Dr. John Armstrong, Littérateur, and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities

PMLA ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 59 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 1019-1058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis M. Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Literary Reputation ◽  
Diet And Exercise ◽  
The Future ◽  
National Biography

Two hundred years ago, in April, 1744, there was printed in London a long didactic poem in blank verse, The Art of Preserving Health, which brought its author, Dr. John Armstrong, considerable literary reputation during the following century in England, Italy, and America. In this work there are occasional passages of very pleasing poetry, but the goddess Hygeia, whom Armstrong invoked with all due fervor, failed to inspire him to create an enduring masterpiece on such themes as air, diet, and exercise. Consequently, during the last century there has been little interest in his poems and essays, or in his life, personality, and friendships. There is, of course, A. H. Bullen's short article in the Dictionary of National Biography, which added little, however, to Robert Anderson's memoir, or to Robert Chambers' account, and more recently Mr. Iolo A. Williams paid tribute to The Art of Preserving Health and published a bibliography of Armstrong's works. But there is no likelihood that Armstrong's writings will be much read or discussed in the future except by literary antiquarians and special students of the eighteenth century.

The Wasteland of William Blake

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
William Blake ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

The question is: how can you put a prophet in his place when, by the very character of prophecy, he is eternally slipping out of place? William Blake was not an eighteenth century or nineteenth century mind or a typically modern mind at all. What I mean to say, right at the start, is that, although well aware of his time and of time altogether, he was not in tune with the main tendencies of his or our own time. Indeed time was a barrier he was forever crashing against. Blake's talent raved through the world into the fastnesses of die past and dramatically confronted the abysses of the future. His age did not confine him. As a poet he does not seem finally to have had real spiritual or artistic rinship with any of the rationalist or romantic writers of England. As a thinker he came to despise the inadequacy of the limited revolutionary effort of the political rebels of the Romantic Revolution. Blake's name is not to be seen mounted first with that of Paine or Godwin, of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Wordsworth or Shelley or Byron or Keats. With these he has, ultimately, little or nothing in common. At any rate, his voice and mood and impact are thoroughly different from the more publicly successful voices of the period of his life, older and younger generations alike.

The role of quality seed use for world crop production with special reference to the developing countries

1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 268-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
W P Feistritzer
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pasture Plants

In this short article the author indicates the present stages of development of variety evaluation, testing, certification, production and marketing of quality seed—of cereals, industrial crops, pasture plants and vegetables—in major geographical regions of the world and draws attention to some of the underlying problems which must be faced in the future if further progress is to be made.

scholarly journals Insomnolent Anathemas

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-398
Author(s):  
Philip G. Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Insomnia ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Receive

Over several decades during the second half of the last century, the Romanian-born Parisian intellectual E. M. Cioran penned a series of uneasy works whose despondent obsession with God is matched only by their utter disavowal of the reality of the divine. Wrestling pessimistically with nihilism in a world forged by chronic insomnia, illness, nicotine, and despair, Cioran confronts the theologian with a particularly radical articulation of unbelief hard-won at the “verge of existence,” and existence suffered as an “accident of God.” This short article explores the form and substance of Cioran’s biting and aphoristic expression of modern unbelief in an attempt to discern something of its theological significance. Perhaps theology would do well to receive this work as a necessary ascesis of its inapt and faithless contentment and ease with the world. And could it be that theology stands to be schooled in the near impossibility and profundity of hope by the cynicist’s surprising confession that, “Each time the future seems conceivable to me, I have the impression of being visited by Grace”?

Prayers

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-149
Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

This chapter studies the logic of traditional innovation by investigating a form of sanctioned Catholic practice. In the eighteenth century, a new movement flourished in many of the most important cities and towns of New Spain. Calling themselves Holy Schools of Christ, these groups combined collective piety sometimes associated with baroque Catholicism, such as the lashing of flesh, with an intense demand for self-regulation of an individual's thoughts and actions. The participants in the Holy Schools might appear as surprisingly modern in their attitude toward controlling the future and their attempts to achieve individual or collective improvement. Yet to characterize this movement as a moment of hybrid modernity in which elements of the past persisted despite a turn toward the modern would be deeply misleading. For the members and supporters of the Holy Schools, innovation required tradition. Individuals of this period, in other words, were often future-oriented without being modern.

“Skilful Jockies” and “Good Sadlers”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Boulware
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Borderlands History ◽  
The Future ◽  
Economic Exchanges ◽  
Territorial Boundaries ◽  
Ecological Landscape ◽  
Southeastern Indians ◽  
Cultural Interactions

This chapter introduces and assesses the roles horses played in the economies and societies of eighteenth-century southeastern Indians. Villagers throughout the region found horses essential in hunting, trade, and war. If the future of borderlands history centers partly on issues of spatial mobility and ambiguities of power, then horses are especially relevant to borderlands scholarship. In the early South, horses facilitated cross-cultural and economic exchanges while undermining the structures of authority for both Indians and whites. A closer look at the interrelationship between Indians, horses, and the environment affords new insights into borderlands history by underscoring how human and animal mobility not only complicated territorial boundaries and cross-cultural interactions but also subtly modified the socioeconomic foundations and ecological landscape of southeastern Indians.

‘It had an odde promiscuous tone’: Lord Rochester and Restoration modernity

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-198
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Augustine
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
The Future ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

This chapter explores how the framework of a ‘long eighteenth century’ distorts our sense of Restoration literature through a process of selective reading and imagining that emphasises ‘the shape of the future’. The writings of Lord Rochester provide the ground on which this argument is tested. In tracing Rochester’s texts through the circuits of script and print, this chapter illuminates the radical unfixity of Rochester as cultural sign. To privilege Rochester’s ‘Augustanism’, or to see him, as recent commentators would have it, as a ‘proto-Whig’, is perforce to strain against the varied cultural scripts he so promiscuously fashioned and in which he was no less promiscuously apprehended and imagined. More largely, this chapter argues, by refiguring Rochester, we may also appreciate the decidedly mixed character of whatever might be called ‘Restoration modernity’.

Land and Territory

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
Nicola Miller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Tropical Agriculture ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Tropical Fruits ◽  
Rare Element ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future

This chapter explains that the arrival of lithography in the 1820s made it possible to illustrate printed matter with beautiful scenic engravings. It analyses the evocations of distinctive natural phenomena that constituted a rare element of continuity between the creole patriotism of the late eighteenth century and the post-independence debates about the future. It also discusses how utility and utopianism were enfolded into investigations of the biblical and secular paradise of American nature. The chapter cites how Bello's famous Ode to Tropical Agriculture summoned its audience to live out the freedom won by independence through working the soil, exhorting them not to let the prodigious bounty of tropical fruits lure them into sterile idleness. It mentions that the Argentine anthem mapped out the battlegrounds where liberty had been won, and the Chilean anthem celebrated the clarity of the sky, the tranquillity of the sea, and the majesty of the mountains.

5. Long Waves and Conjunctures of Democratization

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Long Waves ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Long Wave ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on the history of democratization since the late eighteenth century. It introduces the concepts of ‘waves’ (trends) and ‘conjunctures’ (briefer turmoils) and delineates the major developments in this respect. In this way, the major long-term and short-term factors leading to the emergence and breakdowns of democracies are also highlighted. The first long wave occurred during the period 1776–1914, followed by the first positive conjuncture in 1918–19, the second long wave (with some intermittent turbulences) in 1945–88, and the latest conjuncture in 1989–90. The chapter identifies the main ingredients to democratization throughout history, namely: republicanism, representation, and political equality. It concludes by considering some of the current perspectives and dangers for the future of democracy.

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