THE POETICAL WORKS

OF

ARMSTRONG, DYER,

AND

GREEN.

EDINBURGH:

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY,

PAUL'S WORK.

THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

ARMSTRONG, DYER,

AND

GREEN.

With Memoirs and Critical Dissertations,

BY THE

REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

EDINBURGH:

JAMES NICHOL, 104 HIGH STREET.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO. DUBLIN: W. ROBERTSON.

M.DCCC.LVIII.

280. p. 88.

THE

LIFE OF JOHN ARMSTRONG, M.D.

THE eminent author of "The Art of Preserving Health" was born at Castleton, on the banks of the Liddel, in Roxburghshire, about the year 1709; a year remarkable, too, for the birth of Dr Johnson. The Liddel washes the romantic region of Liddesdale, described so graphically in "Guy Mannering," and forming a fit birthplace for a poet. One of the finest passages in Armstrong's poems is devoted to a panegyric on the Liddel:

:

"Such the stream

On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddel; till now, except in Doric lays

Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song: though not a purer stream,

Through meads more flowery, more romantic groves,
Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be bless'd

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!"

It has been quite a fashion with poets, such as Thomson in his "Seasons," and Coleridge in his lines to the river Otter, beginning,

"Dear native brook, wild streamlet of the west,"

to apostrophise their native rivers. Nor can we wonder at it, when we remember that a stream, whether winding through groves and fertile plains, or pouring its silver through dusky moorlands, or sounding on its way through deep overhanging forests, or coming forth from its mountain spring "like human