2 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 



in our excursions, we have tacitly admitted our interest 

 in Poetry and Painting. I, therefore, make no apology 

 for addressing to you to-day a few remarks on Some 

 Literary and Artistic Associations of the Border Counties ; 

 and I may perhaps be permitted here to add that the 

 leaflet which I had the honour of circulating among 

 members of the Club, at the meeting of 14th August 

 last, was intended in some measure to strike the key- 

 note of to-day's observations. My chief motives in 

 selecting this theme have been the undeserved neglect 

 and untimely oblivion which are rapidly overtaking the 

 names of certain Borderers, erst celebrities of the chisel, 

 palette, goose-quill, or poet's lyre. What, unaided, 1 

 can hope to do to keep these memories green, is indeed 

 but little. But I speak in the trust that others will 

 complete what I aspire merely to indicate. 



John Armstrong. 



At the Thomson Bi-Centenary Celebrations of last year, 

 it was with surprise and regret I noticed the unbroken 

 silence preserved by the speakers with regard to one 

 particular name. It was the name of the friend, the disciple, 

 the beneficiary, and, to a small extent, the collaborator of 

 Thomson ; born in the same county with him, and 

 distinguished in the same art of poetry — the name of 

 all others, in fact, which one would expect to hear 

 mentioned in that particular connection, and on that 

 particular occasion. But though the speakers were 

 numerous, though they certainly did not stint their 

 eloquence, they had amongst them not a word to say 

 of Armstrong ! How was this ? Can it be that the 

 poet of the " Art of Preserving Health," the lyric high- 

 priest of Hygeia, is forgotten in his own country ? He 

 has a place in the standard collections of the British 

 Poets ; whilst, even of his secondary or prose writing, 

 the impartial dispenser of immortality in the National 



