The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem.

London:: A. Millar, 1744., 1744. FIRST EDITION. Small 4to. 134 pp. Endsheets missing, considerable contemporary marginalia, loss of a few words on penultimate leaf. Original marbled boards; spine replaced with kozo. As is. By profession a physician, Armstrong also was a popular and witty author of considerable merit, whose writings reflect his age and his contemporaries. He was a close friend of another physician/author, Tobias Smollett, and was with him during his final illness. This was Armstrong's first great literary success, and it enjoyed numerous editions along with the dubious honor of being pirated in both Scotland and in Ireland, all within the first few years of its first appearance. ". . . no writer of the eighteenth century had so masterful a grasp of blank verse as is shown in parts of this poem. The powerful passage descriptive of the plague (book iii.) has been highly praised. As in all didactic poetry, the practical directions are of little interest; but those who value austere imagination and weighty diction cannot afford to neglect Armstrong's masterpiece." [DNB]. CBEL II, 535; DNB Vol. I, pp. 566-8; Foxon A296; Hayward 168; Rothschild 56.