Robert Montgomery Biography

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Montgomery, Robert.

Biographical Information

Robert Montgomery was born inauspiciously as Robert Gomery in 1807 in Bath, England. The illegitimate son of the resident clown of the Bath theater and an unnamed woman, Robert changed his surname to Montgomery in his adolescence when he began to write and publish poetry, the first of which, Poetical Trifles, was published at age eighteen. Montgomery’s reasons for adopting the new name are not clear. He may have changed his name to disassociate himself from his humble origins or to take advantage of the name recognition (or confusion) connected to James Montgomery, the popular psalmist, poet, and critic. This may have a been a merely preferential choice, though. In any case, the issue of Montgomery’s adopted name and the constant threat (and/or benefit) of a confusion with James Montgomery was recognized by some of Robert Montgomery’s early reviewers, who felt it necessary to explicitly distinguish between the two. At the time of Montgomery’s early publications, however, some misinformation in regard to Montgomery’s biography appears to have been in circulation. At least one American journal, Spirit of the Pilgrims, reported that Montgomery was “the son of a merchant in Bath, (England) and a relative of General Montgomery, who was so conspicuous in the American war” (502). Whether this story was concocted by Montgomery or originated from elsewhere is unknown.

In 1827, Montgomery published his first satire, The Age Reviewed, which was followed quickly by A Universal Prayer; Death; a Vision of Heaven; and a Vision of Hell (1827), the first of his volumes of religious poetry. In 1828, he published his most popular work, The Omnipresence of the Deity and a second satire, The Puffiad. The Age Reviewed and The Omnipresence of the Deity both received flattering puffs from The Literary Gazette and The Times. The latter poem, however, also received favorable notice by Robert Southey. The Omnipresence of the Deity would be popular throughout Montgomery’s lifetime, running eight editions in its first eight months and twenty-eight overall, the last coming in 1855, the year of Montgomery’s death. Only Montgomery’s 1830 Miltonic epic Satan, or, Intellect Without God and Luther (1842) would approach that level of popularity, running eight and six editions, respectively. Over the next twelve years, Montgomery would produce four more long poems: Oxford (1831), The Messiah (1832), Woman, The Angel of Life (1833), and the enormous Luther, which ran eight volumes in its expanded edition.

By 1832, Montgomery’s work had been reviewed by most of the major periodicals in Britain and a few in the United States. The vast majority of the reviews were negative, and most of those were scathing. Montgomery’s poems were characterized as “the second or the third rank” in a charitable review of The Messiah (Literary and Theological Review 666) and as “absurd abortions [falling] stillborn from the press” in a particularly nasty article in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country (725). A similar sentiment was expressed by the Westminster Review in 1828 (450). One of the most devastating reviews was by T.B. Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review, which thoroughly exposed Montgomery’s poetic shortcomings. This literary reputation remains to this day, exemplified by the Concise Dictionary of National Biography’s one-word identifier: “poetaster” (895). Nevertheless, Montgomery remained popular throughout his lifetime with his reading public, which was largely composed of Evangelical Christians in both England and America. Omnipresence, in fact, was popular enough that it reached a third “school” edition in 1845, and it was even adapted as an oratorio by John Burnett in 1830.

Montgomery was educated at Oxford, with a B.A. in 1830 and an M.A. in 1838. He was ordained in 1835, and in 1843, he became minister of Percy Chapel in London, where he served for the remainder of his life. During this time, Montgomery revised and released editions of his earlier religious poems, especially the ever-popular Omnipresence and the expanding Luther. He also published two collections of sermons in 1843 and ’45, and another religious work, The Church of the Invisible in 1847. By most accounts, Montgomery was an inspirational and energetic sermonizer, and he was well-liked by his congregation. He married Rachel Mackenzie of Hampshire in 1843, with whom he had one child. Robert Montgomery died in 1855.

Sources

Burnett, John. The Omnipresence of the Deity. An Oratorio. By Robert Montgomery. London: 1830.
The Concise Dictionary of National Biography. 2 vols. London: Oxford UP, 1979. 1: 895.
Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. 22. vols. London: Oxford UP, 1917. 13: 769-70.
Dingley, Robert. “Robert Montgomery.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 38: 864-5.
[Macaulay, T.B.]. “Mr. Robert Montgomery’s Poems, and the Modern Practice of Puffing.” Edinburgh Review 51 (April 1830): 193-210.
“The Poems of Robert Montgomery.” Spirit of the Pilgrims 2 (September 1829): 502-14.
“Puffing, and The Puffiad.” Westminster Review 9 (April 1828): 441-50.
“Robert Montgomery and His Critics.” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country 1 (July 1830): 721-6.