburgh, combining training with practice, and not to the three years of formal curriculum required at Edinburgh simply for the MD. This is an important distinction, revealing Armstrong’s defensiveness given the ubiquitous London-based objection to the arrival of Edinburgh physicians: “in less than four or five years space they shall be dubb’d Doctors.” See J. D. Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine to 1860 (London: Wellcome Medical Historical Museum, 1927) 197; J. Tristram, note 30.

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Charybdis rages in th’ Ionian wave123; Whence those impetuous currents in the main Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure 240 As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.124 In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied For polish’d luxury and useful arts; All hot and reeking from th’ Olympic strife, And warm Palestra,125 in the tepid bath 245 Th’ athletic youth relax’d their weary limbs. Soft oils bedew’d them, with the grateful pow’rs Of Nard and Cassia126 fraught, to sooth and heal The cherish’d nerves. Our less voluptuous clime Not much invites us to such arts as these. 250 ’Tis not for those, whom gelid skies embrace, And chilling fogs; whose perspiration feels Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North; bars obstructions, i.e., harsh winds ’Tis not for those to cultivate a skin recremental fume, i.e., breath Too soft; or teach the recremental fume 255 Too fast to crowd thro’ such precarious ways. For thro’ the small arterial mouths, that pierce In endless millions the close-woven skin, The baser fluids in a constant stream Escape, and viewless melt into the winds. 260 While this eternal, this most copious waste vapid brine, i.e., sweat Of blood, degenerate into vapid brine, wonted appropriate Maintains its wonted measure, all the powers Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life With ease and pleasure move: But this restrain’d 265 Or more or less, so more or less you feel The functions labour: From this fatal source What woes descend is never to be sung.127 To take their numbers were to count the sands That ride in whirlwind the parch’d Libyan air; Charybdis One of the twin dangers in Odyssey 12. Scylla was a six-headed seamonster across a narrow strait from Charybdis, another monster that drowned entire ships, between both of whom Odysseus had to steer his ship. See Martyn, note 47. 124 Orion Constellation visible in the west. 125 Palestra The school for athletic training in ancient Greece and Rome. 126 Nard and Cassia aromatic plants. 127 Never to be sung From Galenic to contemporary medicine, perspiration was considered one of the body’s essential means of eliminating excessive or toxic fluids that would otherwise poison. 123

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270 Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils The Baltic,128 thunder on the German shore. Subject not then, by soft emollient arts, This grand expence, on which your fates depend, To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart genius essential nature 275 The genius of your clime: For from the blood Least fickle rise the recremental steams,129 obnoxious subjected styptic cooling And least obnoxious to the styptic air, Which breathe thro’ straiter and more callous pores, callous hardened The temper’d Scythian130 hence, half-naked treads 280 His boundless snows, nor rues th’ inclement heaven; rues is worried by And hence our painted ancestors defied The East, i.e., source of storms The East: nor curs’d, like us, their fickle sky. The body, moulded by the clime, endures Hyperborean Arctic Th’ Equator heats or Hyperborean frost: 285 Except by habits foreign to its turn, Unwise you counteract its forming pow’r. Rude, i.e., harsh Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less By long acquaintance: Study then your sky, Form to its manners your obsequious frame, suffer manage 290 And learn to suffer what you cannot shun. Against the rigors of a damp cold heav’n To fortify their bodies, some frequent gelid cistern cool bath The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids, I praise their dauntless heart: A frame so steel’d 295 Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts That breathe the Tertian131 or fell Rheumatism; fell cruel quit abandon The nerves so temper’d never quit their tone, No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts. But all things have their bounds: and he who makes 300 By daily use the kindest regimen Essential to his health, should never mix With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue. He not the safe vicissitudes of life Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he want, i.e., lack 305 To want the known, or bear unusual things, 128 Baltic Sea bordering the German kingdom of Prussia (allied with Britain; see APH, note 128). 129 That is, because the character of our physical or racial nature determines the degree to which we sweat. 130 Scythian Ancient nomadic tribes of western Asia. 131 Tertian Fever lasting three days.

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Besides, the powerful remedies of pain (Since pain in spite of all our care will come) Should never with your prosperous days of health Grow too familiar: For by frequent use 310 The strongest medicines lose their healing power, And even the surest poisons theirs to kill. Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach Arctos Arctic Parch’d Mauritania, or the sultry West, Mauritania northwest Africa West Caribbean Indostan Indian subcontinent Or the wide flood that laves rich Indostan, 315 Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free Th’ evaporation thro’ the soften’d skin May bear proportion to the swelling blood. So, i.e., thus So may they ’scape the fever’s rapid flames; 320 So feel untainted the hot breath of hell. With us, the man of no complaint demands ablution cleansing The warm ablution, just enough to clear sluices reservoirs The sluices of the skin, enough to keep sacred immune The body sacred from indecent soil.132 325 Still to be pure, ev’n did it not conduce (As much it does) to health, were greatly worth Your daily pains. ’Tis this adorns the rich133; The want of this is poverty’s worst woe; external virtue material benefit With this external virtue, age maintains 330 A decent grace; without it youth and charms Are loathsome. This the skilful virgin134 knows: So doubtless do your wives: For married sires, As well as lovers, still pretend to taste135; 132 Soil Used here with associations from the verb form, to carry moral and sexual meanings. See, for example, Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, where soil refers to the moral stain of the suitors’ licentious attempts: “an absent hero’s bed they sought to soil,/ An absent hero’s wealth they made their spoil” (Odyssey 21: 524–5). Armstrong’s association between physical cleanliness and the tendency toward sexual promiscuity has no basis in contemporary medicine, which helps to explain the conditional phrase and conceptual shift that follows. 133 Armstrong is observing the obvious point that wealth enables access to regular bathing with clean (i.e., pure) water, also retaining the association of purity with morality. 134 In later editions, “skilful virgin” is substituted with “venal Graces.” 135 That is, committed lovers and married men affect a distinction between chaste and unchaste desire, but their avowed devotion to their partner reveals that this distinction is false: the virtue of love is understood by all, which is why a prudent wife would experience the loss of a husband’s love as deeply as the loss of her lover’s.

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Nor is it less (all prudent wives can tell) 335 To lose a husband’s than a lover’s heart. But now the hours and seasons when to toil From foreign themes recall my wandering song. Some labour fasting, or but slightly fed To lull the grinding stomach’s hungry rage. 340 Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame ’Tis wisely done: For while the thirsty veins, Impatient of lean penury, devour oil, i.e., essential nutrients The treasur’d oil, then is the happiest time To shake the lazy balsam from its cells. 345 Now while the stomach from the full repast Subsides, but ere returning hunger gnaws, Ye leaner habits give an hour to toil: luxuriancy of growth weight And ye whom no luxuriancy of growth Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress. 350 But from the recent meal no labours please, Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial powers cordial vital, restorative Claim all the wandering spirits to a work Of strong and subtle toil, and great event: A work of time: and you may rue the day 355 You hurried, with untimely exercise, A half-concocted chyle into the blood. The body overcharg’d with unctuous phlegm Much toil demands: The lean elastic less. While winter chills the blood and binds the veins, 360 No labours are too hard: By those you ’scape The slow diseases of the torpid year; Endless to name; to one of which alone, To that which tears the nerves,136 the toil of slaves Is pleasure: Oh! from such inhuman pains 365 May all be free who merit not the wheel!137 136 If Armstrong is using tear to describe the sensation caused by this disease (rather than its action), and nerves as the means of transmitting its pain (rather than its source) then he may be referring to rheumatism (see APH 3: 296) or to gout. The tearing of flesh and the suffering of bound slaves recurs in contemporary images that depict gout and those afflicted by it; paradoxical to such depictions contemporary physicians described it as a disease of those who avoid physical activity. See APH 1, note 35. 137 the wheel A particularly brutal instrument of carrying out execution by torture, dating from the medieval period. During the eighteenth century, the breaking-wheel was notorious for its continued use by French authorities to punish mutinous African slaves in Louisiana and the Caribbean. Armstrong may have read about one of the various slave uprisings, particularly those publicized during the 1730s, that led to the torture and death of

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But from the burning Lion138 when the sun Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood Too much already maddens in the veins, And all the finer fluids thro’ the skin 370 Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade Explore search out lofty, i.e., subject to fresh air Reclin’d, or sauntring in the lofty grove, No needless slight occasion should engage To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon.139 Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve 375 To shady walks and active rural sports140 Invite. But, while the chilling dews descend, May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace Of humid skies; tho’ ‘tis no vulgar joy To trace the horrors of the solemn wood 380 While the soft evening saddens into night: Tho’ the sweet Poet of the vernal groves Melts all the night in strains of am’rous woe.141 The shades descend, and midnight o’er the world Expands her sable wings. Great Nature droops

shades, i.e., shadows and spirits

slaves on the breaking-wheel. When it was used in Paris, sometimes an attempt was made to drown the prisoner first, by means of tying “a kind of ruff about his Neck, which went up above his eyes … they poured water into their ruff by pints at a time.” See Peter H. Wood, “Strange New Land, 1619–1776,” eds R. D. G. Kelley and E. Lewis, To Make Our World Anew: A History of African-Americans to 1880, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 91; The Life and Actions of Lewis Dominique Cartouche, Who Was Broke Alive upon the Wheel at Paris, Nov. 28. 1721 (London: J. Roberts, 1722) 77. 138 Reference to the astrological sign Leo, which defines the location of the sun from 23 July to 22 August. 139 This imagery is an adaptation from a famous passage in Georgics 2, where the farmer’s contentment is measured by his ability to relax and to sleep even with the understanding of life’s worries. See Georgics 2: 466–9. See also 385–95, below. 140 Normally understood to include hunting and fishing, but also may allude to a major poem by John Gay, Rural Sports: A Georgic (1713) that helped to popularize Virgil’s classical model. Dedicated to Alexander Pope, the most eminent poet of the age, it publicized Gay’s social ambitions, and remained in print through the mid-eighteenth century. See V. A. Dearing, ed., John Gay: Poetry and Prose, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1974). 141 Following Milton’s celebrated poem Il Penseroso (1645), poetic associations between solitude, sadness, rural settings, and literary inspiration had become conventional by the mid-1740s. The classic account is A. S. P. Woodhouse, “The Poetry of Collins Reconsidered,” From Sensibility to Romanticism, ed. F W. Hilles and H. Bloom (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1965) 93–138. Contemporary examples include Edward Young’s The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742–45); Joseph Warton’s The Enthusiast (1744); later, William Collins’s Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1747); Thomas Warton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747).

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385 Thro’ all her works. Now happy he whose toil Has o’er his languid powerless limbs diffus’d A pleasing lassitude: He not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His powers the most voluptuously dissolve 390 In soft repose: On him the balmy dews Of sleep with double nutriment descend. But would you sweetly waste the blank of night In deep oblivion; or on Fancy’s wings Visit the paradise of happy Dreams, 395 And waken chearful as the lively morn; Oppress not Nature sinking down to rest With feasts too late, too solid, or too full: But be the first concoction half-matur’d142 Ere before Ere you to mighty indolence resign passive internal, i.e. digestive 400 Your passive faculties. He from the toils to heavier toil, i.e. on a full stomach And troubles of the day to heavier toil Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks Amid the clouds, or Calpe’s hideous height,143 the main the sea The busy dæmons hurl; or in the main 405 O’erwhelm; or bury struggling under ground. Not all a monarch’s luxury the woes Can counterpoise of that most wretched man, Whose nights are shaken with the frantic fits Of wild Orestes144; whose delirious brain, 410 Stung by the furies, works with poison’d thought: While pale and monstrous painting shocks the soul; painting imaginative depiction And mangled consciousness bemoans itself For ever torn; and chaos floating round. 142 Let these foods be easily digestible. Contemporary physiology understood the digestive process to involve three stages: the first concoction took place in the stomach and intestines, producing chyle; the second concoction transformed chyle into blood; the third concoction secreted the blood into the vessels and major organs. See J. Arbuthnot, An Essay on Aliments, 2nd edn (London: J. Tonson, 1732) 37, passim. 143 The geographical reference is to the Rock of Ifach, a prominent rocky peak that faces the Mediterranean near the town of Calpe in southern Spain. Although not located within the territory of Gibraltar (which Spain had ceded in 1713 to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht) Calpe was associated with the famous Rock of Gibraltar; indeed Gibraltar’s ancient Phoenician name was Calpe. 144 Orestes The Greek protagonist whose story was dramatized by Euripides (Orestes), Aeschylus (the Orestieia trilogy), Sophocles (Electra), and in Homer’s Iliad. Having murdered his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, Orestes is pursued by Erinyes (the mythical furies, or “angry ones”) who personify the vengeance of his murdered mother.

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What dreams presage, what dangers these or those 415 Portend to sanity, tho’ prudent seers deathless immortal Reveal’d of old and men of deathless fame, We would not to the superstitious mind Suggest new throbs, new vanities of fear. ’Tis ours to teach you from the peaceful night 420 To banish omens and all restless woes. In study some protract the silent hours, Which others consecrate to mirth and wine; live awake And sleep till noon, and hardly live till night. shades spirits But surely this redeems not from the shades 425 One hour of life. Nor does it nought avail Morpheus Greek god of dreams What season you to drowsy Morpheus give Of th’ ever-varying circle of the day; Or whether, thro’ the tedious winter gloom, You tempt the midnight or the morning damps. 430 The body, fresh and vigorous from repose, Defies the early fogs: but, by the toils Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung, Weakly resists the night’s unwholesome breath.145 effusion, i.e., effusive abilities The grand discharge, th’ effusion of the skin, 435 Slowly impair’d, the languid maladies Creep on, and thro’ the sickning functions steal. As, when the chilling East invades the spring, The delicate Narcissus pines away hectic feverish languor distress, In hectic languor146; and a slow disease longing 440 Taints all the family of flowers, condemn’d To cruel heav’ns. But why, already prone To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane? O shame! O pity! nipt with pale Quadrille,147 And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies! Medieval medical theory held that diseases were expelled from the earth at night; such views were no longer esteemed but were still commonplace in the eighteenth century. 146 In Greek myth, the young and beautiful Narcissus is punished by Aphrodite (goddess of love) to fall in love with his own reflection; unable to embrace his own image, Narcissus dies in despair. The gods transformed him into a flower that bears his name. 147 Quadrille Card-game widely fashionable among the leisured classes, and especially women, attacked by moralists and lampooned by commentators as a waste of time and temptation for gambling. Pope ironically described its prominence in London social circles: “Oh, filthy check on all industrious Skills,/ To spoil the national’s last great trade, Quadrille!” (Epistle to Lord Bathurst, 63–4). See Armstrong’s earlier reflection on the health-benefits of more primitive physical and intellectual habits: APH 3: 32–3. 145

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445 By toil subdu’d, the Warrior and the Hind Sleep fast and deep: their active functions soon With generous streams the subtle tubes supply; And soon the tonic irritable nerves Feel the fresh impulse and awake the soul. 450 The sons of indolence with long repose, Grow torpid; and with slowest Lethe drunk, Feebly and lingringly return to life, Blunt every sense and pow’rless every limb. Ye, prone to sleep (whom sleeping most annoys) 455 On the hard mattrass or elastic couch Extend your limbs, and wean yourselves from sloth; Nor grudge the lean projector,148 of dry brain And springy nerves, the blandishments of down: Nor envy while the buried Bacchanal149 460 Exhales his surfeit in prolixer dreams.

Hind female deer active, i.e. secretion tubes, i.e. arteries tonic extended, elasticized

sloth laziness dry, i.e., exhausted springy, i.e., strained buried, i.e., asleep

riot excessive indulgence He without riot, in the balmy feast wants, i.e., needs Of life, the wants of nature has supply’d Who rises, cool, serene, and full of soul. But pliant nature more or less demands, 465 As custom forms her; and all sudden change of due to She hates of habit, even from bad to good. If faults in life, or new emergencies, From habits urge you by long time confirm’d, Slow may the change arrive, and stage by stage; 470 Slow as the shadow o’er the dial moves, Slow as the stealing progress of the year.

Observe the circling year. How unperceiv’d Her seasons change! Behold! by slow degrees, ruder more vigorous Stern Winter tam’d into a ruder Spring; 475 The ripen’d Spring a milder Summer glows; Departing Summer sheds Pomona’s store; And aged Autumn brews the winter-storm. Slow as they come, these changes come not void mortal fatal Of mortal shocks: The cold and torrid reigns, 480 The two great periods of th’ important year, lean projector, i.e., obsessed visionary, particularly in business affairs. For a positive example of ambitiousness, see APH 4: 154–5. 149 In Livy’s History of Rome, the Bacchanalia tried to justify their excessive and criminal behavior on the grounds of their religious devotion to Bacchus (the god of wine); they were subsequently banned from Rome and Italy in 186 bc. 148

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Are in their first approaches seldom safe: Funereal Autumn all the sickly dread, And the black fates deform the lovely Spring. sires, i.e., ancestors He well advis’d who taught our wiser sires Muscovy’s warm spoils, i.e., 485 Early to borrow Muscovy’s warm spoils, Russian fur Ere the first frost has touch’d the tender blade; And late resign them, tho’ the wanton Spring Should deck her charms with all her sister’s rays. effluence, i.e., ability to perspire For while the effluence of the skin maintains pleuritic of pleurisy 490 Its native measure, the pleuritic150 Spring Glides harmless by; and Autumn, sick to death Quartans fever that returns every With sallow Quartans, no contagion breathes.

four days

numbers verses I in prophetic numbers could unfold The omens of the year: what seasons teem 495 With what diseases; what the humid South Prepares, and what the Demon of the East151: But you perhaps refuse the tedious song. Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold, Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you. 500 Skill’d to correct the vices of the sky,152 And taught already how to each extream public bane contagious disease To bend your life. But should the public bane trespass, e.g., venereal infection Infect you; or some trespass of your own, flaw of nature, i.e., constitutional Or flaw of nature, hint mortality: weakness horror shudder 505 Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides Along the spine, thro’ all your torpid limbs; When first the head throbs, or the stomach feels A sickly load, a weary pain the loins; Be Celsus153 call’d: The fates come rushing on; The adjective normally refers to those painful symptoms characteristic of pleurisy (an inflammatory lung disorder). But Armstrong’s coinage (see OED) leads readers to use their own knowledge or experience of these symptoms, which are similar to consumption (see APH 2: 200–202), to describe Britain’s potentially dangerously wet spring. 151 On the presumed danger of infectious winds carrying plague from the South, see APH 3: 523; for the dangerously icy East-wind, see APH 1: 129–30, 286. For Armstrong’s characterization of the West-wind, see APH 3: 313. 152 vices of the sky, i.e., diseases brought or caused by weather. 153 Celsus Any physician who treats symptoms of disease by supporting the body’s own responses to it. Celsus was a first-century Roman physician whose only extant treatise, De medicina, proposed three elements to “the art of medicine”: to cure “though diet, another through medicaments [drugs], and the third by hand [surgery].” His advice was conventional but still widely accepted in the eighteenth century; these included instructions 150

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510 The rapid fates154 admit of no delay. While wilful you, and fatally secure, Expect to-morrow’s more auspicious sun, The growing pest, whose infancy was weak And easy vanquish’d, with triumphant sway 515 O’erpow’rs your life. For want of timely care, Millions have died of medicable wounds.

pest pestilence, plague

Ah! in what perils is vain life engag’d! What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy The hardiest frame! of indolence, of toil, 520 We die; of want, of superfluity: The all-surrounding heaven, the vital air, Is big with death.155 And, tho’ the putrid South156 Be shut; tho’ no convulsive agony Shake, from the deep foundations of the world, 525 Th’ imprisoned plagues; a secret venom oft Corrupts the air, the water, and the land. What livid deaths has sad Byzantium157 seen! for bleeding patients to alleviate a surplus of humors; encouraging vomiting to empty an irritated stomach; recommending cold or warm baths according to the degree of perspiration the body requires to purge itself of toxic elements. See Celsus, De medicina, trans. W. G. Spencer, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1938). See also Tristram, notes 7–8. 154 See APH 1: 319. 155 Popular treatises typically had argued a miasmic theory of disease, that “the Plague hath its chief Origin from an Alteration or Corruption of the nitrous Spirits in the Air”; one particularly famous treatise explained this by integrating the aerial theory of contagion with earlier beliefs that plagues originate underground: “the central nitrous Spirit in the Earth does everywhere transpire and exhale towards the Surface, to recruit the Consumptions of Nature.” See J. Quincy, An Essay on the Different Causes of Pestilential Diseases, 3rd edn (London: E. Bell, 1721) 37. For one ancient source, see Lucretius in Creech: 5–10. 156 During the bubonic plague epidemics of the fourteenth century, European physicians frequently referred to “the stinking breath of the wind” as a route of transmission—and, following Aristotle Meteorologica, sought to define winds according to their relative danger. See A. G. Carmichael, “Universal and Particular: The Language of Plague, 1348–1500,” Medical History Supplement 27 (2008): 17–52. Armstrong’s specific reference could point to the South winds prevalent in the West Indies, then believed to be toxic (“putrid”) carriers of fatal tropical diseases; it could also refer to the centre of the Earth, traditionally believed to contain the elements of plague and other fatal infections. In a royal proclamation of new quarantine regulations published in July 1743, the government continued to insist that quarantines ships can only be piloted by “a Boat or Vessel [that] shall keep as much to the Windward of the Ship or Vessel, to be conducted, as possible.” See “The Additional Proclamation of the 21st July 1743,” in The Plague (London: F. Cogan, 1743) 58. 157 Byzantium, now Istanbul, was the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire until bubonic plague (later called The Great Plague of Justinian) devastated it in ad 541–2. This was

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How oft has Cairo,158 with a mother’s woe, Wept o’er her slaughter’d sons and lonely streets! 530 Even Albion, girt with less malignant skies, Albion the poison of the Gods has drank, And felt the sting of monsters all her own. Ere yet159 the fell Plantagenets160 had spent fell savage Their ancient rage, at Bosworth’s purple field161; purple, i.e., bloody

probably the most destructive pandemic to have yet occurred in world history, infecting and demolishing significant populations across Europe and Asia for some fifty years. Procopius, court historian to the Emperor Justinian I, provided a horrifyingly detailed account in his Wars of Justinian, observing that the plague killed 10,000 inhabitants of Byzantium every day. It remained in print and was widely quoted throughout the eighteenth century. See The Persian Wars, ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1954) 451–73. For this and subsequent references to plague in the classical and medieval periods, see J. Patrick, Daily Life during the Black Death (New York: Greenwood P, 2006). 158 The most recent attack of plague in Cairo was recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine in May 1736: 11 February and 11 March, “100,000 Persons dy’d of the Plague at Grand Cairo; (7000 daily for some days).” See GM 6 (May 1736): 292. Cairo and the major ports and trading centers of the Middle East (from Tunis to Damascus) were leveled by plague in 1348. Numerous accounts and discussions abounded in contemporary print, including Francis Bacon’s Natural History (section 743), which was widely reprinted during the eighteenth century. 159 Ere yet Even before, referring to the Black Death (bubonic plague) the killed hundreds of thousands in England between the summer of 1348 and 1350, with numerous outbreaks throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. See C. Platt, King Death: The Black Death and Its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996). 160 Plantagenets Royal dynasty that ruled England from 1154 to 1399 (under various names); this specific name was not used until 1450 when Richard, duke of York, and father of Richard III (1452–85) used it to bolster his claim to royal lineage. The dynastic renown for treachery and violence has been documented over the centuries, from a wide range of perspectives, in historical and literary sources. See M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007) and M.-H. Besnault and M. Bitot, “Historical Legacy and Fiction: The Poetical Reinvention of King Richard III,” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. M. Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 106–26. 161 Bosworth The Battle of Bosworth Field, 22 August 1485, was the climactic and bloody (purple) battle between Richard III and Henry Tudor, and it marked the end of the War of the Roses (between the Yorkist claimants and Lancastrian rivals for the English throne). Richard was killed at Bosworth, Leicestershire, and Henry was shortly afterward crowned King Henry VII.

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535 While, for which tyrant162 England163 should receive, Her legions in incestuous murders164 mix’d, And daily horrors;165 till the Fates were drunk With kindred blood by kindred hands166 profus’d: Another plague of more gigantic arm167 540 Arose, a monster never known before, Cocytus classical “river of wailing” Rear’d from Cocytus its portentous head. This rapid Fury not, like other pests,168 Pursu’d a gradual course, but in a day Rush’d as a storm o’er half th’ astonish’d isle,169 tyrant Richard III, whose own rise to the throne in 1483 was secured by his imprisoning his nephew, Edward V (1470–83), and his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury (1473–83) in the Tower of London. They were murdered soon afterward and Richard was widely considered responsible. 163 England While the political and epidemiological events mentioned in these lines affected those living throughout the British Isles, England was the primary site of these events and of their inflicted suffering. 164 incestuous murders The houses of Lancaster and York were genealogically related—both Richard III and Henry VII descended from Edward III (1312–77); in national dimensions, the Lancastrians were popular in the South of England, the Yorkists in the northern counties, and so their armies (legions) represent internal factions: thus their bloody conflicts suggest a perversion of filial and national loyalities. Richard’s supposed killing of his own nephews (see previous note) lends further credence to the perception of incestuousness among the claimants to the Plantagenet legacy. 165 Daily horrors This may refer back to the waves of bubonic plague that devastated England throughout the first half of the fifteenth century; ere yet the Plantagenet-claimant’s final defeat at Bosworth in 1485: see General Introduction, note 152. 166 kindred blood by kindred hands see note 164. 167 Another plague The sweating sickness, which killed hundreds of thousands in England in 1485, then again in 1506, 1517, 1528, and 1551. See J. Wylie and L. H. Collier, “The English Sweating Sickness (Sudor Anglicus): A Reappraisal,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 36 (1981): 425–45. Outbreaks of the sweating sickness were particularly rampant in the West Midlands and Yorkshire. Commentators including Stow (see note 169, below) perceived that the sweating sickness infects only Englishmen, even those residing abroad—suggesting divine retribution for their lack of religious devotion. John Caius’s famous advice for those fearing infection was the following: “loke not to receiue by this boke that good which I entend, but that euel which by your owne foly you vudiscretelye bring.” See J. Caius, Counceill against the Sweat (London: R. Grafton, 1552) 28. 168 Whereas weeks may pass between the first symptoms and death from bubonic plague, the sweating sickness killed its victims within 24 hours. See A. Dyer, “The English Sweating Sickness of 1551: An Epidemic Anatomized,” Medical History 41 (1997): 362– 84. Lucretius envisioned the course of Athenian plague at eight or nine days; see Creech, line 112. 169 A report of the Venetian ambassador, written in 1556, emphasized the terrifying speed and voraciousness of this infection. Unlike bubonic plague, which spread slowly and 162

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545 And strew’d with sudden carcases the land. First thro’ the shoulders, or whatever part Was seiz’d the first, a fervid vapour sprung. With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark Shot to the heart, and kindled all within; 550 And soon the surface caught the spreading fires. Thro’ all the yielding pores, the melted blood Gush’d out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag’d The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev’d The stomach’s anguish. With incessant toil, 555 Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain, They toss’d from side to side. In vain the stream stream river waters Ran full and clear, they burnt and thirsted still. The restless arteries with rapid blood Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly 560 The breath was fetch’d, and with huge lab’rings heav’d. At last a heavy pain oppress’d the head, A wild delirium came; their weeping friends Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs. Harrass’d with toil on toil, the sinking powers 565 Lay prostrate and o’erthrown; a ponderous sleep Wrapt all the senses up: they slept and died. horror shudder In some a gentle horror crept at first O’er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin Withheld their moisture, till by art provok’d 570 The sweats o’erflow’d; but in a clammy tide: Now free and copious, now restrain’d and slow; Of tinctures various, as the temperature Had mix’d the blood; and rank with fetid steams: As if the pent-up humours by delay 575 Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign. fell fatal Here lay their hopes (tho’ little hope remain’d) With full effusion of perpetual sweats To drive the venom out. And here the fates Were kind, that long they linger’d not in pain. mainly affected the poor, sweating sickness could afflict anyone as it spread quickly across the English towns and countryside. See W. D. Hamilton, ed. A Chronicle of England … by Charles Wriothesley (London: Camden Society, 1878) 542. An eyewitness in London wrote that the epidemic “was so terrible, that the people being in best health, were sodainly taken, and dead in foure and twenty houres, and twelve, or less … [it] was a terrible time in London, for many one lost sodainly his friends.” See J. Stow, Annales, or a Generall Chronicle of England (London: n.p., 1631) 605.

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diurnal race, i.e., one day 580 For who surviv’d the sun’s diurnal race Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeem’d: Some the sixth hour oppress’d, and some the third.170 oppress’d overwhelmed

Of many thousands few untainted ’scap’d171; Of those infected fewer ’scap’d alive; 585 Of those who liv’d some felt a second blow; And whom the second spar’d a third destroy’d. Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun The fierce contagion.172 O’er the mournful land Th’ infected city pour’d her hurrying swarms: 590 Rous’d by the flames that fir’d her seats around, Th’ infected country rush’d into the town. desart, i.e., in wilderness or solitude Some, sad at home, and in the desart some, Abjur’d the fatal commerce of mankind; In vain: where’er they fled, the Fates pursu’d. 595 Others, with hopes more specious, cross’d the main, main ocean To seek protection in far distant skies; But none they found. It seem’d the general air, From pole to pole, from Atlas173 to the East, Was then at enmity with English blood.174 For, but excepting For, but the race of England, all were safe 600 In foreign climes; nor did this Fury taste The foreign blood which England then contain’d. Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven Involv’d them still; and every breeze was bane. 170 Armstrong’s source for the clinical features of the sweating sickness was probably Caius’s Counceill: First by peine in the backe, or shoulder, peine in the extreme parts, as arme, or legge, with a flusshing, or wind as it semeth to certaine of the patientes, fleing the same. Secondly by the grief in the liver and nigh stomach. Thirdly, by peine in the head, and madness of the same. Fourthly by a passion of the hart … it lasteth but one natural day. (8) An expanded edition of Caius’s book, which was originally designed for physicians and published in Latin, was released in 1729. For other records of symptoms, see G. Thwaites et al., “The English Sweating Sickness, 1485–1551,” New England Journal of Medicine 336 (1997): 580–582. For Lucretius’ description of Athenian plague, see Creech, 56–75; for Thucydides, see Creech, notes 2 and 13. 171 For an analysis of the demographic and moral effects of the major outbreak of 1551, see A. Dyer, 378–84. 172 The paradox is terrifying, when maintaining that physicians of this period continued to advise that fear itself can cause plague. See in Creech, lines 150–151; General Introduction, note 146. 173 Atlas Mountain range in northwest Africa, or the Barbary Coast, bane of Britain’s Mediterranean fleet. 174 See note 75.

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Where find relief? The salutary art 605 Was mute; and, startled at the new disease, In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.175 To Heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray’rs; Heav’n heard them not. Of every hope depriv’d; Fatigu’d with vain resources; and subdued 610 With woes resistless and enfeebling fear; Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow. Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard, Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death. Infectious horror ran from face to face, 615 And pale despair. ’Twas all the business then To tend the sick, and in their turns to die. In heaps they fell: and oft one bed, they say, The sick’ning, dying, and the dead contain’d. Ye guardian Gods, on whom the Fates depend 620 Of tottering Albion! ye eternal Fires That lead thro’ heav’n the wandering year! ye powers That o’er th’ incircling elements preside! May nothing worse than what this age has seen176 See Lucretius: mussabat tacito medicine timore: “medicine was scared into whispers” (4: 1179); Creech, line 141. Armstrong also evokes Virgil’s depiction of the cattle murrain: See in Dryden, Georgics 3: “Besides, to change their pasture ‘tis in vain,/ Or trust to physic; physic is their bane” (236). See W. H. D. Rouse, trans. Lucretius: De rerum natura (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1947) 526. In fact contemporary physicians published their cures for the sweating sickness even during the outbreaks; see Cauis: As in thys, so in alle others before rehearsed, I remytte you to the discretion of a learned manne in phisike, who maye judge what is to be done, aud how, according to the present estate of youre bodies, nature, custome, and proprety, age, strength, delyghte and qualitie, tyme of the yeare, with other circumstaunces, aud thereafter to geue the quantitie, and make diuersitie of hys medicine. . . . seke you out a good Phisicien, and knowen to haue skille. (28) See Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine: 1550–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) 275–313. 176 The major outbreak of plague at Marseilles in 1720 killed half of the city’s one million inhabitants—the same number that were killed by bubonic plague in London in 1665. It may also refer to any of the various smallpox epidemics that throughout the century killed at least 2,000 each year in London alone—and a far higher number in 1710, 1719, 1723, and 1736. Both events caused panic in cities and ports across Europe. See J. N. Hays “Plague in Marseilles, 1720–1722,” Epidemics and Pandemics (London: ABC-CLIO, 2006) 135–41; J. N. Hays, “Smallpox in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” 151. See also Anne Hardy, “The Medical Response to Epidemic Disease during the Long Eighteenth Century,” Epidemic Disease in London, ed. J. A. I. Champion (London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 1993): 65–70. 175

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Arrive! Enough abroad, enough at home 625 Has Albion bled.177 Here a distemper’d heaven Has thin’d her cities; from those lofty cliffs That awe proud Gaul, to Thule’s wintry reign178; While in the West, beyond th’ Atlantic foam, Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have dy’d179 630 The death of cowards and of common men: Sunk void of wounds, and fall’n without renown.180 But from these views the weeping Muses turn, And other themes invite my wandering song.

177 For a literal precedent to this image, see Virgil’s forceful depiction of the battle of Parsalus in Georgics 1: 490, where Roman blood fertilizes the soil. 178 Gaul France, Britain’s perpetual military, economic, and imperial foe; Thule Classical term for the world’s northernmost frontier. 179 Yellow fever and malaria killed 7,400 of the 10,000 British soldiers who attempted to attack the Spanish in the West Indies in April 1741, in the disastrous Cartagena Expedition under Admiral Edward Vernon. This highly publicized catastrophe was instrumental in Sir Robert Walpole’s final removal from power. See David Chandler, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994) 112–113; Richard Harding, Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies 1740–2 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991) 83–120. C. Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994). 180 Void of wounds … without renown, i.e., before they had the chance to fight and defeat the Spanish (see General Introduction). See Thomson’s depiction of the catastrophe: “Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe/ And feeble desolation, casting down/ The towering hopes and all the pride of man:/ Such as of late at Carthagena quenched/ The British fire” (Summer 1037–42): see The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, ed. J. Sambrook (Oxford: OUP, 1972) 65.

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HEALTH. book iv. THE PASSIONS.

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THE A R T OF PRESERVING

HEALTH. book iv. THE PASSIONS. THE choice of Aliment, the choice of Air, The use of Toil and all external things, Already sung; it now remains to trace What good, what evil from ourselves proceeds: 5 And how the subtle Principle within181 Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay Shades, i.e., Muses The passive Body. Ye poetic Shades, Who know the secrets of the world unseen, doubtful obscure Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme 10 Engag’d, I wander thro’ mysterious ways. There is, they say, (and I believe there is) A spark within us of th’ immortal fire, That animates and moulds the grosser frame; And when the body sinks escapes to heaven, 15 Its native seat, and mixes with the Gods. Mean while this heavenly particle pervades The mortal elements; in every nerve It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain, And, in its secret conclave, as it feels 20 The body’s woes and joys, this ruling power Wields at its will the dull material world, And is the body’s health or malady.182 With subtle Principle within, Armstrong is probably referring to traditional Galenic theory concerning the material spirits that circulate throughout the body, whose subtle (mysterious) mechanisms were currently understood through their visible effects and hydraulic mechanisms (lines 29–34). This was the theory that dominated medical instruction at Leiden and at Edinburgh during the first half of the eighteenth century. See Introduction, note 33. 182 This is a conventional Platonic description of the immaterial soul, temporarily resident throughout the body yet the seat of all feeling and volition (it predates Willis’s 181

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By its own toil the gross corporeal frame Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself. 25 Nor less the labours of the mind corrode The solid fabric: for by subtle parts And viewless atoms, secret Nature moves The mighty wheels of this stupendous world. By subtle fluids pour’d thro’ subtle tubes 30 The natural, vital, functions are perform’d. By these the stubborn aliments are tam’d; The toiling heart distributes life and strength; These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.

viewless invisible stupendous vast

35 But ’tis not Thought (for still the soul’s employ’d) employ’d active clay, i.e., physical bodies ’Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.183

anatomical elaboration of nerve and brain function [1664]). For Boerhaave’s teaching of this Platonic and to a significant extent Christian doctrine, and its adoption at Edinburgh during the 1730s and 1740s, see J. P. Wright, “Metaphysics and Physiology: Mind, Body, and the Animal Economy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland.” Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989) 251–301. For a wider overview, see R. Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986); for its conventionality among poets and their readers, see A. Pope, “An Essay on Man,” [1.9.268–80] in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. J. Butt (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963) 514. 183 corrodes our clay, i.e., Mental and corporeal experience of sense-impressions (thought or amusement, see line 58) is not physically damaging because it is animated by the soul (see lines 35 and 67). Rather, it is the exclusively mental process of thinking (or sickly musing, see line 91), from which the soul and sense-impressions are excluded (or flattened, see line 102), that causes damage. It was a contemporary truism among aesthetic theorists such as Joseph Addison that “the pleasures of the fancy [i.e., creative imagination] are more conducive than those of the understanding [i.e., processing of impressions], which are worked out by dint of thinking and attended with too violent a labour of the brain.” See Spectator 411 (21 June 1712) 3: 539. Addison’s view is consistent with current medical theory: in his popular Theory of Aliments, John Arbuthnot observed that “the blood turning acrimonious corrodes the vessels, producing … almost all diseases of the inflammatory kind.” Meanwhile at Edinburgh, Alexander Monro taught that acridity in the blood was caused by “obstructions in the small vessels” brought on by those “violent motions and furious passions” that prevent the spirits from circulating effectively—this would include painful thinking. See Spectator 396 (4 June 1712) 3: 396; J. Arbuthnot, Essay concerning the Nature of Aliments (London: J. Tonson, 1731) 179; A. Monro, “A Treatise of Tumours and Ulcers,” cited in C. Lawrence, “Ornate Physicians and Learned Artisans: Edinburgh Medical Men,” William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. W. Bynum and R. Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 159.

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vacant free, relaxed All day the vacant184 eye without fatigue Strays o’er the heaven and earth; but long intent Strays wanders On microscopic arts its vigour fails. 40 Just so the mind, with various thought amus’d, Nor akes itself, nor gives the body pain. But anxious Study, Discontent, and Care, Love without hope, and Hate without revenge, And Fear, and Jealousy, fatigue the soul, 45 Engross the subtle ministers of life, And spoil the lab’ring functions of their share. Hence the lean gloom that Melancholy wears; The Lover’s paleness; and the sallow hue Of Envy, Jealousy; the meagre stare 50 Of sore Revenge: the canker’d body hence Betrays each fretful motion of the mind.

The strong-built pedant; who both night and day Feeds on the coarsest fare the schools bestow, And crudely fattens at gross Burman’s stall;185 55 O’erwhelm’d with phlegm lies in a dropsy186 drown’d, Or sinks in lethargy before his time. With useful studies you, and arts that please Employ your mind, amuse but not fatigue.187 Peace to each drousy metaphysic sage! vacant See Addison: “The Memory relieves the Mind in her vacant Moments and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is past.” See Spectator 471 (30 Aug. 1712) 4: 165. 185 Pieter Burman (1668–1741), Armstrong’s model of fatal devotion to scholarly pursuits. Until his death, Burman was an eminent and prolific classicist, university administrator, and librarian. He was Professor of Eloquence, History, Greek Language, and Politics at Utrecht, and later Rector of the University; afterward Professor of Eloquence, History, and Greek Language and, later Rector and Chief Librarian at Leiden. Samuel Johnson’s obituary (published less than two years before Armstrong’s poem appeared) observes that “such was the course of his life, till in his old age, leaving off his practice of walking and other exercises, he began to be afflicted by the scurvy . . . the violence of his pain produced irregular fevers, deprived him of rest, and entirely debilitated his whole frame.” See Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (April 1742): 206–10. Armstrong’s first London publication, An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick (J. Wilford, 1734) suggests familiarity with Burman’s Oration … Against the Studies of Humanity (London: J. Roberts, 1720). See Introduction, note 68. From an undated and unsigned painting, Burman appears heavy-set, but not particularly so: see A. Gudeman, ed. Imagines Philologorum (Leipzig: Teubner, 1911) 13. 186 See APH 1: 158. 187 fatigue “To harass with toil,” Johnson, Dictionary. 184

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60 And ever may all German folio’s188 rest! Yet some there are, even of elastic parts, Whom strong and obstinate ambition leads Thro’ all the rugged roads of barren lore, And gives to relish what their generous taste 65 Would else refuse. But may nor thirst of fame, Nor love of knowledge, urge you to fatigue liberal generous, supportive With constant drudgery the liberal soul. Toy with your books: and, as the various fits Of humour seize you, from Philosophy 70 To Fable shift; from serious Antonine189 To Rabelais’ ravings,190 and from prose to song. While reading pleases, but no longer, read; And read aloud resounding Homer’s strain, And wield the thunder of Demosthenes.191 75 The chest so exercis’d improves its strength; And quick vibrations thro’ the bowels drive The restless blood, which in unactive days Would loiter else thro’ unelastic tubes, Deem it not trifling while I recommend 80 What posture suits: To stand and sit by turns, As nature prompts, is best. But o’er your leaves To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts, And robs the fine machinery of its play. 188 German folio’s Later editions substitute heavy systems, a phrase used throughout the century to describe elaborate or arcane astrological, conceptual, or scientific phenomena. More graphically, folio is the largest print format, used only for expensive and physically heavy editions; that it would be printed in German refers to the attendant intellectual labor required for reading it. According to the OED, system was not used in a biological sense (e.g., the digestive or nervous system) until it first appeared thus in Cheyne’s Essay on Regimen (1740), and this sense does not appear in Johnson. 189 The philosophical literature of the Antonine period (ad 138–92) was then associated with Aristides’ six books of Sacred Discourses, and with Ptolemy’s great mathematical and astronomical writings. 190 François Rabelais (c.1494–1553), French author of the comic masterpiece Gargantus and Pantagruel, widely translated and published through the eighteenth century—in both “polite” and in unexpurgated editions. 191 Demosthenes (382–22 bc), then considered the greatest of the Athenian orators. British editions of his nationalist speeches were released upon the resumption of war with France (with the War of Austrian Succession, 1740). See the Preface to Several Orations of Demosthenes, Exciting the Athenians to Oppose the Exorbitant Power of Philip King of Macedon, trans. Lord Lansdowne, Samuel Garth, et al. (London: L. and R. Tonson, 1702 and 1744). See also APH 2: 242.

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’Tis the great art of life to manage well 85 The restless mind. For ever on pursuit Of knowledge bent, it starves the grosser powers: grosser of physical mass Quite, i.e., thus repose need for rest Quite unemploy’d, against its own repose It turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs Than what the body knows embitter life. 90 Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of Care, To sickly musing gives the pensive mind. There Madness enters; and the dim-ey’d Fiend, Sour gloomy, embittered; cold, damp Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale; 95 A mournful visionary light o’erspreads The chearful face of nature: earth becomes A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above. Then various shapes of curs’d illusion rise: creating, i.e., creative Whate’er the wretched fears, creating Fear 100 Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath A load of huge imagination heaves; And all the horrors that the murderer feels With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast. 105 Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes, Of Fear, on delicate Self-love creates. From other cares absolv’d, the busy mind Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon; It finds you miserable, or makes you so. 110 For while yourself you anxiously explore, Timorous Self-love, with sickning Fancy’s aid, Presents the danger that you dread the most, And ever galls you in your tender part. Hence some for love, and some for jealousy, 115 For grim religion some, and some for pride, Have lost their reason: some for fear of want Want all their lives; and others every day For fear of dying suffer worse than death. Ah! from your bosoms banish, if you can, 120 Those fatal guests: and first the Dæmon Fear; That trembles at impossible events, Lest aged Atlas192 should resign his load, And heaven’s eternal battlements rush down.

Pride take pride

192 Atlas Classical figure tasked with holding the heavens upon his shoulders for eternity.

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Is there an evil worse than Fear itself?193 125 And what avails it, that indulgent heaven From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come, If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own? Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares, 130 Of what may spring from blind misfortune’s womb, Appall to make pale, weaken Appall the surest hour that life bestows. Serene, and master of yourself, prepare For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. Oft from the Body, by long ails mistun’d, 135 These evils sprung the most important health, That of the Mind, destroy: and when the mind conscious perceptive They first invade, the conscious body soon In sympathetic languishment declines. These chronic Passions, while from real woes 140 They rise, and yet without the body’s fault Infest the soul, admit one only cure; Diversion, hurry, and a restless life. Vain are the consolations of the wise; In vain your friends would reason down your pain. 145 O ye whose souls relentless love has tam’d To soft distress, or friends untimely fal’n! Court not the luxury of tender thought; Nor deem it impious to forget those pains nought avail, i.e., unavailing That hurt the living, nought avail the dead. calm, gentle enthusiast, i.e., 150 Go, soft enthusiast!194 quit the cypress groves, soft self-deceived visionary Nor to the rivulet’s lonely moanings tune 193 See Saint Augustine: “Why should we fear and avoid what has no being? If our fear is vain, it is certain that fear itself is evil, and that the heart is groundlessly disturbed and tortured. And this evil is the worse for the fact that is has no being to be afraid of. Yet still we fear. Thus either it is evil which we fear or our fear which is evil. See Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991) [7.5.7] 115–16. 194 soft enthusiast Like present-day usage, enthusiast referred to one self-deluded by faulty and usually religious convictions. But it also allowed for a more sympathetic description of someone easily misled by their own imagination, particularly when preceded by this adjective (soft). For a detailed characterization of a young man whose solitary reveries in a lush forest elicit conversations with imagined representations of Wisdom, Virtue, and Innocence, see J. Warton, The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature. A Poem (London: R. Dodsley, 1744). Warton’s poem was first printed within months of APH, he seems to have claimed that it was written in 1740; see “The Enthusiast,” in A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, ed. R. Dodsley, vol. 3 (London: R. Dodsley, 1782) 104. On the cypress, see Young, note 7.

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Your sad complaint195. Go, seek the chearful haunts Of men, and mingle with the bustling croud; Lay schemes for wealth, or power, or same, the wish 155 Of nobler minds, and push them night and day.196 Or join the caravan in quest of scenes New to your eyes, and shifting every hour, Beyond the Alps, beyond the Apennines.197 Or more advent’rous, rush into the field 160 Where war grows hot; and, raging thro’ the sky, The lofty trumpet swells the madd’ning soul: And in the hardy camp and toilsome march Forget all softer and less manly cares.

117 complaint lament

But most too passive, when the blood runs low, 165 Too weakly indolent to strive with pain, And bravely by resisting conquer Fate, Try Circe’s arts198; and in the tempting bowl Of poison’d Nectar sweet oblivion swill. Struck by the pow’rful charm, the gloom dissolves 170 In empty air; Elysium199 opens round, A pleasing phrenzy buoys the lighten’d200 soul, And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care; And what was difficult, and what was dire, Yields to your prowess and superior stars: 175 The happiest you of all that e’er were mad, Or are, or shall be, could this folly last. See Young, note 3. Lines 150–155 borrow the language and imagery of Abraham Cowley’s celebrated ode “The Complaint” (1663), but provide contrary advice. Cowley’s melancholic poet finds himself chided by his muse for abandoning “deep Vision’s intellectual scene/ Beneath a Bow’r for sorrow made” to pursue “the World abroad, and have a share/ In all the follies, and Tumults there … [to] be something in a State,/ and business though would’st find, and would’st Create.” See “The Complaint,” The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, 10th edn, 2 vols (London: J. Tonson, 1707) 2: 584. 197 Alps European mountain range, forming eastern border between France and Switzerland, and the northern frontiers of Italy with Switzerland and Austria, The Apennines are the mountain ranges that run the spine of the Italian peninsula. 198 Reference to Odyssey 10, in which the goddess Circe lures men to her house to feed them cheese, honey, and wine, all laced with a poison that makes them forget their pasts. 199 Elysium Paradise after death, for those sufficiently distinguished or deserving, where humans can enjoy the ease normally reserved for gods. See Odyssey 4. 200 This could refer to the sensory impression of lightness brought on by intoxication, or to the lightning that had been considered the apotheosis leading to Elysium (Gk “struck by lightening”). See W. Burkert, “Elysion,” Glotta 30 (1960–61): 208–13. 195 196

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But soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom Shuts o’er your head: and, as the thund’ring stream, Swoln o’er its banks with sudden mountain rain, 180 Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook; So, when the frantic raptures in your breast Subside, you languish into mortal man; You sleep, and waking find yourself undone. For prodigal of life in one rash night support, i.e., financially 185 You lavish’d more than might support three days. A heavy morning comes; your cares return With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well May be endur’d; so may the throbbing head: But such a dim delirium, such a dream, involve envelop 190 Involves you; such a dastardly despair Unmans your soul, as madd’ning Pentheus201 felt, When, baited round Cithæron’s cruel sides, He saw two Suns, and double Thebes ascend. You curse the sluggish Port; you curse the wretch, 195 The felon, with unnatural mixture first violate, i.e. lace with intoxicants Who dar’d to violate the virgin Wine. Champain open land Or on the fugitive Champain you pour A thousand curses; for to heav’n your soul It rapt, to plunge you deeper in despair.202 200 Perhaps you rue even that divinest gift, The gay, serene, good-natur’d Burgundy, Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine: And wish that heaven from mortals had with-held The grape, and all intoxicating bowls. 205 Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect What follies in your loose unguarded hour Escap’d. For one irrevocable word, Perhaps that meant no harm, you lose a friend. Or in the rage of wine your hasty hand 210 Performs a deed to haunt you to the grave. Add that your means, your health, your parts decay; Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform’d 201 Pentheus… Cithaeron In Euripides’ Bacchae, Dionysius (god of wine and revelry) drives the young king Pentheus to madness as punishment for preventing Thebians from worshipping him. Dionysius then leads the deranged king up to Mount Cithaeron to spy on women whose ecstatic dancing celebrates the god’s hypnotic power. Led by Pentheus’ own mother, the women murder Pentheus and parade his head around the mountain. 202 In later editions, “your soul” and “it rapt” appear in reverse order; this could be a compositor’s error.

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They hardly know you; or if one remains To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven. 215 Despis’d, unwept you fall; who might have left A sacred, cherish’d, sadly-pleasing name; A name still to be utter’d with a sigh. Your last ungraceful scene has quite effac’d All sense and memory of your former worth. 220 How to live happiest; how avoid the pains, The disappointments, and disgusts of those Who would in pleasure all their hours employ; The Precepts here of a divine old man203 I could recite. Tho’ old, he still retain’d 225 His manly sense, and energy of mind. Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe; He still remember’d that he once was young; His easy presence check’d no decent joy. Him even the dissolute admir’d; for he 230 A graceful looseness when he pleas’d put on, And laughing could instruct. Much had he read, Much more had seen; he studied from the life, And in th’ original perus’d mankind. Vers’d in the woes and vanities of life, 235 He pitied man: and much he pitied those Whom falsely-smiling Fate has curs’d with means To dissipate their days in quest of joy. Our aim is happiness; ’tis yours, ’tis mine, He said, ’tis the pursuit of all that live; 240 Yet few attain it, if ’twas e’er attain’d. But they the widest wander from the mark, Who thro’ the flow’ry paths of saunt’ring Joy Seek this coy Goddess; that from stage to stage Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue. 245 For, not to name the pains that pleasure brings To counterpoise itself, relentless Fate Forbids that we thro’ gay voluptuous wilds, Should ever roam: and were the Fates more kind, a divine old man A fictional exemplum; see Georgics 1: 176, Possum multa tibi veterum praecepta referre, or “I could refer to you to many precepts from men of old.” For Dryden’s loose translation, see Georgics 1: 266 (163). For a more familiar example whose teaching would be familiar to contemporary readers, see Luigi Cornaro’s immensely popular Discourses of a Sober and Temperate Life. 203

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Our narrow luxuries would soon grow stale. 250 Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick, And, cloy’d with pleasure, squeamishly complain That all is vanity, and life a dream. Let nature rest: be busy for yourself, And for your friend; be busy even in vain 255 Rather than teize her sated appetites. Who never fasts, no banquet e’er enjoys; Who never toils or watches, never sleeps. Let nature rest: and when the taste of joy Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety. 260 ’Tis not for mortals always to be blest. But him the least the dull or painful hours Of life oppress, whom sober Sense conducts, And Virtue, thro’ this labyrinth we tread. Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin; 265 Virtue and Sense are one: and, trust me, still A faithless Heart betrays the Head unsound, Virtue (for mere Good-nature is a fool) Is Sense and Spirit, with Humanity: ’Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds; 270 ’Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just. Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare; fain glad it, i.e., Virtue But at his heart the most undaunted son Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms. awful solemnly majestic charms force this, i.e., Virtue To noblest uses this determines wealth; 275 This is the solid pomp of prosperous days; The peace and shelter of adversity. And if you pant for glory, build your fame On this foundation, which the secret shock Defies of Envy and all-sapping time. fortune, i.e., wealth 280 The gawdy gloss of fortune only strikes The vulgar eye: the suffrage of the wise, The praise that’s worth ambition, is attain’d By Sense alone, and dignity of mind. Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, 285 Is the best gift of heaven: a happiness That even above the smiles and frowns of fate Exalts great Nature’s favourites: a wealth That ne’er encumbers, nor to baser hands Can be transferr’d: it is the only good

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290 Man justly boasts of, or can call his own.204 Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn’d; Or dealt by chance, to shield a lucky knave, sun-shine transient good fortune Or throw a cruel sun-shine on a fool. But for one end, one much-neglected use, 295 Are riches worth your care: (for Nature’s wants Are few, and without opulence supplied.) to produce to generate, to make This noble end is, to produce the Soul205; visible To shrew the virtues in their fairest light; To make Humanity the Minister 300 Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast That generous luxury the Gods enjoy. Thus, in his graver vein, the friendly Sage206 Sometimes declaim’d. Of Right and Wrong he taught Truths as refin’d as ever Athens heard; 305 And (strange to tell!) he practis’d what he preach’d. Skill’d in the Passions, how to check their sway He knew, as far as Reason can controul The lawless Powers. But other cares are mine: Form’d in the school of Pæon,207 I relate 310 What Passions hurt the body, what improve: Avoid them, or invite them, as you may. Know then, whatever chearful and serene Supports the mind, supports the body too. Hence, the most vital movement mortals feel 315 Is Hope; the balm and life-blood of the soul. It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent heaven Sent down the kind delusion, thro’ the paths delusion, i.e., Hope Of rugged life to lead us patient on; And make our happiest state no tedious thing. 320 Our greatest good, and what we least can spare, Is Hope: the last of all our evils, Fear. Later editions do not include from “nor to baser hands” (line 288) to end of line 290. 205 Soul, i.e., moral sensibility. Clarissa Harlowe, heroic paragon of kindness and virtue in Samuel Richardson’s novel (1747–8), is offered an opportunity to comment on the wickedness of the man who abducted and raped her. Refraining to do so, her friend notes, “What she thought I cannot say; but in general, I never saw so much soul in a lady’s eyes, as in hers.” See S. Richardson, Clarissa, ed. A. Ross (London: Penguin, 1985) 1072. 206 See APH 4: 223. 207 See APH 1: 1. 204

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But there are Passions grateful to the breast, And yet no friends to Life: perhaps they please Or to excess, and dissipate the soul; 325 Or while they please, torment. The stubborn Clown, clown one ignorant, crass The ill-tam’d Ruffian, and pale Usurer, (If Love’s omnipotence such hearts can mould) May safely mellow into love208; and grow Refin’d, humane, and generous, if they can. 330 Love in such bosoms never to a fault Or pains or pleases. But, ye finer Souls, Form’d to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill With all the tumults, all the joys and pains, That beauty gives; with caution and reserve 335 Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose, Nor court too much the Queen of charming cares.209 charming sweetly attractive or delusional For, while the cherish’d poison in your breast Ferments and maddens; sick with jealousy, Absence, distrust, or even with anxious joy, 340 The wholesome appetites and powers of life coy inactive Dissolve in languor. The coy stomach loaths The genial board: Your chearful days are gone; The generous bloom that flush’d your cheeks is fled. To sighs devoted and to tender pains, 345 Pensive you sit, or solitary stray, And waste your youth in musing. Musing first Toy’d into care your unsuspecting heart: It found a liking there, a sportful fire, And that fomented into serious love; 350 Which musing daily strengthens and improves fondness foolishness romance Thro’ all the heights of fondness and romance: fiction And you’re undone, the fatal shaft has sped, shaft, i.e., arrow If once you doubt whether you love or no. 208 For a famous precedent that personified the passions in an explicitly didactic context, see Charles LeBrun, A Method to Learn to Design the Passions, trans. J. Williams (London: Huggonson, 1734). LeBrun was First Painter to Louis XIV and Chancellor of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, whose extensively illustrated Conférence sur L’Expression Générale et Particulière (1698) became a major textbook for artists and theorists across Europe; it remains an important contribution to European aesthetic theory. See S. Ross, “Painting the Passions: Charles Le Brun’s Conférence sur L’Expression,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (Jan.-March 1984): 25–47. 209 This advice evokes Hume’s recently published essay (then anonymous) “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” (1740). See Essays Moral Political and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985).

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The body wastes away; th’ infected mind, female feminine 355 Dissolv’d in female tenderness, forgets fame one’s reputation Each manly virtue, and grows dead to fame. Sweet heaven from such intoxicating charms Defend all worthy breasts! Not that I deem Love always dangerous, always to be shun’d. 360 Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk In wanton and unmanly tenderness, Adds bloom to Health; o’er ev’ry virtue sheds A gay, humane, a sweet, and generous grace, And brightens all the ornaments of man. 365 But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack’d With jealousy, fatigu’d with hope and fear, Too serious, or too languishingly fond, Unnerves the body and unmans the soul. And some have died for love; and some run mad; 370 And some with desperate hands themselves have slain. Some to extinguish, others to prevent, A mad devotion to one dangerous Fair, Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate The cares of Love amongst an hundred Brides. doubtful causing apprehension 375 Th’ event is doubtful: for there are who find A cure in this; there are who find it not. ’Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls The wound, to those who are sincerely sick. For while from feverish and tumultuous joys 380 The nerves grow languid and the soul subsides, The tender fancy smarts with every sting, And what was Love before is Madness now. Is health your care, or luxury your aim, Be temperate still: When Nature bids, obey; 385 Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb: But when the prurient habit of delight,210 Or loose Imagination, spurs you on To deeds above your strength, impute it not To Nature: Nature all compulsion hates. 390 Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown prurient habit of delight, i.e., sexual promiscuity. Contextual allusions to cure, wound, Madness, and looseness suggest the dangers of venereal disease, thus such habits could refer to liaisons with prostitutes (see Laïs, line 394). Treating venereal cases was a lucrative business for physicians in London; for the vast economic and social significance of the contemporary sex-trade in London, see General Introduction, note 76. 210

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Urge you to feats you well might sleep without; To make what should be rapture a fatigue, A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms Of twining Laïs211 melt your manhood down. 395 For from the colliquation of soft joys How chang’d you rise! the ghost of what you was! Languid, and melancholy, and gaunt, and wan; Your veins exhausted, and your nerves unstrung. Spoil’d of its balm and sprightly zest, the blood 400 Grows vapid phlegm212; along the tender nerves (To each slight impulse tremblingly awake) A subtle Fiend that mimics all the plagues Rapid and restless springs from part to part. The blooming honours of your youth are fallen; 405 Your vigour pines; your vital powers decay; Diseases haunt you; and untimely Age Creeps on; unsocial, impotent, and lewd. Infatuate, impious, epicure! to waste The stores of pleasure, chearfulness, and health! 410 Infatuate all who make delight their trade, And coy perdition every hour pursue.

colliquation melting into fluid; consumptive disease

Who pines with Love, or in lascivious flames Consumes, is with his own consent undone: He chuses to be wretched, to be mad; 415 And warn’d proceeds and wilful to his fate. But there’s a Passion, whose tempestuous sway Tears up each virtue planted in the breast, And shakes to ruins proud Philosophy. For pale and trembling Anger213 rushes in, 420 With fault’ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare; Fierce as the Tiger, madder than the seas, Desperate, and arm’d with more than human strength. How soon the calm, humane, and polish’d man Forgets compunction, and starts up a fiend! 425 Who pines in Love, or wastes with silent Cares, 211 Laïs of Corinth, a famously beautiful courtesan of ancient Greece. For Virgil’s passage depicting the power of lustful animals and the skill required to manage them, see Georgics 3 209–75. 212 The anatomical chemistry that Edinburgh inherited from Leiden taught that phlegm was a basic component of the blood; see H. Boerhaave, “The Nature of the Blood,” Academical Lectures on the Theory of Physic, vol. 2, 6 vols (London: W. Innys, 1743) 179. 213 See note 29, above.

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Envy, or ignominy, or tender grief, Slowly descends, and ling’ring, to the shades. But he whom Anger stings, drops, if he dies, At once, and rushes apoplectic down; 430 Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell. For, as the Body thro’ unnumber’d strings Reverberates each vibration of the Soul; As is the Passion, such is still the Pain The Body feels: or chronic, or acute. 435 And oft a sudden storm at once o’erpowers The Life, or gives your Reason to the winds. Such fates attend the rash alarm of Fear, And sudden Grief, and Rage, and sudden Joy. There are, mean time, to whom the boist’rous fit 440 Is Health, and only fills the sails of life. For where the mind a torpid winter leads, Wrapt in a body corpulent and cold, And each clogg’d function lazily moves on; A generous sally spurns th’ incumbent load, 445 Unlocks the breast, and gives a cordial glow. But if your wrathful blood is apt to boil, Or are your nerves too irritably strung,214 Wave all dispute; be cautious, if you joke; Keep Lent for ever; and forswear the Bowl. 450 For one rash moment sends you to the shades, Or shatters ev’ry hopeful scheme of life, And gives to horror all your days to come. Fate, arm’d with thunder, fire, and ev’ry plague, That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind, 455 And makes the happy wretched in an hour, O’erwhelms you not with woes so horrible As your own wrath, nor gives more sudden blows.

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shades, i.e., death

fit sudden paroxysm of activity

This mechanical depiction of nervous irritability, where the nerves are strung through the body like the strings of a musical instrument, and respond in a physical way to external physical forces, was taught by Boerhaave and by his disciples at Edinburgh to the mid-1740s. Yet Armstrong’s suggestion that one’s temperament or subjective experience defines the intensity of such responses anticipates new theories of nervous sensibility (where nerves carry sensory impulses to the soul) and irritability (where nervous responses illustrate a system of autonomic reflexes), which will develop in Edinburgh later in the 1740s under the influence of Robert Whytt (Professor of Physic 1747–66). For a cogent overview of the theory, see Xavier Bichat, “Irritability and Sensibility: The Forces of Life,” Medical History Supplement 4 (1984): 50–56. For discussion of possible implications or metaphors for contemporary literature, see A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004). See also General Introduction, note 13. 214

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While Choler215 works, good Friend, you may be wrong; Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight.216 460 ’Tis not too late to morrow to be brave; If honour bids, to morrow kill or die. But calm advice against a raging fit braves tests Avails too little; and it braves the power Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song, sleeps puts to sleep 465 To tame the Fiend that sleeps a gentle Lamb, And wakes a Lion. Unprovok’d and calm, You reason well; see as you ought to see, And wonder at the madness of mankind: Seiz’d with the common rage, you soon forget 470 The speculations of your wiser hours. Beset with Furies of all deadly shapes, Fierce and insidious, violent and slow: With all that urge or lure us on to Fate: What refuge shall we seek? what arms prepare? 475 Where Reason proves too weak, or void of wiles To cope with subtle or impetuous powers, I would invoke new Passions to your aid: With Indignation would extinguish Fear, With Fear or generous Pity vanquish Rage, 480 And Love with Pride; and force to force oppose. There is a Charm, a Power, that sways the breast; Bids every Passion revel or be still; Inspires with Rage, or all your Cares dissolves; Can sooth Distraction, and almost Despair. 485 That power is Music217: Far beyond the stretch In Galenic physiology, bile: in contemporary parlance, irascibility. fight Duelling, which normally involved at least one member of the aristocracy, whose challenge or acceptance of a challenge sought to defend his honor (see line 461). See D. T. Andrew, “The Code of Honour and Its Critics: The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700–1850,” Social History 5 (1980) 409–34; R. B. Shoemaker, “The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour, and Ritual Violence in London, 1600–1800,” Historical Journal 45 (2002) 525–45. 217 While the ancient physicians (including Paythagoras and Esclepiades) proposed music as a treatment for pain, Armstrong is among the first British physicians of the period to advocate it in print. But the concept held popular interest: an elaborate report in the Gentleman’s Magazine described the cure of a delirious patient by music; see “Surprising Instances of the Effects of Musick in Acute Fevers,” GM vol. 13 (August 1742): 242–4. An expanded second edition of Medicina Musica by an otherwise anonymous Oakham apothecary, appeared in 1728; see R. Browne, Medicina Musica: or a Mechanical Essay on the Effects of Singing, Musick, and Dancing, on Human Bodies (London: J. Pemberton, 1727). The Edinburgh-trained physician Richard Brocklesby would argue in 1749 for the 215 216

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Of those unmeaning warblers on our stage218; Those clumsy Heroes, those fat-headed Gods, Who move no passion justly but Contempt: Who, like our dancers (light indeed and strong!) 490 Do wond’rous feats, but never heard of grace.219 The fault is ours; we bear those monstrous arts; Good Heaven! we praise them: we, with loudest peals, Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels; And, with insipid shew of rapture, die ideot foolish 495 Of ideot notes impertinently long.220 But he the Muse’s laurel justly shares, A Poet he, and touch’d with Heaven’s own fire; Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of sounds, Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul; 500 Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain, In Love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains Breathes a gay rapture thro’ your thrilling breast; Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad; Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings. 505 Such was the Bard, whose heavenly strains of old Appeas’d the fiend of melancholy Saul.221 effectiveness of music as medical treatment as it was practiced in classical Greece; see his Reflections on Antient and Modern Musick with the Application to the Care of Disease (London: M. Cooper, 1749). See also P. Gouk, “Music, Melancholy, and Medical Spirits,” Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity, ed. P. Horden (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 218 For a directory of performances, castings, and reviews of contemporary drama, see A. H. Scouten, ed. The London Stage: 1729–47, 2 vols (Carbondale, IL: U of Illinois P, 1961). 219 This may refer to the contemporary style of Italian dance known as “grotesque,” a particularly athletic interpretation of French ballet, which was popular on the London stage at mid-century. See The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage, ed. R. Harris-Warrick and B. A. Brown (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2005); J. Thorp, “Dance in the London Theatres, c.1700–1750,” Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politic, 1250–1750 (Bloomington, U of Indiana P, 2008) 136–54; J. Milthous, “The Economics of Dance in Eighteenth-Century London,” Theatre Journal 55 (Oct. 2003): 481–508. From the perspective of l’Abbé Edme-François Mallet (1713–55), contributor to Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1752), Armstrong’s view was characteristic of a wider British distaste for stage-actors. See E.-F. Mallet, “Acteur,” ed. D. Diderot et al., L’Esprit de L’Encyclopédie; Ou Choix des Articles, vol. 1 (Paris: Fauvelle et Sagnier, 1798) 93–6. 220 For the reception and production history of Italian opera during this period, see Ian Woodfield, Opera and Drama in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006). 221 In the Old Testament, King Saul of Israel asks David to play his harp to soothe his moods. See 1 Samuel 16: 21–3.

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Such was, if old and heathen fame say true, The man who bade the Theban domes ascend, domes temples ascend rise And tam’d the savage nations with his song222; 510 And such the Thracian, whose melodious lyre, Tun’d to soft woe, made all the mountains weep; Sooth’d even th’ inexorable powers of Hell, And half redeem’d his lost Eurydice.223 Music exalts each Joy, allays each Grief, 515 Expells Diseases, softens every Pain, Subdues the rage of Poison, and the Plague; And hence the wise of ancient days ador’d One Power of Physic, Melody, and Song.

THE END.

222 Pindar, Theban poet and musician (518–c.447 bc), whose reputation as the greatest of the classical Greek poets was sealed by Horace (see Odes 4) and Quintilian (Institutes of Oratory 10: 1.61). Pindar traveled widely and composed throughout the Mediterranean (visiting Athens during the height of its rivalry with Thebes), dedicating shrines, temples, and statues to Greek gods. 223 Orpheus, the Thracian son of the muse Calliope, was so gifted at the lyre that his music charmed animals, inspired rocks to dance, and made mountains sway. He married Eurydice and, after her death, was permitted to seek her in the Underworld—only to lose her as they neared the world of the living. See Virgil, Georgics 4: 464–527; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10: 1–85. For commentary, see C. Segal, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989).

Poetry

Fig. 3

The Plague. London: F. Cogan, 1743. Title-page.

Thomas Creech, “The Plague of Athens, from the Latin of Lucretius,” 1682 At least four editions and seven impressions of Creech’s translation of Lucretius were printed in octavo, 2 vols, between 1682 and 1700; 13 further impressions between 1700 and 1743. These two-volume octavo editions were selling for five shillings in 1767. One impression of this edition was made, in octavo, at one shilling. This poem was printed in The Plague. London: F. Cogan, 1743. 8–15.

An ACCOUNT of the PLAGUE of ATHENS, by Mr. CREECH, from the Latin of LUCRETIUS  Thomas Creech (1659–1700), produced a verse translation of Lucretius (1682) that was among the most esteemed works of classical scholarship of this period. Creech’s translation ran into numerous editions throughout the eighteenth century and remained the standard until well into the nineteenth. By the mid-1720s the Poet Laureate recalled that Creech’s Lucretius was so highly respected, “that Mr Creech had a party formed for him, who ventured to prefer him to Mr Dryden, in point of genius.” This excerpt represents the final 208 lines of Creech’s translation. There is no critical edition of Creech’s complete works of classical translation. See Oxford DNB. No reliable biographies of Lucretius (c.94–55 bc) survive; less is known about him than about any other Latin poet. His verse treatise De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”), espousing an understanding of the world based purely on logical thinking and sensory experience, remains one of the most carefully studied and intellectually influential texts of the classical period. A didactic poem in six books, it eloquently elaborates the fundamental doctrines of the moral philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc): the belief that all physical things derive from other physical things; that the world has a birth and an eventual death; the soul is mortal and therefore we should not fear death; we should trust our sensory perceptions of the essentially physical nature of the universe; human civilization develops on rational principles as our knowledge of things expands; the belief in miracles and divine forces is a deception. Although these principles can be found in earlier Epicurean writings, by using evocative verse rather than sober prose, Lucretius strengthened the viability of poetry as a vehicle for serious teaching. Its most famous sections, which argue for a rational basis of human civilization (at the end of the fifth book), and its powerful ending that depicts horrific suffering from plague, challenge notions of divine providence and the viability of revealed religion. For these reasons De rerum natura has always been one of the most controversial and influential of Latin texts. See M. Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994); the essays collected in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. S. Gillespie and P. Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007). References to the Latin text (“DRN”) cite W. H. D. Rouse, trans., Lucretius: De Rerum Natura, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1947). See A New and Complete Catalogue of All English Books (London: n.p., 1767) 19.  This depiction of the Plague of Athens, the most famous epidemic in classical history and literature, provides the abrupt end to Lucretius’ treatise De rerum natura (6:

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Now next I’ll sing, what Causes Plagues create, What drives a Pestilence, swoln big with Fate, To waste, and lay a Nation desolate. I’ve prov’d, that numerous vital parts do fill The Air, so likewise numerous those that kill: 5 These Poysons (whether from the threatning Skies Like Clouds they fall, or from the Earth arise, When she’s grown putrid by the Rains, or sweats Such noxious Vapors prest by scorching heats,) Infect the lower Air, and hence proceed 10 All raging Plagues, these all Diseases breed. A Traveller, for every Place he sees, Or hazards, or endures a new Disease, Because the Air or Water disagrees. How different is the Air of th’ British Isle 15 From that which plays upon the wandring Nile? What different Air doth Pontus Snows embrace, From that which fans the Sun-burnt Indian’s Face?

swoln swollen

she’s, i.e., the Earth has

Pontus Pontus’

1090–286); it also features in Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.523–81; a famous sixteenth-century edition of Hippocrates provides a visual depiction of the famous physician curing Athens of the page (see Wellcome Institute Library, W.3175). The plague itself ravaged Athens in 430–426 bc, and was first depicted by Thucydides (who survived it) in his History of the Peloponnesian War (2.47-58; 3.87); for detailed commentary on Thucydides, see Rusten in note 13 (below), and D. L. Page, “Thucydides’s Description of the Great Plague of Athens,” Classical Quarterly (1953): 97–119. This episode in Lucretius had been popularized further by an allegorical translation by the eminent historian and clergyman Thomas Sprat (1659), which was reprinted 10 times before 1720. For discussion of the contemporary significance of Creech’s translation, see Paul Davis, “Didactic Poetry,” ed. S. Gillespie and D. Hopkins, The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 194–8. On the cultural and historical significance of the Plague of Athens in classical antiquity, see R. Mitchell-Boyask, Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History, and the Cult of Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007).  sing Representation of the poet as singer and the poem as a song is a convention of classic epic poetry; in this case, Lucretius represents his rational treatise (which depicts the foundation and end of the world) as an epic—thus treating poetic inspiration (by gods or muses) as a rhetorical flourish and not as a genuinely sacred gesture.  from the Earth arise An ancient theory of the source of contagious diseases, increasingly outdated though still mentioned during the 1740s. See also in Bradley, note 9; APH, note 155.  lower Air, i.e., air most susceptible to contagion, relating to the notion that contagious diseases may emerge from the earth.  Pontus was the ancient Greek colony that occupied the mountainous south coast of the Black Sea, present-day Turkey.  This suggestion of climate as a cause of infection (or of a patient’s vulnerability) does not appear in Thucydides; the relevance of Galenical non-naturals such as air emerges in Lucretius (see 4: 1118) and in later interpretations and translations. See DRN 523;

“The Plague of Athens, from the Latin of Lucretius”

Besides, Mens Shape or Colour disagrees, And every Nation hath its own Disease. 20 The Lepers only are to Egypt known, Those Wretches drink of Nilus streams alone: Athens, the Muses Seat, and chief delight, Offends the Feet, Achaia hurts the sight: And thus in every Land a new Disease, 25 New Pains on all the other members seize, And different Air is still the Cause of these. Thus often when one Country’s Air is blown Into another, and forsakes it’s own; It spoils the wholesome Air where e’re it goes, 30 And makes all like itself unfit for Us: Thence Plagues arise, and these descend, and pass Into our Fountains, tender Corn, or Grass, Or other Food, or hang within the Air Held up by fatal wings, and threaten there; 35 So whilst we think to live, and draw our Breath, Those parts must enter in, and following Death: Thus Plagues do often seize the labouring Ox, And raging Rots destroy our tender Flocks. And thus the Thing’s the same, if Winds do bear 40 From other Countries an unusual Air, And fit to raise a Plague, and Fever here, Or if we travel all, and suck it there. A Plague10 thus rais’d laid learned Athens11 waste,

133

disagrees, i.e., differs

Nilus, i.e., the Nile’s

think, i.e., intend

suck, i.e., inhale

V. Nutton, “The Seeds of Disease: An Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance,” Medical History 27 (1983): 1–34. For the eighteenth-century miasmic theory of infection, see APH, note 155.  This view in Lucretius is likely due to the Arab origins of medical descriptions of the disease, rather than the epidemiological facts; “leper hospitals stood outside all the major Italian towns by 1300” and by 1500 leper hospitals were ubiquitous throughout Europe. Since leprosy appears as both a powerful consequence of sin in the Bible, particularly in episodes meant to take place in Egypt, Lucretius’s pronouncement may have retained some force among readers of Creech’s translation. See Vivian Nutton, “Leprosy,” in The Western Medical Tradition, ed. L. Conrad et al., vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995) 185-7.  Feet Lucretius describes Athens as a place where many suffer from gout in the feet (see DRN 1115); Achaia Roman-administered Greek province that, in Lucretius, is a place notorious for inhabitants who suffer pain in the eyes (DRN 1126). 10 On the classical history of the disease and its cultural consequences, see J. Longrigg, “Death and Epidemic Disease in Classical Athens,” ed. V. M. Hope and E. Marshall, Death and Disease in the Ancient City (London: Routledge, 2000) 55–64. 11 learned Lucretius does not thus describe Athens; Creech is emphasizing Athens’s celebrated importance as the birthplace of philosophy (through Socrates and Plato) and literature (through the major tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles). See also line 23, above.

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Thro every Street, thro’ all the Town it past; 45 Blasting both Man and Beast with pois’nous Wind, Death fled before, and Ruin stalkt behind. From Egypt’s burning Sands the Fever came, More hot than those that rais’d the deadly Flame;12 The Wind that bore the Fate went slowly on, 50 And as it went was heard to sigh and groan. At last the raging Plague did Athens seize, The Plague, and Death attending the Disease Then Men did die by Heaps, by Heaps did fall, And the whole City made one Funeral. 55 First, fierce unusual heats did seize the Head,13 The glowing Eyes with blood-shot Beams look’d red, Like blazing Stars approaching Fate foreshow’d; The Mouth and Jaws were fill’d with clotted Blood, The Throat with Ulcers, the Tongue could speak no more, 60 But overflow’d and drown’d in putrid Gore, Grew useless, rough, and scarce could make a Moan, And scarce enjoy’d the wretched power to groan. Next thro the Jaws the Plague did reach the Breast, And there the Heart, the Seat of Life, possest; 65 Then Life began to fail, strange Stinks did come From every putrid Breast, as from a Tomb; A sad presage that Death prepar’d the Room: The Body weak, the Mind did sadly wait, And fear’d, but could not fly approaching Fate. 70 To these fierce pains were joyn’d continual Care, 12 The fever is hotter than its source, illustrating the increasing virulence of this progressive disease. 13 A synoptic description of plague symptoms in Thucydides: The symptoms affect the head and then move down and out through the body: first, the head burns with heat; swelling in the eyes; tongue and throat hot and swollen with blood; fetid breath (49: 2); hoarseness and violent coughing and sneezing; uncontrolled retching and vomiting of bile (49: 3); retching and convulsions (49: 4); skin ulcers, restlessness, compulsive and unquenchable thirst with desire for immersion to relieve the body of intolerable heat (49: 5); complete physical exhaustion (49: 6); toes, fingers, and genitalia rupture away from the ligaments and bones, accompanied by loss of memory (49: 8). See J. S. Rusten, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Book II (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 179-186; see also R. R. Mitchell-Boyask, Plague and the Athenian Imagination, 75. In Lucretius: Heat in the head with bloodshot eyes (4: 1145–6); throat swollen and bleeding, making speech impossible (4: 1148); Affects the heart and stomach, bringing the victim very close to death (4: 1151); fetid breath (4: 1154–5); loss of consciousness and loss of physical control (4: 1156–7); intolerable anxiety (4: 1158); retching and cramping (4: 1161–2); fever throughout the body (4: 1164–5); internal organs burn with heat (4: 1169–70); insatiable thirst (4: 1171–9). See Rouse, trans. Lucretius, 526.

“The Plague of Athens, from the Latin of Lucretius”

And sad Complainings, Groans, and deep Despair; Tormenting, vexing Sobs, and deadly Sighs, Which rais’d Convulsions, broke the vital Ties Of Mind and Limbs, and so the Patient dies. 75 Yet touch the Limbs, the warmth appear’d not great, It seem’d but little more than natural heat; The Body red with Ulcers, swoln with Pains, As when the sacred Fire spreads o’re the Veins; But all within was Fire, fierce flames did burn, 80 No Cloaths could be endur’d, no Garments worn; But all (as if the Plague, that fir’d their Blood, Destroy’d all Virtue, Modesty, and Good,) Lay naked, wishing still for cooling Air, Or ran to Springs, and hop’d to find it there: 85 And some leapt into Wells, in vain; the Heat Or still increas’d, or still remain’d as great. In vain they drank, for when the Water came To th’ burning Breast, it hiss’d before the Flame; And thro each Mouth did streams of Vapours rise, 90 Like Clouds, and darkn’d all the ambient Skies; The Pains continual, and the Body dead, And senseless all, before the Soul was fled; Physicians came, and saw, and shook their Head: No Sleep, the pain’d and wearied Mens Delight; 95 The fiery Eyes, like Stars, wak’d all the night. Besides, a thousand Symptoms more did wait, And told sad News of coming hasty Fate. Distracted Mind, and sad and furious Eyes, Short Breath, or constant, deep and hollow Sighs; 100 And buzzing Ears, and much and frothy Sweat Spread o’er the Neck; and Spittle thin with heat, But salt and yellow, and the Jaws being rough, Could hardly be thrown up with violent Cough. The Nerves contracted, strength in Hands did fail, 105 And Cold crept from the Feet and spread o’er all. And when Death came at last, it chang’d the Nose, And made it sharp, and prest the Nostrils close; Hollow’d the Temples, forc’d the Eye-balls in, And chill’d, and hardn’d all, and stretch’d the Skin. 110 They lay not long, but soon did Life resign, The Warning was but short, eight Days, or nine. If any liv’d, and scap’d the fatal Day, And if their Loosness purg’d the Plague away, Or Ulcers drain’d, yet they would soon decay;

scap’d, i.e., escaped

135

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115 Their Weakness kill’d them; or their Poison’d Blood, And Strength, with horrid Pains thro Nostrils flow’d. But those that felt no Flux, the strong Disease Members, i.e., genitalia Did oft descend and wretched Members seize; And there it rag’d with cruel Pains and Smart, 120 Too weak to kill the Whole, it took a Part. Some lost their Eyes, and some prolong’d their Breath By loss of Hand; so strong the Fear of Death. The Minds of some did dark Oblivion blot, And they their Actions, and themselves forgot. 125 And tho’ the scatter’d Bodies naked lay, Yet Beasts refus’d, the Birds fled all away, And us’d their Wings to shun their easy Prey, They fled the Stench; whom Tyrant hunger prest, And forc’d to tast, he prov’d a wretched Guest, 130 The Price was Life, it was a costly Feast. Few Birds appear’d, no wing could serve for Flight; The Beasts scarce dar’d to trust themselves to Night; The Plague walk’d thro the Woods, in every Den They lay and sigh’d, and groan’d, and dy’d like Men. 135 The faithful Dogs did lie in every Street, And dy’d at their expiring Master’s Feet. Disorder’d Funerals were hurried on, No decent Mourners, and no friendly Groan:14 Neglecting others Fates all wept their own. 140 No common Remedy did Health impart private, i.e., individualistic To all, Physick15 was grown a private Art: For that which gave to one fresh Vigour, Ease, And Health, and Strength, and conquer’d the Disease, E’en the same Thing, with equal Art apply’d. 145 Another took, and by the Physick dy’d. All the Infected lay in deep Despair, Expecting coming Death with constant Fear; Pale Ghosts did walk before their Eyes, and fright, No dawning Hopes broke thro their dismal Night, 150 No thoughts of Help. This was a grievous Ill, This sharpn’d the Plague’s rage; these Fears did kill.16 Besides, the fierce Infection quickly spread, 14 No decent Mourners For a variant image in a contemporary report of plague, see Bradley, note 6; APH 3: 618–19. See also lines 164, 192–6, below. 15 Physick, i.e., the practice of medicine (from physica, Latin “natural science”). 16 On the traditional medical understanding of fear as a cause of death, see General Introduction, note 146.

“The Plague of Athens, from the Latin of Lucretius”

When one poor Wretch was fall’n, to others fled; One kill’d, the Murderer did cast his Eye 155 Around, and if he saw a Witness by, Seiz’d him for fear of a Discovery. Those Wretches too, that greedy to live on, Or fled, or left infected Friends alone, Straight felt their Punishment, and quickly found 160 No Flight could save, no place secure from Wound; A strong Infection all their Walk attends, They fall as much neglected as their Friends; Like rotten Sheep they die in wretched State, And none to pity, or to mourn their Fate. 165 Those whom their Friends Complaints, and piteous Cries Did force to come, and see their Miseries, Receiv’d the fatal and infectious Breath, An innocent Murderer He that gave ‘em Death. This kind of Death was best; so Men did choose, 170 (A wretched Choice) this way their Life to lose! Some rais’d their Friends a Pile,17 that Office done, Return’d, and griev’d, and then prepar’d their own: A treble Mischief this, and no Relief, Not one but suffer’d Death, Disease, or Grief. 175 The Sheperd midst his Flocks resign’d his Breath, Th’ infected Plowman burnt, and starv’d to Death; By Plague and Famine18 both the Deed was done, The Plowman was too strong to yield to one. Here dying Parents on their Children cast, 180 There Children on their Parents breath’d their last. Th’ infected Plowman from the Country came, He came, and brought with him additional Flame. Men flockt from every part, all places fill’d; Where th’ Croud was great, by Heaps the Sickness kill’d. 185 Some in the Streets, some near the Fountains lay, Which quench’d their Flame, but washt their Souls away: And some in publick, half alive, half dead, With filthy Coverings o’er their Members spread, Did lie and rot; the Skin, the poor Remains 190 Of all the Flesh, the starting Bones contains, All cover’d o’er with Ulcers, vex’d with Pains. Death now had fill’d the Temples of the Gods, The Priests themselves, no Beasts no Altar loads, i.e., a funereal pyre, or wooden pile on which the corpse is consumed by fire. i.e., a self-perpetuating famine, caused by the deaths of farmers.

17 18

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Now no Religion, now no Gods were fear’d, 195 Greater than All the Present Plague appear’d All Laws of Burial lost, and all confus’d, No solemn Rites, no decent Order us’d; But as the State of Things, would then permit, Men burnt their Friends, nor look’d on just, and fit: 200 And Want and Poverty did oft ingage A thousand Acts of Violence, and Rage. imperious Want commanding losses Some (O imperious Want!)19 a carcass spoil, And burn their Friend upon another’s Pile; And then would strive, and fight, and still defend, 205 And often rather die, than leave their Friend; The other lost his Pile by pious Theft, A poor Possession, all that Fate had left.

O imperious Want!, i.e., see what such losses would command one to do!

19

[Anne Finch,] “A Nocturnal Reverie,” 1713 This poem appears in Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions. Written by a Lady. London: J. Barber, 1713. 291–3. Five octavo impressions in 1713; 2nd edn, octavo, in 1714. See Foxon, 274–5.

A Nocturnal Reverie. In such a night, when every louder Wind Is to its distant Cavern safe confin’d; And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;

Zephyr mild west-wind Philomel nightingale

 Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661–1720) is often described as the greatest woman poet of the century. Until her poems became prominent through their inclusion in anthologies edited by her friends, she tried to avoid scandal by circulating her verse only in manuscript—illustrating a lingering aristocratic reluctance to be recognized as a published female author. During the 1680s, Finch had complained that male readers could not be bothered to pay attend to women poets, but by 1713 her admirers included the most important poets and critics of the time, including Alexander Pope (whose first published poems appeared with hers), Matthew Prior, Nicholas Rowe, Richard Steele (who praised her in The Tatler), and Jonathan Swift. Her bookseller provided a prefatory note to her Miscellany Poems to describe the admiration her most familiar poem, “The Spleen,” had received among fashionable London society. Her poems were reprinted regularly through the first half of the eighteenth century, particularly “The Spleen” and “A Nocturnal Reverie”; Finch was a highly versatile poet whose verse included satires, fables, meditations on religion, on love and on nature, formal pastorals and odes, and plays. Apart from William Wordsworth’s notable praise of “A Nocturnal Reverie,” her poems were largely overlooked until the late twentieth century. See W. Wordsworth, Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. W. Owen and J. Smyther, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1974) 73; Oxford DNB. Jennifer Keith’s critical edition of Finch’s collected poems is forthcoming; for a learned introduction, see P. B. Backscheider, “Anne Finch and What Women Wrote,” Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005) 28–79. In Virgil’s Aeneid (1: 71–5) the wind-god Aeolus confined the winds to an underground prison. In Dryden, see The Works of John Dryden, ed. V. A. Dearing et al. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1987), vol. 5, 345.  Philomel In Ovid, Philomela killed her son in a fit of madness, and was changed into a nightingale (see Metamorphoses 6: 424–674); in Sophocles’ lost play Tereus, Philomela’s violence was precipitated by her seduction by the king Tereus, who had abducted her sister Procne and cut out her tongue to silence her. The gods transformed Procne into a swallow (who can only scream); Tereus into a hoopoe who pursues her; and Philomela into a nightingale, who mourns eternally for the death of her son. On Philomel’s loneliness, see also Shakespeare, Son.102; Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.2.13–9). Note the contrastingly simple Owl in the next line.

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5 Or from some Tree, famed for the Owl’s delight, She, hollowing clear, directs the Wand’rer right: In such a Night, when passing Clouds give place, Or thinly veil the Heav’ns mysterious Face; When in some River overhung with Green, 10 The waving Moon and trembling Leaves are seen; When freshen’d Grass now bears itself upright, And makes cool Banks to pleasing Rest invite, Whence springs the Woodbind and the Bramble-Rose, And where the sleepy Cowslip shelter’d grows; 15 Whilst now a paler Hue the Foxglove takes, Yet checquers still with Red the dusky brakes: When scatter’d Glow-worms, but in twilight fine, Shew trivial Beauties, watch their Hour to shine; Whilst Salisb’ry stands the Test of every Light, 20 In perfect Charms and perfect Virtue bright: When Odours, which declin’d repelling Day, Thro’ temperate Air uninterrupted stray; When darken’d Groves their softest Shadows wear, And falling Waters we distinctly hear; 25 When thro’ the Gloom more venerable shows Some ancient Fabrick, awful in Repose, While Sunburnt Hills their swarthy Looks conceal, And swelling Haycocks thicken up the Vale: When the loos’d Horse now, as his Pasture leads, 30 Comes slowly gazing thro’ th’ adjoining Meads, Whose stealing Pace and lengthen’d Shade we fear, Till torn-up Forage in his Teeth we hear: When nibbling Sheep at large pursue their Food, And unmolested Kine rechew the Cud;

give place yield space

invite allure

dusky gloomy brakes ferns trivial superficial watch await

venerable venerably Fabrick building awful inspiring awe Haycocks cone-shaped heap of hay Meads meadows Shade shadow Forage food for horses Kine cows

Note that Finch uses the colon as a conceptual as well as grammatical full-stop. Common British plants that flower in the spring and summer: Woodbind Climbing

 

plant, typically honeysuckle, with fragrant pale yellow blossoms; Bramble-Rose White or red flowering plant; Cowslip Wild plant producing yellow blossoms, common in pastures and grassy banks; Foxglove Ornamental plant with finger-like flowers that range from purple, pink, and white.  Anne Tufton, Countess of Salisbury (d. 22 April 1750), the poet’s close friend; see B. McGovern, Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1992) 82; Burke’s Peerage (2003) 1: 1065.

“A Nocturnal Reverie”

35 When Curlews cry beneath the Village-walls, And to her straggling Brood the Partridge calls; Their short-liv’d Jubilee the Creatures keep, Which but endures whilst Tyrant-Man do’s sleep: When a sedate Content the Spirit feels, 40 And no fierce Light disturbs, whilst it reveals; But silent Musings urge the Mind to seek Something, too high for Syllables to speak; Till the free Soul to a compos’dness charm’d, Finding the Elements of Rage disarm’d, 45 O’er all below a solemn Quiet grown, Joys in th’inferiour World and thinks it like her Own: In such a Night let Me abroad remain, Till morning breaks, and All’s confus’d again; Our Cares, our Toils, our Clamours are renew’d, 50 Or Pleasures, seldom reach’d, again pursu’d.

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Jubilee time of freedom, release do’s does

Rage vehemence her Own, i.e., the poet’s Soul abroad outdoors, unconfined

Curlew Long-billed wading bird, frequently seen along coastlines; more common inland during summer.  Tyrant-Man This term is notable for its appearance in Nicholas Rowe’s famous domestic tragedy, The Fair Penitent (1702) where it is used synonymously with “TyrantHusband,” a play that Finch would have known. See E. Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry, 3rd edn (London: S. Buckley, 1708) 312. 

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James Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” 1748 This poem appears in A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, ed. R. Dodsley (London: J. Dodsley, 1748) vol. 3. 322–4.

Hymn on Solitude. Hail, ever-pleasing Solitude! Companion of the wise, and good! But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools, and villains fly. Oh! how I love with thee to walk! 5 And listen to thy whisper’d talk; Which innocence, and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in every shape you please; 10 Now wrapt in some mysterious dream, A lone Philosopher you seem; Now quick from hill to vale you fly, And now you sweep the vaulted sky, And Nature triumphs in your eye: 15 Then strait again you court the shade, And pining, hang the pensive head. A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,

vaulted, i.e., concave-shaped

 James Thomson (1700–48); see biographical note to Preface to Winter (1726). The earliest known version of this poem appeared in a letter that Thomson sent to his lifelong friend, David Mallet (c.1701–65), on 10 July 1725: “I shall give you a few loose lines I compos’d in my last evening walk they may be once worth the reading but no more.” See A. D. McKillop, ed., James Thomson (1700–1748), Letters and Documents (Lawrence, KS: U of Kansas P, 1958) 9-12. It was printed in a poetical miscellany in 1729 and again in 1743, as well as in an edition of the Seasons in 1730 and in pamphlets that were released in 1730–31. For the full publication history, see J. Sambrook, ed. Liberty, The Castle of Indolence, and Other Poems (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1986) 409–10. The version in Robert Dodsley’s widely influential A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748) is the final version that appeared in Thomson’s lifetime; see vol. 3, 2–4. On the Collection, see M. F. Suarez, “The Formation, Transmission, and Reception of Robert Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands” in A Collection, 1782, rpt. (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1997) 1–119.

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And warble forth your oaten strain. 20 A lover now, with all the grace Of that sweet passion in your face! Then, soft-divided, you assume The gentle-looking Hertford’s bloom, As, with her Philomela, she, 25 (Her Philomela fond of thee) Amid the long withdrawing vale, Awakes the rival’d Nightingale. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in every shape you please. 30 Thine is th’ unbounded breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born; And while meridian fervors beat, Thine is the woodland’s dumb retreat; But chief, when evening scenes decay, 35 And the faint landskip swims away, Thine is the doubtful dear decline, And that best hour of musing thine. Descending angels bless thy train, The Virtues of the sage, and swain; 40 Plain Innocence in white array’d, And Contemplation rears the head; Religion, with her awful brow, And rapt Urania waits on you.

strain song

soft-divided, i.e., yielding into parts

meridian midday fervors fevers

landskip landscape doubtful obscure dear precious decline setting (i.e., at sunset) train successive shapes swain shepherd

awful awe-inspiring

Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell! 45 And in thy deep recesses dwell; For ever in they raptures fir’d, oaten strain Traditional depictions of shepherds in pastoral and georgic poems depict them making music from a pipe or flute fashioned from oat-straw.  These are compliments to Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford (1699–1754) and her friend, the widely respected poet Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737); see Oxford DNB. Thomson provided a revised version of the poem to Lady Hertford, which she transcribed into her commonplace book, while he was visiting as her guest at Marlborough Castle during the summer of 1727. It was Rowe who had introduced Thomson’s poetry to Hertford, who would become a valuable patron. See Sambrook, ed., Liberty 409; James Thomson, 1700–1748: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991) 59-64.  See Finch, line 4.  Urania One of the muses, goddesses of intellectual pursuits. Urania is one of the names for Aphrodite, distinguishing her love as “heavenly” (distinct from the vulgar or corporeal). 

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For ever from the world retir’d; Nor by a mortal seen, save he A Lycidas, or Lycon be.

Lycidas, or Lycon Lycidas is a commonplace name in classical literature, made famous by Milton’s great pastoral elegy, Lycidas (1637), on the death of his “learned friend,” Edward King (1612–37). Lycon may refer to the prudent and wise friend who judges a poetical competition between two shepherds, only to conclude that their mutual affection is more important than competing for their objects of desire: see “Lycon. Eclogue,” Fifth Part of Miscellany Poems … Publish’d by John Dryden (London: J. Tonson, 1716) 140–41. The letter to Mallet (1725) has “A Mallet or a Murdoch be”; like Mallet, Patrick Murdoch (c. 1705–1774) was one of Thomson’s closest friends. See M. J. W. Scott, James Thomson, Anglo-Scot (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1988) 108, 243. 

Fig. 4 Thomson, James. Winter. A Poem. 2nd edn. London: J. Millan, 1726. Title-page.

James Thomson, “Preface,” Winter. A Poem, 1726 –Horrida Cano Bruma Gelu– “The sharp blast of winter’s frost.” The second edition of Winter was printed in July 1726, and sold by John Millan at one shilling, three months after the first edition; two more editions followed that same year, all in octavo. Four more editions appeared before 1730, from which date The Seasons was printed at least fourteen times before 1750. It was probably the most frequently printed poem of the eighteenth century. This Preface appears on pages 9–19.

The Preface. I am neither ignorant, nor concern’d [made uneasy by], how much One may suffer in the Opinion of several Persons of great Gravity, and Character, by the Study, and Pursuit, of Poetry. Altho’ there may seem to be some Appearance of Reason for the present Contempt of it, as managed by the most part of our modern Writers, yet that any Man should, seriously, declare against that Divine Art is, really, amazing. It is 

James Thomson (1700–48), dramatist and poet, was born in the Scottish Borders and settled in London in 1725, after completing a short course of study at Edinburgh. Already at the centre of a talented circle of London-based Scottish poets, Thomson published Winter, the first of his descriptive poem The Seasons, in 1726. Over the next 15 years Thomson revised and extended The Seasons, and its expanding installments enjoyed immense popularity. The Seasons set a new standard and pan-European vogue for meditative landscape poetry. One of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century, it has attracted readers, fellow-poets, and scholars ever since. The Prince of Wales granted Thomson a generous annual pension in 1737. The critical edition of his poetry appears in two volumes: James Thomson: The Seasons, ed. J. Sambrook (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981); J. Thomson, Liberty; The Castle of Indolence, and Other Poems, ed. J. Sambrook (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986). Thomson was a close friend of John Armstrong and had incorporated Armstrong’s verses into his Castle of Indolence (1748). Upon hearing that his friend had developed a dangerous fever following an outing in Richmond, Armstrong tried but was unable to reach Thomson on his deathbed. Letters between Armstrong and Thomson survive; most remain in manuscript. See Oxford DNB. See Virgil, Georgics 3: 442–3; in Dryden, Georgics 3: 674–5 (231). This is one of the initial images in an arresting section of Virgil’s Georgics, where the poet depicts diseases in sheep, heralded by the shocking arrival of the frigid winter.  See Foxon, 797–800.  See note 5, below. Poets were associated with playwriting through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century, and the current controversy referred to poems intended and not intended for the stage.

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declaring against the most charming Power of Imagination, the most exalting Force of Thought, the most affecting Touch of Sentiment; in a Word, against the very Soul of all Learning, and Politeness. It is affronting the universal Taste of Mankind, and declaring against what has charmed the listening World from Moses down to Milton. In fine, it is, declaring against the sublimest Passages of the inspired Writings themselves, and what seems to be the peculiar Language of Heaven. The Truth of the Case is this: These weak-sighted Gentlemen cannot bear the strong Light of Poetry, and the finer, and more amusing, Scene of Things it displays; but must Those, therefore, whom Heaven has blessed with the discerning Eye shut it, to keep them Company. It is pleasant enough, however, to observe, frequently, in these Enemies of Poetry, an aukward Imitation of it. They sometimes, have their little Brightnesses, when the Opening [of their] Glooms [clouded vision] will permit. Nay, I have seen their Heaviness, on some Occasions, deign [permit] to turn friskish [lively], and witty, in which they make just such another Figure as Aesop’s Ass, when he began to fawn. To Compleat the Absurdity They would, even, in their Efforts against Poetry, fain be poetical; like those Gentlemen that reason with a great deal of Zeal, and Severity, against Reason. That there are frequent, and notorious, Abuses of Poetry is as true as that the best Things are most liable to that Misfortune; but is there no End of that clamorous Argument against the Use of Things from the Abuse of them? And yet, I hope, that no Man, who has the least Sense of Shame in Him, will fall into it after the present, sulphurous, Attacker of the Stage. To insist no further on this Head, let Poetry, once more, be restored to her antient Truth, and Purity; let Her be inspired from Heaven, and, in Return, her Incense ascend thither; let Her exchange Her low, venal, trifling, Subjects for such as are fair, useful, and magnificent; and, let Her execute these so as, at once, to please, instruct, surprise, and astonish: and then, of Necessity, the most inveterate Ignorance, and Prejudice, shall be struck Dumb; and Poets, yet, may become the Delight and Wonder, of Mankind. ....  In Aesop’s fable “The Donkey and the Lapdog,” the laboring donkey grows jealous of the pampered lapdog, breaks free of its halter, violently jumps onto his master and tries to lick his face, fawning like the lapdog. The donkey is then beaten and forced back into his stall. See Aesop’s Fables, trans. L. Gibbs (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002) 338.  See William Law, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the English Stage (London: W. and J. Innys, 1726). Two editions of this pamphlet appeared in 1726, renewing the controversy famously initiated a generation earlier by Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698). Paul Goring has counted more than 80 publications that contributed to the controversy during the intervening years; see The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) 116. See also R. Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, 1698–1726 (New York: Blom, 1937) 300–307.

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Nothing can have a better Influence towards a Revival of Poetry than the chusing of great, and serious, Subjects; such as, at once, amuse the Fancy, enlighten the Head, and warm the Heart. These give a Weight, and Dignity, to the Poem: Nor is the Pleasure, I should say Rapture, both the Writer, and the Reader, feels, unwarranted by Reason, or followed by repentant Disgust. To be able to write on a dry, barren, Theme, is looked upon, by some, as a Sign of a happy, fruitful, Genius—fruitful indeed;—like one of the pendant Gardens in Cheapside, water’d every Morning, by the Hand of the Alderman, Himself. And what are we commonly entertain’d with, on these Ocassions, have forced, unaffecting, Fancies; little, glittering Prettinesses; mixed Turns of Wit, and Expression; which are as widely different from Native POETRY, as Buffoonery is from the Perfection of human Thinking? A Genius fired with the Charms of Truth, and Nature, is turned to a sublimer Pitch, and scorns to associate with such Subjects. I cannot more emphatically recommend this Poetical Ambition than by the four Lines from Mr. Hill’s Poem, called The Judgement Day, which is so singular an Instance of it. For Me, suffice it to have taught my Muse, The tuneful Triflings of her Tribe to shun; And raid’s her Warmth such Heavenly Themes to chuse, As, in past Ages, her best Garlands won.

By the 1720s London’s ancient Cheapside market was lined with the shops of skilled tradesmen, many of them adorned with hanging baskets of flowers (“pendant gardens”). Apprentices who had successfully completed a seven-year apprenticeship would be permitted to practice their trade by the guilds’ representative Council of Aldermen; these aldermen held a measure of commercial and legal power—for it was this Council that elected the Lord Mayor of London. Thomson is commenting sarcastically on these aldermen’s “fruitful” powers of watering their own potted plants. The comment is especially resonant since it appears in the preface to a poem that celebrates the country’s mutable rural landscape. See R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747) 302–308.  Aaron Hill (1685–1750), poet, dramatist, business entrepreneur, at the centre of an important circle of London-based writers during the 1720s. This group included John Dyer, Joseph Mitchell, Thomson, and Edward Young; Hill contributed a congratulatory poem for the Preface of Winter, appearing in all three editions of 1726, following Thomson’s preface. See D. Brewster, Aaron Hill: Poet, Dramatist, Projector (New York: Columbia UP, 1913); M. J. W. Scott, James Thomson, Anglo-Scot (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1988); S. Jung, David Mallet: Anglo-Scot (Newark, NJ: U of Delaware P, 2008). Hill’s The Judgement-Day, A Poem was first published in 1721, with a Preface that anticipates many of the arguments posed here by Thomson; its title-page advertised concurrent sales of Mitchell’s Ode on the Power of Musick (1721). Hill’s poem was reprinted in various editions of his work, which appeared before his death.  See The Judgement-Day, A Poem (London: T. Jauncy, 1721) 14. 

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I know no Subject more elevating, more amusing; more ready to awake the poetical Enthusiasm, the philosophical Reflection, and the moral Sentiment, than the Works of Nature. Where can we meet with such Variety, such Beauty, such Magnificence? All that enlarges, and transports, the Soul? What more inspiring than a calm, wise, Survey of Them? In every Dress Nature is greatly charming! whether she puts on the Crimson Robes of the Morning! the strong Effulgence of Noon! the sober Suit of the Evening! or the deep Sables of Blackness, and Tempest! how gay looks the Spring! how glorious the Summer! how pleasing the Autumn! and how venerable the Winter!—But there is not thinking of these Things without breaking out into Poetry; which is, by the bye, a plain, and undeniable, Argument of their superior Excellence.10 For this Reason the best, both Antient, and Modern, Poetry have been passionately fond of Retirement, and Solitude. The wild romantic Country was their Delight. And they seem never to have been more happy, than when lost in unfrequented Fields, far from the little, busy, World, they were at Leisure, to meditate, and sing the Works of Nature. The Book of Job, that noble, and antient, Poem, which, even, strikes, so forcibly thro’ a mangling Translation, is crowned with a Description of the grand Works of Nature; and that, too, from the Mouth of their Almighty Author. It was this Devotion to the Works of Nature that, in his Georgicks, inspired the rural Virgil to write so inimitably;11 and who can forbear joining with him in this Declaration of his, which has been the Rapture of Ages. Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, Quarum Sacra fero ingenti percussus Amore, Accipiant; Caelique Vias et Sidera monstrent, Defectus solis varios, Lunaeque labores: Unde tremor Terris: qua vi Maria alta tumescant Obicibus ruptis, rursusque in se ipsa residant: Quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles Hyberni: vel quae tardis Mora Noctibus obstat. Sin, has ne possim Naturae accedere Partis, Frigidus obstiterit circum Praecordia sanguis; Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes Flumina amem silvasque inglorius.---12 Which may be Englished thus. First, above all sweet, may the Muses me, Whose Priest I am, smit with immense Desire, Snatch to their Care; the Starry Tracts disclose,  Timothy Fulford has noted that specific passages in this Preface are indebted to John Dennis’s The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (London: Rich, Parker, 1701; 2nd edn, 1728). See “The Causes of Poetical Enthusiasm, Shewn by Examples” 34–6. 10 See Dennis, Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry 9. 11 See prefatory note to Addison. 12 See Georgics 2: 475–86.

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The Sun’s Distress, the Labours of the Moon: Whence the Earth quakes: and by what Force the Deeps Heave at the Rocks, then on Themselves reflow: Why Winter-Suns to plunge in Ocean speed: And what retards the lazy Summer-Night. But, least I should these mystic-Truths attain, If the cold Current freezes round my Heart, The Country Me, the brooky Vales may please Mid Woods, and Streams, unknown---13

..... I only wish my Description of the various Appearance of Nature in Winter, and, as I purpose, in the other Seasons, may have the good Fortune, to give the Reader some of that true Pleasure, which They, in their agreeable Succession, are, always, sure to inspire into my Heart.

This is likely Thomson’s own translation.

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Edward Young, “Night the First,” 1742 Sunt lacymae rerum, & mentem mortalia tangunt. Virg. “These tears are for mortal things and battles that touch the soul!” Thirty-eight separate impressions of the expanding poem appeared, usually in quarto, between 1742 and 1744. Priced at one shilling. This poem was included in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. London: R. Dodsley (1742).

The COMPLAINT. NIGHT the First. Tir’d nature’s sweet Restorer, balmy Sleep!

He, like the World, his ready visit pays, Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;

ready eager

 Edward Young (c.1683–1765), dramatist, satirist, critic, clergyman, and the only poet whose activity and popularity spanned the reigns of Anne (he was a friend of Addison, Pope, and Swift) to George III (he was close to the novelist Samuel Richardson and bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu). Following a moderately successful career as a playwright and satirist, and shortly after suffering three family deaths within just a few weeks, Young published his Night Thoughts in installments (1742–46); the poem reached nearly 10,000 lines. The poem was reprinted over one hundred times during the next 50 years, and was widely translated. It was one of the most popular European poems of the eighteenth century, and remained in print well into the nineteenth, admired by the Romantic poets as well as by Young’s contemporaries. In 1857, the novelist and critic George Eliot argued that Night Thoughts provides evidence of its author’s “radical insincerity as a poetic artist,” given its highly rhetorical treatment of deeply emotional and psychological topics. Eliot’s observations became a standard interpretation, and led to the poem’s subsequent neglect— along with a wider nineteenth-century dismissal of sentimental poems and novels written in the first person, a vogue that Night Thoughts had pioneered and whose popularity held for generations of readers. See Oxford DNB; G. Eliot, “Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young,” 1857, The Essays of George Eliot, ed. T. Pinney (London: Routledge, 1963) 366. For detailed annotations and commentary, including textual and editorial history, see S. Cornford, ed., Edward Young: Night Thoughts (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). See Virgil, Aeneid 1: 462; in Dryden, Aeneid 1: 511–13 (360). In tears, Aeneas says these words to his mother (who is in disguise) while gazing at a mural that depicts the bloody battles of the Trojan war, from which he has survived.  See D. Foxon, English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1973) 911-4.  Complaint A lament expressing sadness and suffering rather than dissatisfaction.

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Swift on his downy pinion flies from Woe, 5 And lights on Lids unsully’d with a tear. From short, (as usual) and disturb’d Repose I wake: How happy they who wake no more! Yet that were vain, if Dreams infest the Grave. I wake, emerging from a sea of Dreams 10 Tumultuous; where my wreck’d desponding Thought, From wave to wave of fancy’d Misery, At random drove, her helm of Reason lost; Tho’ now restor’d, ’tis only Change of pain, A bitter change; severer for severe: 15 The Day too short for my Distress! and Night, Even in the Zenith of her dark Domain, Is Sun-shine, to the colour of my Fate. Night, sable Goddess! from her Ebon throne, In rayless Majesty, now stretches forth 20 Her leaden Scepter o’er a slumbering world: Silence, how dead? and darkness, how profound? Nor Eye, nor list’ning Ear, an object finds; Creation sleeps. ’Tis as the general Pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a Pause; 25 An aweful pause! prophetic of her End. And let her prophecy be soon fulfill’d: Fate! drop the Curtain; I can lose no more. Silence, and Darkness! solemn Sisters! Twins From antient Night, who nurse the tender Thought 30 To Reason; and on reason build Resolve, (That column of true Majesty in man!) Assist me: I will thank you in the Grave; The grave your Kingdom: There this frame shall fall A victim sacred to your dreary shrine: 35 But what are Ye? Thou, who didst put to flight Primeval Silence, when the Morning Stars Exulting, shouted o’er the rising Ball; O thou! whose Word from solid Darkness struck That spark, the Sun; strike Wisdom from my soul; 40 My soul, which flies to thee, her Trust, her Treasure; As misers to their Gold, while others rest. Thro’ this Opaque of Nature and of Woe, This double Night, transmit one pitying ray, To lighten and to chear: O lead my Mind, 45 (A Mind that fain would wander from its Woe,) Lead it thro’ various scenes of Life and Death, And from each scene, the noblest Truths inspire:

pinion a bird’s primary flight-feathers lights lands, dismounts

Ebon ebony

frame body

Ball, i.e., sun

fain gladly

“Night the First”

Nor less inspire my Conduct than my Song; Teach my best Reason, Reason; my best Will 50 Teach Rectitude; and fix my firm Resolve Wisdom to wed, and pay her long Arrear. Nor let the vial of thy Vengeance, pour’d On this devoted head, be pour’d in vain. The Bell strikes One. We take no note of Time 55 But from its Loss. To give it then a Tongue, Is wise in man. As if an Angel spoke, I feel the solemn Sound. If heard aright, It is the Knell of my departed Hours. Where are they? With the years beyond the Flood; 60 It is the Signal that demands Dispatch; How Much is to be done! My Hopes and Fears Start up alarm’d, and o’er life’s narrow Verge Look down----on what? a fathomless Abyss; A dread Eternity! how surely mine ! 65 And can Eternity belong to me, Poor Pensioner on the mercies of an Hour? How poor? how rich? how abject? how august? How complicat? how wonderful is Man? How passing wonder He, who made him such? 70 Who centred in our make such strange Extremes? From different Natures marvellously mixt, Connection exquisite of distant Worlds! Distinguisht Link in Being’s endless Chain! Midway from Nothing to the Deity! 75 A Beam ethereal sully’d, and absorbt! Though sully’d, and dishonour’d, still Divine! Dim Miniature of Greatness absolute! An Heir of Glory! a frail Child of Dust! Helpless Immortal! Insect infinite ! 80 A Worm! a God! I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost! At home a Stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surpris’d, amaz’d, And wond’ring at her own: How Reason reels? O what a Miracle to man is man,

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devoted doomed

aright correctly

complicat complicated; complex make makeup, constitution

Flood, i.e., the first redemption and cleansing of sin from the world. See Genesis 6: 11–8: 14.  Chain, i.e., the great chain of being, on which every living creature occupies a place according to its power of dominion as defined by God’s creation. In the next line Young suggests, conventionally, mankind’s middle place on that chain. See Cheyne, note 27.  Heir see Romans 8: 17; Child of Dust see Genesis 3: 19. 

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85 Triumphantly distresst? what Joy, what Dread? Alternately transported, and alarm’d! What can preserve my Life? or what destroy? An Angel’s arm can’t snatch me from the Grave: Legions of Angels can’t confine me There. 90 ’Tis past Conjecture; all things rise in Proof: While o’er my limbs Sleep’s soft dominion spread, What, tho’ my soul phantastic Measures trod O’er Fairy Fields; or mourn’d along the gloom Of pathless Woods; or down the craggy Steep 95 Hurl’d headlong, swam with pain the mantled Pool; Or scaled the Cliff; or danced on hollow Winds, With antic Shapes, wild Natives of the Brain? Her ceaseless Flight, tho’ devious, speaks her Nature, Of subtler Essence than the trodden Clod; 100 Active, aerial, tow’ring, unconfin’d, Unfetter’d with her gross Companion’s fall. E’en silent Night proclaims my soul immortal: E’en silent Night proclaims eternal Day: For human weal, Heaven husbands all events; 105 Dull Sleep instructs, nor sport vain Dreams in vain. Why then their Loss deplore, that are not lost? Why wanders wretched Thought their tombs around In infidel distress? Are Angels there? Slumbers, rak’d up in dust, Ethereal fire? 110 They live! they greatly live a life on earth Unkindled, unconceiv’d; and from an eye Of Tenderness, let heav’nly pity fall, On me, more justly number’d with the Dead: This is the Desert, this the Solitude; 115 How populous? how vital, is the Grave? This is Creation’s melancholy Vault, The Vale funereal, the sad Cypress gloom; The land of Apparitions, empty Shades: All, all on earth is Shadow, all beyond

Measures dance-steps

mantled shrouded antic ancient Clod, i.e., soil gross physical

weal happiness

vital alive Vale funereal dismal valley Shades ghostly shadows

 The cypress tree has been associated with death and immortality since the Greeks; it was sacred to Hades, god of the underworld. “The dark evergreen leaves symbolize solemnity, longevity, resurrection, and immortality; its sticky resin symbolizes incorruptibility; when cut down, it will never again spring up from its roots, symbolizing the finality of death”; it remained a typical feature of eighteenth-century cemeteries. See D. Keister, Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2004) 60.  Shades see also Warton, note 10.

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120 Is Substance; the reverse is Folly’s creed: How solid all, where Change shall be no more? This is the bud of Being, the dim Dawn, The twilight of our Day, the Vestibule, Life’s Theater as yet is shut, and Death, 125 Strong Death, alone can heave the massy Bar, This gross impediment of Clay remove, And make us Embryos of Existence free. From real life, but little more remote Is He, not yet a candidate for Light, 130 The future Embryo, slumb’ring in his Sire.10 Embryos we must be, till we burst the Shell, Yon ambient, azure shell, and spring to Life, The life of Gods: O Transport! and of Man. Yet man, fool man! here burys all his Thoughts; 135 Inters celestial Hopes without one Sigh: pent contained Prisoner of Earth, and pent beneath the Moon, pinions is shackled, tied up Here pinions11 all his Wishes; wing’d by Heaven To fly at Infinite; and reach it there, Where Seraphs gather Immortality, 140 On life’s fair Tree,12 fast by the throne of God: What golden Joys ambrosial clust’ring glow, In His full beam, and ripen for the Just, Where momentary Ages are no more? Where Time, and Pain, and Chance and Death expire? threescore sixty 145 And is it in the Flight of threescore years, To push Eternity from human Thought, And smother souls immortal in the Dust? A soul immortal, spending all her Fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous Idleness, 150 Thrown into Tumult, raptur’d, or alarm’d,  This image of a weighty bar that must be raised to open the gates of immortality has biblical, classical and English literary precedents: see Ezekiel 46: 9; Homer, Odyssey 13: 132–3, in Pope, The Odyssey of Homer (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1909) 209; Spenser, Faerie Queene, ed. T. P. Roche (London: Penguin, 1978) 469 [3: 6: 35]. 10 slumb’ring in his Sire The view that the embryo was a homunculus or “little man,” wholly contained in the sperm and merely implanted in the uterus, was widely accepted throughout the eighteenth century. See R. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002) 207–16. See Trapp, “Of Didactic or Preceptive Poetry,” note 59. 11 Note the ironic homonymic association to pinion in line 4. Etymologically, to pinion is to prevent the flight of pinions—thus our mortal hopes are both restrained and freed by death. See also Armstrong, APH 1: 8. 12 fair Tree see Genesis 3: 22–4.

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At ought13 this scene can threaten, or indulge, Resembles Ocean into Tempest wrought, To waft a Feather, or to drown a Fly. Where falls this Censure? It o’erwhelms myself. 155 How was my Heart encrusted by the World? O how self-fetter’d was my grovelling Soul? How, like a Worm, was I wrapt round and round In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun, Till darken’d Reason lay quite clouded o’er 160 With soft conceit of endless Comfort here, Nor yet put forth her Wings to reach the skies? Night-visions may befriend, (as sung above) Our waking Dreams are fatal: How I dreamt Of things impossible? (could Sleep do more?) 165 Of Joys perpetual in perpetual Change? Of stable Pleasures on the tossing Wave? Eternal Sunshine in the Storms of life? How richly were my noon-tide Trances hung With gorgeous Tapestries of pictur’d joys? 170 Joy behind joy, in endless Perspective! Till at Death’s Toll, whose restless Iron tongue Calls daily for his Millions at a meal, Starting I woke, and found myself undone? Where now my Frenzy’s pompous Furniture? 175 The cobweb’d Cottage, with its ragged wall Of mould’ring mud, is Royalty to me! The Spider’s most attenuated Thread Is Cord, is Cable, to man’s tender Tie On earthly bliss; it breaks at every Breeze. 180 O ye blest scenes of permanent Delight! Full, above measure! lasting beyond bound! Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an End, That ghastly Thought would drink up all your Joy, And quite unparadise the realms of Light. 185 Safe are you lodg’d above these rowling Spheres; The baleful influence of whose giddy Dance Sheds sad Vicissitude on all beneath. How teems with Revolutions every Hour? And rarely for the better; or the best, 190 More mortal than the common births of Fate. Each Moment has its Sickle, emulous

At ought At the sight of

conceit vain belief

undone ruined, doomed pompous grandiose

rowling Spheres rolling planets baleful destructive Vicissitude changes

emulous wishing to emulate

13 ought Young is using the preposition, normally spelled aught, and not the imperfect verb.

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Of Time’s enormous Scythe, whose ample Sweep Strikes Empires from the root; each Moment plays His little Weapon in the narrower sphere 195 Of sweet domestic Comfort, and cuts down sublunary earth-bound The fairest bloom of sublunary Bliss. Bliss! sublunary bliss! proud words! and vain: Implicit Treason to divine Decree! A bold Invasion of the rights of Heaven! 200 I clasp’d the phantoms, and I found them Air.14 e’er ever before fond foolish O had I weigh’d it e’er my fond Embrace! had, i.e., would have What darts of Agony had miss’d my heart? Death! Great Proprietor of all! ‘Tis thine To tread out Empire, and to quench the Stars. 205 The Sun himself by thy permission shines; And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere. Amid such mighty Plunder, why exhaust partial prejudiced Thy partial Quiver on a Mark so mean? peculiar particular Why thy peculiar rancour wreak’d on me? 210 Insatiate Archer! could not One suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my Peace was slain;15 And thrice, ev’n thrice yon Moon had fill’d her Horn.16 O Cynthia!17 why so pale? Dost thou lament Thy wretched Neighbour? Grieve to see thy Wheel18 215 Of ceaseless change outwhirl’d in human Life? How wanes my borrow’d bliss! from Fortune’s smile, Precarious Courtesy! not Virtue’s sure, Self-given, solar, ray of sound Delight. In every vary’d Posture, Place, and Hour, 220 How widow’d every Thought of every Joy? Thought, busy Thought! too busy for my Peace, Postern secret entrance Thro’ the dark Postern of Time long elapsed, I found them Air Stephen Cornford traces numerous references to this classical imagery in Virgil and Dante and its appearance in Milton and Pope. See Edward Young: Night Thoughts, 323. 15 Young had suffered three recent losses: his stepdaughter Elizabeth died of consumption on 8 October 1737; his wife, Lady Elizabeth Lee, died on 29 January 1740; his son-in-law and close friend of two decades, Henry Temple, died suddenly on 18 August 1740. See H. Forster, Edward Young: Poet of the Night Thoughts, 1683–1765 (Alburgh, UK: Erskine P, 1986) 150–160. 16 fill’d her horn Referring to the cornucopia, or horn of plenty: the Moon (or Cynthia or Diana, goddess of the moon and of hunting) is filled because it she satisfied by the spoils of the hunt. 17 Cynthia See previous note. 18 Wheel the Wheel of Diana, from which the goddess spun all human life. 14

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Led softly, by the stillness of the Night, Led, like a Murderer, (and such it proves!) 225 Strays, wretched Rover! o’er the pleasing Past, In quest of wretchedness perversely strays; And finds all Desart now; and meets the Ghosts Of my departed Joys; a numerous Train! I rue the Riches of my former Fate; 230 Sweet Comfort’s blasted Clusters make me sigh: I tremble at the Blessings once so dear; And every Pleasure pains me to the Heart. Yet why complain? or why complain for One! Hangs out the Sun his Lustre but for me? 235 The single Man?19 Are Angels all beside? I mourn for Millions: ’tis the common Lot; In this shape, or in that, has Fate entail’d The Mother’s throes on all of woman born, Not more the Children, than sure heirs of Pain. 240 War, Famine, Pest, Volcano, Storm, and Fire, Intestine Broils, Oppression, with her heart Wrapt up in tripple Brass,20 besiege mankind: God’s Image, disinherited of Day, Here plunged in Mines,21 forgets a Sun was made. 245 There Beings deathless as their haughty Lord, Are hammer’d to the galling Oar22 for life; And plough the Winter’s wave, and reap Despair: Some, for hard Masters, broken under Arms,23 In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,

Train things in succession

Pest plague Intestine Broils domestic discord

There i.e., in the mines Lord ruler galling punishing Some, i.e., some miners

See note 15. tripple [sic] Brass This could be brass monumental tablets inscribing the names

19 20

of the three beloved dead, and the evocative digression that follows instances of suffering associated with the mining and use of brass. 21 Mines During this period, brass was an alloy composed of copper and zinc, which required mining. 22 the galling Oar These are prisoners chained to oars, presumably in iron and brass, and forced to row. 23 Arms Contemporary armaments typically included the Brown Bess, a powerful musket with brass-handled bayonet—thus those who suffer to mine these metals become victims of weapons made from them. See Addison’s description of a contemporary infantry firing-line: Batt’ries on batt’ries guard each fatal pass, Threat’ning destruction; rows of hollow brass, Tube behind tube, the dreadful entrance keep, Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep. (The Campaign [London: J. Tonson, 1704) 7.

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realms, i.e., territory 250 Beg bitter bread thro’ realms their Valour sav’d, Minion favorite servant If so the Tyrant, or his Minion, doom: fell fatal Want, and incurable Disease, (fell Pair!) On hopeless Multitudes remorseless seize At once, and make a Refuge of the Grave: 255 How groaning Hospitals eject their Dead? What numbers groan for sad Admission there? high richly What numbers, once in Fortune’s lap high-fed, Sollicit the cold hand of Charity? To shock us more, sollicit it in vain? silken pampered 260 Ye silken Sons of Pleasure! since in Pains You rue more modish visits,24 visit here, And breathe from your Debauch: Give, and reduce from, i.e., of Surfeit’s Dominion o’er you25: but so great Your Impudence, you blush at what is Right! did, i.e., if did 265 Happy! did Sorrow seize on such alone: Not Prudence can defend, or Virtue save; Disease invades the chastest Temperance; And Punishment the Guiltless; and Alarm, Through thickest shades, pursues the fond of Peace: fond foundation 270 Man’s Caution often into Danger turns, And his Guard, falling, crushes him to death. Not Happiness itself makes good her name; Our very Wishes give us not our wish; How distant oft the Thing we dote on most 275 From that for which we dote, Felicity! The smoothest course of Nature has its Pains; And truest Friends, thro’ error, wound our Rest; Without Misfortune, what Calamities? And what Hostilities, without a Foe? wanting to lacking relative to 280 Nor are Foes wanting to the best on earth: But endless is the list of human Ills, And Sighs might sooner fail, than Cause to sigh. terraqueous formed of land A Part how small of the terraqueous Globe and water Is tenanted by man? the rest a Waste, 285 Rocks, Deserts, frozen Seas, and burning Sands; Wild haunts of Monsters, Poisons, Stings, and Death:

rue more modish visits Young may be referring to wealthy men and women who visit fashionable resorts, ostensibly to recover their health, who regret having to do so when they are truly ill. 25 Surfeit’s Dominion o’er you The complaints of wealthy patients were popularly interpreted as the ill effects of a rich diet and physical inactivity. See George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life (Bath: J. Leake, 1724). 24

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Such is Earth’s melancholy Map! But far More sad! this Earth is a true Map of man: So bounded are its haughty Lord’s Delights 290 To Woe’s wide empire; where deep Troubles toss; Loud sorrows howl; envenom’d Passions bite; Ravenous Calamities our vitals seize, And threat’ning Fate wide-opens to devour. What then am I, who sorrow for myself? 295 In Age, in Infancy, from others’ aid Is all our Hope; to teach us to be kind: That, Nature’s first, last Lesson to mankind: The selfish Heart deserves the pain it feels; More generous Sorrow, while it sinks, exalts, 300 And conscious Virtue mitigates the Pang. Nor Virtue, more than Prudence, bids me give Swoln Thought a second channel; who divide, They weaken too, the Torrent of their grief: Take then, O World! thy much-indebted Tear: 305 How sad a sight is human Happiness To those whose Thought can pierce beyond an Hour? O thou! whate’er thou art, whose Heart exults! Would’st thou I should congratulate thy Fate? I know thou would’st; thy Pride demands it from me. 310 Let thy Pride pardon, what thy Nature needs, The salutary Censure of a friend: Thou happy Wretch! by Blindness art thou blest; By Dotage dandled to perpetual Smiles. Know, Smiler! at thy peril art thou pleas’d; 315 Thy Pleasure is the promise of thy Pain. Misfortune, like a Creditor severe, But rises in demand for her Delay; She makes a scourge of past Prosperity, To sting thee more, and double thy Distress. .... The shrill Lark’s sprightly Mattin awakes the Morn; I strive, with wakeful Melody, to chear (Grief’s sharpest Thorn hard-pressing on my breast) The sullen Gloom, sweet Philomel!26 like thee, 440 And call the Stars to listen: Ev’ry star Is deaf to mine, enamour’d of thy Lay. Yet be not vain; there are, who thine excell, And charm thro’ distant Ages: Wrapt in Shade,

Swoln swollen

Mattin morning song

Lay song

Philomel Conventional and classical reference to a nightingale; see Finch, note 2.

26

“Night the First”

Pris’ner of darkness! to the silent Hours, 445 How often I repeat their Rage divine, To lull my Griefs, and steal my heart from Woe? I roll their Raptures, but not catch their Flame: Dark, though not blind, like thee, Maeonides!27 Or, Milton! thee; ah; cou’d I reach your Strain! 450 Or His, who made Maeonides our Own.28 Man too he sung:29 Immortal Man I sing; Oft bursts my Song beyond the bounds of Life; What, now, but immortality can please! O had He press’d his theme, pursu’d the track 455 Which opens out of Darkness into Day! O had he mounted on his wing of Fire, Soar’d, where I sink, and sung Immortal Man! How had it blest mankind? and rescu’d me?

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Rage inspiration

His Pope, translator of Homer

had could it have

27 Maeonides Homer, by his surname. Homer has been considered a native of Lydia, the Greek province whose ancient name is Maeonia; hence Maeonides, or son of Maeonia. See Milton, Paradise Lost 3: 35. 28 our Own Milton was the first to invite comparison between himself and Homer; his prefatory note to the fourth issue of the first edition of Paradise Lost (1668) opened by stating that “The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin” (ed. A. Fowler, 54.) The fourth edition of the poem included an epigram by John Dryden, which claimed that “Three poets, in three distant ages born,/ Greece, Italy, and England did adorn . . . . To make a third [nature] joined the former two” (Fowler, 55). 29 Man too he sung Reference to The Essay on Man (1733–4). See Cornford, Edward Young, 325.

Fig. 5

[Warton, Thomas]. The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem. London: R. Dodsley, 1747. Title-page.

[Thomas Warton], The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem, 1747 ------Praecipe lugubres Cantus, Melpomene! (“Teach me this mournful song, Melpomene!”) One edition in quarto, at one shilling: London: R. Dodsley, 1747.

The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem. Mother of musings, Contemplation sage, Whose mansion stands upon the topmost cliff Of cloud-capt Teneriff, in secret bow’r; 5 Where ever wrapt in meditation high, Thou hear’st unmov’d, in dark tempestuous night, The loud winds howl around, the beating rain And the big hail in mingling storm descend Upon his horrid brow. But when the skies

horrid rough, shaggy

Thomas Warton (1728–90) composed this poem when he was a 17-year-old student, by which time his poems had already been published by Robert Dodsley, a prestigious London bookseller. By 1753 his poems were appearing in miscellanies alongside the work of poets including William Collins, Thomas Gray, and Samuel Johnson. “The Pleasures of Melancholy” was Warton’s first major poem, appearing anonymously but under its own title-page in quarto, and Warton revised and extended it for Dodley’s celebrated Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1747) vol. 4, 214–25. It remained popular some 25 years later, when an anonymous poet answered it with Mirth, A Poem (London: E. Johnson, 1774). Warton would emerge as notable literary historian, scholar, satirist, and editor, and was made Poet Laureate in 1785. There is no modern critical edition of his collected poems. See Oxford DNB.  From Horace’s ode “To Virgil” (1.24) on the death of their mutual friend Quintilius (23 bc). Melpomene is the muse of song and dance, and of tragic drama. See The Odes of Horace, trans. David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997) 65.  See D. Foxon, English Verse 871.  See Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” line 41.  Teneriff Now Tenerife, a small island off the northwest coast of Africa whose dominant physical feature is its Acantilados de los Gigantes (Cliffs of the Giants).  horrid During the eighteenth century this adjective was used typically to describe mountains; Warton uses it to associate Contemplation with the coarseness of its primitive surroundings. See M. H. Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1959). 

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Unclouded shine, and thro’ the blue serene 10 Pale Cynthia rolls her silver-axled car, Then ever looking on the spangled vault Raptur’d thou sitt’st, while murmurs indistinct Of distant billows sooth thy pensive ear With hoarse and hollow sounds; secure, self-blest, 15 Oft too thou listen’st to the wild uproar fleets streams or bays Of fleets encount’ring, that in whispers low Ascends the rocky summit, where thou dwell’st spheres heavens, planets Remote from man, conversing with the spheres. O lead me, black-brow’d Eve, to solemn glooms Cogenial sympathetic 20 Cogenial with my soul, to cheerless shades10 seats buildings To ruin’d seats, to twilight cells and bow’rs, Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse, Her fav’rite midnight haunts. The laughing scenes purple fruitful train succession Of purple Spring, where all the wanton train 25 Of Smiles and Graces seem to lead the dance In sportive round, while from their hand they show’r Ambrosial blooms and flow’rs, no longer charm; Tempe,11 no more I court thy balmy breeze, meads meadows Adieu, green vales! embroider’d meads adieu! 30 Beneath yon ruin’d Abbey’s moss-grown piles Eve, i.e., evening Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of Eve, Where thro’ some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levell’d rule of streaming light; While sullen sacred silence reigns around, 35 Save the lone Screech-owl’s note, whose bow’r is built Amid the mould’ring caverns dark and damp, And the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests, i.e., infests Invests some wasted tow’r. Or let me tread 40 It’s neighb’ring walk of pines, where stray’d of old

Cynthia The Moon. vault, i.e., concave-shaped sky. See Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” line 14.  Eve, i.e., ultimate mother of humankind. According to Foxon (871), “most copies”  

replace this word with “Queen,” by hand; see, for instance, the copy scanned on EighteenthCentury Collections Online. For an unaltered copy, see NLS [Al].1/1.14(8). 10   shades Ambiguous reference to darkness, to departed spirits, or to the underworld; all three senses were current in the 1740s. 11 Tempe A valley in Thessaly (Greece), used by classical writers and their imitators to denote any idealized rural retreat.

The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem

The cloyster’d brothers12: thro’ the gloomy void That far extends beneath their ample arch As on I tread, religious horror wraps My soul in dread repose. But when the world 45 Is clad in Midnight’s raven-color’d robe, In hollow charnel let me watch the flame Of taper dim, while airy voices talk Along the glimm’ring walls, or ghostly shape At distance seen, invites with beck’ning hand 50 My lonesome steps, thro’ the far-winding vaults. Nor undelightful is the solemn noon Of night, when haply wakeful from my couch I start: lo, all is motionless around! Roars not the rushing wind, the sons of men 55 And every beast in mute oblivion lie; All Nature’s hush’d in silence and in sleep. O then how fearful is it to reflect, That thro’ the solitude of the still globe No Being wakes but me! ’till stealing sleep 60 My drooping temples baths in opiate dews.13 Nor then let dreams, of wanton Folly born, My senses lead thro’ flow’ry paths of joy; But let the sacred Genius of the night Such mystic visions send, as Spenser saw, 65 When through bewild’ring Fancy’s magic maze, To the bright regions of the fairy world Soar’d his creative mind:14 or Milton knew,15 When in abstracted thought he first conceiv’d All Heav’n in tumult, and the Seraphim 70 Come tow’ring, arm’d in adamant and gold.16 ....

167

charnel mortuary taper, i.e., candle-light

couch bed

globe world wakes is awake

tow’ring rising up

cloyster’d brothers Catholic monks; the setting is a ruined monastery. opiate Anything that causes drowsiness. Hence opiate dews could be perspiration

12 13

caused by a drug-induced sleep, or it could be rest that is signified by a sweaty brow. 14 Spenser Edmund Spenser (c.1552–99), author of the complex allegorical poem The Fairie Queene (1589, 1596). 15 Milton See Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” line 49; Young, lines 449–55. 16 adamant and gold This line is taken from Milton, Paradise Lost 6: 110. In fact it is Satan and not the rebellious angels who is thus armed. See Fowler, ed. 345..

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175

180

185

190

195

200

Ye youths of Albion’s beauty-blooming isle, Whose brows have worn the wreath of luckless love, Is there a pleasure like the pensive mood, Whose magic wont to sooth your soften’d souls? O tell how rapt’rous is the deep-felt bliss, To melt to Melody’s assuasive voice, Careless to stray the midnight mead along, And pour your sorrows to the pitying Moon, Oft interrupted by the Bird of Woe!17 To muse by margin of romantic stream, To fly to solitudes, and there forget The solemn dulness of the tedious world, ’Till in abstracted dreams of fancy lost, Eager you snatch the visionary fair,= And on the phantom feast your cheated gaze! Sudden you start — th’ imagine’d joys recede, The same sad prospect opens on your sense; And nought is seen but deep-extended trees In hollow rows, and your awaken’d ear Again attends the neighb’ring fountain’s sound. These are delights that absence drear has made Familiar to my soul, er’e [sic] since the form Of young Sapphira18, beauteous as the Spring, When from her vi’let-woven couch19 awak’d By frolic Zephyr’s hand, her tender cheek Graceful she lifts, and blushing from her bow’r, Issues to cloath in gladsome-glist’ring green The genial globe, first met my dazzled sight. These are delights unknown to minds profane20, And which alone the pensive soul can taste.

Albion England

wont is accustomed, tends assuasive soothing mead meadow romantic imagined or suited to imagination

drear dreary er’e ever

zephyr mild west-wind

...

Bird of Woe Probably the nightingale; see Finch, note 2; Thomson, “On Solitude,”

17

note 4.

Sapphira Generic name for a young woman or, as in this case, a goddess. vi’let-woven couch Ambiguous reference to the leaves of trees, flowers, or bright

18 19

sunset; until the late seventeenth century, violet normally referred to a color seen in richly woven fabrics. 20 profane Those unacquainted with or disrespectful toward sacred things.

The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem

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285

290

295

300

169

O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought, O come with saintly look, and steadfast step, From forth thy cave embower’d with mournful yew Where ever to the curfew’s solemn sound21 List’ning thou sitt’st, and with thy cypress22 bind votary sworn dedicatee; i.e., the poet Thy votary’s hair, and seal him for thy son. But never let Euphrosyne23 beguile With toys of wanton mirth my fixed mind, Nor with her primrose garlands24 strew my paths. What tho’ with her the dimpled Hebe25 dwells With young-ey’d Pleasure, and the loose-rob’d Joy; Tho’ Venus,26 mother of the Smiles and Loves, And Bacchus,27 ivy-crown’d, in citron-bow’r28 the blue the sky With her in dance fantastic beat the ground: What tho’ ’tis her’s to calm the blue serene, And at her presence mild the low’ring clouds day daylight Disperse in air, and o’er the face of heav’n piteous compassionately New day diffusive glows at her approach; Yet are these joys that Melancholy gives. By Contemplation taught, her sister sage, Than all her witless revels happier far.29 Then ever, beauteous Contemplation, hail! From thee began, auspicious maid, my song, With thee shall end: for thou art fairer far Than are the nymphs of Cirrha’s mossy grot30; curfew’s solemn sound The ringing of an evening bell. See Young, line 54. cypress See Young, note 7. 23 Euphrosyne One of the three graces, daughters of Venus (goddess of love) and 21

22

Bacchus (god of wine); she the goddess of “Jest and youthful Jollity” who opposes Melancholy in Milton’s “L’Allegro” (1645). See The Major Works, ed. S. Orgel and J. Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991) 22–5. 24 primrose garlands Conventional prize for excellence in poetry in ancient Greece and Rome. See APH, note 60. 25 Hebe Goddess of youth and spring, cup-bearer of Olympus, the sacred home of the Greek gods. 26 Venus Goddess of love. 27 Bacchus God of wine who presides over celebrations. 28 Citron An exotic and fragrant citrus fruit that grows only in temperate and subtropical climates. 29 Taught by Contemplation, her wise sister, Melancholy is thus made far happier than by trivial celebrations. 30 Cirrha’s mossy grot In his famous Pythian Odes, Pindar (522–443 bc) identified Cirrha with Delphi (they are geographically distinct), site of the Apollonian temple, sacred to Apollo and the poetic muses. Its cave (grott), called the Korynkian cave, was guarded

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To loftier rapture thou canst wake the thought Than all the fabling Poet’s boasted pow’rs. 305 Hail, queen divine! whom, as tradition tells, Once in his ev’ning-walk a Druid31 found Far in a hollow glade of Mona’s32 woods, And piteous bore with hospitable hand To the close shelter of his oaken bow’r. 310 There soon the Sage admiring mark’d the dawn mark’d watched thy, i.e., Melancholy’s Of solemn Musing in thy pensive thought; For when a smiling babe, you lov’d to lie Oft deeply list’ning to the rapid roar Of wood-hung Meinai,33 stream of Druids old, 315 That lav’d his hallow’d haunt with dashing wave. lav’d flowed past

by nymphs for whom all pilgrims (fabling Poets) brought gifts. See F. J. Nisetich, trans., “Pindar Three,” Pindar’s Victory Odes (London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980) 171; H. G. Evelyn-White, trans. “To Hermes,” Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1914) 4.552–68; 362–405. 31 Druid By the late-1740s, Druids were considered the earliest poets from Britain’s Celtic history; for further associations among contemporary poets and readers, see R. Terry, “Thomson and the Druids,” ed. R. Terry, James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary (Liverpool: U of Liverpool P, 2000) 141–64. 32 Mona Separated from the northwest coast of Wales by the narrow Menai Strait, the Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Mon in local parlance); the Druids comprised the learned classes of ancient Celtic culture. The island has been associated with Druids for centuries; see D. Pretty, Anglesey: The Concise History (Lampeter: U of Wales P, 2005). 33 i.e., Menai Strait; see previous note.

Theory of the Georgic

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Joseph Addison, “An Essay on the Georgics,” 1697 

Joseph Addison (1672–1719), essayist, poet, and politician, whose highly refined comments on literature, society, and morality defined English tastes for the first half of the eighteenth century. This “Essay on the Georgics” appeared anonymously but prestigiously, as a preface to a widely anticipated translation by Britain’s most eminent living poet. Addison had submitted it to John Dryden while still a student, and it was among his earliest ventures into print. From 1700, Addison represented the whigs as a Member of Parliament, but had earned the admiration even of the sharpest satirist of his generation, the outspoken tory Jonathan Swift, who remarked in 1710 that “if [Addison] had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be refused.” Following Queen Anne’s death in 1714, Addison was among the ministers responsible for handling the arrival of the Hanoverian regime. By this time Addison and his friend Richard Steele had invented a new genre of periodical literature that combined social commentary with critical observations on literature, philosophy, and public conduct. Their first periodical, The Tatler, was hugely successful, attacking vanity and praising good sense thrice weekly from April 1709 to January 1711; the accessible but morally improving Spectator ran six times each week from March 1711 to December 1712, demonstrating Addison’s considerable literary and intellectual energy. Its polished style and principles were widely taught and imitated. Collected editions of both journals sold briskly throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and were quickly translated on the Continent; one biographer claims that Addison’s essays “were among the most widely read documents in the language.” See Oxford DNB. The great Roman poet Virgil (70–19 bc) spent seven years composing his 2,000-line Georgics (36–29 bc) upon the publication of his deceptively whimsical Eclogues and before embarking on his great Roman epic Aeneid. Borrowing elements from pastoral and epic traditions, the Georgics comprise four books of didactic poetry on husbandry, with powerful digressions on historical, mythical, philosophical, and moral topics. It was the first descriptive poem in Western literature and remains one of its most sophisticated. (On its classical predecessors, see Martyn, note 24.) Through the centuries, generations of commentators have observed that the Georgics are highly accomplished, conceptually and stylistically, providing a vivid but subtle depiction of ancient farming practices while creating a reverential vision of rustic life in the Italian countryside. The Georgics cast a major influence on European literature; Dryden provided an enduring translation in English (and its most popular among English readers of the eighteenth century), and scholarly interpretations have circulated since the Renaissance. See The Georgics of Virgil, ed. L. P. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978); for its influence on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, see A. Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985); for the eighteenth century, see J. Chalker, The English Georgic: The Development of a Form (London: Routledge, 1969); R. Crawford, “English Georgic and British Nationhood,” ELH 65 (1998): 123–58; and J. C. Pellicer, “The Georgic,” A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. C. Gerrard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) 203–16. For scholarly commentary see R. A. B. Mynors, Virgil: Georgics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990); R. Thomas, Virgil: Georgics (Cambridge; Cambridge UP, 1988); influential classicist commentary for literary critics include M. Gale, Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius, and the Didactic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).

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John Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health Reprinted frequently through the eighteenth century as a Preface to Dryden’s Works of Virgil in English, and in editions of Addison’s perennially popular Works. Seventy years after its first appearance, copies of Dryden’s Virgil (in 3 vols, duodecimo) were selling for the considerable sum of 9 shillings, and for 10 shillings sixpence with woodcut illustrations. Addison probably composed this essay as early as 1693. This work was printed in The Works of Virgil . . . translated into English by Mr. Dryden. London: J. Tonson, 1697. 42–7.

VIRGIL may be reckon’d the first who introduc’d three new kinds of Poetry among the Romans, which he Copied after three [of] the Greatest Masters of Greece. Theocritus and Homer have still disputed for the advantage over him in Pastoral and Heroicks, but I think all are Unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the Sweetness and Rusticity of a Pastoral cannot be so well exprest in any other Tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixt and qualified with the Doric Dialect; nor can the Majesty of an Heroick Poem any where appear so well as in this Language, which has a Natural greatness in it, and can be often render’d more deep and sonorous

For a fine anthology of selected biographical and exegetical sources, see M. Putman and J. Ziolkowski, eds, The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven: Yale UP, 2008).  For prices and formats, see A New and Correct Catalogue of all the English Books (London: n.p., 1767) 23; for the composition date, see W. H. Youngren, “Addison and the Birth of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics,” Modern Philology 79 (1982): 269. Kevis Goodman makes a compelling case for reading this essay as the intellectual basis for Addison’s later, and more famous essays “On the Pleasures of the Imagination” (in Spectator nos 411–21; 1712), despite the conventional view that Addison follows Locke’s chapter on the association of ideas (1700). See K. Goodman, Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) 34.  Heroicks epic poems; i.e., Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Virgil’s Aeneid.  The Greek poet Hesiod’s Works and Days (c.700 bc), a didactic poem in 828 hexameters, is divided into two parts. The “works” section describes the tasks that shape the agricultural year, and the “days” provides a list of each day of the year that is suited or unsuited to each of those tasks, according to Zeus’s command of providence. The two relevant translations were made by George Chapman (1618) and by Thomas Cooke (1728), but as Paul Davis observes, this poem was largely neglected by English readers during the eighteenth century—apart from their attention to Addison’s uncharitable comparison between it and Virgil’s masterpiece. See P. Davis, “Didactic Poetry,” The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, 1660–1790, ed. S. Gillespie and D. Hopkins, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006) 193.  Doric dialect Ancient Greek dialect characteristic of its south-western states. Ancient inscriptions that document Doric include excerpts from Theocritus. See J. Méndez Dosuna, “The Doric Dialects,” A History of Ancient Greek, ed. M. A. Anastasios-Phoivos Christides (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007) 444–59.

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by the Pronunciation of the Ionians. But in the middle Stile, where the Writers in both Tongues are on a Level: we see how far Virgil has excell’d all who have written in the same way with him. There has been abundance of Criticism spent on Virgil’s Pastorals and Aeneids, but the Georgics are a Subject which none of the Criticks have sufficiently taken into their Consideration; most of ’em passing it over in silence, or casting it under the same head with Pastoral; a division by no means proper, unless we suppose the Stile of a Husbandman ought to be imitated in a Georgic as that of a Shepherd is in Pastoral. But tho’ the Scene of both these Poems lies in the same place; the Speakers in them are of a quite different Character, since the Precepts of Husbandry are not to be deliver’d with the simplicity of a Plow-Man, but with the Address of a Poet. No Rules therefore that relate to Pastoral, can any way affect the Georgics, which fall under that Class of Poetry which consists in giving plain and direct Instructions to the Reader; whether they be Moral Duties, as those of Theognis and Pythagoras; or Philosophical Speculations, as those of Aratus and Lucretius;10 or Rules of Practice, as those of Hesiod and Virgil. Among these different kinds of Subjects, that which the Georgics goes upon, is I think the meanest and the least improving, but the most pleasing and delightful. Precepts of Morality, besides the Natural Corruption of our Tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from Ideas of Sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those Beautiful Descriptions and Images which are the Spirit and Life of Poetry. Natural Philosophy11 has indeed sensible Objects to work upon, but then it often puzzles the Reader with the Intricacy of its Notions, and perplexes him with the multitude of its Disputes. But this kind of Poetry I am now speaking of, addresses it self wholly to the Imagination: It is altogether Conversant among the Fields and Woods, and has the most delightful part of Nature for its Province. It raises in our Minds a pleasing variety of Scenes and Landskips, whilst it teaches us: and makes the dryest of its Precepts look like a Description. A Georgic therefore is some part of the Science of Husbandry put  Ionians The Ionian dialect, originally spoken on the Greek mainland and on the eastern islands, provided the basis for ancient Greek epic and lyric poetry; the historian and rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus called Ionic “clear and accessible, pure and concise.” See A. Panayotou, “Ionic and Doric,” A History of Ancient Greek, 408–9.  i.e., in the mode of the Georgics, which lies between the “rusticity” of the pastoral and the “greatness” of the epic.  i.e, Greek and Latin; Virgil’s Greek model for the Georgics, according to Addison, was Theocritus—who wrote in the Doric dialect (see note 5).  Theognis (c.600 bc), prolific poet of short poems espousing moral precepts of the kind that were sung or recited in public; Pythagoras (c.600 bc) did not write books per se, but his wide learning and religious teaching was widely reputed. See Greek Elegiac Poetry, trans. D. E. Gerber, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999); C. H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001). 10 Aratus see Trapp, note 13; Lucretius see Creech, prefatory note. 11 i.e., the study of nature through experimentation or description of physical objects.

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into a pleasing Dress, and set off with all the Beauties and Embellishments of Poetry. Now since this Science of Husbandry is of a very large extent, the Poet shews his Skill in singling out such Precepts to proceed on, as are useful, and at the same time most capable of Ornament. Virgil was so well acquainted with this Secret, that to set off his first Georgic, he has run into a set of Precepts, which are almost foreign to his Subject, in that Beautiful account he gives us of the Signs in Nature, which precede the Changes of the Weather. And if there be so much Art in the choice of fit Precepts, there is much more requir’d in the Treating of ’em; that they may fall in after each other by a Natural unforc’d Method, and shew themselves in the best and most advantagious Light. They shou’d all be so finely wrought together into the same Piece, that no course [i.e., coarse] Seam may discover where they joyn; as in a Curious Brede of NeedleWork, one Colour falls away by such just degrees, and another rises so insensibly, that we see the variety, without being able to distinguish the total vanishing of the one from the first appearance of the other. Nor is it sufficient to range and dispose [of] this Body of Precepts into a clear and easie Method, unless they are deliver’d to us in the most pleasing and agreeable manner: For there are several ways of conveying the same Truth to the Mind of Man, and to chuse the pleasantest of these ways, is that which chiefly distinguishes Poetry from Prose, and makes Virgil’s Rules of Husbandry pleasanter to read than Varro’s.12 Where the Prosewriter tells us plainly what ought to be done, the Poet often conceals the Precept in a description, and represents his Country-Man performing the Action in which he wou’d instruct his Reader. Where the one sets out as fully and distinctly as he can, all the parts of the Truth, which he wou’d communicate to us; the other singles out the most pleasing Circumstance of this Truth, and so conveys the whole in a more diverting manner to the Understanding. I shall give one Instance out of a multitude of this nature, that might be found in the Georgics, where the Reader may see the different ways Virgil has taken to express the same thing, and how much pleasanter every manner of Expression is, than the plain and direct mention of it wou’d have been. It is in the Second Georgic where he tells us what Trees will bear Grafting on each other. Et saepe alterius ramos impune videmus, Vertere in alterius, mutatamq; insita mala Ferre pyrum, & prunis lapidosa rubescere corna. ---Steriles Platani malos gessere valentes, Castaneae fagos, ornusq; incanuit albo Flore pyri: Glandemq; sues fregere sub ulmis. ---Nec longum tempus: & ingens

Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 bc), man of letters, famously described by Quintilian as “the most learned of Romans”; his output extends to some 600 volumes. Varro’s De re rustica (“On Agriculture” 37 bc) provided technical knowledge for Virgil and other Latin writers on husbandry. See De re rustica, trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1934). 12

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Exijt ad Coelum ramis felicibus arbos; Miraturq; novas frondes, & non sua poma.13

Here we see the Poet consider’d all the Effects of this Union between Trees of different kinds, and took notice of that Effect which had the most surprize, and by consequence the most delight in it, to express the capacity that was in them of being thus united. This way of Writing is every where much in use among the Poets, and is particularly practis’d by Virgil, who loves to suggest a Truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it: To let us see just so much as will naturally lead the Imagination into all the parts that lie conceal’d. This is wonderfully diverting to the Understanding, thus to receive a Precept, that enters as it were through a By-way, and to apprehend an Idea that draws a whole train after it: For here the Mind, which is always delighted with its own Discoveries, only takes the hint from the Poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of her own faculties. But since the inculcating Precept upon Precept, will at length prove tiresom to the Reader, if he meets with no other Entertainment, the Poet must take care not to encumber his Poem with too much Business; but sometimes to relieve the Subject with a Moral Reflection, or let it rest a while for the sake of a pleasant and pertinent digression. Nor is it sufficient to run out into beautiful and diverting digressions (as it is generally thought) unless they are brought in aptly, and are something of a piece with the main design of the Georgic: for they ought to have a remote alliance at least to the Subject, so that the whole Poem may be more uniform and agreeable in all its parts. We shou’d never quite lose sight of the Country, tho’ we are sometimes entertain’d with a distant prospect of it. Of this nature are Virgil’s Descriptions of the Original of Agriculture, of the Fruitfulness of Italy, of a Country Life, and the like, which are not brought in by force, but naturally rise out of the principal Argument and Design of the Poem. I know no one digression See Georgics 2: 74–82; in Dryden, 1: 102–17: But various are the ways to change the state Of Plants, to Bud, to Graff, t’ Inoculate. For where the tender Rinds of Trees disclose Their shooting Gems, a swelling Knot there grows; Just in that space a narrow Slit we make, Then other Buds from bearing Trees we take: Inserted thus, the wounded Rind we close, In whose moist Womb th’ admitted Infant grows. But when the smoother Bole from Knots is free, We make a deep Incision in the Tree; And in the solid Wood the Slip inclose, The bat’ning Bastard shoots again and grows: And in short space the laden Boughs arise, With happy Fruit advancing to the Skies. The Mother Plant admires the Leaves unknown, Of Alien Trees, and Apples not her own. (74–5) 13

Bole trunk bat’ning thin stick of wood

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in the Georgics that may seem to contradict this Observation, besides that in the latter end of the First Book, where the Poet launches out into a discourse of the Battle of Pharsalia, and the Actions of Augustus:14 But it’s worth while to consider how admirably he has turn’d the course of his narration into its proper Channel, and made his Husbandman concern’d even in what relates to the Battle, in those inimitable Lines, Scilicet & tempus veniet, cum finibus illis Agricola in curvo terram molitus aratro, Exesa inveniet scabra rubigine pila: Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanes, Grandiaq; effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.15

And afterwards speaking of Augustus’s Actions, he still remembers that Agriculture ought to be some way hinted at throughout the whole Poem. ---Non ullus Aratro Dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis: Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in Ensem.16

We now come to the Stile which is proper to a Georgic; and indeed this is the part on which the Poet must lay out all his strength, that his words may be warm and glowing, and that every thing he describes may immediately present it self, and rise up to the Reader’s view. He ought in particular to be careful of not letting his 14 See Georgics 1: 463–92; in Dryden, 1: 637–59. The major battle at Pharsalus (48 bc), among the bloodiest in a wave of civil wars that ravaged the Roman empire in the years during which Virgil composed the poem. Its powerful imagery of bloody soil, howling cries, and powerless victims such as those who suffer the explosions of a volcano, provides Virgil with a digression that illustrates an important moral theme of the poem—the inevitability of decline in the absence of wise judgment. Violent imagery and the meek moral protests of the poet close the first book, anticipating the abrupt close of the third book with the depiction of plague—with which Lucretius memorably ended his poem. Dryden’s translation does not represent Caesar’s actions in the battle. 15 See Georgics 1: 493–7; in Dryden, 1: 662–7 Then, after length of Time, the lab’ring Swains, Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains, Shall rusty Piles from the plough’d Furrows take, And over empty Helmets pass the Rake. Amaz’d at Antick Titles on the Stones, And mighty Relicks of Gygantick Bones. (69) 16 See Georgics 1: 506–8; in Dryden, 1: 682–5: The peaceful Peasant to the Wars is prest; The Fields lye fallow in inglorious Rest. The Plain no Pasture to the Flock affords, The crooked Scythes are streightned into Swords. (69)

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Subject debase his Stile, and betray him into a meanness of Expression, but every where to keep up his Verse in all the Pomp of Numbers, and Dignity of words. I think nothing which is a Phrase or Saying in common talk, shou’d be admitted into a serious Poem: because it takes off from the Solemnity of the expression, and gives it too great a turn of Familiarity: much less ought the low Phrases and Terms of Art, that are adapted to Husbandry, have any place in such a Work as the Georgic, which is not to appear in the natural simplicity and nakedness of its Subject, but in the pleasantest Dress that Poetry can bestow on it. Thus Virgil, to deviate from the common form of words, wou’d not make use of Tempore but Sidere in his first Verse,17 and every where else abounds with Metaphors, Grecisms, and Circumlocutions, to give his Verse the greater Pomp, and preserve it from sinking into a Plebeian Stile. And herein consists Virgil’s Master-piece, who has not only excell’d all other Poets, but even himself in the Language of his Georgics; where we receive more strong and lively Ideas of things from his words, than we cou’d have done from the Objects themselves: and find our Imaginations more affected by his Descriptions, than they wou’d have been by the very sight of what he describes. I shall now, after this short Scheme of Rules, consider the different success that Hesiod and Virgil have met with in this kind of Poetry, which may give us some further Notion of the Excellence of the Georgics. To begin with Hesiod; If we may guess at his Character from his Writings, he had much more of the Husbandman than the Poet in his Temper: He was wonderfully Grave, Discreet, and Frugal, he liv’d altogether in the Country, and was probably for his great Prudence the Oracle of the whole Neighbourhood. These Principles of good Husbandry ran through his Works, and directed him to the choice of Tillage, and Merchandise, for the Subject of that which is the most Celebrated of them. He is every where bent on Instruction, avoids all manner of Digressions, and does not stir out of the Field once in the whole Georgic. His Method in describing Month after Month with its proper Seasons and Employments, is too grave and simple; it takes off from the surprize and variety of the Poem, and makes the whole look but like a modern Almanack in Verse. The Reader is carried through a See Georgics 1:1: “Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram/ vertere”; in Dryden, 1: 1–2, “What makes a plenteous Harvest, when to turn/ The fruitful Soil” (50). The Latin sidere is a form of the noun sidus “a constellation of stars,” used metaphorically by Virgil to designate the celestial sign that indicates the time for harvesting. The adverb tempore, “at the time,” would use concrete and ostensibly simplistic language to communicate the same sense. L. P. Wilkinson describes Virgil’s highly stylized opening line thus: “Virgil exercised his wit in Latinizing the odd phrase from the Works and Days [of Hesiod] that might have stuck in the memory of his audience … The recognition would gratify the cultured hearer, as with Milton’s mannered Grecisms and Latinisms”; David Ferry translates these lines as “What’s right for bringing abundance to the fields;/ Under what sign the plowing should begin”. See Wilkinson, The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978) 57; Ferry, trans., The Georgics of Virgil (New York: Ferrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005) 3. 17

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course of Weather, and may beforehand guess whether he is to meet with Snow or Rain, Clouds or Sunshine in the next Description. His Descriptions indeed have abundance of Nature in them, but then it is Nature in her simplicity and undress. Thus when he speaks of January; the Wild-Beasts, says he, run shivering through the Woods with their Heads stooping to the ground, and their Tails clapt between their Legs; the Goats and Oxen are almost flead [i.e., flayed] with Cold; but it is not so bad with the Sheep, because they have a thick Coat of Wooll about ’em. The Old Men too are bitterly pincht with the Weather, but the young Girls feel nothing of it, who sit at home with their Mothers by a warm Fire-side. Thus does the Old Gentleman give himself up to a loose kind of Tattle, rather than endeavour after a just Poetical Description. Nor has he shewn more of Art or Judgment in the Precepts he has given us, which are sown so very thick, that they clog the Poem too much, and are often so minute and full of Circumstances, that they weaken and un-nerve his Verse. But after all, we are beholding to him for the first rough sketch of a Georgic: where we may still discover something venerable in the Antickness18 of the Work; but if we wou’d see the Design enlarg’d, the Figures reform’d, the Colouring laid on, and the whole Piece finish’d, we must expect it from a greater Master’s hand. Virgil has drawn out the Rules for Tillage and Planting into Two Books, which Hesiod has dispatcht in half a one; but has so rais’d the natural rudeness and simplicity of his Subject with such a significancy of Expression, such a Pomp of Verse, such variety of Transitions, and such a solemn Air in his Reflections, that if we look on both Poets together, we see in one the plainness of a down-right Country-Man, and in the other, something of a Rustick Majesty, like that of a Roman Dictator at the Plow-Tail.19 He delivers the meanest of his Precepts with a kind of Grandeur, he breaks the Clods and tosses the Dung about with an air of gracefulness.20 His Prognostications of the Weather are taken out of Aratus,21 where we may see how judiciously he has pickt out those that are most proper for his Husbandman’s Observation; how he has enforc’d the Expression, and heighten’d the Images which he found in the Original. The Second Book has more wit in it, and a greater boldness in its Metaphors than any of the rest. The Poet with a great Beauty applies Oblivion, Ignorance, Wonder, Desire and the like to his Trees. The last Georgic has indeed as many Metaphors, but not so daring as this; for Humane Thoughts and Passions may be Antickness, i.e., antique character. Addison is referring to Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who reputedly

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abandoned his field to direct the army and returned to his plough following the battle; see Martyn, note 8. 20 This implicit conflict between tossing dung and poetic grace refers to a longstanding controversy in neoclassical aesthetics, over how best to balance instruction and pleasure (utile and dulci)—and it will become increasingly prominent in criticism of the sentimental novel, toward the middle of the eighteenth century. 21 Aratus, see Trapp, note 13.

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more naturally ascrib’d to a Bee, than to an Inanimate Plant. He who reads over the Pleasures of a Country Life, as they are describ’d by Virgil in the latter end of this Book, can scarce [not] be of Virgil’s Mind, in [not] preferring even the Life of a Philosopher to it. We may I think read the Poet’s Clime in his Description, for he seems to have been in a sweat at the Writing of it. ---O Quis me gelidis sub Montibus Haemi Sistat, & ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!22

And is every where mentioning among his chief Pleasures, the coolness of his Shades and Rivers, Vales and Grottos, which a more Northern Poet wou’d have omitted for the description of a Sunny Hill, and Fire-side. The Third Georgic seems to be the most labour’d of ’em all; there is a wonderful Vigour and Spirit in the description of the Horse and Chariot-Race. The force of Love is represented in Noble Instances, and very Sublime Expressions. The Scythian Winter-piece appears so very cold and bleak to the Eye, that a Man can scarce look on it without shivering. The Murrain23 at the end has all the expressiveness that words can give. It was here that the Poet strain’d hard to outdo Lucretius in the description of his Plague; and if the Reader wou’d see what success he had, he may find it at large in Scaliger.24 But Virgil seems no where so well pleas’d, as when he is got among his Bees in the Fourth Georgic: And Ennobles the Actions of so trivial a Creature, with Metaphors drawn from the most important Concerns of Mankind. His Verses are not in a greater noise and hurry in the Battels of Aeneas and Turnus, than in the Engagement of two Swarms. And as in his Aeneis he compares the Labours of his Trojans to those of Bees and Pismires, here he compares the Labours of the Bees to those of the Cyclops. In short, the last Georgic was a good Prelude to the Aeneis; and very well shew’d what the Poet could do in the description of what was really great, by his describing the Mock-grandeur of an Insect with so good a grace. There is more pleasantness in the little Platform of a Garden, which he gives us about the middle of this Book, than in all the spacious Walks and Water-works

See Georgics 2: 488–9; see Dryden, 2: 216–7: “With spreading Planes he made a cool retreat,/ To shade good Fellows from the Summer’s heat” (128). 23 i.e., depiction of plague in cattle. 24 Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609), major French classical scholar, whose reputation as the founder of textual scholarship and historical chronology was celebrated internationally through the eighteenth century. In his Poetics (1561, widely translated and reprinted), Scaliger claimed Virgil as the supreme poet of the classical past, and the Georgics as his greatest work: Scaliger used Virgil’s descriptions of nature as a literal source in his chronology of world history. See A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983) 272–3. 22

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of Rapin’s.25 The Speech of Proteus at the end can never be enough admir’d, and was indeed very fit to conclude so Divine a Work. After this particular account of the Beauties in the Georgics, I shou’d in the next place endeavour to point out its imperfections, if it has any. But tho’ I think there are some few parts in it that are not so Beautiful as the rest, I shall not presume to name them, as rather suspecting my own Judgment, than I can believe a fault to be in that Poem, which lay so long under Virgil’s Correction, and had his last hand put to it.26 The first Georgic was probably Burlesqu’d27 in the Author’s Lifetime; for we still find in the Scholiasts28 a Verse that ridicules part of a Line Translated from Hesiod. Nudus Ara, sere Nudus---29 And we may easily guess at the Judgment of this extraordinary Critick, whoever he was, from his Censuring this particular Precept. We may be sure Virgil wou’d not have Translated it from Hesiod, had he not discover’d some Beauty in it; and indeed the Beauty of it is what I have before observ’d to be frequently met with in Virgil, the delivering the Precept so indirectly, and singling out the particular circumstance of Sowing and Plowing naked, to suggest to us that these Employments are proper only in the hot Season of the Year. I shall not here compare the Stile of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the Reader may see already done in the Preface to the Second Volume of Miscellany Poems;30 but shall conclude this Poem to be the most Compleat, René Rapin (1621–87), French classical scholar and writer of aesthetic treatises. A noted commentator remarked in 1696 that Thomas Rymer’s translation of Rapin’s Reflexions on Aristotles’s Treatise of Poesie (1674) included a Preface that gave him “almost as eminent a Name among the English Critics, as his Author held among the French.” Nevertheless, Addison’s offhanded dismissal of Rapin with reference to the baroque features of neoclassical palaces characterizes Rapin as an “ancient” since he emphasized the importance of classical principles in works of art; Addison’s view that Virgil’s superiority as a poet derives from his graceful eclecticism casts him as a “modern”. See Basil Kennett, Romae Antiquae Notitia, or The Antiquities of Rome (London: A. Swall, 1697) A2r. See also J. M. Levine, Between Ancients and Moderns: Baroque Culture in Restoration England (New Haven: Yale UP, 1999) 52–5; 96–110. 26 i.e., Virgil was the final editor of his poem. John Martyn repeats this important editorial point; see Martyn, note 53. 27 i.e., ridiculed. 28 i.e., authors of short explanatory notes recorded on classical manuscripts. The ancient grammarian Aelius Donatus’s Life of Virgil indicates that early parodies of the Georgics featured the line nudus ara, sere nudus: habebis frigore febrem (“plough naked, sow naked; you will catch a fever from the cold.”) See Putman and Ziolkowski, eds, The Virgilian Tradition, 642–3. 29 See Georgics 1: 299; Works and Days 391. In Dryden’s translation, 1: 401–2: “Plough naked, Swain, and naked sow the Land, / For lazy Winter numbs the lab’ring Hand” (168). See also Martyn, note 8. 30 See J. Dryden, The First Part of Miscellany Poems. Containing a Variety of New Translations of the Ancient Poets: Together with Several Original Poems. 1692. 4th edn (London: J. Tonson, 1716): Having with much ado got clear of Virgil, I have in the next place to consider the Genius of Lucretius, whom I have Translated more happily in those parts of him which I undertook. 25

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Elaborate, and finisht Piece of all Antiquity. The Aeneid indeed is of a Nobler kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Aeneid has a greater variety of Beauties in it, but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a Poem written by the greatest Poet in the Flower of his Age, when his Invention was ready, his Imagination warm, his Judgment settled, and all his Faculties in their full Vigour and Maturity.

If he was not of the best Age of Roman Poetry, he was at least of that which preceded it, and he himself refin’d it to that degree of Perfection, both in the Language and the Thoughts, that he left an easie Task to Virgil; who as he succeeded him in time, so he Copy’d his Excellencies; for the method of the Georgicks is plainly deriv’d from him. Lucretius had chosen a Subject naturally crabbed [disagreeably arcane in its detail or contrary for its atheism]; he therefore adorn’d it with Poetical Descriptions, and Precepts of Morality, in the beginning and ending of his Books. Which you see Virgil has imitated with great Success, in those Four Books, which in my Opinion are more perfect in their kind, than even his Divine Aeneis. The turn of his Verses he has likewise follow’d, in those places which Lucretius has most labour’d, and some of his very Lines he has transplanted into his own Works, with out much Variation. If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing Character of Lucretius (I mean of his Soul and Genius) is a certain kind of noble Pride, and positive Assertion of his Opinions. He is every where confident of his own Reason, and assuming an absolute Commond not only over his vulgar Reader, but even his Patron Memmius. For he is always bidding him attend, as if he had the Rod over him; and using a Magisterial Authority, while he instructs him. From his Time to ours, I know none so like him, as our Poet and Philosopher of Malmsbury [i.e., Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)]. This is what perpetual Dictatorship, which is exercis’d by Lucretius; who though often in the wrong, yet seems to deal bonâ fide with his Reader, and tells him nothing but what he thinks … . For there is no doubt to be made, but that he could have been every where as Poetical. as he is in his Descriptions, and in the Moral part of this Philosophy, if he had not aim’d more to instruct in his System of Nature, than to delight. But he was bent upon making Memmius a Materialist, and teaching him to defie an invisible Power; In short, he was so much an Atheist, that he forgot sometimes to be a Poet. These are the Considerations which I had of that Author, before I attempted to translate some parts of him. And accordingly I laid by my natural Diffidence and Scepticism for a while, to take up that Dogmatical way of his, which, as I said, is so much his Character, as to make him that individual Poet. (xv–xix)

Fig. 6

Virgil. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English Translation and Notes. Trans. John Martyn. London: R. Reily, 1741. Title-page.

Virgil, The Georgicks, trans. John Martyn, 1741 First edition in quarto, printed by subscription in 1741; octavo, 1744; second edition in octavo, 1746; two octavo impressions, 1749; quarto impression (possibly cancels from 1741), 1747; third edition in octavo, 1755; another impression in octavo, 1778. Octavo selling for 6 shillings in 1767. The author was styled as John Martyn, FRS, Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge. London: R. Reily,, 1741.

 John Martyn (1699–1768), botanist, FRS (1727), Professor of Botany at Cambridge (1733–62). His scholarly reputation developed through editing, translating, and writing notable botanical treatises, founding Britain’s first botanical society in 1721, and corresponding with the great Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus. Following research based on reading and excursions in the countryside, Martyn offered a series of lectures on botany in London during the 1730s, which he was later invited to give to medical students at Cambridge. Following his election to the Royal Society, his new friendships with powerful figures including Sir Hans Sloane (see General Introduction, note 62), and his new prominence as a teacher at Cambridge, Martyn began to express his jealousy of Richard Bradley (author of The Plague at Marseilles Considered and current holder of the Botany chair at Cambridge) in several Grub-Street pamphlets. He was elected to the chair upon Bradley’s death in 1733, but afterward devoted little time or energy to teaching, returning to London in 1736. His translation of Virgil’s Georgicks (1741) features a List of Subscribers that displays his standing among eminent medical, scientific, and academic friends in London and Cambridge. See Oxford DNB.  See A New and Complete Catalogue of All Books in English (London, n. p., 1767) 51. Edited translations of Virgil were immensely popular at this time: James Hamilton’s subscription volume of Virgil’s Pastorals Translated into English Prose, and also his Georgics (Edinburgh: W. Cheyne) appeared in 1742; Joseph Davidson’s two-volume Works of Virgil, Translated into English Prose … with the Latin Text … and Critical, Historical, Geographical, and Classical Notes (London: J. Davidson) appeared in 1743 and would call for three editions within ten years; an additional two volume Aeneid of Virgil, translated by the respected classical scholar Christopher Pitt, was published by Robert Dodsley 1740 and again in 1743. Further interest among students and lay readers can be gauged by the two editions of Clavis Virgiliana: or a Vocabulary of All the Words in Virgil’s Bucolics, Goergics, and Aeneid (London: T. Astley) that appeared in 1742 and 1749—Joseph Warton included this translation in its entirety in his own Works of Virgil, vols 2–4 (London: R. Dodsley, 1753) which was reprinted five times that year. Readers of Latin were catered to by no less than three different editions of Virgil’s Opera (complete works) in 1741, and a further nine impressions of the Latin editions appeared between 1743 and 1746.

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To Richard Mead, M.D. Physician to His Majesty King George II.  SIR, I Desire leave to present to You the following Work, which was begun with Your approbation and Encouragement. You will find in almost every Page, what Use has been made of those valuable Manuscripts of VIRGIL, which make a Part of Your noble Library; and which You was pleased to lend me with that Readiness, which You always shew in the Encouragement of Learning. Your exact Acquaintance with all the fine Authors of Antiquity, makes You a proper Patron of an Edition of any of the Compositions. But VIRGIL seems in a particular Manner to claim Your Patronage. He, if we may credit the Writers of his Life, had made no small Proficiency in that Divine Art, in the Profession of You have for so many Years held the first Place, and acquired a Reputation equal to the great Knowledge and Humanity, with which You have exercised it. As the Georgicks were, in the Opinion of the great Author himself, the most valuable Part of his Works, You will not be displeased with the Pains that I have taken to illustrate the most difficult passages therein. And if I shall be so happy as to have Your Approbation of the Fruits of my Labours, I shall have no Reason to fear the Censure of others. But if they had not been composed with as much Exactness and Care as I am Master of, I should not have ventured to desire Your Acceptance of them, from, SIR, Your most obliged Humble Servant,

 Mead (see APH, note 12) agreed to this dedication in a letter to Martyn dated 23 March 1740: “I am very sensible of the honour you do me, in prefixing my name to so valuable a performance.” G. C. Gorham, ed., Memoirs of John Martyn, FRS, and of Thomas Martyn (London: Hatchard, 1830) 60–61.  In 1738, Mead purchased a 75-page facsimile of the unique illuminated manuscript codex Vegilius Vaticanus (Cod. Vat. 3867), produced in Rome in 1677. The original, which dates from c.400, contains fragments from the Aeneid and Georgics and is one of only three surviving sources of classical literature. Mead’s facsimile was acquired by the British Museum in 1807 (BL Lansdowne 834); Mead appears among the List of Subscribers (see xxi). See H. Ellis and D. Douce, A Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1819) no. 834; D. H. Wright, The Vatican Vergil. A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley: U of California P, 1993) 117–18.  Mead’s considerable library of books, incunabula, manuscripts, paintings, and sculpture was celebrated in his own time. It numbered some 10,000 volumes and was second only in size to the library of Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, also a supporter of John Martyn. See L. Jordanova, “Portraits, People and Things: Richard Mead and Medical Identity,” History of Science 41 (2003): 293–313; and Oxford DNB.

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JOHN MARTYN Chelsey, March 16, 1740/1

The Preface Husbandry is not only the most ancient, but also the most useful of all arts. This alone is absolutely necessary for the support of human life; and without it other pursuits would be in vain. The exercise therefore of this art was justly accounted most honourable by the Ancients. Thus in the earliest ages of the world, we find the greatest heroes wielding the share [i.e., ploughshare] as well as the sword, and the fairest hands no more disdaining to hold a crook than a sceptre. The ancient Romans owed their glory and power to Husbandry: and that famous Republick never flourished so much, as when their greatest men ploughed with their own hands. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was found naked at the plough-tail, when he was summoned to take the Dictatorship. And when he had settled the Commonwealth, the glorious old man returned to the tillage of his small farm, laden with the praises of the Roman people. C. Fabricius and Curius Dentatus, those glorious patterns of temperance, who drove Pyrrhus out of Italy,10 and vanquished the Samnites  Chelsey, i.e., Chelsea, then a village on the Thames, west of Westminster, notable for the Chelsea Hospital (designed by Christopher Wren in 1682), Chelsea Manor House (owned by Sloane from 1712), and as a fashionable neighborhood for eminent authors (including Addison and Swift). An important attraction for Martyn was its Physic Garden (visited by Linnaeus in 1736), one of the most extensive and important in Britain.  i.e., 16 March 1740 in England; 16 March 1741 in Scotland and most of Europe. Until England adopted the Gregorian calendar in September 1752, England had marked the New Year on 25 March (the Julian calendar or “old style”) instead of 1 January (“new style”). See R. Poole, “‘Give Us Back Our Eleven Days’: Calendar Reform in EighteenthCentury England,” Past and Present 149 (Nov. 1995): 95–139.  Quinctius Cincinnatus (fl. c.460 bc), Roman tradition holds that when the Roman army was attacked in 458, Cincinnatus was called from the plough, appointed dictator, quickly assembled a triumphant army, then resigned his dictatorship to return to his fields. This moral example of Roman modesty may have originated in Livy and Cicero. See R. M. Ogilvie, Commentary on Livy: Books 1–5 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969) 416. Virgil evokes its imagery in Georgics 1: 299; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 401–2 (168). See Martyn, note 8.  Fabricius (fl. c.282–278 bc), successful Roman diplomat, magistrate, and military leader. See E. S. Staveley, “Rome and Italy in the Early Third Century,” The Cambridge Ancient History vol. 7, part 2., ed. A. Drummond (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 447–54. Manius Curius Dentatus (fl. c. 290–274 bc), successful Roman soldier and diplomat, whose frugality and incorruptibility has led to traditional associations with Fabricius, according to Plutarch was admired deeply by Cato (see note 15); see Plutarch, “Marcus Cato,” trans. J. Dryden, ed. A. L. Clough, Plutarch’s Lives, vol. 1 (London: Dent, 1910) 517–18. 10 Pyrrhus of Epirus (319–272 bc), famous king of a large and powerful state (Epirus) that he allied with the Spartans and other Greek states in their struggles against Rome. His campaigns (280–275 bc) were largely successful until his defeat by Curius Dentatus in 275

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and Sabines,11 were as diligent in cultivating their fields, as they were valiant and successful in war. But when the virtuous industry of this great people gave way to luxury and effeminacy, the loss of their glory attended on their neglect of Husbandry, and by degrees they fell a prey to barbarous nations. This art has not only exercised the bodies of the greatest heroes, but the pens also of the most celebrated writers of Antiquity. Hesiod, who lives in the generation immediately succeeding the Trojan war, wrote a Greek poem in Husbandry.12 And though Homer did not write expressly on this subject, yet he has represented Laërtes, the father of his favourite hero, as a wise prince, retiring from public business, and devoting his latter years to the tillage of his land.13 Democritus, Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and several other Grecian Philosophers, have treated of Agriculture in prose.14 Among the Roman, Cato the famous Censor has written a treatise of rural affairs,15 in which he was imitated by the learned Varro.16 bc, which expelled him from Italy with less than a third of his original army (hence the paradoxical term “Pyrrhic victory”). Fabricius, acting as a Roman diplomat who negotiated with Pyrrhus, famously refused to poison him and refused to be bribed by him. See N. G. L. Hammond, Epirus (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967). 11 The Sabines, an ancient Italian ethic group, were integrated into the Roman state as a subordinate citizenry by Curius Dentatus in 290; the Samnites, who were allied with Pyrrhus against Rome were conquered by Dentatus (268–3 bc) following his defeat of Pyrrus. See E. T. Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1982). 12 Hesiod, author of the didactic treatise on agriculture Works and Days; for brief biographical note, see Addison, note 4; for Trapp’s observation of Virgil’s debt to Hesiod’s adoption of a farmer’s persona, see Trapp note 29. 13 Laertes, who taught farming to his son, Odysseus. See Homer, Odyssey 24: 336–44; in Pope, see Odyssey 24: 253–347. See Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. J. Butt et al., vol. 10 (London: Methuen, 1967) 363–5. 14 Democritus (b. c.460–457 bc), philosopher, none of whose writings survive; Xenophon (c.430–354 bc), prolific philosopher, author of the Oeconomicus, an important social-historical source of ancient agriculture; Aristotle (384–22 bc) author of the extant De generatione animalium (“On the Generation of Animals”); Theophrastus (c.371–287 bc) student of Aristotle, author of Research on Plants, On Winds, and Meteorology. See G. E. Fussell, The Classical Tradition in West European Farming (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1972). 15 Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 bc), major cultural and legal figure in secondcentury Rome, recognized as the founder of Latin prose literature. His only surviving complete work is De agricultura. See E. Brehaut, Cato the Censor on Farming (New York: Columbia UP, 1933). 16 Varro (fl. c.116–27 bc), scholar of Latin literature, author of De re rustica (“On Farming”), the major historical source on Roman agriculture; see trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1934). Richard Bradley, author of The Plague at Marseilles Considered and occupier of the professorial position at Cambridge that Martyn coveted, edited A Survey of the Ancient Husbandry and Gardening, collected from Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, and others (London: B. Motte, 1725). On Cato, see previous note.

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Cato writes like an ancient country gentleman, of much experience; he abounds in short pithy sentences, intersperses his book with moral precepts, and was esteemed as a sort of rural oracle. Varro writes more like a scholar then a man of much practice; he is fond of researches into antiquity, inquiries into the etymology of the names of persons and things; and we are obliged to him for a catalogue of those who had written on this subject before him. But Virgil shines in a sphere far superior to the rest.17 His natural abilities, his education, his experience in Husbandry, conspired to render him the finest writer on this subject. No man was ever endowed with a more noble genius, which he took care to improve by the study of Greek Literature, Mathematicks, Astronomy, Medicine, and Philosophy. He cultivated his own lands near Mantua, till he was about thirty years of age, when he appeared at Rome, and was soon received into the favour of Augustus Caesar.18 Virgil wanted [i.e., needed] nothing but the air of a court, to add a polish to his uncommon share of part and learning. And here he had the happiness to live under the protection of the most powerful Prince in the world, and to converse familiarly with the greatest men that any age or nation ever produced. The Pastorals of Theocritus were much admired, and not undeservedly; but the Romans had never seen anything of that kind in their own language. Virgil attempted it, and with such success, that he has at least made the victory doubtful. The Latin Eclogues discovered such a delicacy in their composition, that the Author was immediately judged capable of arriving at the nobler sorts of Poetry.19 The long duration of the civil wars had almost depopulated the country, and laid it waste20; there had been such a scarcity in Rome, that Augustus had almost lost his life by an insurrection of the populace. A great part of the lands in Italy had been divided among the solider, who had been too long engaged in the wars, to have a just knowledge of Agriculture. Hence it became necessary that the ancient spirit 17 This praise and subsequent biography suggests that, like most editors of Virgil during the eighteenth century, Martyn is using Donatus’ Virgil as his source; Donatus, in turn, drew on Servius (see note 55, below) and from the De poetis (“On Poets”) section of De viris illustribus of Suetonius (b. c. ad 70). For a contemporary edition of Donatus with explicit integration of Servian material, see E. Holdsworth, Remarks and Dissertation on Virgil, ed. J. Spence (London: J. Dodsley, 1768); on Suetonius’ place in the biographical history, see A. H. M. Jones, ed. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971) 268. 18 Augustus (63 bc–ad 14), first Roman emperor and guiding figure in the establishment of the Roman state institutions and ideology of the first three centuries ad. He also presided over a golden age of Latin literature, which included Virgil (see biographical note in Addison) and the great lyric poet and critic Horace (65–8 bc). See F. Millar and E. Segal, Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1984). 19 In the closing lines of his Eclogues or “Pastorals” (c.39–8 bc), Virgil himself anticipates a “rising of the subject” for his subsequent literary projects: in Dryden, see Pastorals 10: 110–111: “Now let us rise, for hoarseness of invades/ The Singer’s Voice, who sings beneath the Shades” (136). 20 See Trapp, note 16.

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of Husbandry should be revived among the Romans. And Maecenas, who wisely pursued everything that might be of service to his master, engaged the favourite Poet in the undertaking.21 Virgil, who had already succeeded so well in the contention with one Greek Poet, now boldly entered the lists22 with another. And if it may be questioned whether he exceeded Theocritus; there can be no doubt of his having gone far beyond Hesiod.23 He was now in the thirty-fifth year of his age, his imagination in full vigour, and his judgment mature. He employed seven years in the composition of this noble Poem, which he called Georgicks,24 and, when it was finished, it did not fall short of the expectations of his patron. Those, who have been accustomed to see the noble art of Husbandry committed to the management of the meanest people, may think the majestick style,25 which Virgil has used, not well adapted to the subject. But the Poet wrote for the delight and instruction of a people, whose Dictators and Consuls had been husbandmen. His expressions accordingly are every where so solemn, and every precept is delivered with such dignity, that we seem to be instructed by one of those ancient farmers, who had just enjoyed the honours of a triumph.26 Never was any Poem finished with such exactness: there being hardly a sentence that we could wish omitted, or a word that could be changed, without injuring the propriety or delicacy of the expression. He never sinks into any think low and mean; but by a just distribution of Grecisms, antique phrases, figurative expressions, and noble allusions, keeps up a true poetical spirit through the whole composition. But we cannot be surprized at this extraordinary exactness, if we consider, that every line of this charming Poem cost more than an entire day to the most judicious of all Poets, in the most vigorous part of his life. Besides, it appears that he was continually revising it to the very day of his death. It would be an endless labour to point out all the several beauties in this Poem: but it would be an unpardonable omission in an Editor, to pass them wholly over in silence. The reader will easily observe the variety which Virgil uses in delivering his precepts. A writer less animated with a spirit of Poetry, would have contented Gaius Maecenas (70–78 bc), major literary patron and supporter of Augustus. Macenas is the explicit dedicatee of Virgil’s Georgics and appears as a patron in numerous contemporary Roman poems, including Horace’s Odes 1 and 17. See The Georgics of Virgil” A Critical Survey, ed. L. P. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978) 49–55, passim. 22 entered the lists, i.e., accepted a challenge for literary supremacy. 23 Theocritus, see Trapp, note 27; Hesiod, see note 12 (above). 24 The Latin georgicus is a translated compound of the two Greek words signifying work and earth. Virgil was not the first to write a poem on husbandry using this title; the fragmentary Georgica of Nicander (c.258 bc) was an influential model. See J. Farrell, Virgil’s Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991). 25 majestick, i.e., poetical, allusive, literate. 26 the honours of a triumph, i.e., like one of the warrior-farmers Cincinnatus, Fabricius, or Dentatus, triumphant in war and in husbandry. See notes 8–9. 21

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himself with dryly telling us, that it is proper to break the clods with harrows, and by drawing hurdles over them; and to plot the furrows across: that moist summers and fair winters are to be desired: and that it is good to float the field after it is sown. These precepts are just; but it is the part of a Poet to make them beautiful also, by a variety of expression. Virgil therefore begins these precepts by saying, the husbandman, who breaks the clods with harrows and hurdles greatly helps the fields; and then his introduces Ceres looking down from heaven with a favourable aspect upon him, and on those also, who plow the field across, which he beautifully calls exercising the earth, and commanding the fields.27 He expresses the advantage of moist summers and dry winters, by advising the farmers to pray for such seasons; and then immediately leaves the didactic style, and represents the fields as rejoicing in winter dust, and introduces the mention of a country famous for corn, owing to it’s [sic] fertility to nothing so much as to this weather, and, by a bold metaphor, makes the fields astonished at the plenty of their harvest.28 The Poet now changes his style to the form of a question, and asks why he needs to mention him that floats the ground: he then describes the field gasping with thirst, and the grass withering, and places before our eyes the labourer inviting the rill [stream] to descend from a neighbouring rock; we hear the stream bubble

“Multum adeo rastris glebas qui frangit inertes, Viminaesque trahit crates juvat arva, neque illum Flava Ceres alto nequiequam spectat Olympo; Et qui, proscisso aequeore terga, Rusus in obliquum verso perrumpit aratro, Exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat arvis” [-JM]. See Georgics 1: 93–8; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 137–4: Nor is the profit small, the Peasant makes; Who smooths with Harrows, or who pounds with Rakes The crumbling Clod: Nor Ceres from on high Regards his Labours with a grudging Eye; Nor his, who plows across the furrow’d Grounds, And on the Back of Earth inflicts new Wounds: For he with frequent Exercise Commands Th’ unwilling Soil, and tames the stubborn Lands. (159). 28 “Humida solistitia atque hyemes orate serenas, Agricolae: hyberno laetissima pulvere farra, Laetus ager: nullo se Mysia cultu Jactat, et ipsa suos mirantur Gargara messes.” [-JM] See Georgics 1: 99–102; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 145–50: Ye Swain, invoke the Pow’rs who rule the Sky, For a moist Summer, and a Winter dry: For Winter drout [sic] rewards the Peasant’s Pain. And broods indulgent on the bury’d Grain. Hence Mysia boasts her Harvests, and the tops Of Gargarus admire their happy Crops. (159). 27

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over the stones, and are delighted with the refreshment that is given to the fields.29 To mention every instance of this variety of expression, would be almost the same thing as reciting the whole Poem. Virgil has exceeded all other Poets in the justness of beauty of his descriptions. The summer storm in the first book is, I believe not to be equalled. We see the adverse winds engaging, the heavy corn torn up by the roots, and whirled aloft, the clouds thickening, the rain pouring, the rivers overflowing, and the sea swelling, and to conclude the horror of the description, Jupiter is introduced darting thunder with his fiery right-hand, and overturning the mountains; earth trembles, the beasts are fled, and men are struck with horror; the south wind redoubles, the shower increases, and the woods and shoars rebellow. 30 The description of the spring, in the second book, is no less pleasing, than that of the storm is terrible.31 We there are entertained with the melody of birds, the loves of the cattle, the earth opening her bosom to the warm zephyrs,32 and the trees and herbs unfolding their tender buds. I need not mention the fine descriptions of the aesculus, the citron, the amellus, or the several sorts of serpents, which are all excellent.33 The descriptions of the horse, the chariot race, the fighting of the bulls, the violent effects of lust, and the Scythian winter,34 can never be too much admired. The use of well adapted similes is in a manner essential to a Poem. None can be more just, than the comparison of a well ordered vineyard to the Roman army drawn out in rank and file; nor could any have been more happily imagined, than that of a bull rushing on his adversary, to a great wave rolling to the shoar, and 29 “Quid dicam, iacto qui semine comminus arva Insequitur, cumulosque ruit male pinguis arenae? Deinde satis fluvium inducit rivosque sequentes? Et, cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis, Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam Elicit? Illa cadens raucum per levia murmur Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva” [-JM]. See Georgics 1: 103–109; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 153–6: So fenc’d from Cold; the plyant Furrows break, Before the surly Clod resists the Rake. And call the Floods from high, to rush amain With pregnant Streams, to swell the teeming Grain. (160). 30 In Dryden, see Georgics 1: 431–58 (169–70). 31 In Dryden, see Georgics 2: 398–459 (195–6). 32 zephyrs west-winds. 33 aesculus horse-chestnut (Georgics 2: 16; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 20) [182]; citron (Georgics 1: 126–30, in Dryden, Georgics 2: 175–80 [187]); amellus purple violet (Georgics 4: 42; in Dryden, Georgics 4: 46 [240]); serpents (Georgics 2: 215–16; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 295–6 [190]). 34 Description of the horse in Dryden, see Georgics 3: 118–40 (212–13); chariot race: see Georgics 3: 165–72 (214); fighting of the bulls: see Georgics 3: 354–50 (220); violent effects of lust: see Georgics 3: 383–404 (221); Scythian winter: see Georgics 3: 463–5 (224–5).

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dashing over the rocks. But above all, that celebrated simile of the nightingal [sic], in the fourth book,35 has been no less than universally applauded. But nothing is more generally admired in Poetry, than that curious art of making the numbers of the verse expressive of the sense that is contained in it. When the giants strive to heap one huge mountain upon another, the very line pants and heaves36; and when the earth is to be broken up with heavy drags, the verse labours as much as the husbandman.37 We hear the prancing steps of the war horse38, the swelling of the sea, the crashing of the mountains, the resounding of the shoars, and the murmuring of the woods39, in the Poet’s numbers. The swift rushing of the North wind40, and the haste required to catch up a stone to destroy a serpent41, are described in words as quick as the subject. Digressions are not only permitted, but are thought ornamental in a Poem; provided they do not seem to be struck on unartfully, or to ramble too far from the subject. Virgil’s are entertaining and pertinent; and he never suffers them to lose sight of the business in hand. The most liable to objection seems to be the conclusion of the first Georgick, where he entertains the reader with a long account of the prodigies that attended Caesar’s death, and of the miseries occasioned by the civil wars among the Romans.42 But here it may be observed what care the Poet takes not to forget his subject. He introduces a Husbandman in future ages turning up rusty spears with the civil plough-share, striking harrows [rakes] against empty helmets, and astonished at the gigantic size of the bones.43 And when he would describe the whole world in arms, he expresses it by saying that plough does not receive it’s due honour, the fields lie uncultivated, and the sickles 35 In Dryden, see Georgics 4: 742–7, where Orpheus’s miserable cry is compared with a mother nightingale who laments alone the murder of her baby chicks: “she supplies the night with mournful strains;/ And melancholy music fills the plains” (263). 36 “Ter sunt conati impenere Pelio Ossam” [-JM]. See Georgics 1: 281; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 375–8 (168). 37 “----Omne quotannis/ Terque quaterque solum scindendum, glaebaque versis,/ Aeternum frangenda bidentibus” [-JM]. See Georgics 2: 397–9; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 550–555 (199). 38 “Insultare solo, et gressus globmerare supervos” [-JM]. See Georgics 3: 116; in Dryden, Georgics 3: 180–183 (214). 39 “--Freta ponti Incipiunt agitata tumescere et aridus altis Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur” [-JM]. See Georgics 1: 355–8; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 440–447 (171). 40 “Ille volat simul arva fuga, simul aequora verrens” [-JM]. See Georgics 3: 200; in Dryden, Georgics 3: 431–2 (224). 41 “—Cape saxa manu, cape robora pastor” [-JM]. See Georgics 3: 420; in Dryden, Georgics 3: 640–45 (230). 42 In Dryden, Georgics 1: 628–39 (177). 43 In Dryden, Georgics 1: 662–7 (178).

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are beaten into swords.44 The praises of Italy, and the charms of a country life, in the second Georgick, seem naturally to flow from the subject.45 The violent effects of lust, in the third book, are described with a delicacy not to be paralleled,46 [sic] This was a dangerous undertaking; it was venturing to steer between Scylla and Charybdis47. We need but consult the translations to be convinced of this. Dryden, endeavouring to keep up the spirit of the original, could not avoid being obscene and lascivious in his expressions:48 and Dr Trapp, whose character laid him under a necessity of avoiding that rock, has sunk into an insipid flatness, unworthy of the Poet whom he has translated.49 But in the original, the sentiments are warm and lively, and the expressions strong and masculine. And yet he does not make use of a word unbecoming the gravity of a Philosopher, or the modesty of a virgin. The pestilence that reigned among the Alpine cattle is confessedly a master-piece;50 and not inferior to the admired description which Lucretius has given of the plague at Athens.51 The story of Orpheus and Euridyce is told in so delightful a manner, that, had it been less of a piece with the main Poem, we could not but have thanked the author for inserting it.52 These, and innumerable other beauties, which cannot easily escape the observation of a judicious reader, are sufficient to make the Georgicks esteemed as the finest Poem that ever appeared. But the work is not only beautiful, but useful too. The precepts contained in it are so just, that the gravest prose writers among the Romans have appealed to Virgil, as to an oracle, in affairs of Husbandry. And In Dryden, Georgics 1: 681–4 (178). Praises of Italy: In Dryden, Georgics 2: 187–246 (187–9); charms of a country life:

44 45

the celebrated O fortunatos nimium passage (Georgics 2: 458); in Dryden, see Georgics 2: 688–719 (203–4). For Armstrong’s adaptation, see APH, note 107. 46 In Dryden, see Georgics 3: 327–40 (218–20). 47 Twin dangers in Odyssey 12; Scylla was the six-headed sea-monster across a narrow strait from Charybdis, another monster that drowned entire ships, between both of whom Odysseus had to steer his ship. See also Armstrong, APH, note 123. 48 e.g., “The stallion snuffs the well-known scent afar,/ And snorts and trembles for the distant mare;/ Nor bits nor bridles can his rage sustain,/ And rugged rocks are interposed in vain.” See Dryden, Georgics 3: 391–5 (221). 49 e.g., “Seest thou not how the Horse, if once he snuffs/ The well-known Odour wafted by the Wind,/ Trembles all o’er; Nor can the Curb, nor Lash,/ Nor Cliffs, nor Caverns, nor opposing Streams,/ That whirl huge rocky Fragments as they roll,/ Retard his fury?” See J. Trapp, The Works of Virgil (London: J. Brotherton, et al., 1731) 186–7. In Trapp’s view, Dryden’s translation is “extremely licentious”; the translator’s willingness to evoke the intensity of sexual desire was akin to his tendency to depart from the original text. See Trapp, Lectures on Poetry, xlix. 50 In Dryden, see Georgics 3: 726–46 (233–4). 51 See Lucretius 1138, in Rouse 525–6, translated in Creech’s “The Plague of Athens.” See Addison, note 30, for Dryden’s comments on this specific debt to Lucretius in the Georgics. 52 See Dryden, Georgics 4: 656–777 (261–4). For Trapp’s citation of the fable, see Trapp, note 42.

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though the soil and climate of Italy are different from those of England; yet it has been found by experience, that most of his rules may be put in practice, even here, to advantage. This was the Poem on which Virgil depended for his reputation with posterity. He desired on his death-bed, that his Aeneis might be burnt; but was willing to trust the Georgicks to future ages. The reason of this conduct seems to be obvious. The Aeneis was unfinished, and had not received the last hand of the author.53 And though it has been justly been the admiration of all succeeding times; yet this great master thought it unworthy of his pen. He was conscious, that it fell short of the Iliad, which he had hoped to exceed; and, like a true Roman, could not brook [tolerate] a superior. But in the Georgicks, he knew that he had triumphed over the Greek Poet. This Poem had received the finishing stroke, and was therefore the fittest to give posterity an idea of the genius of it’s author. Nor was the Poet disappointed in his expectations: for the Georgicks have been universally admired, even by those who are unacquainted with the subject. The descriptions, the similes, the digressions, the purity, and majest, of the style, have afforded a great share of delight to many whom I have heard lament, that they were not able to enjoy the principal beauties of this Poem. I had the good fortune to give some of my friends the satisfaction they desired in this point: and they were pleased to think, that my observations on this Poem would be as acceptable to much the publick, as they had been to themselves. I was without much difficulty persuaded to undertake a new edition of a work, which I had always admired, and endeavoured to understand, to which the general bent of my studies had in some measure contributed.54 I was desirous in the first place, that the text of my author might be as exact as possible. To this end, I compared a considerable number of printed editions, valuable either for their age, their correctness, or the skill of the editor. I thought it necessary also to inquire into the manuscripts, that were to be found in England, that be a collection of all the various readings, I might be able to lay before the reader the true and genuine expression of my author. The manuscripts, which I collated, being all that I had any information of, are seven in number: One of them is in the King’s Library; one in the Royal Library at Cambridge; one in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; two in the Arundelian Library, belonging to the Royal Society55; and two

the last hand of the author, i.e., final touches from the author’s hand. Martyn translated Continental botanical treatises, helped the found Britain’s first

53 54

botanical society, lectured on botany at the Royal Society and (on Sloane’s recommendation) to medical students at Cambridge. He corresponded with Linnaeus and was elected Professor of Botany at Cambridge in 1733. See Oxford DNB. Sloane numbers among the subscribers of this edition of Virgil; see xxii. 55 King’s Library: fiftheenth-century Italian manuscript of Georgica including Ovid’s remarks (BL King’s MSS 24); Royal Library: fourteenth- to early sixteenth-century manuscript of Georgics (UL Nn.III.4); Bodleian: tenth-century German manuscript of Servius (c.ad 420), containing influential criticism on the surviving manuscripts of Virgil (Bod. MS. Auct. F.1.16); see J. J. H. Savage, “The Manuscripts of Servius’s Commentary on Virgil,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 45 (1934): 157–204.

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in Dr Mead’s Library.56 I have collated all of these myself, and the reader will find the various readings inserted in the following annotations. I have generally followed the edition of Heinsius,57 seldom departing from it, unless compelled by some strong reason; and I have never ventured to alter the text by any conjectural emendation, or on the authority of a single manuscript. In composing the annotations, I have carefully perused the grammatical comments of Servius,58 the learned paraphrase of Grimoaldus,59 the valuable collections of observations, various readings, and comparisons with the Greek Poets, made by Fulvius Ursinus and Pierius;60 the learned and judicious criticisms of La Cerda and Ruaeus,61 and the curious remarks of Father Catrou, whose French edition of Virgil did not fall into my hands, till the greatest part of the first Georgick was printed, which is the reason that I have not quoted him sooner.62 But I did not depend entirely on these learned Commentators; and have often ventured to differ from them, for which I have assigned such reasons, as I believe will be found satisfactory. They were all unacquainted with the subject, and therefore could not avoid falling into considerable and frequent errors. When the sense of any word or 56 See note 4; I have been unable to trace a second Virgilian manuscript in Mead’s possession. 57 Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655), Dutch classicist whose editions of Hesiod, Aristotle, Horace, and Virgil influenced many seventeenth-century British readers (including Dryden). The edition to which Martyn refers is P. Virgilii Maronis opera (Leyden: Elzeviriana, 1636), which Alexander Pope owned and on which he probably drew for his own notable translations of Virgil. See P. R. Sellin, Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England (London: Oxford UP, 1968); M. Mack, “A Finding List of Books Surviving from Pope’s Library,” Collected in Himself (Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1982) 424. 58 See Bodleian in note 55. 59 Abbot Grimald (c.790–872), French scribe and Benedictine scholar, whose copy of a Virgilian manuscript was deposited at the great scriptorium at St. Gall (Switzerland); printed copies were consulted by German and British editors of Virgil well into the seventeenth century. See V. Edden, “Early Manuscripts of Virgiliana,” The Library 14, Ser. 5 (1973): 14–25. 60 Fulvius Ursinus (1529–1600), Italian scholar and Vatican librarian, whose Collatio (1568) was among the very first critical studies of Virgil that also considered the Greek literary tradition. See G. N. Knauer, “Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer,” Virgil: The Aeneid, ed. P. R. Hardie (London: Taylor and Francis, 1999) 96. Pierius untraced. 61 La Cerda: Juan Luis de la Cerda (1569–1647), Spanish Jesuit and scholar whose three-volume Commentary on Virgil (1647) was reprinted in Spain, France, and Italy through the seventeenth century. See A. Laird, “Juan Luis De La Cerda, Virgil, and the Predicament of Commentary,” Classical Commentary, ed. C. S. Kraus and R. Gibson (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 171–203. Ruaeus: Carolus Ruaeus (1643–1725), Jesuit poet and author of an influential scholarly commentary on Virgil, Virgilii Maronis opera interpretatione et notis (1687). See, for example, Holdsworth, note 17 (above). It was reprinted in Britain at least 10 times before 1746. 62 François Catrou (1659–1737), French Jesuit scholar, translator and editor of Les poesies de Virgile, avec des notes critiques et historiques (Paris: Barbou, 1729).

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expression has been doubtful, or variously interpreted, I have endeavoured to find how it has been used by the Poet himself in other parts of his works, and by this means have sometimes removed the ambiguity. If this has failed, I have consulted the other authors, who wrote [at] about the same time; and after them, the earliest criticks, who are most likely to have retained the true meaning. With regards to the precepts themselves, I have compared them with what is to be found in Aristotle, Cato, and Varro, who our author himself evidently consulted; and with those of Columella, Pliny, and Palladius, who wrote before the memory of Virgil’s rules was lost in the barbarous ages.63 I have generally given the very words of the author, whom I find occasion to cite, not taking them at second hand, as is too frequent64 but having recourse to the originals themselves. I am not conscious of having assumed any observation, for which I am indebted to any other. The reader will find many, which I am persuaded are not to be met with in any of the commentators. I have been very particular in my criticism on the plants mentioned by Virgil; that being the part, in which I am best able to inform him, and which, I believe has been chiefly expected from me.65 The astronomical part has given me most trouble, being that with which I am the least acquainted. But yet I may venture to lay the annotation on this subject before the reader, with some confidence, as they have had the good fortune to be perused by the greatest Astronomer of this, or perhaps of any age; the enjoyment of whose acquaintance and friendship I shall always esteem as one of the happiest circumstances of my life.66 I know not whether I need make any apology for publishing my notes in English. Had they been in Latin as I first intended, they might have been of more use to foreigners: but as they are, I hope they will be of service to my own country, which is what I most desire.67 The prose translation will, I know, be thought to debase Virgil. But it was never intended to have any idea of the Poet’s style; the whole design of it being to help the less learned reader to understand the subject. Translations of the antient [sic] Poets into prose have been long used with success by the French: and I do not see why they should be rejected by the English. 63 Columella, Spanish-born Roman author of De res rustica, a 12-book prose treatise on farming that includes a book of hexameters on gardens, inspired by Virgil’s Georgics; Pliny, i.e., Pliny the Elder (ad 23/4–79), author of the immense 37-book Naturalis historia (“Natural History”); books 12–9 follow Virgil on botany. Palladius fourth-century author whose 14-book De res rustica follows Virgil on the grafting of trees. A Latin edition of these three authors appeared in 1732; a more expensive 640-page quarto compilation of the three authors, with excerpts from Cato and Varro (see notes 9 and 12) appeared in 1745; see Columella, Of Husbandry in Twelve Books (London: A. Millar, 1745). 64 The reference is appropriate to Trapp; see Trapp, notes 20 and 30–39. 65 See Martyn’s biographical note, above. 66 Edmond Halley (1656–1742), astronomer royal and mathematician, supporter and friend of Martyn since 1730; his name appears among the subscribers affixed to this edition. See G. C. Gorham, ed. Memoirs of John Martyn, FRS 42, 61. See note 2; Armstrong, APH, note 9. 67 cf. Armstrong, “with my country share” (APH 1:63).

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But those who choose to read the Georgicks in English verse, may find several translations by eminent men of our own country, to whom we are greatly obliged for their laudable endeavours, though they have sometimes deviated from the sense and spirit of the author. I have therefore pointed out most of their errors, that have occurred to me; which I thought myself the more obliged to do, because I have found Virgil himself accused of some mistakes, which are wholly to be ascribed to a translator. I say not this to detract from the merit of any of those learned and ingenious gentlemen. I am no Poet myself, and therefore cannot be moved by an envy to their superior abilities. But as I have endeavoured to rectify the errors of others; so I shall be heartily glad to have my own corrected. I hope they are not very numerous, since I have spared no labour, to do all all the justice to my author that was in my power; and have bestowed as much time, in attempting to explain this incomparable Work, as Virgil did in composing it.

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Fig. 7 Trapp, Joseph. Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. Translated from the Latin. [1711–19.] Trans. W. Bowyer and W. Clarke. London: C. Hitch and C. Davis, 1742. Title-page.

Joseph Trapp, “Of Didactic or Preceptive Poetry,” 1711–9 One edition in duodecimo; selling for 3 shillings in 1767. Praelectiones Poeticae was originally published in 3 vols in octavo (1711, 1715, 1719); 2nd edn (2 vols) 1722; duodecimo (2 vols) 1736 and 1760. This last edition was selling for 6 shillings in 1767. This work is from Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. Translated from the Latin. [1711–9.] Trans. W. Bowyer and W. Clarke. London: C. Hitch and C. Davis, 1742. 187–201.

LECTURE XV. Of Didactic or Preceptive Poetry. HUMAN Nature, at the same Time it is desirous of Knowledge, is cautious of confessing its Want of it. The Precepts, therefore, design’d for its Information, must not be obtruded with Moroseness, but insinuated with Mildness; and even its Vanity soothed, to remove its Ignorance. Instructions are the better receiv’d, and sink the deeper upon the Mind, in proportion to the Address with which they are convey’d. There’s a Sort of Obsequiousness due from the Teacher to the Scholar, and even in this Sense that Maxim of Juvenal holds true:

 Joseph Trapp (1679–1747), Church of England minister, political writer, and first Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1708–18). He generated a public reputation for his devotion to high-church ritual as well as his strict adherence to clerical dress. Despite the fact that he was the author of Duties of Private, Domestick, and Public Devotion, Briefly Enforced (1721) and presented every member of his London congregation with a copy of his Thoughts upon the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell (1734–5), he had enjoyed an earlier reputation as a composer of Latin verse; his tragedy Abramulè, or, Love and Empire (1704) was produced on the London stage and was reprinted. For anticipations of Trapp’s prudishness as a translator, see Martyn, note 48. Trapp shared political and religious views with Jonathan Swift. See Oxford DNB.  See A New and Correct Catalogue of all the English Books (London, n.p., 1767) 79.  See A New and Correct Catalogue, 80

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Maxima debetur puero reverentia.

Hence it is, that Precepts deliver’d in Verse, are imbib’d with so much Pleasure; and are held in so great Esteem, that they constitute one distinct Species of Poetry. Many Rules we have already given, concerning the other Branches of it, and are now come to teach even the Art of Teaching. Upon this Subject I am under little Temptation of rifling the Stores of the Learned: I don’t know one that has treated of it, except the ingenious Author of the Essay on Virgil’s Georgics, prefix’d to Mr. Dryden’s Translation of them. And he, indeed, has so exhausted the Subject, that it is as hard to come after him, as it is after the great Dryden, or his greater Original. From what has been said, it appears, that Poetry is in its Nature adapted to deliver Precepts of any Kind, which are sure to be learnt with more Ease, and retain’d the more faithfully by the Help of it. Laws, and religious Maxims, were anciently promulged in Verse; and Priests and Poets were the same: And even to this Day it is a prudent Custom to have religious Lessons drawn up in Verse for the Sake of Youth: In this Respect: it may more truly be said ----pueris dant crustula blandi Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima. Thus Teachers bribe their Boys with Figs and Cake, To mind their Books. Creech.

For by Poetry the very Elements that are taught are soften’d into Allurements. The common Grammar, we see, is Verse; and tho’ the Language of it, indeed, is Prose, whatever the Measure be, yet it is a sufficient Proof, that, in the Opinion of the past and present Age, Precepts and Poetry are no ways inconsistent: And it were to be wish’d, that not only Rules of Rhetoric and Logic, but of Philosophy, and all other Sciences, were drawn up in a more entertaining Manner. Not that technical Words, or Terms of Art, as they are call’d, should be excluded; for it is impossible any Science should be without them: But they might be so dress’d up, as to invite, not deter the Pains of the Learner. But these are Observations less material to “Sat. XIV. v. 47” [-JT]. “You owe the greatest reverence to the young.” See Juvenal’s “Satura XIV,” trans. G. G. Ramsay, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1928) 268.  Joseph Addison, “Essay on the Georgics” (1697).  “Hor. L. I. v 25” [-JT]. See Horace, Satires 1: 24–6: “teachers bearing treats who bribe a youth,/ so that he’ll gobble up his ABCs.” See The Satires of Horace, trans. A. M. Juster (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008) 10.  See The Odes, Satyrs, and Epistles of Horace. Done into English by Mr. Creech, 1684 (London: J. Tonson, 1711) 207. On the poor reception of this translation, and the considerable damage it did to Creech’s scholarly reputation, see Oxford DNB.  For a similar implied conflict between the practical and the decorative, and its basis in neoclassical aesthetics, see Addison, note 20. 

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our Purpose, and I only make them by the Way. I now proceed to observe, that there are four Kinds of Didactic Poems, viz. those that relate to moral Duties; or philosophical Speculations; or the Business or Pleasures of Life; or, lastly, to Poetry itself. Of the moral Poems we shall say but little … We have nothing of this Kind of the Latin Writers, or of our own, worth mentioning; and, in short, they have nothing in common with a Poem, except this, that a Life led according to the strictest Rules of Virtue, resembles the best, and the noblest. But, on the other Hand, nothing shines more in Verse, than Disquisitions of natural History. We then see the strictest Reasoning join’d to the politest Expression. Poetry and Philosophy are happily united: The latter affords abundant Matter for Description; it opens a large Field for Fancy, and strikes out new Ideas, which the other expresses with suitable Dignity. What Subject can be a more poetical one than ---Errantem Lunam, Solisque labores, Unde hominum genus, & pecudes, unde imber, & ignes,10 Unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant Obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,11 Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones: Quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet?12 The wand’ring Moon, the Labours of the Sun; Whence Men, and Beasts, whence Rain,’and Lightnings come; The Constellations of the northern Cars, Arcturus, and the show’ry Hyades: Why Suns, in Winter, haste to swift to tinge Themselves in Ocean; and what Cause retards The sluggish Nights.

Note added by Trapp for the 1742 edition: “Mr. Pope has since struck out a new Scheme of Ethic Poems, in which he has deserv’d [i.e., served] as much of the Moral World, as Sir Isaac Newton did of the Natural.” Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism was published in 1711; several months later, Addison praised it as “a masterpiece in its kind” and compared it favourably with Horace’s Ars Poetica and Boileau’s L’Art Poétique (see notes 56–7, below). See Spectator 253 (20 Dec 1711): 3. Trapp had dedicated the Latin edition of these lectures (1711–19) to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751), who by 1742 was a close friend of Pope—to whom Pope had addressed his major moral work, An Essay on Man (1734–5). 10 Virgil, Aeneid 1: 742–3; in Dryden, Aeneis 1: 1040–1041 (377). 11 Virgil, Georgics 2: 479–80; excluded from Trapp’s English gloss. See Dryden, Georgics 2: 681–3: “Why flowing Tides prevail upon the Main,/ And in what dark Recess they shrink again;/ What shakes the solid Earth; what Cause delays” (203). 12 Virgil, Aeneid 1: 474–6; in Dryden, Aeneis 1: 1045–6 (377). “Virg. Aen. L. I. 746. & Georg. II 479. &c.” [-JT] 

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What can be more suitable to the Dignity of a Poem, than to celebrate the Works of the great Creator? What more agreeable to the Variety of one, than to describe the Journies of the heavenly Orbs, the Rise of Thunder, and other Meteors, the Motion of the Earth, and the Tides of the Sea; the attractive Force of the Magnet, the impulsive Motion of Light, and the slower Progression of Sound; and innumerable other Wonders, in the unbounded Storehouse of Nature. I shall say nothing, at present, of Aratus among the Greeks,13 or of Manilius among the Latin Writers;14 Lucretius, alone, shall suffice, instead of all the rest.15 He, indeed, is so far from celebrating the Creator, that he supposes there is none; but, allowing him his Hypothesis, his Poem is truly philosophical. He had deserv’d much greater Praise, had he corrected his Notions in Philosophy, and his Style in Poetry; for in this Particular, also, he is often deficient. The Asperity of his Versification must be imputed rather to the Times he liv’d in (viz. the Age between Ennius and Virgil)16 than to the Subject he treated of; which, whatever the common Opinion be, not only admits of the Harmony of Numbers, but requires it. The following Directions of Virgil about burning the Turf, part of which we cited before, upon another Occasion, don’t lose any Thing of their Philosophy by their Smoothness: Sive inde occultas vires, & pabula terra Pinguia concipiunt, sive illis omne per ignem Excoquitur vitium, atque exudat inutilis humor; Seu plures calor ille vias, & caeca relaxat Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas: Seu durat magis, & venas astringit hiantes, Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia solis Acrior, aut Borae penetrabile frigus adurat.17 13 Aratus (c.315–240 bc), author of the major didactic poem Phaenomena, which describes the constellations, weather signs, and seasonal cycles, with frequent mythological references and sophisticated poetical digressions. It achieved enormous popularity beyond learned readers and was probably the second-most popular literary work in the ancient world (after Homer). See Phaenomena, trans. G. R. Mair, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1921). 14 Marcus Manilius, Stoic poet and author of Astronomica, a didactic astrological poem that attacks Lucretius atomism and, like Virgil’s Georgics, is more concerned with philosophical concepts than practical instruction. See Astronomica, trans. and ed. G. O. Goold, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1977). 15 See Addison, note 10. 16 i.e., a period of considerable expansion of the Roman Empire, northward and westward to Gaul and eastward through the Mediterranean, leading to a series of military, social, and political crises, largely between 133 bc and Caesar’s assassination in 44 bc. See R. Saeger, ed., The Crisis of the Roman Republic (Cambridge: Heffers, 1969). Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, c.94–51 bc), see biographical note in Creech; Quintus Ennius (239–169 bc), Roman poet and dramatist; Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 bc), see biographical note in Addison. 17 “Georg. I. 86” [-JT]. See Georgics 1: 86–93; in Dryden, Georgics 1:126–35 (159).

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Whether from thence they secret Strength receive, And richer Nutriment: Or by the Fire All latent Mischief, and redundant Juice, Oozing sweats off: Or whether the same Heat Opens the hidden Pores, that new Supplies Of Moisture may refresh the recent Blades. Or hardens more, and with astringent Force Closes the gaping Veins; lest driv’ling Show’rs Shou’d soak too deep, or the Sun’s parching Rays, Or Boreas’ piercing Cold shou’d dry the Glebe.18

And even Lucretius himself is sometimes more flowing and sonorous, not only when he addresses himself to Venus, as in the following beautiful Passage: Te, Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila coesli, Adventumque tuum; tibi suaves daedala tellus Summittit flores; tibi rident aequora ponti, Pacatumque nitet, diffuso lumine, calum.19 At thy Approach, great Goddess, strait remove Whate’er are rough, and Enemies, to Love; The Clouds disperse, the Winds do swiftly waft, And reverently in Murmurs breathe their last. The Earth with various Art (for thy warm Pow’rs That dull Mass feels) puts forth her gawdy Flow’rs. To pleasure thee, ev’n lazy Lux’ry toils, The roughest Sea puts on smooth Looks, and Smiles: The well-pleas’d Heav’n assumes a brighter Ray At thy Approach, and makes a double Day. Creech.20

But sometimes, likewise, when he unfolds the Principles of Matter, the Causes of Things, and the Phenomena of Nature. It is certain, Virgil is much indebted to him, tho’ he has much improv’d his Manner. Another Imperfection in Lucretius is, that he never makes any Excursions into poetical Fiction. Some Digressions he has, but they are rather philosophical, than poetical; and therefore don’t diversify the Subject, nor afford the Reader sufficient Refreshment. He has some, indeed, philosophical; but then they are impious, such Boreas Among the four Greek wind-gods (Anemoi), Boreas is the frigid north-

18

wind.

“Lib. I. v 6” [note added by JT for 1742 edition]. See De rerum natura 1: 6–9. Trapp’s quote excludes the following lines from Creech: “For thee doth subtle

19 20

Luxury prepare/ The choicest stores of Earth, of Sea, and Air;/ To welcome Thee she comes profusely Drest/ With all the Spices of the wanton East,” which appear between the line ending “Flow’rs” and commencing “To pleasure.” See Titus Lucretius Carus. By T. Creech. (1682; London: G. Sawbridge, 1712) 1. Martyn identifies Trapp through such instances of editorial liberties and dependence on translations; see Martyn, note 63.

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as reason against Providence, the Foundations of Religion, and the Immortality of the Soul. One, however, I must except, that upon the Plague of Athens; which contains, indeed, a poetical Description, but nothing of poetical Fable. It must be own’d, this Poet reasons too much in the Manner of the Schools, the Philosopher appears too open, he wants [i.e., needs] the Gentility to conceal his Beard, and temper his Severity. Poetry and Philosophy, indeed, were both to be join’d together, but the one ought to be as the Handmaid to the other; which Virgil would not have fail’d to have taken care of, had he been engag’d on such a Subject. Nor so Lucretius, who appears more a Philosopher than a Poet and yet of Poets not the meanest: Virgil, in his Georgics, appears more a Poet than a Husbandman, and yet of Husbandmen the greatest. I can’t see why, in a Work of this Kind, Nature may not be so explain’d, as to admit sometimes of poetical Fiction; in the same Manner that Virgil describes the Cyclops forging the Thunderbolts? Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosa Addiderant, rutili tres ignis, & alitis Austri: Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque, Addiderant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.21 Three Forks of darted Hail, of wat’ry Cloud Three more they added; three of glaring Fire, As many of the winged southern Wind; Then dreadful Flashes, and the roaring Noise, And Rage, and Terror, and avenging Flames.

Here the Formation of the Thunder is poetically feign’d; the Matter and the Adjuncts explain’d physically; Philosophy is made the Basis, and Poetry the Superstructure. I know of no modern Poem of this Sort worth mentioning, except Buchanan’s Sphere,22 which is a Work by no means contemptible. But as Natural Philosophy has, by the Help of Experiments, been lately brought to much greater Perfection than “Aen. VIII. 429” [-JT]. Aeneid 8: 429–32; in Dryden, see Aeneis 8: 565–70, in The Works of Dryden, ed. A. Roper et al, vol. 6 (Berkeley: U of California P, 1987) 625–7. 22 George Buchanan (1506–82), poet and historian, author of De Sphaera (c. 1566), a Latin poem in five books that describes Ptolemaic cosmology, then challenged by Copernicus. See J. R. Naiden, The Sphera of George Buchanan, PhD diss. Columbia U, 1952. Addison observed that Buchanan is the just boast of the Scots Nation: He was a perfect Master of the Latin Tongue, knew all its Strength and Beauties, and very happily transfus’d them into his own Poems. That neglect piece of his De Spaera is upon so nice and difficult a Subject as fine and noble a Poem as ever was wrote; tho’ I don’t know by what Fate, the Modern Criticks are never pleas’d to mention it to his Honour. See Poems on Several Occasions. With a Dissertation upon the Roman Poets, 1718 (London: E .Curll, 1719). viii. 21

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ever; this Kind of Poetry, no doubt, would have made proportionable Advances, if the same Age that shew’d a Boyle, a Hally, and a Newton,23 had produc’d a Virgil; or if we had not been so much worse Poets than the Ancients, as we are better Philosophers. We have, indeed, some poetical Essays on the Circulation of the Blood, the Air-Pump, the Microscope, and the Telescope,24 and the like: But these are short Descriptions, no ways reducible to the Species of Poetry before us. ’Tis true; they may in some Sense be reduc’d under the Title of Didactic, tho’ not of Preceptive Poetry; they teach by Description, not by Precept. But the next Kind I mention’d, relating to the Business or Pleasures of Life, do both. Under this Head Virgil’s Georgics stand foremost, containing the most useful Rules for Husbandry in all its Branches, Agriculture, the Method of raising Trees, or Cattle, or tending of Bees.25 The Pleasure that naturally results from reading them, is chiefly owing to the Pleasure and Advantage which attends a Country Life. Here Virgil has imitated Hesiod,26 as he has Theocritus in his Eclogues,27 and Homer in Aenies;28 I should rather have said, has exceeded each in their peculiar Way of Writing, unless, perhaps, we ought to except Theocritus: But Hesiod he has left so far behind him, that he scarce deserves to be mention’d in the Comparison. The good old Man of Ascrea29 is at best but a downright Yeoman, whereas Virgil appears with the Learning of a Scholar, and the Elegance of a Gentleman. From his Georgics, then, all the Maxims that relate to this Subject must be illustrated.

Robert Boyle (1627–91), mathematician and physicist, founding member of the Royal Society; Edmond Hally (1656–1742), mathematician and astronomer royal; Isaac Newton (1642–1727), mathematician and physicist, President of the Royal Society. All three elaborated and distinguished Baconian principles of “the new science,” emphasizing experimentation and observation rather than a priori principles, thus establishing empiricism as the only acceptable scientific method. 24 Poems celebrating each of these novel scientific discoveries were published in an collection titled Musarum Anglicanarum analecta (Oxford: T. Childe, 1692), with at least five editions and ten impressions by 1714, under the variant title Musae Anglicanae. For the circulation of the blood, see Richard Blackmore, The Creation: A Philosophical Poem (London: J. Tonson, 1712) 286–303; on the microscope, see T. Cowles, “Dr Henry Power’s Poem on the Microscope [1661]” Isis 21 (April 1934): 71–80. 25 The first book of Virgil’s Georgics is devoted to the tools, soil, and agricultural seasons; the second to the planting and management of trees; the third to the raising of farm animals; the fourth to the management of bees. 26 Trapp is indebted to Addison; see “An Essay on the Georgics,” note 4. 27 Theocritus (early-3rd cent. BC), influential poetic innovator, creator of the bucolic or pastoral genre in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. See K. J. Gutzwiller, Theocritus’ Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1991); T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley: U of California P, 1969). 28 i.e., variant spelling of Aeneis or Aeneid. 29 i.e., Hesiod’s textual persona in the Works and Days. 23

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The first Rule I would lay down, is, That we ought to select with Judgment such Circumstances as are capable of shining in Verse; not that we are to omit the gravest Precepts, but to express them by their most poetical Adjuncts: Iam vinctae vites, jam falcem arbusta reponunt Iam canit extremos effoetus vinitor antes: Sollcitanda tamen tellus, pulvisque movendus; Et jam maturis metuendus Jupiter uvis.30 And now the Vines are ty’d, nor longer ask The Pruning Hook; the weary Dresser now With Songs salutes his outmost Ranks complete: Yet must we still sollicit the dull Mold; And the ripe Grapes have still to fear from Jove.

I need not explain myself any farther. To produce all the Instances of this Kind, would be to transcribe the Georgics. ’Tis with the same View the great Author of them is so copious upon the different Properties of Trees and Cattle; the Combat of Bulls; the Conduct and Politics of Bees, and the like. To vary the Form of Instruction, and to add Life to his Precepts, he sometimes in instils them as Matters of Fact, and conveys them under the Appearance of a Narration: Quid dicam, jacto qui semine cominus arua Insequitur, cumulosque ruit male pinguis arenae?31 What shou’d I say of him; who, having sown His Grain, with ceaseless Industry proceeds, And spreads abroad the Heaps of barren Sand? Quid, qui, ne gravidis procumbat culmus aristis, Luxuriem segetum tenera depascit in herba?32 Or what of him; who, left the Stalks, o’ercharg’d By the plump Ears, shou’d sink beneath their Weight, Crops their Luxuriance in the tender Blade?

And in another Place: Et quidam seros hyberni ad luminis ignes Invigilat, ferroque faces inspicat acuto; Aut dulcis musti Vulcano decoquit humorem, Et foliis undam trepidi despumat abeni.33 One watches late by Light of Winter Fires;

32 33 30 31

“Georg. II. 416.” [-JT]. Georgics 2: 416–19; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 563–70 (200). “Georg. I. 104.” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 104–5; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 151–6 (159–60). “v III” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 111–12; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 163–9 (160). “v. 291” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 291–2; 295–6; in Dryden, Georgics 2: 280–285 (164).

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And with the sharpen’d Steel for Torches splits The spiky Wood.---Or of sweet Must boils down the luscious Juice; And skims with Leaves the trembling Cauldron’s Flood.

Sometimes he foretels the ill Consequences of a contrary Practice: Quod nisi & assiduis terram insectabere rastris, Et sonitu terrebis aves, & ruris opaci Falce premes umbras, votisque vocaveris imbrem; Heu! magnum alterius frustra spectabis acervum, Concussaque famem in silvis solbere quercu. 34 Unless then with assiduous Rakes thou work The Ground, and chase the Birds with scaring Noise; And with the crooked Pruner lop the Shades Of spreading Trees,and pray to Heav’n for Show’rs, Another’s Store, in vain, alas! admir’d, Thou shalt behold, and from a shaken Oak Thy hungry Appetite in Woods relieve.

Or he describes the ill Effects he has observ’d to attend it: Semina vidi equidem multos medicare serentes, Et nitro prius, & nigra perfundere amurca, &c. Vidi lecta diu, & multo spectata labore, Degenerare tamen.35 Many I’ve known to medicate their Seed, In Nitre steep’d, and the black Lees of Oil;36 And tho’ o’er mod’rate Fire Moist, and precipitated, and with Pain Long try’d, and chosen, oft they have been prov’d Degen’rate.

By this agreeable Variety the Reader’s Attention is wonderfully awaken’d, tho’ he sees not the Reason of it ; and the Poet’s Art is the more to be admir’d, because it escapes Observation. But the greatest Ornaments of this sort of Poems, are the frequent Excursions into some more noble Subject, which seem’d naturally to arise out of that [which] the Poet is treating of. Sometimes, for Instance, he runs back into History and Antiquity, or, perhaps, the very Origin of Things: -

“v 155” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 155–9; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 231–8 (163). “v 193” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 193–4; 195–6; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 280–285 (164). 36 Nitre … Lees of Oil i.e., to fortify their seeds before sowing with nitrum or sodium 34 35

bicarbonate and the sediment from olive oil, both thought to improve the size of the resulting plants.

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Ante Jovem nulli subigebant arva coloni, &c.37 E’re Jove was King, no Hinds subdu’d the Glebe.

And again: Prima Ceres ferro martales vertere terram Instituit, &c.38 ‘Twas Ceres first taught Mortals with the Share To cut the Ground.

Sometimes he makes Reflections on the Condition of Human Life: Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit subeunt morbi , tristisque senectus, &c.39 The belt of Life, which wretched Mortals share, First flies away: Diseases, sick Old Age, And Pain, and Death’s Inclemency, succeed.

At another Time he heightens his Subject with Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy: an Instance of which I have already cited, from the Georgics: But I cannot help adding one more, not only as it makes very remarkably for our present Purpose, but is, moreover, an abundant Proof of what I before advanc’d, that Natural Philosophy might be express’d in the sweetest Numbers, and consequently is capable of much smoother Versification than that of Lucretius. The Poet, then, having mention’d the Noise of Crows as a Sign of fair Weather, proceeds thus: Haud equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium, & rerum fato prudentia major: Verum ubi tempestas, & coeli mobilis humor Mutavere vias, & Jupiter humidus Austris Densat errant quae rara modo, & quae densa, relaxat; Vertuntur species animorum; & pector motus Nunc alios; alios, dum nubila ventus agebat, Concipiunt: Hinc ille avium concentus in agris, Et laetae pecudes, & ovantes gutture corvi. Not that I think an Ingeny divine40 To them is giv’n, or Prescience of Events In Fate superior: But when changeful Winds Alter the various Temper of the Sky, And the moist Ether what [i.e, that] before was dense

39 40 37 38

“v 125” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 124; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 191 (161). “v 147” [-JT]. Georgics 1: 146-7; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 219 (161). “Geor. III. 66” [-JT]. Georgics 3: 66–7; in Dryden, Georgics 1: 108–11 (212). i.e., divine ingeniousness.

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Relaxes, and condenses what was rare:41 The shifting Phantasms of their Minds are turn’d; And now within their Breasts new Passions move, Diff’rent from those they felt, when driving Blasts Dispers’d the Clouds: Hence that Concent [concert] of Birds Chirping in Chorus; hence the Joy of Beasts, And Flocks of Crows exulting in the Fields.

Often he digresses into Fable and Fiction, as in that beautiful Episode of Orpheus and Eurydice:42 And still more often into poetical Descriptions, as those of the perpetual Spring in Italy, and the bleak Winter in Scythia;43 or the Happiness of a Country Life;44 of the various Prognostications of the Weather;45 of the Prodigies that foretold the Death of Caesar;46 and, to name no more, of the Murrain among the Cattle.47 Of which, I wonder the foremention’d Author of the Essay on Virgil’s Georgics should say, that Virgil seems in it to have summon’d up all his Might to equal the Description of the Plague in Lucretius,48 since the one is as much beyond rare thinly spread. See Georgics 4: 453–525; in Dryden, Georgics 4: 656–777 (261–4). 43 See J. Dryden, Georgics 2: 204–5: “Perpetual spring our happy climate sees:/ Twice 41 42

breed the cattle, and twice bear the trees” (188); Dryden, Georgics 2: 430–431: “When winter frosts the field with cold,/ The fainty root can take no steady hold” (195). 44 See Dryden, Georgics 2: 639–44: O happy, if he knew his happy state, The swain, who, free from business and debate, Receives his easy food from nature’s hand, And just returns of cultivated land! No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants, To admit the tide of early visitants. (202) 45 The first book of Georgics concerns the relationship between agricultural cycles and the changing seasons. 46 Prodigies omens or portents. See Virgil, Georgics 1: 469–71; in Dryden, 1: 633–7 (177). 47 Murrain plague. Evoking Lucretius’ abrupt ending of De rerum natura with a harrowing depiction of the plague of Athens, Virgil ends his third Georgic with a plague that kills cattle. For its opening lines, see Dryden, Georgics 3: 707–12: But, where thou seest a single sheep remain In shades aloof, or couched upon the plain, Or listlessly to crop the tender grass, Or late to lag behind with truant pace; Revenge the crime, and take the traitor’s head, Ere in the faultless flock the dire contagion spread. (233) 48 Addison observed that “The Murrain at the end [of Georgics 3] has all the expressiveness that words can give. It was here that the Poet strain’d hard to outdo Lucretius in the description of his Plague.” See Addison, “An Essay on the Georgics,” note 8, passim.

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the other in the Ingenuity of the Composition, as it is inferior to it, in the Dignity of the Subject and the Plague in Lucretius is exceeded by that of Virgil, as much as Beasts are by Men. Upon the whole, this is deservedly esteem’d the most finish’d Piece of all Virgil’s Works; I need not add, that it is the compleatest in its Kind, of any we now have, or the World ever saw. The Moderns have produc’d nothing in this Kind, except Rapin’s Books of Gardening,49 and the celebrated Poem on Cyder by an ingenious Author, that not long since resided among us50; who, if he had enjoy’d the Advantage of Virgil’s Language, would have been second to Virgil in a much nearer Degree. As long as the fluctuating State of our Tongue will permit, this English Georgic shall infallibly flourish, ----& honos erit huic quoque Pomo.51 And to this Apple Honours shall be paid.

Among the Pleasures of a Country Life, we may reckon Hunting, Fishing, Hawking, and the like; which are excellent Subjects for Didactic Verse, and are very fruitful of poetic Matter. We have only some Essays of this Sort, and those by modern Hands, except only Gratius’s Cynaegeticon, which owes all its Value to Fortune, rather than any true Merit of its own52; viz. that it has the Advantage of being writ in the Augustan Age, and being recommended by Ovid, a Contemporary, in the following Verse, Aptaque venanti Gratius arma dabit.53 And Gratius to the Hunter Arms supplies.

René Rapin (1621–87) French poet and critic, whose Hortorum Libri IV (1666) was translated from the Latin by the noted antiquarian and agricultural improver John Evelyn; his Of Gardens was published in 1672. A rival translation by James Gardiner appeared in 1706 and was reprinted frequently; the third edition (1728) was revised by Alexander Pope. Rapin’s treatise on classical poetry, Dissertatio de Carmine Pastorali (1659, trans. 1684) argued that the pastoral was the most ancient poetic form, whose structure and ideas should form the model for poets intending to evoke the “Golden Age” of classical Greece and Rome. 50 John Philips (1676–1709), author of Cyder: A Poem in Two Books (1708). See J. C. Pellicer, “The Publication of John Philips’s Cyder, 29 January 1708,” The Library 7, 7th ser. (June 2006): 185–98. 51 Virgil, Eclogues 2: 53, in Dryden, The Second Pastoral 72 (81). This is the epigraph on the title page of the first three editions of Philips’s Cyder (all 1708). 52 Faliscus Grattius, Cynegeticon, a four-book poem on hunting. See Christopher Wase, ed. and trans., Grati Fasci Cynegeticon. Or, A Poem of Hunting by Gratius the Faliscian (London: C. Adams, 1654) 8. It entered a second edition in 1699, and although it was not reprinted in the following century, it was quoted in the Preface to William Somervile’s popular georgic poem, The Chace (1735). 53 Ovid, Ex Ponto 4: 16: 34. See A. L. Wheeler, trans. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1939) 488. 49

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Oppian’s Halieutica and Cynegetica are scarce to be reckon’d among the Writings of the Ancients, but to be plac’d rather in the Middle Age.54 The Rules for writing upon these Subjects are the same with what I have mention’d under the Georgics; I have no Occasion, therefore, to add new ones here. The same may be said for that Species of Poetry, that consists in teaching the Art of Poetry; the Manner of Writing is the same, as far as the Difference of the Matter will admit. The Pieces that have been writ in this Way, are known to all; and Poetry seems never to have employ’d her Time better, than upon herself. The Ancients have left us only one Specimen of this Kind, but such as may compensate for all the rest, Horace’s Epistle to the Piso’s55; a Work that ought to be got by Heart by all true Lovers of Poetry, in which ’tis hard to say, whether we should admire the Wit or Judgment most, both in the Choice of the Precepts, and the Manner of delivering them. Among the Moderns, the celebrated French Poet,56 and several of our Countrymen,57 have succeeded, each in his native Tongue, very happily. These are the several Kinds of Didactic Poetry, with which the Writers of the past or Present Age have furnish’d us. In this Number I might reckon Ovid of the Art of Love;58 but I pass it by, on account of its Levity, not to say its Indecency. “Nemesianus’s Cynegeticon, I suppose, is omitted, as being still of a later Age, tho’ he had the good Fortune, as Vossius observes, to be read in the Schools in the Time of Charles the Great: and may still bear to be read in better Times than when Emperors could not write their own Name” [-JT]. Oppian of Cilicia (late 2nd cent. bc), certain author of Halieutica (“Fishing”) an imaginative didactic poem, and less likely the attributed author of Cynegetica (“Hunting”) a less polished treatise in verse. See A. W. Mair, trans. and ed., Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard UP, 1922). 55 i.e.. The Epistle to the Pisos (18 bc) more commonly known as the Ars Poetica, is Horace’s longest and most famous poem, widely printed and cited throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The major translations are Ben Jonson (1640–1641), Wentworth Dillon (1679), John Oldham (1686 and dedicated to Dryden), Thomas Creech (1684), Philip Francis (1746). See P. Wilson, “Lyric, Pastoral, and Elegy,” Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, ed. S. Gillespite and D. Hopkins (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 174–8. 56 “Boileau” [-JT]. The poetical and critical works of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) were widely popular in late-seventeenth century Britain; the first translation of L’Art Poétique (1674) was followed by a more astute edition by William Soame (1683), assisted by Dryden. A new three-volume edition of his works, newly translated, appeared in 1711–13. 57 “Earl of Roscommon, and Mr. Pope” [-JT]. Wentworth Dillon, fourth earl of Roscommon (1637–85), completed his verse translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica in 1679; Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (1711) was modeled on Horace’s critical principles and literary style; Pope’s epigraph is a quotation from Horace’s Epistle 1: 6, 67–8. 58 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 bc–ad 17), author of Ars Amatoria, poetic treatise on courtship and didactic instruction both to men and women on sexual intrigues. Notable partial translations include Francis Wolferson (1661), Thomas Hoy (162, 1692), and Dryden (1704). Further minor translation and imitations include Armstrong’s The Oeconomy of Love (1736), whose popularity damaged his reputation as a physician. See General Introduction. 54

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Much less excusable are Claudius Quilletus,59 and Hieronymus Fracastorius,60 among the Moderns; who, it were to be wish’d, had chosen Subjects less obnoxious to Censure. I would, however, observe, that any Thing in the World may be the Subject of this Kind of Poem: The Business or Recreations of the City, or the Country; even the Conduct of common Life, and civil Converse: But none more suitable than Arts and Sciences. And among those, which of them so proper to receive Instructions from the Hand of Poetry, as its two Sister Arts, Painting and Music? In the former, particularly, there is Room for the most entertaining Precepts concerning the Disposal of Colours; the Arrangement of Lights and Shades; the secret Attractives of Beauty; the various Ideas which make up that one; the distinguishing between the Attitudes proper to either Sex, and every Passion; the representing Prospects, of Claude Quillet (1602–1661), French poet whose Latin poem Callipaedia (Leiden, 1655) was published in London (1708–9) and translated into English by William Oldisworth, as Callipaedia, or An Art how to have Handsome Children (1710), dedicated to Samuel Garth, friend of Addison and later Physician to the King. The translation called for five editions and twelve printings before 1776. A pirated translation, under the title The Conjugal Directory; or the Joys of Hymen appeared in 1768 and was reissued as late as 1825. The advice repeats Aristotle’s notion of the homunculus, the complete “little man” that the mother receives from the father during sexual intercourse and merely nourishes until its birth; by thinking pleasant thoughts and consuming certain foods, the mother may be able to birth a more handsome child. See J. Blackman, “Popular Theories of Generation: The Evolution of Aristotle’s Works: The Study of an Anachronism,” in J. Woodward and D. Richards, eds, Health Care and Popular Medicine in Nineteenth-Century England: Essays in the Social History of Medicine (London: Croom Helm, 1977) 56–88. For the popularity of such preformation theories in the eighteenth century, see G. S. Rousseau, “Pineapples, Pregnancy, Pica, and Peregrine Pickle,” Tobias Smollett: Bicentennial Essays Presented to Lewis M. Knapp, ed. G. S. Rousseau and P.-G. Boucé (New York: Oxford UP, 1971) 79–110; A. McLaren, “The Pleasures of Procreation: Tradition and Biomedical Theories of Conception,” in W. F. Bynum and R. Porter, William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 323–420. It may be helpful to note that Armstrong’s innovative anatomical professor, Alexander Monro primus, was also a preformationist: see C. Lawrence, “Alexander Monro primus and the Edinburgh Manner of Anatomy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 62 (1988): 193–225. See also Young, Night Thoughts, note 10. 60 Hieronymus Fracastorius (1478–1553), Italian physician and poet, author of the epic poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (1530), translated into English by the poet laureate Nahum Tate as Syphilis, or, A Poetical History of the French Disease (1686), and included in a miscellany of Dryden’s poems, Examen poeticum (1693). Fracastorius offers the view that syphilis originated in America and was brought to Europe by the earliest Spanish explorers. Fracatorius prescribes learned medical remedies and attempts to explain why rural victims practice useless rituals by narrating the story of Syphilis, a shepherd who curses the gods for bringing drought and is then punished with the contagious disease. Rather than allow the infected community to sacrifice its original victim, the gods intercede by permitting the villagers to slaughter an animal instead—leading to the misleading and therefore dangerous folk practices that fail to stop the disease. 59

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Buildings, Battles, or the Country; and, lastly, concerning the Nature of Imitation, and the Power of Painting. What a boundless Field of Invention is here? what Room for Description, Comparison, and poetical Fable? How easy the Transition, at any Time, from the Draught to the Original, from the Shadow to the Substance? And, from hence, what noble Excursions may be made into History, into Panegyric upon the greatest Beauties or Hero’s of the past or present Age? The Task, I confess, is difficult; but, according to that noted, but true Saying, So are all Things that are great.61 Let the Man, therefore, that is equal to such an Undertaking, be fir’d with a noble Ambition to attempt a Work untouch’d before, and let the Georgics, which have been our great Example, furnish him with this noble Incentive: ----Temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim Tollere humo, victorque virûm volitare per ora.62 A Way by me, too, must be try’d, to raise Myself from Earth, and fill the Mouths of Men.

“Difficilia quae Pulchra” [-JT]. The probable source is Plato, where the phase appears in numerous dialogues and in the Republic; it is also found in Lucian and Plutarch, and elaborated by Erasmus. See Collected Works of Erasmus: Adages II.i.1 to II.vi.100, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991) 22–4. 62 “Geor. III. 8” [-JT]. See Georgics 3: 8; in Dryden, Georgics 3: 13–14 (209). 61

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Medical Documents

Fig. 8

Bradley, Richard. The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d: with Remarks upon the Plague in General. London: W. Mears, 1720. Title-page.

Richard Bradley The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d, 1720 This edition was printed in 1720 (London: W. Mears). Four editions and ten impressions between 1719 and 1721, another 1727; variously priced at 1 shilling and at 1 shilling sixpence.

The Plague at Marseilles Considered. TO Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society, &c. SIR, To Act under Your Influence, is to do Good, and to Study the Laws of Nature, is the Obligation I owe to the Royal Society, who have so wisely placed Sir Isaac Newton at their Head. The following Piece, therefore, as I design it for the publick Good naturally claims Your Patronage, and, as it depends chiefly upon Rules in Nature, I am doubly obliged to offer it to the President of the Learned Assembly, whose Institution was for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. I am, Sir, With due Respect, Your most obliged, Humble Servant,

R.Bradley.

 Richard Bradley (1688–1732), prolific author and botanist. Bradley was elected to the Royal Society by a well-placed friend in 1712, and to the first professorial chair in Botany at Cambridge in 1724, and was encouraged by numerous supporters throughout his varied career as a physician and scholar. He published on a wide range of botanical and medical topics, at times misleading his readers and patients about his formal credentials. See Martyn, biographical note, and Oxford DNB.  Isaac Newton (1642–1727), the most important mathematician of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and President of the Royal Society from 1703 until his death. It is unlikely any materials survive that document anything more than Newton’s passing acquaintance with Bradley; nevertheless, given the social prestige associated both with Newton and with membership in the Royal Society, and Bradley’s sustained dependence on the grace and favor of others, his choice of dedicatee is unsurprising. His dedicatees also included Sir Hans Sloane (see General Introduction, note 62) and other potential patrons in contemporary scientific circles.

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PREFACE. There would be little Occasion for a Preface to this Treatise, if the last Foreign Advises had not given us something particular relating to the Pestilence that now rages in the South Parts of France, and what may more particularly recommend these Relations to the World is, because they come from Physicians, who resided at the Infected Places. The Physicians at Aix give us the following Account. The Contagious Distemper, which has become the Reproach of our Faculty here, for above a month past, is more violent than that at Marseilles; it breaks out in Carbuncles, Buboes, livid Blisters, and Purple Spots, the first Symptoms are grievous Pains in the Head, Consternations, wild Looks, a trembling Voice, a cadaverous Face, Coldness in all the extreme Parts, a low unequal Pulse, great Pains in the Stomach, Reachings to Vomit, and these are follow’d with Sleepiness, Deleriums, Convulsions, or Fluxes of Blood, the Forerunners of sudden Death. In the Bodies that are opened, we find gangrenous Inflammations in all the lower Parts of the Belly, Breast, and Neck. Above Fifty Persons have died every Day, for three Weeks past, in the Town and Hospitals. Most of them fall into dreadful a Phrenzy, so that we are forc’d to tie them. The other is a Letter from a Physician at Marseilles, sent to John Wheake, Esq.; who was so kind to give me the Abstract. Marseilles Sept 15. 1720.

SIR, I Arriv’d here the 8th, and enter’d the Gate of Aix which leads to the Cours [fashionable open-air park], which has always been esteem’d one of the most pleasant Prospects in the Kingdom, but that Day was a very dismal Spectacle to me; all that great Place, both on the Right and Left, was fill’d with Dead,

As Jeremy Black has shown, European newspapers were major sources of news from the Continent during the first three decades of the eighteenth century. French-language newspapers from Holland were readily available and widely circulated in London and beyond, providing valuable sources for translations that would appear in book form. See J. Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1987) 88–91. For a list of 203 separately printed documents relating to the outbreak at Marseille, see F. Cotton, La peste à Marseille (Marseille: Bibliothèque Municipale, 1973). See also APH, note 176, and General Introduction, notes 152–3.  John Wheakes, overseas trader and commercial agent (“Turkey-merchant”), based in Cornhill, London, is listed in A. Kent, The Directory . . . of the Names and Places of Abode of the Directors of Companies and Persons in Publick Business (London: H. Kent, 1736) 45. He is not mentioned anywhere in the Oxford DNB nor has a probate on record at Kew.  i.e., Aix en Provence, the judicial centre of Provence, a short distance inland from Marseille, the province’s port and commercial centre. 

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Sick, and Dying Persons. The Carts were continually employ’d in going and returning to carry away the Dead Carcases of which there were that Day above four Thousand. The Town was without Bread, without Wine, without Meat, without Medicines, and in General without any Succours [relief supplies]. The Father abandon’d the Child, and the Child the Father; the Husband the Wife, and the Wife the Husband; and those who had not a House to themselves, lay upon Quilts in the Streets and Pavements, all the Streets were fil’d with Cloaths and Houshold Goods, strew’d with Dead Dogs and Cats, which made an insupportable Stench. Mead [grain] was Sold at 18 to 20 Sous per Pound, and was only distributed to those that had Billets [vouchers] from the Consuls: This, Sir, was the miserable State of this City at that Time, but at present, Things have a better appearance; Monsieur le Marquis de Langeron, who Commands here, has caused the Dead to be burnt, and the Shops to be open’d, for the Sustenance of the Publick. Two Hospitals are prepar’d where they carry all the Sick of the Town, good Orders are daily re-establish’d, and the Obligation is chiefly owing to Monsieur de Laugeron, who does Wonders. However, there is not any Divine Service Celebrated, nor are there any Confessors. The People die, and are buried without any Ceremonies of the Church; But the Bishop, with any undaunted Courage, goes thro’ the Streets, and into publick Places, accompanied with a Jesuit and one Ecclesiastick, to Exhort the Dying, and to give them Absolution; and he distributes his Charity very largely. The Religious Order have almost all perish’d, and the Fathers of the Oratory are not exempt; it is accounted, that there have died 50000 Persons. One thing very particular is, that Monsieur Monstier, one of the Consuls of the City, who has been continually on Hors[e]back ordering the Slaves who carried away the Dead in Carts, of those that were Sick to the Hospitals, enjoys his Health as well as he did the first Day he began; the Sickness seems at present to abate, and we have the Satisfaction to see several whom we took under our Care at the begin[n]ing of the Sickness, promise fair towards as Recovery. The sickness however, is of a very extraordinary Nature, and the Observations we have in our Authors, have scarce any Agreement with what we find in this: It is the Assistance of Heaven we ought to implore, and to wait for a Blessing from thence upon our Labours. I am, &c. We may observe, that the Contagion now spreading itself in Foreign Parts, has nearly the same Symptoms that were observ’d in the late Plague at London; so that what Medicines were then used with good Success, may direct not only the without any Ceremonies See Creech, note 14, for Lucretius’s famous precedents of this image.  Slaves i.e., excessively devoted or submissive servants. From 1716, slavery was permitted on French soil only in very specific contexts—none of which would apply here. On the Edict of 1716, see S. Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996) 15-18. 

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People of England in the way of Practice, if God Almighty should please to afflict us with that dreadful Distemper, but be serviceable likewise to the Infected Places abroad. There is room enough to hope, the approaching Cold, which we naturally expect at this Season, may prevent its spreading amongst us for some Months, ’till the Air begins to warm, but the Seeds of that Venom may be brought over in Merchandizes even in the coldest Months, and according to the Nature of Insects will not hatch, or appear to our Prejudice, ’till the hotter Seasons. For to suppose this Malignant Distemper is occasion’d by Vapours only raising from the Earth, is to lay aside our Reason, as I think I have already shewn in my New Emprovements of Planting, &c.10 to which my Reader may refer.

 Since plague was known to spread from shipping ports, particularly in Mediterranean climates, there was a widespread belief that plague could be transported through infected objects (apart from rodents). Bradley is using seeds in the nonspecific sense of “source.” See APH, note 151.  from the Earth See Creech, note 4; on the contemporary miasmic theory of disease, see APH, note 155. 10 Bradley’s New Improvements of Planting and Gardening (London: W. Mears, 1717) was immensely popular, passing through some 18 impressions before 1740.

George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life, 1724 At Imbecillis (quod in Numero magna Pars Urbanorum, omnesque pene Cupidi Literarum sunt) Observatio major necessaria est: ut quod Corporis, vel Loci, vel Studii Ratio detrahit, Cura Restituat. Cels. (“The weak, however, among whom are a large portion of townspeople, and almost all those who are fond of reading, need greater precaution, so that care may re-establish what the character of their constitution or of their residence or of their study detracts.”) This edition was printed in 1724 (London: G. Strahan and Bath: J. Leake) and appeared on pages xi–xx and 1–5. Six further impressions appeared in 1725; eighth edition 1734; ninth and tenth edition 1745, all in octavo, and selling for 4 shillings in 1767. Latin editions: 1726 (London) and 1742 (Paris); Two competing French translations; 1725, 1726, 1727 (Paris); 1725 (Paris); Dutch edition, 1734 German edition, 1744.

 George Cheyne (1671/2–1743), Scottish physician based in London and Bath, early admirer of Newton, made famous by his accessible guides to health and by attending to the medical complaints of fashionable patients. He attended Marischal College (Aberdeen) and studied medicine at Edinburgh, receiving his MD (Aberdeen) through sponsorship (rather than by examination) in 1701 and on a honorary basis in 1740. Upon his arrival in London in 1702, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, but alienated Newton (then its president) and, as a graduate of a Scottish university, was unable to obtain a license to practice medicine in the capital. He returned to Scotland until 1715, when he developed a medical practice in Bath; he settled there permanently in 1718, where his practice and reputation grew, and from where he wrote moral, religious, and popular medical treatises directed to the concerns of his wealthy patients. Although his writings were targeted by satirists and disapproving colleagues, by 1730 Cheyne was among the most famous physicians in Britain. It was through the great sales of this book that Cheyne’s fortune was secured. His advice on regimen and ideas concerning the fibrous structure of the nerves continued to sell through the century and in numerous translations, influencing the neurological theory of Robert Whytt and the practical self-help books of John Wesley and others. See Oxford DNB.  See Celsus, On Medicine [1: 2], trans. W. G. Spencer, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1935) 45.  See A New and Complete Catalogue of All English Books (London: n. p., 1767) 14.  See A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 2000) 241–2.

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Preface. I am now come to this my last Production; whose Origin was as casual as that of my former. My good and worthy Friend the present Master of the Rolls, having been last Autumn at Bath, for a Confirmation of his Health, at his Departure desired of me to draw up some Instructions in Writing, to direct him in the Conduct of his Health for the future, and in the Manner of supporting his Spirits free and full, under the great Business he is engaged in. I was then in the Hurry of our Season, and could not so soon answer his Expectation, as his real Worth, and my sincere Esteem required. I thought myself therefore the more obliged, as soon as I had Leisure, to exert myself to the uttermost in Obedience to his Commands. At first I drew up most of these Rules at the End of the several Chapters; but, upon Reflexion, thought it not Respect enough to his good Taste and Capacity to judge of the Reasons of Things, to prescribe him bare and dry Directions in Matters of so great Moment. I added therefore the philosophical Account and Reasons of these Rules, which make up the Bulk of the Chapters themselves. He, out of his Love to his Fellow-Citizens, (which is one shining Part of his Character, and which I ought to suppose, has in this Instance only imposed on his better Judgment) desired they might be made publick. Upon which Account several Things have been since added, to make the Whole of more general Use. If therefore any Thing in this treatise be tolerable, or if any Person receive Benefit

 Apart from specialist scientific and theological treatises published between 1701 and 1716, Cheyne’s celebrity as a physician and author arose through his hugely popular and more recent publication, An Essay of the Gout (1720), which had reached its sixth edition in 1724. Further titles would follow in the wake of the present Essay. See A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression 239–43.  Master of the Rolls The third-most senior judge in England, following the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice. Sir Joseph Jekyll (c.1662–1738) lawyer and politician, Chief Justice and member of the Privy Council, respected for his conscientiousness during his tenure as Master of the Rolls (1717–38). See Oxford DNB.  Following Queen Anne’s famous visit to Bath in 1702, the popular visiting season ranged from April to October, when visitors would spend up to two months taking the mineral waters and joining the lively social scene. Later in the century, an aristocratic visitor noted that the visit “was principally taken during the autumn, as the company is more numerous and of a better class before the opening of Parliament, and before the winter gaieties of London, both of which last far into the summer, and prevent many people from visiting Bath during that time.” See F. von Kielmansegge, Diary of a Journey to England in the Years 1761–62, trans. S. P. Kielmansegg (London: Longmans, 1902) 120. See also R. S. Neale, Bath: A Social History, 1680–1850: A Valley of Pleasure, Yet a Sink of Iniquity (London: Routledge, 1981); P. Hembry, The English Spa, 1560–1815: A Social History (London: Athlone P, 1990).

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by it, they owe it intirely to that excellent Person, upon whose Account solely it was undertaken, and at whose Request it is published. I have, indeed, long and often, observed, with great Pity and Regret, many very learned, ingenious, find even religious Persons, who being weak and tender (as such generally are) have suffered to the last Extremity, for want of a due Regimen of Diet, and other general Directions of Health, who had good Sense enough to understand the Force and Necessity of such Rules valued Health sufficiently, and despised sensual Gratifications, for the Pleasures of the Mind, so far, as to be able and willing to abstain from every thing hurtful, deny themselves any Thing their Appetites craved, and to conform to any Rules, for a tolerable Degree of Health, Ease, and Freedom of Spirits; and yet being ignorant how to conduct themselves, from what to abstain, and what to use, they have suffered even to mortal Agonies; who, had they been better directed and instructed, had [i.e., would have] passed their Lives in tolerable Ease and Quiet. It is for these, and these only, the following Treatise is designed. The Robust, the Luxurious, the Pot-companions, the Loose, and the Abandoned, have here no Business; their Time is not yet come. But the Sickly and the Aged, the Studious and the Sedentary, Persons of weak Nerves, and  This is an ironic attempt at the traditional rhetoric of literary patronage, for even by 1724 Cheyne was more widely famous, particularly as a successful author, than the patron to whom he gestures. This passage illustrates changing notions of literary patronage and medical authority, where the physician living in the country (Bath) celebrates his patient, an eminent figure in the highest court in the land, whose traditionally powerful position in politics and the law in fact cannot match the fame and fortune that Cheyne’s writing on ailments affords.  their Time has not yet come Such evangelical rhetoric informs Cheyne’s advice, social ideology, and literary style—leaving him vulnerable to accusations of manipulating his ailing readers (see “A Letter,” textual reference to note 4). Cheyne’s phrasing indicates that he has not yet prepared a treatise for this particular group of patients, insinuating a clear moral distinction between his reader (who already “understands” the need for self-discipline) and those others (who have “abandoned” themselves to the causes of their disease). Physicians, patients, and the novelists who depict them have long associated specific ailments with moral sensibility; Armstrong’s extensive and highly specific references to exclusive places and social practices is another example of this. On the theological basis of Cheyne’s writings, see G. S. Rousseau, “Mysticism and Millenarianism: ‘Immortal Dr Cheyne’,” Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650–1800, ed. R. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1988) 81–126; on its social ideology, see R. Porter, “Civilization and Disease: Medical Ideology in the Enlightenment,” Culture, Politics, and Society in Britain: 1660-1800, ed. J. Black and J. Gregory (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991) 154–83. Useful surveys of the medical and literary discourse include J. Mullan, “Hypochondria and Hysteria: Sensibility and the Physicians,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 25 (1983): 141–75; C. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992). See also S. Shapin, “Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77 (2003): 263–97.

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the Gentlemen of the learned Professions, I hope, by the divine Blessing on the following Treatise, may be enabled to follow their Studies and Professions with greater Security and Application, and yet preserve their Health and Freedom of Spirits more entire, and to a longer Date. I am morally certain, had I known and been as well satisfied of the Necessity of those Rules here laid down, thirty Years ago, as I am now, I had [i.e., would have] suffered less, and had had a greater Freedom of Spirits than I have enjoyed.10 But every thing is best as it has been, except the Errors and Failings of our free Wills. I know no useful Means of Health and Long Life I have omitted, nor any pernicious Custom I have not noted; and have given the plainest and most familiar Reason I could urge for the Rules I have here laid down. Most of my Arguments (as they needs must) have risen out of the animal11 Functions and Oeconomy: And I have used as little Subtilty and Refinement in my Explications of these, as the present State of Natural Philosophy12 could admit. I have been often contented with plain and obvious Facts to account for Appearances., and the Cautions thence deduced; when, according to the Humour of the present Age, I might have run into refined Speculations of Metaphysics, or Mathematicks; being contented with the Crasso Modo Philosophari;13 because we shall never be able to search out the Works of the Almighty to Perfection, so as to penetrate the internal Nature of Things.

Cheyne’s subsequent treatise, The English Malady (1733), would feature an autobiographical postscript titled “The CASE of the Author,” elaborating this point. See H. Deutsch, “Symptomatic Correspondences: The Author’s Case in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Cultural Critique 42 (Spring 1999): 35–80; A. Guerrini, “Case History as Spiritual Autobiography: George Cheyne’s ‘Case of the Author’,” Eighteenth-Century Life 19 (May 1995): 18–27. 11 animal The physically animated body, in contrast to the immaterial soul, whose functions would require more subtle explication. Frequently distinguished as the “animal and rational souls.” For a cogent survey, see R. K. French, Robert Whytt, the Soul, and Medicine (London: Wellcome Library, 1969). 93–107; 117–68. 12 Natural Philosophy, i.e., the study of nature, then dominated by the notoriously arcane reasoning and mathematical formulae that characterized Newtonian approaches to scholarly field that included physiology. See M. Mazzotti, “Newton for the Ladies: Gentility, Gender, and Radical Culture,” British Journal for the History of Science, 37 (June 2004): 119–46. See also G. S. Rousseau, “Science Books and Their Readers in the Eighteenth Century,” Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. I. Rivers (Leicester: Leicester UP, 1982) 197–255. 13 Crasso Modo Philosophari “the dull manner of philosophizing.” See previous note. 10

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I have consulted nothing but my own Experience and Observation on my own crazy [i.e., diseased]14 Carcase, and the Infirmities of others I have treated, in the following Rules, their Reasons and Philosophy, (so that if any thing is borrowed, it has occurred to me as my own) but in so far as Authorities go shorten philosophical Accounts. Not but that all systematic Writers in Physick, and many particular Authors, have treated the same Subject: But their Rules, besides that they are often inconsistent with Reason, or contrary to Experience, are so general, and expressed in so unlimited and undefined Terms, as leave little or no Certainty in them; when apply’d to particular Cases, they want [i.e., lack] the necessary Precision and Exactness, and so become useless or perplexing: and, lastly, when they come (which is rarely to be found among them) to give the Reasons and Philosophy of their Directions, they have not the Perspicuity and natural Way of convincing the ingenious,15 sickly, and tender Sufferers, so necessary to make them chearfully and readily undergo such severe Restraints; which I take to be, by far, the most difficult Part of such a Work, and which I have laboured, with my utmost Power, to supply. I know not what may be the Fate and Success of this Performance; nor am I sollicitous about it, being conscious the Design was honest, the Subject weighty, and the Execution the best my Time, my Abilities, and my Health would permit, which cannot bear the Labour of pitch Fileing and Finishing.16 Being careful not to incroach on the Province of the Physician,17 I have concealed nothing my Knowledge could suggest, to direct the Sufferer, in the best manner I could, to preserve his Health, and lengthen out his Life. And I have held out no false or delusory Lights to lead him astray, or torment him unnecessarily. If it were possible any Set of Men could be offended at my Performance, it might be my Brethren of the Profession,18 for endeavouring to lessen the Materia crazy from craze (i.e., flawed), see OED: “I find my frame grown crasie with perpetual Toil and Meditation” (see R. Steele, Spectator 426 [9 July 1712]). 15 ingenious, i.e., intelligent: see Cheyne’s earlier linking of “Persons of weak Nerves, and the Gentlemen of the learned Professions” with those most susceptible to nervous illness. 16 i.e., the physical labor of filing and then sanding (finishing) the hardened tar (pitch) that seals the wooden hull of ships—metaphorically, laboring with words to seal an argument. Cheyne’s honesty, and the gravity of his subject, mean that he cannot bear such labor. Cheyne uses this phrase again in “Dr Cheyne’s Own Account of His Writings,” with reference to an earlier scientific treatise that “wants to much filing and finishing, so many Alterations and Additions, as would cost me more Labour and Pains that the writing a new Treatise on the same Subject.” See Dr. Cheyne’s Own Account of Himself and of His Writings (London: J. Wilford, 1743) 10. 17 i.e., by prescribing specific treatments for disease. 18 See A Letter to George Cheyne. See also Remarks on Dr Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long Life (London: A. Ward and T. Cos, 1724); E. Strother, Essay on Sickness and Health (London: C. Rivington, 1725). 14

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Morbifica.19 But as this would be the most malicious, unjust, and unworthy Reflection [that] could be thrown on Scholars and Gentlemen of a liberal Education, so I never entertain’d the most remote Vanity to think any Endeavour of mine would make so considerable a Change in the Nation; especially when the Devil, the World, and the Flesh were on the other Side of the Question, which have stood their Ground even against the Rules of Life and Immortality brought to Light by the Gospel. I cannot conclude this tedious Preface, without begging Pardon of the Reader, for troubling him with my private Matters. All I can say as an Apology, is, that of whatsoever Indifference my Concerns as an Author may be to him, yet they were not so to me; this being the only Place and Time I may have to adjust them in, and being the Height of my Ambition, Nil conscire mihi, nulla pallescere culpa.20

An Essay of Health and Long Life. §.I. It is a common Saying, That every Man past Forty, is either a Fool or a Physician. It might have been as justly added, that he was a Divine [i.e., clergyman] too: For, as the World goes at present, there is not any Thing that the Generality of the better Sort of Mankind so lavishly and so unconcernedly throw away, as Health, except eternally Felicity. Most men know when they are ill, but very few when they are well. And yet it is most certain, that ’tis easier to preserve Health, than to recover it; and to prevent Diseases, than to cure them. Towards the first, the Means are mostly in our own Power: Little else is required than to bear, and forbear. But towards the latter, the Means are perplexed and uncertain; and, for the Knowledge of them, the far greatest Part of Mankind must apply to others, of whose Skill and Honesty they are, in a great measure, ignorant, and the Benefit of whose Art they can but conditionally and precariously obtain. A crazy Constitution, original weak Nerves, dear bought Experience in Things helpful and hurtful, and long Observation on the Complaints of others, who came for Relief to this universal Infirmary, BATH, have at last (in some measure) taught me some 19 Materia Morbifica: “diseased matter,” or organic sources of disease that can be treated or delayed only by medical intervention. Cheyne is using the term to refer to the diseased nature of contemporary social life; the phrase had been used typically by seventeenth-century physicians such as Thomas Sydenham in his famous treatises on gout: it is caused by “the native heat not being strong enough to throw off the material medifica upon the joints.” See The Works of Thomas Sydenham, vol. 1 (London: Sydenham Society, 1848–50) xxxviii. See also R. Porter and G. S. Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988). 20 “Not being aware of having done wrong means not turning pale with guilt”; a slight modification from Horace, Epistles 1, 1: 60. See R. Mayer, ed., Epistles by Horace (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 101.

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of the most effectual Means of preserving Health, and prolonging Life, in those who are tender and sickly, and labour under chronical Distempers. And I thought I could not spend my leisure Hours better, than by putting together the most general Rules for that Purpose, and setting them in the clearest and strongest Light I could, for the Benefit of those who may want them, and yet have not had such favourable Opportunities to learn them. §.II. And that I might write with some Order and Connexion, I have chosen to make some Observations and Reflections on the Non-naturals, (as they are called, possibly because that in their preternatural State21 they are eminently injurious to human Constitutions; or, more probably, because tho’ they be necessary to the Subsistence of Man, yet, in respect of him, they may be considered as external, or different from the internal Causes that produce Diseases); to wit, 1. The Air we breathe in. 2. Our Meat and Drink. 3. Our Sleep and Watching,22 4. Our Exercise and Rest. f. Our Evacuations and their Obstructions. 6. The Passions of our Minds. And, lastly, To add some Observations that come not so naturally under any of these Heads. I shall not consider here how philosophically these Distinctions are made; they seem to me, the best general Heads for bringing in those Observations and Reflections I am to make in the following Pages. §.III. The Reflexion is not more common than just, That he who lives physically must live miserably. The Truth is, too great Nicety and Exactness about every minute Circumstance that may impair our Health, is such a Yoke and Slavery, as no Man of a generous, free Spirit would submit to. ’Tis, as a Poet expresses it, to die for fear of Dying.23 And to forbear or give over a just, charitable, or even generous Office of Life, from a too scrupulous regard to Health, is unworthy of a Man, much more of a Christian. But then, on the other hand, to cut off our Days by Intemperance, Indiscretion, and guilty Passions; to live miserably, for the sake of gratifying a sweet Tooth, or a brutal Itch;24 to die Martyrs to our Luxury and Wantonness, is equally beneath the Dignity of human Nature, and contrary to the Homage we owe to the Author of our Being. Without some Degree of Health, we can neither be agreeable to ourselves, nor useful to our Friends; we can neither relish the Blessings of Divine Providence to us in Life, nor acquit ourselves of i.e., in their extreme states, beyond their natural bounds. Watching, i.e., wakefulness. 23 Francis Quarles (1592–1644), English poet, author of Hieroglyphikes of the Life of 21 22

Man (1638), a major work of Christian iconography, from which this phrase is taken. See F. Quarles, “Hieroglyfe 6,” Hieroglyphikes (London: J. Marriot, 1638) 16. At least thirty editions of Hieroglyphikes appeared by the mid-eighteenth century. See M. Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture (London: Longman, 1994). 24 Itch “A constant teasing desire” (Samuel Johnson); any compulsion involving immoral or restricted behaviour—contemporary examples include vanity and gambling. See Young, note 25.

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our Duties to our Maker, or our Neighbour. He that wantonly transgresseth the self-evident Rules of Health, is guilty of a Degree of Self-Murder; and an habitual Perseverance therein, is direct Suicide,25 and consequently the greatest Crime he can commit against the Author of his Being; as it is slighting and despising the noblest Gift he could bestow upon him, viz. the Means of making himself infinitely happy;26 and also, as it is a treacherous forsaking the Post,27 wherein his Wisdom has placed him, and thereby rendering himself incapable of answering the Designs of his Providence over him. The infinitely wise Author of Nature has so contrived Things, that the most remarkable Rules of preserving Life and Health are moral Duties commanded us; so true it is, that Godliness has the Promises of this Life, as well as that to come.28

“Self-Murder” [-GC]. i.e., by living a virtuous life on earth and thus finding eternal life after death. 27 i.e., refusing to accept one’s “middle station” in the great chain of being. See J. 25 26

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) 447 [3.6.12]; A. Pope, “An Essay on Man,” Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963) 516 [2.3–7]. See A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1936). 28 See note 10, above.

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A Letter to George Cheyne, M.D. F.R.S. Shewing, the Danger of laying down General Rules To those who are not Acquainted with the Animal Oeconomy, &c. For Preserving and Restoring Health. Occason’d by his Essay on Health and Long Life. London: J. Graves, 1724. Title-page.

[Anonymous], A Letter to George Cheyne, 1724 The Circumstances of Diseases are infinitely various, and no general Rules whatsoever, can be applied to particular Cases, without the Knowledge of the Reason of the Rule, that is, without understanding the Animal Oeconomy, upon which all the Rules of Physick are built. Preface to Keill’s Essay’s. This pamphlet was printed twice, in octavo, 1724; priced at one shilling. This edition was printed in 1724 (London: J. Graves) and appears on pages 1–7 and 9–13.

To George Cheyne, M.D. Fellow of the Royal Society. Sir, If any Thing in this World, be worth of a wise Man’s Care, it is Health; and as Mankind, cannot sufficiently testify their Gratitude to Those, who labour in the Practice of healing Diseases, with Diligence, Candour, and Judgment; so on the other hand, they cannot enough detest those who set up for the Art of Healing, without any other Qualification, but their Diploma, to Recommend them; and having nothing in their view, but making or mending their Fortunes, neglect that Knowledge, which is absolutely necessary, to make their Practice Honourable and Successful. Those who write Well and Ill, on the Subject of Health, ought in like-manner, to be set in opposition to one another, and as their Labours tend to the Preservation of Prejudice of Health, so ought they to become the Objects of our Favour, or Contempt. As all Mankind, are more or less frail, they therefore ought to bear a great deal from one anothers Folly; and the trade of Scribling, among the rest of Men’s folly’s, may be so far indulged, as not to be censured, so long as it continues  See J. Keill, Essays on Several Parts of the Animal Oeconomy (London: G. Strahan, 1717) xi–xii.  Final page of the first edition closes with “November 1724”; while it is likely that one or more editions of Cheyne that indicate 1725 were available late in 1724, this date is early in the prolific printing history of Cheyne’s Essay. See Cheyne, note 5.  In Cheyne’s case, as well as for many other Scottish MDs during this period, the MD qualification did not represent a completed course of formal university training, for his diploma from Aberdeen was awarded through “sponsorship”—the invitation to pay a fee for the document. See also the granting of medical degrees in eundem gradum, which recognized the candidate’s formal training completed elsewhere. See Martha Wright, “In Eundem Gradum,” AAUP Bulletin 52, no. 4 (Dec., 1966): 433–36. See Cheyne, biographical note, and Tristram, note 30.

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harmless and innocent; but as soon as it ceases to be so, it is every reasonable Man’s duty, to endeavour to stop its torrent, and divert as much as possibly he can, the Mischief it threatens. If a Man imagines he can oblige the World, by communicating some thing useful; as he ought by no means to suppress it, so what he advances, ought to be attended with the Reasons that led him into his Opinion; and these shou’d be offered to the Consideration of such only, whose application in that way to which they tend, hath made them Judges of their Sufficiency; and then if his Arguments shou’d prove too weak, to support his Oppinion, no other hard will ensue, but his Loss of Labour, and that share of Praise, which probably he might expect as the Reward of it. But when a Physician shall presume, to lay down Practical Rules, to all Mankind without Distinction, for the Preservation of Health; and if these Rules shou’d prove pernicious and destructive to it, People will be apt to imagine, that he puts himself upon a Level with these Savages on the Sea-coast, who set out false Lights, to invite distressed Mariners to their destruction; that they may reap the Benefit of the Ship-wreck. You best know Sir, what were the Motives, that prompted you to publish your Essay of Health and long Life, as you call it; but I doubt [i.e., think], many will have Reason to wish it had never appear’d; it is now almost in every bodys hand, and that seeming self-deniedness in your Preface, that Air of Piety that you put on, in almost every other Period [i.e., sentence], will perswade many to believe, so good a Man, wou’d never publish a Book to pamper his Vanity, and wou’d never pretend to the Knowledge of any thing he was an absolute Stranger to; these Considerations, will, I am afraid weigh with many to their Distruction [sic]. I intend by this to show, that every Attempt of this kind must be fruitless, if not pernicious, by encouraging People to tamper with their Constitutions, which they cannot possibly regulate by any General Rules. And if your Performance proves, that your knowledge of the Animal Oeconomy, is not quite so extensive as perhaps it ought to be; you must not take it amiss if I point out a few of those Passages, from when that unhappy Conclusion naturaly flows. If the Reasons I shall offer to this purpose, are not sufficient to make it appear, they cannot hurt you; but on the Contrary, if they happen to be just and convincing, no good Man will blame me for undeceiving People, in what regards a thing, so essential to their Well-being as Health. I have no Inclination to trace you thro’ every thing that I think wrong with this Performance, because, beside the irksome Employment of finding fault, that wou’d oblige me to write a Book at least as large as yours. I shall endeavour therefore, to be as short as the Subject will allow me.



See, for example, Cheyne notes 9–10. i.e., the principles of physical animation; the body. See Cheyne, note 11.  The editions of 1724 and 1725 reached 232 pages; the present Letter reached 72 pages, both in octavo format. 

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It is a common Saying, as you observe, that a Man past Forty, is either a Fool, or a Physician; and if it means any thing, it only implys, that by long experience, a Man that is not a Fool, will know what things have best agreed with him; and his Reason will direct him to continue the Use of them, till some alteration in his Constitution makes them hurtful; and when that happens, he will find there is something else required to make a Man a Physician, besides living forty Years in the World; for beside Diseases, Old Age will alter a Man’s Constitution, and bring on Symptoms, which he could have no experience of, when less advanced in Years. Of what use then, can his former Experience be to him, in Circumstance be never was in before? But let us suppose, that by forty Years Experience, a Man may have discover’d the proper Method he shou’d follow, through all the different Stages and Accidents of Life, to preserve his Health, and prolong his Days; yet this Method will only be applicable to himself, and such Constitutions as exactly resemble his own, in every Circumstance; and such another, perhaps will not be to be found among all the rest of Mankind. [ …] When a Man has acquired a competent Knowledge of the Animal Oeconomy, and of the Power and Efficacy of these Medicines proper to restore and preserve Health, to such a Man, I believe it is possible to lay down such general Rules, and Directions, as may enable him to practice the Art of healing, with success and ease. But to pretend to direct Men ignorant of these things, how to govern themselves, to preserve or restore their Health, is equally reasonable, as if one should give Directions to a blind Man, to go a long Journey by himself, thro’ ways that he never cou’d possibly have any Idea of, and where every step out of the way wou’d endanger if not destroy his Life. For how shall Men be able to adjust either the Kind or Quantity of Diet or Medicine, that may be necessary, to Constitutions they are Strangers to? How shall they be able to judge for themselves, of that Exercise, and Air, that is proper for them, when they are unacquainted with the Nature of those Symptoms, that can only enable them to distinguish. You will perhaps say, that you have acquainted them with these Symptoms to which your Directions are suitable; but may not a Person be afflicted with any Symptoms you can mention, and at the same time have others, which wou’d make the Method that might be proper to remove such Symptoms, were they alone destructive to the Patient, now they are complicated with others, which you cou’d not possibly foresee.



Thomas Gray imagines Cheyne repeating this aphorism to Aristotle in a letter to Richard West of January 1742. See The Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. P. Toynbee, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford U P, 1915) 19.  i.e., only by understanding the medical nature of these symptoms through clinical consultation, can they distinguish the proper treatment for them.

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What then must become of that Person, who having these Symptoms you mention, follows your Advice, and whose want of Knowledge will make him disregard those other Symptoms that will make your prescription pernicious? Many Attempts have been made to lay down general Rules, for Mankind without distinction, to preserve their Health and prolong their Lives; but these Productions never obtain’d the End they aim’d at; because the Constitutions and Habits of Mens bodies differ so much from one another, that any general Rule laid down to any number of Men for this Purpose, must be destructive, at least to the greatest Part of them, if they all comply with it. For if every Man, was exactly to pursue that method to Health and long Life, that is proper for him to follow, perhaps we should not find two in ten thousand, exactly pursuing the same Course, though their End wou’d be all the same; so that any general Rule enjoyn’d to these ten thousand, wou’d but at best be useful to two, and hurtful or destructive to all the rest. It is very rarely, or never happens, that Diseases, even of the same Denomination, ever affected two Persons, in the same manner, in every Symptom, and the Method of Cure ought always to vary with the Symptoms. How then can you tell a Man, after what manner he shou’d govern himself in a Disorder, when you cannot possibly know, in what manner he is to be affected with it? Or tell how a Constitution shou’d be regulated, which you are altogether a Stranger to? And these valetudinary crazy Constitutions, that you address your self to, actually labour under Distempers [diseases], or they wou’d not be so; and perhaps there are not two such in all England, whose Complaints, and Constitutions don’t differ in many Circumstances. So infinite is the variety of Diseases and Constitutions, that the best Physician in the World, can only determine, for these he is intimately acquainted with, and whose Symptoms he himself hath examin’d, and cannot with any safety, depend upon any thing, but the conviction of his own Senses, to regulate his Practice by. What then must the Complexion of your Merit be, who pretending to point out the way to Health and long Life, lay down Rules for Mankind to follow, which perhaps will never be useful to any, and may be hurtful and destructive to all, who regard your Advice? and the greater your Reputation as a Physician, the worse will be the Consequences, and consequently the greater your Guilt.

 The author is quoting from Cheyne and his particular use of crazy; see Cheyne, note 14.

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[Tristram, John]. The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain: Truly Represented to all Lovers of Health, and of their Country. And An Apology for the Regular Physicians. London: J. Roberts, 1727. Title-page.

[John Tristram], The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain, 1727 Fraudantur Medici, Laudantur Pharmacopolae. Phamaca dat Celsus, dat Paracelsus opes. (“In vain the physicians practice with the honoured apothecaries. The drugs of Celsus and of Paracelsus are abundant.”) One edition, a pamphlet in octavo; probably one shilling. London: J. Roberts, 1727.

The ILL STATE of PHYSICK in GREAT BRITAIN. Sect. 1. Having gone thus far by way of Preface, I still find that I am obliged to remove an Objection or two that lye against myself, before I proceed far in those that I shall offer against the Men that abuse this Noble Science; and likewise to premise something of the Difficulty to attain a competent Knowledge in it. There are some inquisitive People, who will needs [i.e. wish to] know how I came by these dismal, ill-natured Accounts of the Male-Administration [i.e., Maladministration] of Physick? To whom I reply: Dear-bought Experience, the most faithful Informer, hath for the most part (tho’ I must acknowledge some things are taken upon Trust and Narrative; but then of such Persons, whose Insight and Veracity I esteemed altogether equal to my own Knowledge) hath, I say, led me into these sad Secrets. For being a Piece of John Tristram (b. 1689) does not appear in the Oxford DNB; since he does not appear in William Munk’s Lives of the Royal College of Physicians of London (London: RCPL, 1861) it is unlikely that he was ever elected to Royal College of Physicians of London. Nevertheless the archives at University College, Oxford, indicate that Tristram graduated BA in 1700, MA 1703, BM [Bachelor of Medicine] 1706—he never acquired the DM [Doctor of Medicine], which was required for application to practice in London, but the BM was sufficient to practice legally in Oxford. In September 1711, several Oxfordtrained medics (including the eminent John Freind, see note 19) were found to be practicing in London without a license; Tristram said that “he was in town as a gentleman, not a physician”—see his remarks on the nature of his practice in the subsequent paragraph. According to his will (dated 10 January 1732/3), Tristram owned land and controlled tenements in Chelsea, and also owned land near the Worchester village of Belbroughton. See J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1891) on CD-ROM; R. O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800 (London: Longman, 2000) 186; G. Clark, History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966) 508; Probate, National Archives (Kew), Prob. 11/683.  Untraced. 

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a Physician myself, who have had a liberal [i.e. extensive] Education in one of our own celebrated Universities, and performed (tho’ perfunctorily I must confess with Compunction) all the Exercises there required to be done for the last Degree that a Student can be honoured with in that Academy; who have spent some Years in the Wholesale Apothecaries Shops in London, where I had an Opportunity of examining into their adulterate and deadly Compositions, of seeing too many of their unfaithful Dispensations; and have been a Practitioner of above twenty Years standing, (for some time in the Country, but for the major Part) in this grand Metropolis, and consequently could not well avoid being not only Ear, but more frequently an Eyewitness of those horrid Practices, (as one ingenuous and faithful Apothecary, who could hardly ever be prevail’d upon to leave his proper Business in his Shop, to intrude into the sick Chambers, was used to call them) that introduce such vast Swarms of impudent Empiricks into Credit with the unthinking Multitude, and unwary People, and discourage and disgrace the true Physicians, as well as deprive them of their just Rights, and lawful Emoluments. And here I need not descend to Particulars; this whole Discourse being intended against these ignorant Pretenders to this learned Art in general, some of their Disqualifications will necessarily occur in every Paragraph: But for Shew of some Methods, I chuse to speak to the Formalist in the first place. And it is easy to demonstrate, that he, who is merely such, and that takes all for granted that he finds recommended to him by Authors, and practices by their Schemes, and can use no other than their Prescriptions, will never make any thing on’t, never be a good and honest Physician. To what Errors do Men expose themselves through Prejudice? and to how many more through a blind Submission to a reputed Authority? Doth not every Day’s Experience convince us, that the same Remedy applied to the same Disease may be successful in some Constitutions, and fatal in others? This  Where, presumably, the apothecary would offer services at considerably lower expense than a trained physician. “One ingenuous and faithful Apothecary”: untraced.  Empirics Those who rely on their own experience with disease rather than systematic learning and training in medicine. For a useful cultural history of this term, see R. Williams, “Empirical,” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2nd edn (London: Fontana P, 1983) 115–17.  Formalist One whose method of practicing medicine extends to blind compliance with the formal treatments used by others, without any understanding of the nature of diseases or means of treatments, and without appreciating subtle distinctions between symptoms that only appear (i.e., formally) similar.  “Nemo ex libris evasit artifex” [-Tristram]: Skills do not emerge from books (classical proverb).  “Illud ignorari non oporter, quod bib omnibus aegris eadum auxilia conveniunt: non eadem omnibus, etiam in similibus casibus opitulantur. Cels” [-Tristram]: There is another point that should not be ignored, that the same remedies do not heal all patients. In the same way, the same remedy will not heal all, even in similar cases. See A. Cornelius Celsus, On Medicine [3.1; Preface], trans. W. G. Spencer, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1935) vol. 1, 220; 69. See also APH, note 153; A Letter to George Cheyne, passim.

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deserves to be insisted on more at large in our present Subject; which, as I doubt it will not prove very entertaining, I shall endeavour to contract into as narrow a Compass as may be. Such Practitioners then, it is to be suspected, are more frequently obliged to bring the Symptoms of Diseases to their Receipts [i.e., medicinal recipes], than accommodate their Receipts to the Diseases. Such a Medicine-monger, qui medicinam ab usu tantum & experimentis novit & tracta, non ex cansis naturalibus; who fetcheth his Skills therein not from natural Causes, but from his own injudicious Use of it, and bold Experiments, is justly called by the learned Celsus an Empiric. Those who are not really Masters of this Science, but practices barely upon Receipts, and those that have obtained only Notions from Books or Imagination, instead of a true and accurate Information of the Laws of the animal Oeconomy, will ever be perplexed in the Mists of Fancy, and be much more likely to do hurt than good, by putting Nature out of her way by the Force of Ignorance. Such Men have little regard to the Caution given by Asclepiades, That it is the Duty of a Physician not only to cure as soon as may be, but to take care that his Medicines are safe, as well as palatable; nor to the Admonition of Hippocrates, That the Physician be perpetually on his Guard, exert his utmost skill and Endeavours to do good, and to take care that by his wrong Administration nothing of harm befal his patient.10 ’Tis better to wait, to observe, and give nothing, where there is Cause to doubt, than venture to give what may prove wrong. And it were to be wished, there was not, by the great Numbers of Medicines flung in at random, perhaps to please, or to amuse,11 (not to mention some less honourable Ends) more Destruction made, than by Distempers themselves. And if any Faculty [i.e., profession] is so far imperfect in itself, or so much corrupted by those that practice it, that a Man must be forced to play little Tricks, and to make wonderful Pretences to those things that are not, and to what he is utterly ignorant of, to support his Credit in his Calling; and must cheat other People not only of their Money, but sometimes of their Lives too, that he may get himself a Livelihood: certainly that Art, and the Followers of it, ought to be banished from amongst Men, to be suppressed as a Cheat and Imposture. For the Good of Mankind,  Tristram’s Latin is a paraphrase of Celsus, appearing at the start of his history of ancient medicine, after which follows: Thus this Art of Medicine … was divided into two parts, some claiming an Art based upon speculation, others on practice alone. But after those … no one troubled about anything except what tradition had handed down to him until Asclepiades changed in large measure the way of curing … And it is through these men in particular that this health-giving profession of ours has grown up. See Celsus, “Proemium,” On Medicine, trans. Spencer. 7.  “Medici est, cite, tuto, et jucunde curare” [-Tristram]: The physician is to cure quickly, safely, and pleasantly. Latin proverb, only possibly by Asclepiades. 10 Paraphrase from Hippocrates’ celebrated Oath. See Hippocrates, Ancient Medicine, trans. W. H. S. Jones. Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1923). 11 amuse In typical eighteenth-century parlance, “to deceive.”

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and honest Gain, is the only Bottom (as I have before observed)12 upon which every Trade and Science is set on foot: And he who cannot live honestly, that is, give a just and satisfactory Account how he lives, shou’d not be suffered to live. […] ’Tis a a needless (as well as a too tedious) Task to recite all that hath been offered on this Head by conscientious Physicians, in their own Vindication, and in order to detect such impudent Impostors. And it is a lamentable Observation, That a Physician, nowadays, who hath been regularly educated in one of our famous Universities,13 and hath given reasonable and legal Tests of his Qualification14, hath, after all his Way to make thro’ a vast Crowd, and superior Numbers, who have no other Support but superficial Pretences, backed by consummate Assurance, and all the insinuating Arts of Imposition, received greedily by an unthinking People. The honest and truly instructed Sons of Aesculepius15 need not have recourse to such Subterfuges: They can, it is to be hoped, give a Rationale of their Practice. But the more I consider these things, the more I admire how an Apothecary can commence Physician from the Doctor’s Bills hand upon his File!16 Yet this prating Monster is produced every Day, not only in the Country Towns, but the greatest Cities, and Places of Wealth and Concourse, and with Impunity, and most impudently jostles out of place the modest Physician; assuming this ostentatious Untraced. our The possessive refers to the course of medical education at the two English

12 13

universities. See note 30. By 1726 medical training was also available at Edinburgh, and enrollment increased annually for its rigorous three-year course of studies. See H. P. Tait, “Medical Education at the Scottish Universities to the Close of the Eighteenth Century,” ed. F. Poynter, ed. Evolution of Medical Education in Britain (London: Pitman, 1966) 66. It was important to specify “regular” education, for London provided a competitive market for private anatomical schools and apprenticeships that offered hands-on training but no formal qualification. One of its graduates, William Hunter (1718–83) was among the most talented and eminent physicians of the century. See P. K. Wilson, “Acquiring Surgical Know-How: Occupational and Lay Instruction in Early Eighteenth-Century London,” The Popularization of Medicine: 1650–1850, ed. R. Porter (London: Routledge, 1992) 42–71. 14 The Royal College of Physicians of London required an MD from an English or recognized Continental university, and examination orally in Latin based upon reading and interpretation of classical medical texts. Those who wished to proceed to be elected Fellows (and thus could vote on College matters), required a Cambridge or Oxford MD. See G. Clark, History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 2, 518–19; 552–72. 15 Aesculepius, Greek god of healing, also known as Paeon. Armstrong claims him as the source of his inspiration as a poet-physician; see APH, notes 2 and 98. 16 File a line on which papers are strung to keep them in order (Johnson, Dictionary): Th’ apothecary-train is wholly blind. From files, a random-recipe they take, And many deaths of one prescription make. See J. Dryden, “To John Driden,” Works of John Dryden, ed. P. Hammond and D. Hopkins, vol. 5 (London: Longman, 2005) 196.

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Motto Opiserque per orben dicor.17 For which Presumption he deserves the Fate of Python from the Hand of Apollo.18 As if a slight Knowledge (as a learned Gentleman observes) gathered from a few modern Systems, or by consulting Dispensaries, and perusing their musty Files, or spending some time in Hospitals, wou’d sufficiently qualify a Man to sit [i.e., in judgement] upon Life and Death. Whereas no Man’s own Experience is sufficient to make him a Master of the Art of Physick: He must take in also the Experience of former Ages, as well as his own. “I don’t see (saith the above quoted Author) how any honest Man can satisfy himself with a little superficial Inspection into our present Modes of Practice, and neglect the antient and best Writers in our Profession.”19 Tho’ it is one of the greatest Difficulties to find out proper and certain Methods of Cure; and this Difficulty that attends the Attainment of a competent Knowledge in the Art of Healing, is surely sufficient to deter any considering [i.e., considerate] and just Man from invading the Offices of it, without regular and cautious Instructions therein; with what abundant Application, with what conscientious Circumspection and Preparation of Mind shou’d we set about the Duties of this sacred Art, when we hear what the great and judicious Celsus pronounceth of the Uncertainty of its Rules and Precepts?20 No [words in Greek] must pass amongst Physicians. There is no Infallibility in our Science. ’Tis sufficient for us to know Properties, not Textures; to know the peculiar Attributes, and not the Essence of Things. God reserves these Secrets to himself, and leaves us room to admire. ’Tis enough for us to know the Properties of Bodies, without knowing the Causes of those Properties. Tho’ we may search into the Causes without Offence, yet we rarely do it to our Satisfaction. Do we satisfy ourselves when we pretend to reason upon many Phaenomena occurring in natural Philosophy?21 which agrees, that Qualities or Properties, 17 I am called Help-Bringer throughout the world. Apollo, god of healing, says this of himself in Ovid, Metamorphoses 1: 521–2. See Metamorphoses: Books 1–8, trans. F. J. Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984) 39. 18 In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Apollo kills the serpent or dragon Python with a shot from a single arrow, ridding the world of its poison and liberating the oracular Delphi from its guardian. See Andrew Lang, ed. and trans., The Homeric Hymns, 1899 (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2007) 68–9. 19 See John Freind, The History of Physick; from the time of Galen to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, in a Discourse written to Doctor Mead (London: J. Walthoe, 1725) 304–5. Friend was one of the most important and successful London physicians of the time; he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London on the same day as his friend Mead was elected Fellow of the Royal Society by Newton, and his History of Physick was a major success, commanding four editions and seven printings between 1725 and 1727. On Mead, see Armstrong, APH, note 12; Martyn, notes 1–5. 20 “Medicina vix ulla perpetua Pracepta recipit, &c” [-Tristram]. Scarcely any medical precepts have no exceptions. A slight misquotation from Celsus, “Proemium,” On Medicine, trans. Spencer. 34. 21 natural Philosophy see Cheyne, note 12.

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whether universal, particular, or occult, may be discovered, to’ their Way of operating cannot be explained by us. And there are certain Textures in Bodies we are absolutely ignorant of, whose Qualities however we are well acquainted with [ … ] Who can find all the Tubes, and Liquors moving in them, that compose a human Body? And who can tell how the animal and rational Soul are united?22 It must be confessed, we know no farther of the Union between Soul and Body, than that if there be a harmonious Proportion between the Fluids and Solids, our Senses are vigorous; but are disturbed where they fall short of, or exceed the natural Constitution. As most, if not all the former of these things are beyond the Knowledge of the Physician, so the Union of the Soul and Body is a Secret the wisest and most devout Divine does not pretend to penetrate, nor to explain the Difficulties that attend it. [ … ] Sect. II. Having given these Hints of the Difficulties that attend the Study of Physick, and that disqualify many, who presume to intrude themselves into the Practice of it; it may not be altogether impertinent to delineate a true Physician, to shew what, amongst all these Uncertainties, is absolutely necessary for him certainly to know; and what must be his real Qualifications and Accomplishments. And though I have insinuated how dark and uncertain all physical knowledge is, that the Professors thereof oftentimes lose themselves, and wander they know not where; [ … ] they follow the Food from the Mouth to the Stomach, and the Chyle from thence to the Lacteal Vessels,23 and their Insertion into the Veins; they search the Glands, and trace the Arteries and Nerves, that they may know the Vessels, and the liquids and Fluids moving in them, of which the human Fabrick is composed; that we call Blood and animal Spirits. And so they go on till they lose themselves, their Senses, all ocular Demonstrations, and can find nothing but the unsearchable Works of an Omnipotent Creator. Yet, I say, it is in the first place necessary, that the Student in Physick make himself very well versed in natural Philosophy; for it is generally remarked, Ubi definit Philosophus, incipit Medicus24; and he that will undertake the Art of Healing, must understand not only the general, but also the particular Subjects thereof; not only the sound Frame of an human Body, but the Diseases thereof, and those Remedies that are indicated from the Causes and Symptoms of them. Hence we infer, that he must understand Anatomy, which shews him the Figure, Position, and Use of every Part of our Bodies, as they are in their natural State of Health. Secondly, Pathology and Aetiology, which treat of the Difference, Causes, and Symptoms of all Diseases. Thirdly, Physiology, or the Knowledge of simple Medicines, that are supply’d tous by Nature; and this See Cheyne, note 11. Chyle Undigested food transiting through the intestines; see APH, note 38. Lacteal

22 23

Vessels lymphatic vessels that absorb nutrients from chyle. 24 One must be a Philosopher to become a Physician.

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also sheweth the Strength and Virtue of each Medicament. He must understand Pharmacy, both Galenical and Chymicall he must know Herbs and Drugs, and all the Spagyrical25 Preparations of them; that by knowing how to mix Simples in a just and right Proportion, he may prepare compound Medicines to supply the Defects of the simple. Thus an expert Physician should not only very well know the containing; but the contained Parts also of an human Body; and be well verses in the Causes26 and Symptoms of all Distempers. He must know the Virtues and Strength of all Medicines, simple and compound, and how to aply them seasonably, and in due Proportion. Hic labour, hoc opus27: An hard Task truly! and enough to discourage the young Student, who may have reason, upon taking this short View of his tedious Undertaking, to apply the28 Words of the great Father of the Faculty, who complained that the whole Life of Man was too short a time for his accomplishment in this Art. And hence too we may very justly conclude with the learned Celsus, That of all Men living a Physician has the highest Wisdom and Consideration. [ … ] These ten excellent Endowments being requisite to denominate a good Physician, it can’t be justly supposed that he can do well attain the same by any other Means, as by a liberal and pious Education; and without going through a regular, careful, and well-directed Course of Studies. Sect. III. And this leads me, in the next place, to take notice of some Discouragement to young Gentlemen to enter upon this Faculty, in Oxford especially.29 In that they are obliged to take the Degrees of Batchelor and Master of Arts, before they can there be admitted upon the Physick line; and must then take the Degree of Batchelor

Spagyrical Pertaining to alchemy, but by the 1720s the word was synonymous with chemical. 26 “Pertinet ad rem omnium Proprietates nosere non credunt posse eum feire quomodo morbos curare conveniat, qui under hi sint ignoret. Celsus” [-Tristram]. An acquaintance with the properties of all is of importance (De medicina, 2.18. trans. Spencer. 12); For they believe it impossible for one who is ignorant of the origin of diseases to learn how to treat them suitably (Proemium 14, trans. Spencer. 9). 27 This is the difficulty, this is the task. Ancient proverb, whose reverse formulation is associated with the advice Aeneis receives from the Sybil: “ascent from the underworld is easy, but returning is difficult” (see Aeneis, 4.129; not translated in Dryden.) 28 “Vita brevis, arts logna, occasio celer, experimentum periculosum, judicium difficile, &c.” [-Tristram]: Life is short, the art long, the crisis fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult. Hippocrates’s first aphorism has enjoyed an extensive literary and philosophical legacy; see O. Tempkin, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991) 44–5. 29 See General Introduction, note 112; APH, note 153. 25

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of Physick (and that after ten Years Residence)30 before they can be qualified regularly to hear the public Professor; which too they must do for full four Years longer, and be also full fourteen Years standing before they can commence Doctors. This tedious Continuance in the University, as well as the Exercises for those four Degrees, can’t but be attended with abundance of Charge [i.e., cost] and Trouble [i.e., inconvenience]. But whilst they see, in the mean time, their brethren at Cambridge take their Degree of Batchelor of Physick at seven Years standing; and after that, not be obliged to Residence, and at ten Years standing put on their Doctor’s Gown: tho’ their Time spent in the University is no longer than that required for the Degree of a Batchelor of Physick in Oxford, and their Tests of Probation no more expensive nor difficult than his. And what is more aggravating, when they see People, that are bred in private Academies (and thence removed to Padua, Leyden, or Utrecht, to Edinburgh or Glasgow, where in less than four or five Years Space they shall be dubb’d Doctors)31 intrude themselves into Places of Resort and Practice, and by the unthinking, major Part of Mankind be caressed, and preferred before our home-bred32 Physicians, merely for their Pretences to more Skill acquired by a foreign, though a much cheaper and shorter Way of Education: They cannot, I say, help being affected with some Uneasiness and Disgust, to see themselves thus unjustly obviated in their Pretences, and postponed.33 And as the Universities of other Nations are to be blamed for crowding in upon us such Clusters of mere Novices (or rather our Laws for suffering them so Despite such formal requirements, in practice Oxford graduated students MD simply on the basis of orally-defended examinations and, in some cases, patronage leading to purely honorary (but still recognized) medical degrees (“by sponsorship”). Oxford also awarded the MD in eundem gradum (“at the same level”)—upon the production of a foreign medical diploma and the payment of a fee, and this was notably the case at St. Andrews and at Aberdeen. In her survey of the controversies that raged at mid-century concerning Oxford’s flexible graduation practices, Bernice Hamilton observes that “it was difficult at that time to defend medical education at Oxford or Cambridge” according to any formal curriculum. Advocates of the medical degrees conferred by the English universities had to rely on inherited assumptions concerning gentility and tradition. See B. Hamilton, “The Medical Professions in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 4 (1951): 147; see also Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine to 1860 (London: Wellcome Museum, 1927) 178. See also A Letter, note 3. 31 Continental universities normally accepted a fee and then submitted applicants to an oral examination in Latin leading to the degree. There was no curriculum in medicine at Glasgow, and no medical teaching there before 1744, when William Cullen took the Chair of Medicine. Its MDs were awarded in eundem gradum with payment of a nominal £10 fee. See previous note, and A Letter, note 30. At Edinburgh the formal course of medical training in the first half of the century was normally completed within four years. See Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine to 1860, 173, 197. 32 Thus “home” refers to England rather than Britain; for a similar use of a possessive, see note 13. 33 postponed, i.e., to be placed in a subordinate position. 30

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to do);34 so are our own for not better regulating their Methods of Study, and not making the Degrees of Physick less expensive. It might be more advantageous for the Oxford Students in this Art, if for the two first Years they apply’d themselves to the Study of Logick, moral Philosophy, Politicks, aliisque humanioribus literis, &c.35 and for five more years they should not only hear the publick Lectures, but the Professor should direct the Course of their Studies; and by taking them with him into the sick Chambers, should inform them how to apply the Theory in their Practice; and not suffer the young Men to go on in their own injudicious Methods before they commence Batchelors of Physick.36 [ … ] But our publick Professors (whether thro’ Negligence or Want of sufficient Salaries to encourage them)37 seem very indifferent how the publick Exercises are performed; and give themselves no trouble in directing the Students, either [i.e., neither] in a regular and expeditious Method of Study, or in the usual way of Application of Medicines, and the Rules of Practice. Or, if this were too much for our Professors to undertake, a Catalogue of Authors they might readily exhibit; and, out of Conscience, scrutiny [i.e., scrutinize] and examine more narrowly into the Abilities of those they present to their Degrees in this Faculty: Or, surely there seems great need of some other able Men, who should be appointed to try and judge who are fit to prescribe and administer Physick, before they are rashly admitted to Practice. Section. IV. For certainly the Law of Nature, and well ordered Commonwealths,38 do require, that every ignorant Man who thinks himself skilful, should not play the Physician until he kill Men.39 Formerly in England any Man might use what Trade, and as many Trades as he could: But in time the Publick being damnified [inconvenienced], and Trade in general injured by this Liberty, such Persons, and those that followed Occupations to which they were not bred, were first restrained, Stat. 37. Ed. 3. and Tristram is overlooking the period between 1717 and 1722, when the Royal College of Physicians was protesting the tendencies of Oxford and Cambridge to award medical degrees to students on a purely honorary basis and to those who had not completed the formally required examinations. Anyone with a medical degree from these universities was legally entitled to practice in London; his not having passed the College’s own examination annoyed the College censors, but they were legally powerless to act. See Clark, History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 509–10. 35 Anything in the literary humanities. 36 See General Introduction, notes 33–5. 37 See General introduction, note 48. 38 Commonwealths societies defined by concern for the well-being of its citizens. 39 i.e., Surely natural laws and moral societies require that one have more than a high regard for his own skill, and not have killed someone, before he be permitted to practice medicine. 34

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again by Stat. 5 Eliz.40 under a penalty. This Law, that a Person should not employ himself in any other Business than what he was bred to was made to encourage Skilfulness, and that Youth might be regularly brought up in some lawful Trade. And the same Reason holds good with respect to the exercising the Faculties in the liberal Sciences; And we have Academical Statutes made accordingly, which say, That those that are not qualified there directed,41 should be punished as Rioters and Breakers of the Peace. But they are not much regarded, out of the University especially, to the great Injury of Physicians. And thus, or worse, all Quacks certainly deserve to be treated. For if they can practice, and get the Bread of learned Physicians, who have spent many hundred Pounds, and so many Years Labour and Study: nay, many of them the most vigorous and active Parts of their Lives, to obtain these Privileges, to what purpose is it to study Physick in our Universities! This doth but prejudice them. They spend their whole Fortunes to obtain a Degree, and a Diploma, or Power and Authority to exercise their Faculty all over the Kingdom, &c. and then have the Mortification to see an Apothecary, a Surgeon, a poor Vicar, and idle Schoolmaster, a strolling Stage-Player, a Toothdrawer, a Pickpocket (for Reasons best known to themselves, sometimes leaving their proper Stations, and mounting a Jointstool, as others a spotted Horse42) cum multis aliis43, assume his Title and Dignity of Degree, invade his Province, and take his Gain or Praemium!44 The Statute of Labourers (1349) was intended to guarantee local access to skilled tradesmen: it was enacted during the Black Plague and ensuing labor shortages, prohibiting skilled laborers from seeking work beyond their home parishes. The Statute of Apprentices (1562) improved the quality of skilled labor by mandating a seven-year apprenticeship (and to extend to the age of 24) for entry into certain trades, and administering specific wages for related labor. Both statutes were repealed in 1714 by 54 George III, ch. 94. See M. J. Trebilcock, The Common Law of Restraint of Trade (Toronto: Carswell P, 1986) 4–12. For the text of 1349, see E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, vol. 1 (London: Bell and Sons, 1903) 307; for 1562, see Statutes at Large, new ed., vol. 2 (London: M. Basket et al, 1770) 535–43. 41 “Sicut Perturbator Pacis puniatur” [-Tristram]. They shall be punished just like those who disturb the peace. From the fourth of the Academic Statutes of the University of Oxford; see Corpore Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1852) 112. 42 Jointstool a sturdy stool, small and strong and therefore easily transported. The traditional medical charlatan, announces his services at English markets upon a spotted horse, accompanied by a trumpeter. For a visual example, see the line engraving Pharmacopola circumforaneus, or the horse doctor’s harangue to the credulous mob … not far from Titter Tatter Fair, T. Slater, sculp. (London: J. Harrison c. 1750), in the Wellcome Library, no. 575019i. For a similar image, see Doctor Rock, an itinerant vendor of medicines, selling his wares from a horse-drawn carriage to a crowd at Kennington Common (London: White Horse, 1743); see C. J. S. Thompson, The Quacks of Old London (London: Barnes and Noble, 1993) 312. 43 among many others. 44 Gain Sums raised by profitable trade; Praemium Fees paid for apprenticeship or professional training. 40

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[Armstrong, John]. A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children. London: A. Millar, 1742. Title-page.

[John Armstrong], “Preface,” A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children, 1742 

John Armstrong (1709–1779), physician, poet, and satirist, was born in the village of Castleton, in the Scottish Borders. Through to the mid-nineteenth century, Armstrong was known for his popular didactic poem The Art of Preserving Health (1744) and for his literary collaborations with fellow Scottish authors including James Thomson and Tobias Smollett, and friendships with James Boswell and David Hume. Armstrong was the first to graduate MD insignitus (“with distinction” in 1732) from the innovative medical school at the University of Edinburgh, where he was among the first in Britain to study clinical medicine (in the Edinburgh Infirmary) while caring for patients. He had already developed a reputation in England (he was praised by Edward Young) for verses he wrote as a student. By the time he arrived in London in 1733 he was at work on his first satirical pamphlet, An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick (1734) that imitates Lucian in its sarcastic advocacy for letting uneducated quacks practice medicine with the same level of respect and legal protection as trained physicians. Meanwhile he published a scholarly essay on dermatology in the prestigious journal Medical Essays and Observations (1734), which was edited by his eminent teacher at Edinburgh, the anatomist Alexander Monro, and was translated into several European languages. Surviving manuscripts document Armstrong’s tenacious and even audacious attempts to secure the patronage of established physicians in the Royal Society such as Hans Sloane (he presented papers there in 1734 and 1735) and in the Royal College of Physicians of London such as Richard Mead—but he was disappointed repeatedly and, along with other Scots graduates, denied a license to practice medicine in the capital. His friendship with the Scottish bookseller Andrew Millar led to the anonymous publication of a racy imitation of Ovid, The Oeconomy of Love (1736), a sexmanual in blank verse, followed up by the scrupulous and scholarly Aphrodisiacus (1737), an English translation of famous Latin treatises on venereal diseases. Just as pirated editions of the Oeconomy appeared with his name on it, Armstrong’s Full View of the Diseases Incident to Children (1742), the first English-language anthology of pediatric writings intended for parents and lay readers, appeared. His Art of Preserving Health, addressed to Mead and written in Virgil’s restrained and yet evocative georgic style, was hugely successful, appearing, ironically, in the same year that his Oeconomy was translated into Italian. Armstrong’s georgic poem helped him to win a non-paying but still prominent position at the Duke of Cumberland’s newly founded military hospital in London (1746). Armstrong contributed to Thomson’s Castle of Indolence (1748) and was called to Thomson’s deathbed in 1748, was made Physician to His Majesty’s Forces in Germany (1759–63), contributed to Smollett’s Critical Review though the 1760s, all the while publishing satirical essays and poems. He was a longtime friend of the musicologist Charles Burney and physician to the Burney family (he was remembered with fondness by Frances Burney), was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1767), and received visits from Hume and Boswell. He supported his younger brother’s efforts to establish London’s first charitable hospital for children (1769). Armstrong died in his Covent-Garden flat, following a carriage accident, in 1779. A monument to Armstrong’s “learning, worth, and genius” was erected by public subscription in the Newcastleton churchyard in 1821. See General Introduction.

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One edition, duodecimo. Selling for 3 shillings in 1742 and four shillings in 1767. This edition: London. A. Millar, 1742.

THE PREFACE. Children are subject to so many Diseases peculiar to the State of Infancy, besides those they are liable to in common with Adults, that I have often wondered that they should have been so much over-looked by Medical Authors. But as very young Children have not the Power of Speech, to describe their Complaints, which are hardly to be understood otherwise; most Physicians, either through Indolence, or the fear of doing Mischief, when the Indications of Cure were not quite so clear as they could wish, have commonly resigned those little Patients to the Nurses and old Women, not scrupling to own their superior Skill in that Branch of Physick. In short the Method of managing the Diseases of Infants, was rather a Sort of Guess-work than any Thing else, till the Time of Harris. That sagacious Physician, was the first who attempted to put the Practice upon Infants (as far as related to their Acute Diseases at least) on as certain and rational a Footing as that upon Adults; and how well he succeeded in this laudable Attempt, I leave to those to judge who will only be at the Pains to read him, and put his Experiments to the Trial. His Theory of those Diseases is certainly very rational, and has one Thing to recommend it, without which no Theory can be firmly established: It is altogether founded upon Practice. It is to be regretted that he did not apply himself to study their Chronical Diseases too, or at least that he has left us nothing upon those Diseases, except one or two Cases, which as they have something singular enough about them, I have inserted in the following Collection. To supply this Defect in Harris as well as I could, I have added to this Translation of his Book, an Abstract of some of the best Authors, who have writ upon the Chronical Diseases of Children, as well as those Acute Ones, which he has omitted.

 See London Magazine 13 (April 1744): 208; A New and Correct Catalogue of All the English Books (London: n.p., 1767) 4.  Nurses Anyone hired to care for a child, not medically trained.  Walter Harris (1647–1732), physician and protégée of Thomas Syndenham, whose De morbis acutis infantum (1689, trans. 1693 as An Exact Enquiry into, and Cure of the Acute Diseases of Infants), was the standard pediatric treatise throughout the eighteenth century. It was reprinted in 1705, 1720, 1736, 1741, and 1745, with translations into French and German. Harris was Physician to William and Mary, and a prominent member of the Royal College of Physicians of London from 1688, when he first served as a Censor responsible for examining new licentiates and imposing the College’s statutes on all physicians practicing in the capital. See Oxford DNB.  Chronical Diseases, i.e., chronic, long-term illnesses; distinguished from Acute: sudden and short-lived.

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The Theory of those Authors, as it was more amusing [i.e., deceiving] than instructing, was quite foreign to my Purpose, so I have left it out. But as several of the Diseases treated of in this Abstract, are common both to Adults and Infants, (such as the Measles, Small-Pox, Scrophula, &c.) and are treated accordingly by the Authors which have writ upon them: that the Reader might not be led into dangerous Mistakes, I have always taken Notice where there was any Difference required, in the Management of Patients of different Ages, as to the Doses of the Medicines, the Regimen, &c. The Case of Queen Mary I thought was well worth a Place, both as it is a singular One, and such a Case may happen, as well as to Infants as Adults. Besides, as the Measles and Small-Pox are frequently Epidemical, both at the same Time, I am apt to believe that they are sometimes complicated with one another, while there is no Suspicion of any such Thing; the Measles being taken for the Purples which attend the worst kind of Small-Pox, and are always looked upon as a most dangerous Symptom.10 A Mistake here must be attended with the worst Consequences, as the Indication of Cure must widely differ upon a Suspicion of the Purples, from what it would be if one was sure that those Spots were only Measles. For whereas in the first, Astringent Remedies are proper; in the other, Relaxants and Diluters ought to be given. The Chapter upon the Chin-Cough will, perhaps, be reckoned somewhat Lame [weak]; and indeed the Author who treats of it, is candid enough to own that his Method will only succeed in one Kind of Chin-Cough, viz. when it proceeds from a rough viscid [sticky] Phlegm; but it is not the most fatal, it is perhaps as obstinate and cruel a Disease, as most that Children are liable to. And this may be one Reason why scarce any have touched upon it, except Systematical Writers, who were obliged by their Plan to say something of it. Bleeding, Purging, Vomiting and Blisters are the common Practice. But even all these, though used in the most prudent Manner, are oft found insufficient to perfect a Cure, and Nature will have her own Time in spite of all that can be done. Scrophula scrofula: an acute skin disease, frequently of childhood, characterized by the outbreak of painful sores on the face and neck, then believed to occur in the stomach as well (for which it was associated with consumption and the inability to absorb nutrients); also called “the king’s evil” from the enduring medieval belief that it could be cured by the monarch’s touch. See M. Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, 1924, trans. J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge, 1973). It is now understood to be a bacterial infection causing inflammation of the lymphatic glands.  For similar cautiousness about recommending specific medical advice in print, see Cheyne, note 17; “A Letter,” passim.  Having at first believed that she was suffering from measles, Mary died quickly of smallpox in 1694, at the age of 32. Harris attended her and supervised treatment (see note 4). See E. Lane Furdell, “The ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the Medical Household of the Dual Monarchs,” The Royal Doctors, 1485–1714 (Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2001) 199–225.  Purples Dark red or purple rash, characteristic of the progression of smallpox. 10 On contemporary notions of smallpox and its associations, see D. Shuttleton, Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007). 

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But though from the Success of Dr. Harris and some other Authors that have wrote upon the Diseases of Infants, Physicians of late have not declined so much to meddle with those little Patients, yet they have not hitherto been able to rescue them out of the Hands of old Women and Nurses, who as they are mostly employed about them, the Parents, but especially Mothers, seldom commit them to any other Hands, till the Disease has arrived at such a Height, that the good Women are quite at a stand11 what to do, and are glad to call in the Physician to take a Part, at least of the Blame, off themselves. It is entirely upon Account of those Female Practitioners, that I have put all the Formulae12 into English; and having set down all the Articles13 and their Doses at full Length; being resolved to have as little Hand as possible in leading them into Mistakes.

stand standstill: i.e., at a loss. Formulae, i.e., ingredients contained in the prescription for dispensing by an

11

12

apothecary, normally composed by the physician in Latin—which was unlikely to be understood by formally uneducated “female practitioners.” 13 Articles, i.e., each distinct drug or course of medication.

Table 1 [Date] 1659

1661 1666 1668 1671 1672 1673 1674

1679 1682 1683 1684

Selected Chronology of significant figures, events, and publications; Events and titles in bold refer to those featured in this book. For further biographical details, see Oxford DNB and headnotes Historical or Biographical Events b.Thomas Creech, classicist

b. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea

b. George Cheyne, physician b. Joseph Addison, critic and poet b. Richard Mead, physician

b. Joseph Trapp, critic and divine b. Edward Young, poet and divine

Literary and Cultural Publications René Rapin, Dissertatio de Carmine Pastorali Thomas Sprat, trans. The Plague of Athens by Lucretius René Rapin, Hortorum Libri IV John Milton, Paradise Lost René Rapin, Of Gardens Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, L’art Poétique Thomas Rymer, trans. René Rapin, Reflexions on Aristotles’s Treatise of Poesie Wentworth Dillon, trans. Horace, Ars Poetica Thomas Creech, Titus Lucretius Carus. William Soame, ed. Nicolas BoileauDespréaux, L’art Poétique Thomas Creech, The Odes, Satyrs, and Epistles of Horace. Done into English by Mr. Creech Thomas Creech, trans. Horace, Ars Poetica

Scientific Publications

[Date] 1685

Historical or Biographical Events b. Aaron Hill, poet and critic

1687

d. René Rapin, critic

1688

b. Richard Bradley, botanist

1689

Walter Harris becomes a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London b. John Tristram, physician

1693 1695

Scientific Publications

John Oldham, trans. Horace, Ars Poetica

1686

1691 1692

Literary and Cultural Publications

d. Robert Boyle, chemist

Nahum Tate, trans. Hieronymus Fracastorius, Syphilis, or, A Poetical History of the French Disease Carolus Ruaeus, Virgilii Maronis Opera interpretatione et notis

Thomas Sydenham, De morbis acutis infantum (An Exact Enquiry into, and Cure of the Acute Diseases of Infants) John Dryden, The First Part of Miscellany Poems. Containing a Variety of New Translations of the Ancient Poets: Together with Several Original Poems John Dryden, Examen poeticum

Apollo Mathematicus: or The Art of Curing Diseases by the Mathematicks, According to the Principles of Dr. Pitcairn

[Date] 1697

Historical or Biographical Events

1698 1699 1700

1701 1702

1703

b. John Martyn, botanist d. Thomas Creech, poet d. John Dryden, poet, dies b. James Thomson, poet John Tristram obtains his BA (Oxon) George Cheyne receives his MD (Aber) b. David Mallet, poet George Cheyne becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society

Literary and Cultural Publications Joseph Addison, “An Essay on the Georgicks,” in The Works of Virgil … translated into English by Mr. Dryden Basil Kennett, Romae Antiquae Notitia, or The Antiquities of Rome Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage

Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent

Isaac Newton becomes President of the Royal Society (to 1727) John Tristram obtains his MA (Oxon)

1704

Joseph Addison, The Campaign Joseph Trapp, Abramulè, or, Love and Empire

1705

b. Patrick Murdoch, poet

Scientific Publications

[Date] 1706 1707 1708 1709

Historical or Biographical Events John Tristram obtains his B.Med. (Oxon) Acts of Union creates the United Kingdom of Great Britain (joining England and Wales with Scotland) Joseph Trapp becomes the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford b. John Armstrong, poet and physician d. John Philips, poet

1710 1711 1712

Richard Bradley is elected to the Royal Society

1713 1714

The Statute of Laborers (1349) and the Statute of Apprentices (1562) are repealed

1716

Literary and Cultural Publications

Scientific Publications

Sir Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry

James Keill, An Account of Animal Secretion, the Quantity of Blood in the Humane Body, and Muscular Motion

John Philips, Cyder: A Poem in Two Books William Oldisworth, trans. Claude Quillet, Callipaedia, or The Art of how to have Handsome Children Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism Richard Blackmore, The Creation: A Philosophical Poem Anne Finch, Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions. Written by a Lady

John Dryden, “Lycon. Eclogue,” Fifth Part of Miscellany Poems … Publish’d by John Dryden

1717 1718

b. William Hunter, surgeon

Joseph Addison, Poems on Several Occasions. With a Dissertation upon the Roman Poets

James Keill, Essays on Several Parts of the Animal Oeconomy

[Date] 1719 1720

Historical or Biographical Events d. Joseph Addison Major plague outbreak in Provence d. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea

Literary and Cultural Publications

Scientific Publications Richard Bradley, The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d: with Remarks upon the Plague in General George Cheyne, An Essay of the Gout

1721

1724

John Martyn founds Britain’s first botanical society

Richard Bradley becomes Chair in Botany at the University of Cambridge

Aaron Hill, The Judgement-Day, A Poem Joseph Mitchell, Ode on the Power of Musick Joseph Trapp, Duties of Private, Domestick, and Public Devotion, Briefly Enforced

Richard Mead, A Discourse of the Plague Medicina Flagellata: or, the Doctor Scarify’d. Laying Open the Vices of the Faculty

A Letter to George Cheyne, M.D. F.R.S. Shewing, the Danger of laying down General Rules To those who are not Acquainted with the Animal Oeconomy, &c. For Preserving and Restoring Health. Occason’d by his Essay on Health and Long Life Remarks on Dr Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long Life George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life

[Date] 1725

Historical or Biographical Events

Literary and Cultural Publications

Scientific Publications Hermann Boerhaave, Boerhaave’s Aphorisms: Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Disease (trans. J. Delacoste) Richard Bradley, ed. A Survey of the Ancient Husbandry and Gardening, collected from Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, and others John Freind, The History of Physick; from the time of Galen to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, in a Discourse written to Doctor Mead

1726

Founding of the Medical School at the University of Edinburgh

1727

John Martyn becomes Fellow of the Royal Society

1728

Isaac Newton dies b. Thomas Warton, poet and critic John Armstrong commences medical training at Edinburgh under Monro

William Law, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the English Stage James Thomson, Preface to Winter, A Poem John Tristram, The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain: Truly Represented to all Lovers of Health, and of their Country. And An Apology for the Regular Physicians Thomas Cooke, trans. Hesiod, Works and Days

Edward Strother, Essay on Sickness and Health

[Date] 1729

Historical or Biographical Events Founding of Britain’s first charity hospital, The Hospital for the Sick Poor, run by the Edinburgh medical school and staffed by its students and physicians

1731 1732

1733

John Armstrong graduates insignitus (“with distinction”) from the University of Edinburgh’s medical school d. Richard Bradley d. Walter Harris, physician, John Martyn becomes Professor of Botany at University of Cambridge

Joseph Trapp, The Works of Virgil in English

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man Joseph Trapp, Thoughts upon the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell

1734

1735 1736

Literary and Cultural Publications François Catrou, Les poesies de Virgile, avec des notes critiques et historiques

Edinburgh’s voluntary hospital receives Britain’s first such royal charter, becoming the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary

William Somerville, The Chace. A Georgic John Armstrong, The Oeconomy of Love

Scientific Publications Hermann Boerhaave, A Treatise on the Venereal Disease and Its Cure in All Its Stages and Circumstances. Englished by J.M. M.B, of ChristChurch College John Armstrong, De tabes purulenta. [On the Wasting of Purulent Tissue], Edinburgh M.D. dissertation

George Cheyne, The English Malady: or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds John Armstrong, An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick (published in London) John Armstrong, “An Essay of Penetrating Topic Medicines,” Medical Essays and Observations Revised and Published by a Society in Edinburgh (vol. 2) Daniel Turner, Aphrodisiacus. Containing a Summary of the Ancient Writers on the Venereal Disease

[Date] 1737

1740

1741 1742

Historical or Biographical Events d. Edward Young’s stepdaughter Elizabeth

Literary and Cultural Publications

Scientific Publications John Armstrong, Aphrodisiacus: A Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases Jean Astruc, A Treatise of the Venereal Disease in Six Books …. Now Translated into English by William Barrowby Health Restor’d. or the Triumph of Nature over Physick, Doctors, and Apothecaries

d. Edward Young’s friend Henry Temple d. Edward Young’s wife Elizabeth Lee Minor plague outbreak in London and Salisbury (to 1741)

John Martyn, The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English Translation and Notes Joseph Trapp, Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. Trans. from the Latin Edward Young, The Complaint: Or, NightThoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality to 1746

George Cheyne, An Essay on Regimen … Serving to Illustrate the Principles and Theory of Philosophical Medicin [sic], and Point Out Some of Its Moral Consequences A Cheap, Sure and Ready Guide to Health: or, a Cure for a Disease Call’d the Doctor John Armstrong, A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children

[Date] 1743

Historical or Biographical Events d. George Cheyne Major plague outbreak in Sicily

Literary and Cultural Publications Thomas Creech, trans. Lucretius, The Plague

Scientific Publications The Duty and Advantages of Encouraging Public Infirmaries Hermann Boerhaave, Dr Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures On the Theory of Physic. Being A Genuine Translation of his Institutes … As they were dictated to his Students at the University of Leyden George Cheyne, Dr. Cheyne’s Own Account of Himself and of His Writings

John Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health. A Poem, in Four Books

1744

1745 1746

Jacobite Rebellion, quelled in April 1746 by the Duke of Cumberland John Armstrong begins his position at the Duke of Cumberland’s Hospital for Sick Soldiers, London

William Collins, Poems on Several Occasions Columella, Of Husbandry in Twelve Books Philip Francis, trans. Horace, Ars Poetica Joseph Warton, Odes on Various Subjects

Robert James, ed., A Medicinal Dictionary, Including Physic, Surgery, Anatomy, Chymistry, and Botany, in All Their Branches Relative to Medicine

[Date] 1747

Historical or Biographical Events d. Joseph Trapp

Literary and Cultural Publications James Thomson, Castle of Indolence James Thomson, “A Hymn on Solitude,” appears in A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (ed. Robert Dodsley) Thomas Warton, The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem R. Campbell, The London Tradesman

1748

d. James Thomson

1750

Anne Tufton, Countess of Salisbury, dies

Scientific Publications An Address to the College of Physicians and to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Occasioned by the Late Swarms of Scotch and Leyden Physicians who have Assumed the Liberty ... of Practising Physick in England John Wesley, Primitive Physick. or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases

Aaron Hill dies 1751

Robert Whytt, “An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals,” The Works of Robert Whytt

1752 1753

England adopts the Gregorian calendar

1754

d. Richard Mead

Joseph Warton, “An Essay on Didactic Poetry,” The Works of Virgil

A Letter from a Physician in London to his Friend in the Country, Concerning the Disputes at Present Subsisting between the Fellows and Licentiates of the College of Physicians in London

[Date] 1755

Historical or Biographical Events

1759 1765

John Armstrong becomes Physician to His Majesty’s Forces in Germany d. Edward Young

1768

d. David Mallet d. John Martyn

1772 1773 1774 1779 1783 1785

d. Patrick Murdoch d. John Armstrong d. William Hunter, surgeon, Thomas Warton becomes Poet Laureate

1788 1790 1806 1818

d. Thomas Warton

Literary and Cultural Publications Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language

E. Holdsworth, Remarks and Dissertation on Virgil (ed. Joseph Spence)

Scientific Publications

John Gregory, Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician John Armstrong, Medical Essays

John Armstrong, Die Kunst, die Gesundheit zu erhalten John Armstrong, Igea ovvero l’arte di conservar la salut (trans. Lazzaro Papi) John Armstrong, Fragment d’un Poème anglais intitulé «L’Art de conserver la santé» (trans. A.-L. Marquis)

[Date] 1824 1827

Historical or Biographical Events

Literary and Cultural Publications

Scientific Publications John Armstrong, La salute o l’arte di conservarla poema in quattro canti (trans. T. J. Mathias) John Armstrong, L’Art de conserver la santé (trans. N. B. Monne)

Table 2 [Date]

c.850 bc c.850 bc 700 bc c.620–560 bc 498–446 bc 431 bc c.400 bc c.362 bc c.343 bc c.320 bc c.277 bc 258 bc c.160 bc c.50 bc 39–8 bc 37 bc 36–29 bc 23, 13 bc c.19 bc 18 bc 1 bc ad 8 ad 70 ad 77–9 400 ad c.ad 400

Chronology of Classical Texts Classical Texts

Homer, Iliad Homer, Odyssey Hesiod, Works and Days Aesop, Fables Pindar, Pythian Odes Thucidydes, History of the Peloponnesian War Sophocles, Tereus Xenophon, Oeconomicus Aristotle, De generatione animalium (“On the Generation of Animals”) Theophrastus, Research on Plants, On Winds, and Meteorology Aratus, Phaenomena Nicander, Georgica Marcus Porcius Cato, De agricultura Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Virgil, Eclogues Marcus Terentius Varro, De re rustica (“On Agriculture”) Virgil, Georgics Horace, Odes Virgil, Aeneid Horace, Ars poetica Ovid, Ars amatoria Ovid, Metamorphoses Suetonius, De viris illustribus Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia (“Natural History”) Vegilius Vaticanus Paladius, De res rustica

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Bibliography Featured Texts Addison, Joseph. “An Essay on the Georgics.” The Works of Virgil … translated into English by Mr. Dryden. London: J. Tonson, 1697. 42–7. Anonymous. A Letter to George Cheyne, M.D. F.R.S. Shewing, the Danger of laying down General Rules To those who are not Acquainted with the Animal Oeconomy, &c. For Preserving and Restoring Health. Occason’d by his Essay on Health and Long Life. London: J. Graves, 1724. 1–7; 9–13. Armstrong, John. A Full View of All the Diseases Incident to Children. London: A. Millar, 1742. ———. The Art of Preserving Health. London: A. Millar, 1744. Bradley, Richard. The Plague at Marseilles Consider’d: with Remarks upon the Plague in General. London: W. Mears, 1720. Cheyne, George. An Essay of Health and Long Life. London: G. Strahan and Bath: J. Leake, 1724. Creech, Thomas. “The Plague of Athens.” The Plague. London: F. Cogan, 1743. 8–15. Dodsley, R, ed. A Collection of Poems by Several Hands. London: J. Dodsley, 1748. Finch, Anne. “A Nocturnal Reverie,” Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions. Written by a Lady. London: J. Barber, 1713. 291–3. Thomson, James. “A Hymn on Solitude.” A Collection of Poems by Several Hands. Ed. R. Dodsley. London: J. Dodsley, 1748. vol. 3, 322–4. Thomson, James. “Preface.” Winter. A Poem. 2nd edn. London: J. Millan, 1726. 9–19. Trapp, Joseph. “Of Didactic or Preceptive Poetry.” Lectures on Poetry Read in the Schools of Natural Philosophy at Oxford. Translated from the Latin [in 1711–19.] Trans. W. Bowyer and W. Clarke. London: C. Hitch and C. Davis, 1742. 187–201. Tristram, John. The Ill State of Physick in Great Britain: Truly Represented to all Lovers of Health, and of their Country. And An Apology for the Regular Physicians. London: J. Roberts, 1727. Virgil. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English Translation and Notes. Trans. John Martyn. London: R. Reily, 1741. Warton, Thomas. The Pleasures of Melancholy. A Poem. London: R. Dodsley, 1747. Young, Edward. The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. Night the First. London: R. Dodsley, 1742.

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Bibliography A Letter from a Physician in London to his Friend in the Country. London: A. Millar, 1753. A New and Complete Catalogue of All English Books. London: n.p., 1767. A Treatise on the Venereal Disease and Its Cure in All Its Stages and Circumstances. Englished by J.B. M.B. of Christ-Church College. London: T. Cox, 1729. A True and Candid Relation of the Good and Bad Effects of Joshua Ward’s Pill and Drop, Exhibited in Sixty-Eight Cases. London: J. Wilford, 1736. Abt, Arthur. History of Pediatrics. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1965. Addison, Joseph. Poems on Several Occasions. With a Dissertation upon the Roman Poets. London: E. Curll, 1719. Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Trans. Phillip Vellacott. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. Aesop. The Fables. Trans. L. Gibbs. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Aldridge, A. O. “Primitivism in the Eighteenth Century,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener. Vol 3. New York: Scribners, 1973–4. 598–605. Alexander, B. W. “The Epidemic Fever (1741–42).” Salisbury Medical Bulletin, 11 (1971): 24–9. An Address to the College of Physicians, and to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; Occasion’d by the Late Swarms of Scotch and Leyden Physicians, &c. Who have Openly Assum’d the Liberty (Unlicens’d from the College, &c.) of Practising Physick in England, Contrary to the Privileges of our Universities, and of the Charter Granted to the College of Physicians in London. By an Impartial Hand. London: M. Cooper. 1747. An Account of the Rise and Establishment of the Infirmary or Hospital for Sick Poor, Erected at Edinburgh. Edinburgh: n.p, ca. 1730. Andrew, D. T. “The Code of Honour and its Critics: The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700–1850.” Social History 5 (1980): 409–34. Andrews, C. E. “‘Almost the Same, but Not Quite’: English Poetry by EighteenthCentury Scots.” The Eighteenth Century 47 (2006): 59–79. The Annals of Europe for the Year 1743. London: T. Astley, 1745. Anthony, R. The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, 1698–1726. New York: Blom, 1937. Arbuthnot, J. An Essay on Aliments, 2nd edn. London: J. Tonson, 1732. ———. Essay concerning the Nature of Aliments. London: J. Tonson, 1731. Armstrong, J. Aphrodisiacus. A Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases. London: A. Millar, 1737. ———. L’Art de conserver la santé. Trans. N. B. Monne. Paris: Goujon, 1827. ———. The Art of Preserving Health. Aging and Old Age Collection. Ed. Robert Kastenbaum et al.. New York: Arno P, 1979. ———. The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem, in Four Books. With a Critical Essay by J. Aiken M.D. and Notes by Dr. Alcott. Boston: George W. Light, 1838. ———. An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick. London: J. Wilford, 1734.

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Index Abt, Arthur 22 Addison, Joseph x–xi, 37, 53, 86, 88, 112–13, 150, 153, 160, 173–5, 180, 182, 187–9, 194, 202–4, 206–7, 211, 214, 255, 257–9 Aeschylus 60, 98, 133 Esculapius 51, 85 Aesop 148, 267 Aldridge, A. O. 78 Alexander, B. W. 38 Allen, Ralph 14 anatomy xi, 10–11, 25–6, 30, 35, 55, 79, 112, 124, 214, 242, 244, 263 Andrew, D. T. 126 Andrews, C. E. 3 Anthony, R. 148 Aratus 175, 180, 204, 267 Arbuthnot, John 28, 98, 112 Argyll, Duke of Argyll see Campbell, Archibald Aristotle 26, 82, 102, 182, 188, 196–7, 214, 235, 255, 267 Armstrong, John ix–xix, 1–8, 10–11, 13–24, 26–48, 50–52, 54–7, 59–60, 62–3, 68, 70–74, 79, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95–6, 99, 101–2, 106–7, 111, 113, 125–7, 131, 147, 157, 169, 194, 197, 213–24, 225, 242, 250–51, 258, 260–63, 265–6 Art of Preserving Health, The ix–xvii, 1–8, 18, 24, 26, 30, 33, 39, 43, 45–46, 48, 50–128, 251, 263 Essay for Abridging the Study of Physick, An 16–17, 113, 251, 261 Full View of All Diseases Incident to Children, A xv, 250–54, 262 Oeconomy of Love, The 17–19, 28, 213, 251, 261 Synopsis of the History and Cure of Venereal Diseases 19–20, 23, 262 Astruc, Jean 23, 262

Athens, Plague of 37, 131–2, 194, 206, 211, 255 Augustine 116 Axworthy, M. 70 Backscheider, P.B. 30, 139 Baglivi, Georgio 36 Baker, Henry 30 Ballaster, Ros 19 Barber, Mary 20–21 Barker, John 38–9, 44 Barker–Benfield, C.J. 4, 5, 225 Barrowby, William 23–4, 262 Bath, M. 229 Battestin, Martin 29, 44 Battestin, Ruthe 29 Baynard, Edward 30 Benson, William 32 Besnault, M.–H. 103 Bichat, Xavier 125 Bitot, M. 103 Black, Jeremy 220 Blackman, J. 26, 214 Blackmore, Richard 15, 30, 207, 258 Blair, Hugh 7 Blair, Patrick 42–3 Bloch, M. 253 blood 1, 25, 41, 55–6, 59–61, 64, 67–71, 73, 75–6, 80–81, 86, 91, 93–98, 103–6, 108, 112, 114, 117, 121, 124–5, 134–6, 153, 178, 207, 220, 244, 258 Boehrer, Bruce xii, 19, 51 Boerhaave, Hermann 9, 20, 26, 33, 42, 92, 112, 124–5, 260–61, 263 Boswell, Jamesxv, xvii, 1 Bosworth Field, Battle of 38, 103 Bradley, Richard xii, 38, 132, 136, 185, 188, 218–20, 256, 258–61 Brandt, A. M. 18 Braudel, F. 22

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Brehaut, E. 188 Brewster, D. 149 Brocklesby, R. 126 Brown, T. 2, 13 Browne, R. 126 de Bruyn, F. xvii, 2, 32 Burkert, W. 117 Burman, Pieter 17, 113 Burnet, Thomas 52, 55, 82 Burney, Charles 14, 43, 45, 251 Burney, Frances 14, 24, 32, 46, 251 Butt, John 18 Button, W. 25 Byzantium 102–3 Bynum, William 4, 25, 36 Bysshe, E. 141, 258 Cairo 38, 103 Caius, John 104, 106 Cambridge, University of x, 9–11, 14, 25, 185, 195, 219, 246–7, 259, 261, 264 Campbell, Archibald, Duke of Argyll 13 Campbell, R. 149, 264 Carmichael, A. G. 102 Cartagena xii–xiii, 40, 74, 108 Castleton 45, 251 Cato, 187–9, 197, 260, 267 Celsus 25–26, 41, 85, 101–2, 223, 239–41, 243, 245 Chalker, J. 173 Chambers, E. 62 Chandler, D. 39, 108 Charleton, William 37 Chatterton, Thomas 6 Chelsea 63, 187, 239 Chelsey see Chelsea Cheselden, William 43–4, 55 Cheshire 68 Cheyne, George xi, xiii–xv, 2, 5, 15–16, 24–5, 27, 31, 33, 45–6, 86, 114, 155, 161, 223–30, 232–6, 240, 243–4, 253, 255, 257, 259, 261–3 Chitnis, Anand C. 11 Christie, John R. R. 9, 16 chyle 59, 61, 68–9, 73–4, 96, 98, 244 Clark, George 14–15, 21, 239, 242, 247 Cockburn, William 19–20 Cohen, Leonard xvi Cohen, Ralph 29

Coleman, William 32 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor xv, 5 Royal College of Physicians of London ix, 10, 15, 21, 30, 44, 54, 239, 242–3, 247, 251–2, 256, 264 Collier, Jeremy 148, 257 Collier, L.H. 104 Collins, Joseph 6 Collins, William xvi, 97, 165, 263 Columella 188, 197, 260, 263 Comrie, John D. 9, 92, 246 contagion 36, 38, 54, 63, 101–2, 106, 132–3, 211, 221 Cooke, Thomas 174, 260 Coram, Thomas 23 Cornaro, Luigi xi, 31, 86, 119 cosmology see Earth, theory of the Cotton, F. 38, 220 Courlander, K. 56 Cowles, T. 207 Cowley, Abraham 117 Crawford, R. 70, 173 Creech, Thomas xiii, xix, 60, 89, 102, 104, 106–7, 131–138, 175, 194, 202, 204–5, 213, 221–2, 255, 257, 263 Cruickshank, D. 18 Cullen, William x, 26, 43, 246 Culpeper, Nicholas xi, 42 Cumberland, Duke of 43–4, 251, 263 Cumbria, 87–8 Cunningham, Andrew 9, 26 curriculum 8–9, 11–12, 92, 246 dance 90, 127–8, 156, 158, 165–6, 169 D’Arblay, F. 14 Davenport, R. A. 18–19 Davis, Paul 132, 174 De naturarerum xvi, xix, 37, 107, 131, 211, 267 deathxi, 13, 17, 18, 24, 31, 37, 39, 42, 44, 47, 52, 64, 70, 73, 78, 82, 87, 96, 99, 101–4, 107–8, 115, 117, 125, 128, 131, 133–7, 139, 145, 147, 153–4, 156–61, 165, 190, 193, 195, 201, 210–11, 220, 230, 242–3, 251, 261–2 Defoe, D. xv, 11, 38, 73 Demosthenes, 114 Dennis, John 40, 150 Deutsch, H. x, 28, 226

Index Devine, T. M. 8 Dick, S. J. 83 Dictionary of the English Language, A64, 265 Digby, Anne 28, 31 distempersee plague Dodsley, R. 83, 116, 143, 153, 164–5, 185, 189, 264 Donnalee, F. 22 Donoghue, Frank 45 Douce, D. 186 dropsy 3, 58, 92, 113 Dryden, J. xix, 53, 56, 64, 71, 77, 89–90, 107, 119, 131, 139, 145, 147, 153, 163, 173–4, 177–9, 181–2, 187, 189, 191–4, 196, 202–4, 206, 208–15, 242, 245, 256–8 Dyer, A. 104, 106 Dyer, John 149 Eales, N.B. 59 Earth, theory of the cosmology 53, 83, 206 Sacred Theory of the Earth, The 52, 55, 82 Edden, V. 196 Edinburgh, University of ix–xii, 4–6, 8–15, 24–6, 33, 43–4, 46, 92, 111–12, 124–6, 147, 214, 223, 242, 246, 251, 260–61 Eliot, George 153 Ellis, H. 186 Elysium, 117 Emerson, R. L. 11, 13 England x, xiii, xvii, 4, 8, 10, 13, 15–16, 22–3, 38, 51, 54, 68, 87, 103–6, 126, 163, 168, 187, 195, 222, 224, 236, 246–7, 251, 258, 264 English Verse, 1701–50: A Catalogue of Separately Printed Poems xix, 153, 165; see also Foxon Epsom 27, 63 Erlam, H. D. 44 Esculapius seeAeslepius Fairer, David xii, 2–3, 6 fearxii, xiv–xvi, 21–2, 34, 36, 42, 53, 61, 68, 77, 99, 106–7, 113, 115–16, 121, 123, 125–6, 131, 134, 136–8, 140, 155, 158, 167, 186, 208, 229, 252

297

fever xiii, 26, 38–40, 44, 54, 56–9, 75–6, 78, 80, 91, 94–5, 99, 101, 108, 113, 123, 125–6, 133–4, 144, 147, 182 Fielding, Henry ix, xv, 5, 29, 40, 44 Fielding, Sarah 14, 44 Finch, Anne, Countess of Winchelsea xi, xvi, 139–41, 144, 162, 168, 255, 258 Flemyng, Malcolm 30 Forster, A. 45 Forster, H. 159 Foster, J. 239 Foxon, D.F., as abbreviation for English Verse xix, 51, 139, 147, 153, 165–6 France ix, 60, 74, 108, 114, 117, 196, 220–21 Franklin, Benjamin 6–7 Freind, John 239, 243, 260 French, Roger 4, 9, 25, 226 Fulford, T. 37, 40, 150 Fuller, F. 31 Furdell, E. Lane 27, 253 Fussell, G. E. 188 Gale, M. 37, 131, 173 Galen xiv, 3, 25, 32–4, 55, 73, 85, 93, 111, 126, 243, 260 Garth, Samuel 30, 114, 214 Gaul 108, 204 Gay, Peter 2, 9 Gay, John 97 georgic(mode) x–xii, 2, 6, 30, 29–43, 46, 53, 144, 147, 150, 171–215, 251, 261 Georgics x, xiv, xvii–xix, 2, 30, 32–3, 37, 53, 56, 71, 85, 88–90, 97, 107–8, 119, 124, 128, 147, 150, 171–198, 202–4, 207–11, 213, 215, 267 Gillespie, C. C. 36 Glasgow, College of 7, 246 Golinsky, Jan 12 Goodman, K. 174 Goring, Paul 148 Gouk, P. 127 gout 20, 58, 133, 224, 228, 259 Grafton, A. 104, 181 Gray, Thomas xvi, 165, 235 great chain of being, the 33, 155, 230 Greece 54, 67, 71, 82, 87–8, 93, 124, 127, 163, 166, 169, 174, 212 Gregory, John 2, 13, 24, 265

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Grub Street 17, 27–9, 185 Guerrini, Anita xi, 2, 5, 11, 21, 25, 46, 223–4, 226

Jordanova, L. 186 Jung, S. 29, 149 Juvenal xvi, 201–2

Hamilton, B. 246 Hammond, Breane S. 19, 28–9 Hammond, N. G. L. 188 Hampstead 27, 57 Harding, Richard 39, 108 Hardy, A. 38, 107, 117 Harley, D. xiii Hart, Clive 17, 19 Hartmann, Cyril Hughes 40 Harvey, William 67 Hathaway, B. 40 Hays, J. N. 107 Hazlitt, William 7 Healy, Margaret 36 Hembry, P. 224 Henderson, E. F. 248 Hesiod 78, 170, 174–5, 179–80, 182, 188, 190, 196, 207, 260, 267 Hill, Aaron 29, 149, 256, 259, 264 Hippocrates 20, 25–6, 51, 78, 132, 241, 245 Holdsworth, E. 189, 196, 265 Holmes, G. F. ix–x, 10–11, 15, 31, 44 Homer xix, 71, 82, 98, 114, 157, 163, 174, 188, 204, 207, 267 homunculus, 157, 214 Horace xix, 44, 52, 60, 128, 165, 189–90, 196, 202–3, 213, 228, 255–6, 263, 267 Hume, David xv, xvii, 8, 122, 251 humours, 105, 114, 226 Hunter, P. 30 Hunter, William 12, 44, 59, 112, 214, 242, 258, 265 hydropsy see dropsy

Kahn, C.H. 175 Keill, James 2, 35, 233, 258 Keister, D. 156 Kennedy, A. E. Clark 12 Kennett, Basil 182, 257 Kent, A. 220 Keymer, Thomas xiv, 21 King, Lester 33 Von Kielmansegge, F. 224 Kiple, K. F. 38 Knapp, Lewis 6, 19, 40, 46, 214 Knauer, G. N. 196

Isaacson, Walter 7 Italy ix, 39, 77, 100, 117, 163, 177, 187–9, 194–6, 211 James, Robert 57, 59, 85, 263 Jenkin’s Ear, War of xiii, 74 Jewson, Nicholas 27 Johnson, J. 13 Johnson, Samuel xvi, xix, 5, 20, 64, 85, 113, 165, 265 Jones, H. 46

Laird, A. 196 Lane, Joan 10 Langford, P. 4 Law, William 148, 260 Lawlor, D. 28 Lawrence, C. 9, 12, 15, 20, 25–6, 112, 214 Lawrence, Susan 10, 15, 44 LeBrun, Charles 122 Lee, M. Owen 87 LeFanu, William 45 Leiden, University of 9, 17, 26, 111, 113, 124, 225 Lennox, Charlotte 40 Levine, J. M. 182 Liddal 88 Lindeboom, G. A. 20, 42 Locke, John 25, 174, 230 London ix–x, xii–xiv, xvi, 1, 3–4, 6, 8–12, 14–18, 21–4, 26–28, 30, 32–3, 38–9, 42–5, 51, 54, 56–7, 63, 70, 73, 87, 92, 99, 104–5, 107, 113, 123, 126–7, 139, 147, 149, 165, 185, 201, 214, 220–21, 224, 239–40, 242–3, 247, 251, 252, 264 Lonsdale, Roger 14 Lovejoy, A. 33, 230 Low, A. 173 Lucretius xvi–xvii, xix, 37, 40, 89, 102, 104, 106–7, 131–4, 173, 175, 178, 181–3, 194, 204–6, 210–12, 221, 255, 263, 267 Luyendijk–Elshout, A. M. 26, 43

Index lymph 26, 59, 69, 79, 244, 253, Macalister, Alexander 10 Mack, M. 44, 196 Maecenas, 190 Mahoney, William J. 6 Mallet, David see David Mallochix, 8, 29, 143, 145, 149, 257, 265 Manilius 204 Manning, David 46 Markel, H. 51 Marseilles xiii, 38, 54, 107, 185, 188, 218–21, 259 McClure, Ruth K. 23 McDowell, Paula 28–9 McElroy, Davis D. 16 McGovern, B. 140 McIntosh, C. 19 McLaren, A. 214 McMenemey, W. H. 23 Mead, Richard xii, 11, 24, 29, 31–2, 36, 38–9, 40, 43–4, 54, 186, 196, 243, 251, 255, 259–60, 264 Medical Society of Edinburgh 16, 20 Melancholy xvi, 36, 58, 97, 113, 115, 124, 127, 156, 162, 164–70, 264 Meynell, G. G. 25 Millar, Andrew ix, 15, 17, 19–20, 22–4, 29, 36, 50, 189, 197, 250–52 Miller, C. William 7 Miller, T. 12, 25 Milthous, 127 Milton, John xii, 7, 19, 51–2, 61–2, 64, 90, 97, 145, 148, 159, 163, 167, 169, 179, 255 Mitchell–Boyask, R. R. 134 Mitsis, Philip 37 Monro, Alexander, primus x, 4, 10–12, 15–6, 20, 23, 25–6, 33, 40, 44, 59, 112, 214, 251, 260 Montagu, Henry Wortley 14 Montpellier 60 Morgan, Victor 10 Morrell, J. B. 10–11 Mullan, J. 5, 28, 225 Mulso, Hester 14 Munk, William 44, 239 Murdoch, Patrick 43, 145, 257, 265 murrain see plague

299

Musson, A. E. 55 Mynors, R. A. B. 173, 215 Naiden, J. R. 206 Neale, R. S. 224 nerves 4, 59–60, 86, 91, 93, 94, 96, 100, 123–5, 135, 223, 225, 227–8, 244 Newton, Isaac 25, 44, 53–4, 203, 207, 219, 223, 243, 257, 260 Nicander 190, 267 Nichols, J. 8, 24, 44 Nicolson, M. H. 165 Niebyl, Peter H. 32 non–naturals xi, xiv, 32–4, 36, 39, 41, 132, 229 Nutton, V. 133 O’Brien, Karen xi O’Day, R. 239 Ober, William B. 6 Odes xvi, xix, 52, 60, 97, 117, 128, 139, 165, 169–70, 190, 202, 255, 259, 263, 267 OED, the xix, 77, 101, 114, 227 Ogilvie, R. M. 187 Ornelas, K. C. 38 Ovid 17, 59, 128, 132, 195, 212–213, 243, 251, 267 Oxford, University ofx, 9–11, 13, 14, 25, 35, 195, 200–215, 239, 242, 245–8, 258, 262, 264 Oxford DNB, xii, xix, 7, 13, 15, 40, 54, 131, 139, 144, 147, 153, 165, 173, 185–6, 195, 201–2, 219–20, 223–4, 239, 252, 255 Padua 9, 246 Page, D. L. 132 Paladius, 267 Panayotou, A. 175 pastoral 3, 6, 87–8, 139, 144–5, 173–5, 185, 189, 207, 212–13 Patrick, J. 103, 145 patronage 4, 13, 24, 27, 31, 43, 186, 219, 225, 246, 251 Patterson, Annabel 27 Peabody, S. 221 Pellicer, J. C. 2, 173, 212 (Juan Christian) Pelling, Margaret 16

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phlebotomy 25, 73 physic 2, 17, 26, 59, 73, 107, 124–5, 128, 187, 263 Pindar 128, 169–70, 267 Pitcairne256 plague xi–xiii, 11, 22, 36–40, 52, 54, 62, 73, 86, 101–4, 106–7, 124–5, 128, 130–38, 160, 178, 181, 185, 188, 194, 206, 211–12, 218–19, 221–2, 248, 255, 259, 262–3 distemper 108, 220, 222, 229, 236, 241, 245 murrain 107, 181, 211 plays 139, 141 Pliny the Elder 197, 267 Plutarch 89, 187, 215 Poole, R. 187 Pope, Alexander ix–x, xix, 2, 7, 27–9, 44, 54, 56, 71, 95, 97, 99, 112, 139, 153, 157, 159, 163, 188, 196, 203, 212–3, 230, 258, 261 his translation of Iliad xix, 71 his translation of Odyssey xix, 90, 95, 157, 188 Porter, Roy 2, 4, 10, 12, 15–16, 18, 22–6, 30, 32–3, 44–5, 58, 112, 214, 225, 228, 242 Pottle, Frederick 1 Poyner, F. N. L. 42 Prestwich, M. 103 Pretty, D. 170 Pringle, John 44 Quarles, F. 229 Quillet, Claude 214, 258 Quincy, John 39, 102 Rabelais, François 114 Rapin, René 182, 212, 255–6 Rather, L. J. 32 Reynolds, Joshua 46–7, 251 Richards, R. 157 Richardson, Samuel ix, xiv–xvi, 5, 29, 45, 121, 153 Richmond 56–57, 147 Riebling, Barbara 61 Risse, Guenter B. 9, 12 Rist, J. M. 89 Robb–Smith, A. H. T. 9

Robinson, E. 55 Rogers, Pat 29 Rome 67, 82, 86, 93, 100, 169, 182, 186–9, 212, 257 Rosen, G. 12, 21 Rosenmeyer, T. G. 207 Rosner, L. 9, 12 Ross, S. 122 Rousseau 2, 4, 26, 43, 58, 214, 225–6, 228 Royal Society, the 15, 23, 43, 185–6, 195, 207, 219, 223, 233, 243, 251, 257–8, 260 Rusten, J. S. 132, 134 Sabor, P. xiv Saeger, R. 204 Salisbury 38, 262 Salmon, E.T. 188 Sambrook, J. 3, 108, 143–4, 147 Santesso, A. 83 Savage, J.J.H 195 Schechner, S.S. 53 Scholes, Percy 14 Schulte, B. P. M. 42 Scotland ix–x, xiii, 1, 3–6, 8–10, 11–17, 21, 24–8, 40, 43–6, 54, 87–8, 92, 112, 147, 187, 223, 233, 242, 246, 251, 258 Scott, Mary Jane W. 3, 8, 56, 145, 149 Scull, A. 5 Segal, C. 128 Segal, E. 189 Sellin, P. R. 196 Sensibility xi, 1, 4–5, 11, 19, 21–2, 28, 31, 33–4, 37, 39, 41, 45–8, 121, 125, 148, 225 Shapin, S. 27, 225 Shaw, P. xi, 79 Shoemaker, R. B. 126 Short, John D. 44 Shuttleton, D. 29, 253 Sicily xii, xiii, 39, 263 Siena, K. P. 21 (Kevin) Signoli, M. 38 Sill, Geoffrey 4 Siskind, Clifford 29 Sloane, Hans 15, 21, 185–7, 195, 219, 251 Smellie, William 15 Smith, A. 13 (Adam)

Index Smith, C.M. 25 Smith, H.xi, 45 (Hugh) Smith, Virginia 33 Smith, W. D. 51 Smollett, Tobias 6, 8, 19, 40, 43–44, 46, 214, 251 Somerville, W. A. 45 Somerville, William 261 Sophocles 98, 133, 139, 267 soul, the 1, 35, 61, 64, 67, 73, 77–8, 79, 86, 91, 98, 100, 111–18, 120–23, 125, 127, 131, 135, 137, 141, 148, 150, 153–4, 156–8, 166–8, 183, 206, 226, 244 Spaeth, B.S. 79 Spain xiii, 74, 98, 196 Spectator, The xi, xix, 86, 112–13, 173–4, 203, 227 Spenser, Edmund 90, 157, 167 stage, 81, 100, 119, 127, 147–8, 201, 248, 257, 260 Starr, Gabrielle 3 Staveley, E. S. 187 Stevenson, C. 12–13, Stone, L. 22 (Lawrence) Stow, J. 104–5 Strahan, William xix, 51, 64 Strother, E. 227, 260 (Edward) Stuart, Alexander 20–21 Suetonius 189, 267 Swift, Jonathan ix, 29, 139, 153, 173, 187, 201 Swinburne, R.112 Sydenham, Thomas 25, 43, 228, 256 syphilis see venereal disease Tait, H. P. 242 Tempkin, O. 245 Terry, R. xvii, 170 tertian fever 26, 58, 94 theatre 11, 64, 127 Theophrastus 188, 267 Thirsk, J. 33 Thomas, R. 173 Thompson, C. J. S. 248 Thompson, John 26 Thomson, James ix, xvi, 3, 6, 8, 13–14, 19, 27, 29, 32, 37, 40, 46, 56, 77, 108, 143–51, 165–70, 251, 257, 260, 264

301

Thorp, J. 127 Thucydides 106, 132, 134, 267 Thwaites, G. 106 Todd, Janet 5, 28 Trapp, Joseph 26, 157, 175, 180, 188–90, 194, 197, 200–215, 255, 257–9, 261–2, 264 Trebilcock, M. J. 248 Tristram, John xiii, 9, 10, 12, 26, 39, 85, 92, 102, 233, 238–48, 256–8, 260 Tufton, Anne 140, 264 Turner, Daniel 23–4, 261 Utrecht 1, 98, 113, 246 Vallance, J. T. 86 Van Sant, Anne Jessie xi, 4, 28, 125 Van Swieten, G. F. 92 Varro 176, 188–9, 197, 260, 267 Vegilius Vaticanus 186, 267 venereal disease 18–21, 23, 68, 101, 123, 251, 261–2 syphilis 18, 214, 256 Vernon, Edward, Admiral 40, 108 Virgil x–xi, xvi, xvi–xvii, xix, 2, 26, 30–34, 37, 53, 56, 71, 77, 85, 87–9, 97, 107–8, 124, 128, 139, 147, 150, 153, 159, 163, 165, 173–98, 202–7, 211–12, 251, 256–7, 260–62, 264–5, 267 Wald, P. 40 (Priscilla) Wallace, A. 32 (Andrew) Walpole, Robert xii, 40, 108 War of Jenkin’s Ear see Jenkin’s Ear, War Warton, Joseph 83, 97, 116, 185, 263 Warton, Thomas xvi, 6, 97, 156, 164–70, 185, 260, 264, 265 Wear, Andrew 25, 36, 107 Weinbrot, Howard xiii, 43 Westfall, R. S. 44 Whytt, Robertx, 4–5, 26, 36, 125, 223, 226, 264 Wild, Wayne 2, 11, 16 Williams, Abigail x Williams, David Innes 21 Williams, R. 240 Williamson, K. 6 Wilson, A. 22

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Wilson, P. 213 Wilson, P. K. 242 Wood, P. 11, 21 Wood, Peter H. 97 Woodhouse, A. S. P. 97 Wootton, David 25 Wordsworth, William xv, 5, 7, 37, 139 Works of Virgil in English, The xix, 174, 257, 261 Wright, D. H. 186 Wright, J. P. 112

Wright, Martha 233 Wylie, J. 104 Xenophon 14, 188, 267 Young, Edward ix, 26, 29, 97, 116, 117, 149, 153–63, 167 Youngren, W. H. 174 Zuckerman, A. 38, 54