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].
The Puffiad: A Satire. London:
Maunder, 1828. Pp. viii + 128
Descriptive Essay
Robert Montgomerys The Puffiad: A Satire (1828) takes on
the popular publishers of early nineteenth century England and their use of
hyperbolic advertisements, known as puffs. Although puffing was
by no means the exclusive province of booksellers everyone with something
to sell used the periodical press to advertise the puffing of novels
and volumes of poetry seemed to strike a special nerve with many social commentators.
The aesthetic preoccupation with taste and a lingering Augustan
conservatism among many literary critics into and beyond the Romantic age contributed
to a concern that the popularization of sensational novels was diluting artistic
sensibilities and promoting loose morality in the masses. Denunciation of puffery
was not new in 1828, either, as William Hazlitt had dealt with the phenomenon
in his Table Talk of 1822 (On Patronage and Puffing
289-302). In 1824, William Frederick Deacon published a volume of poetry called
Warreniana, which parodied puffs for Warrens blacking (boot
polish) with poems in the styles of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and other
literary luminaries (Montgomery himself includes a brief parody of Warren puffs
on the final page of the The Puffiad, The Japan-Blacking
Man).
The Puffiad was published only in 1828, and it appears that there was a single impression. This corresponds with the general lack of attention that the volume received in the periodical press, which is somewhat surprising considering that The Puffiad was released nearly simultaneously with Montgomerys most famous and popular work, The Omnipresence of the Deity, which went through eight editions in as many months in 1828. Nevertheless, only one major periodical reviewed The Puffiad (Westminster Review, April 1828 review transcribed below), and a second alludes to it two years later in a review of Montgomerys Satan, although it misstates the title of The Puffiad as On the Art of Puffing (Frasers Magazine for Town and Country, February 1830. 95-9). Two other reviews of 1830 one by T.B. Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review and one more from Frasers are devoted primarily to condemnations of puffing generally and puffs of Montgomerys work specifically. An additional review in Frasers takes a sideswipe at Montgomery: the July 1830 review of Edward Clarksons Robert Montgomery and His Reviewers mentions the title of The Puffiad in its lengthy condemnation of Clarkson and Montgomery but includes no commentary on the poem, despite the obvious opportunity to ridicule Montgomery further (725). Another probable cause of The Puffiads relative obscurity is that Montgomerys primary audience, Evangelical Christians, would likely have been uninterested in a poem that was neither overtly nor implicitly religious.
With The Puffiad, Montgomery devotes a book-length satirical poem to the subject of literary puffery. The poem is in two parts, and includes an Introductory Epistle and an appendix (Puffiana), which contains supposedly authentic examples of literary puffery. The Introductory Epistle, whose twenty-three page length comprises nearly 18% of the volumes total, is a microcosm of the poem. Montgomery addresses the Epistle to an anonymous publisher, whom Montgomery charges with having inflicted lasting injury on the literature of the country (6). Montgomery makes clear that this is puffings chief crime: that the publishers (merely a synonym of puffers for Montgomery) have foisted upon Britain a host of coarse, unqualified, immoral authors, who can do no less than efface the historical and rightful producers of literature and thereby drag English culture into the gutter.
The poem commences in Part 1, the Argumentum for which advertises a summary
of puffing practices, a discussion of the incondite twaddle which
comprises contemporary literary production, and finally, a polite lamentation
of the demise of English poetry (25). The title Puffiad, an epigraph
by Juvenal, the initial invocation of the muse, the Augustan regularity of structure,
and an opening page quotation of Popes The Dunciad announce Montgomerys
intention to create a sweeping mock epic:
Of puffs defrauding,
and the puffing race,
The curse of learning,
and the lands disgrace,
I sing. Accomplishd
Heliconian Miss,
Descend, and aid
a task divine as this!
Diffuse sweet influence
through all my brain,
Balance the periods,
keep in tune the strain;
When low, upraise,direct
me when I fly!
And all but smut
and modern slang supply;
Illume, refine,
and regulate my song,
Perch on my page,
and puff the verse along. (27-8)
Beyond this initial invocation, however, Montgomery devotes Part 1 to a polemic
against modern literature that is less a satire, parody, or mock epic than it
is a straightforward harangue of righteous indignation (and frequent fury).
That The Puffiad is in verse appears to be a coincidence. Although the
poem is composed of heroic couplets, and Montgomery offers an occasional play
on words, Montgomery does not demonstrate much facility for satire, or even
sarcasm. The poem is almost unfailingly composed of direct, undisguised vitriol
that might have been more effective in prose:
From volume-hacks
to grubbers for reviews,
Thick as the blights
on wintry trees, resort,
As to one common,
all-directing court;
Hence Ramsgate
tourists, full of far renown,
With greasy quartos
stuff the stupid town!
Hence novel-vampers,
fraught with lackey lore,
Supply St. Jamess
with their kitchen store;
Hence reminiscent
rubbish, picked from brains
Addled and heavy
with their rakish pairs,
In fat octavos
pester all the isle
With slip-slop,
nasty, venomous, and vile;
Hence hungry hermits,
Bow-Street blackguards, all
Book-vamping reptiles
in this earthly ball,
In fetid volumes
on the world intrude,
Spurrd by
the vulgar wish of getting food. (55-6)
Irony is all but absent from the poem as Montgomery subjects authors, poets,
publishers, puffers, and readers to the same treatment. Thus, the poem is better
characterized as a versified assault than a satire.
Part 1, surprisingly, contains few mentions of puffing after the initial stanza.
Rather, Montgomery concerns himself with a discussion of the declining state
of English literature. Here, Montgomery has two targets: the un-Englishness
of contemporary literature and, most significantly, the emergence of a mass
of untaught and unrefined authors who have betrayed Englands Augustan
heritage. First, for Montgomery, the sorry state of contemporary literature
is partially a result of unwholesome foreign influence:
And here,
fair Muse! Applaud the rich who roam
To sun-rouged lands,and
leave their debts at home:
Who catch the Gallic
smileth Ausonian mien,
And glossy manner
of a foreign scene,
And thence returning,
kindly spread around
The continental
itch on British ground.
So shall religion,
dress, and language,all
That once was British,
be absorbd in Gaul;
So shall each genuine
trait of English growth
Dwindle away in
dastard vice and sloth;
Candour shall yield
unto obsequious art,
And John
Bull in the Gallic ape depart. (32-3)
Clearly, Montgomery sees that the Continental influence upon literature
is a symptom of a larger shift in English culture. The effects upon literary
art, however, concern him most, especially that Plain English, undefiled,
correctly pure, / Where native force and nervous sounds allure, / Now rarely
greets us in the gauzy page, / Spun out to suit this puffing, piping age, /
In Latin [i.e., Italian] patch-work, and in French brocade (40-1). The
un-Englishness, as Montgomery perceives it, of contemporary style and language
is a thorough corruption of English literary tradition.
Most distressing for Montgomery, though, is what he sees as the leveling effect
of the growth of the popular press and the startling growth in choice for consumers
of literature. In other words, the formerly exclusive realm of literary production
has been breached by the mob:
FACILITY!that
dismal, dreadful curse!
Has mangled prose, and
victimised our verse;
Has made our litrature
a public pool,
To catch the brain-dregs
of the hack and fool;
Where all may go, and
dabble as they will,
And drop the crude disasters
of their quill. (39)
This, for Montgomery, is the principal tragedy of the modern literary age; he
perceives that the transgression for it could only be characterized thus
of the masses into the province of the refined and high-minded artist
has wrecked English literature. Montgomery compares the creative impulse of
this amateurish author to a swelld bladder, [which] strains, and
bursts abroad (37) and likens the collective producers to a mixd
herd of pigs (46), evoking the contemptuous conservatism of Burkes
swinish multitude. With unbridled nostalgia, Montgomery yearns for
a time past, . . . a Muse ennobled time, / When Glory hoverd round
the hallowed rhyme, / And poesy was deemed celestial art (43). This perception
of the state of English literature and culture confirmed, then, is the crux
of Montgomerys argument in Part 1.
In Part 2, though the novelists and poets of the age still receive the majority of his scorn, Montgomery moves more directly to a criticism of puffing and puffers. Montgomery singles out a Mr. Burlington as the boundless master-mind of literary puffery (69). It is unclear whether Burlington is an actual puff-writer, a pseudonym, or a fiction. It is possible that Montgomery invented Burlington to stand as a representative of all puff-writers. That Montgomery uses a full name in this case stands out among the long list of the accused since Montgomery habitually uses traditional, partially elided names to camouflage the identities of his targets. For instance, Montgomery revives the old accusation (noted by Hazlitt) that Byron wrote lottery puffs: And B---n, toolong may his genius write / The puff-born, puff-bred mimics from our sight (69). Montgomery, however, avoids using Byrons full name even though Byron has been dead for four years, which speaks strongly to Montgomerys general adherence to convention. Montgomery follows this practice unerringly for both authors and titles under attack, so the conspicuous exception of Burlington may indicate that he is a character of convenience. Added to this, the absence of a Burlington from records of contemporary booksellers suggests that Mr. Burlington is either a fiction or a façade.
If Burlington represents a specific person, a reasonable possibility is that Montgomery refers to the publisher Henry Colburn, who operated in New Burlington Street and published, among other things, the Literary Gazette. The Literary Gazette was well-known for its puffs, though they appeared to be puffs of a higher quality and subtler style. Using the street name for Colburns publishing house would be a recognizable surrogate name but vague enough to avoid direct offense or slander. On the other hand, Colburns Literary Gazette provided some of the early, glowing reviews of Montgomerys The Age Reviewed and The Omnipresence of the Deity, reviews which no doubt contributed to the success of the two volumes, raising some doubt that Montgomery would attack one of his benefactors. While it was not uncommon to take digs at ones friends in a satire like Montgomerys, the polemic style, the especially vicious tone, and the general atmosphere of moral outrage of The Puffiad make this unlikely. Montgomery levels the full force of invective upon Burlington and all of the unworthy recipients of his puffs.
A significant implication of an unexpected attack on ones unsolicited
benefactor is the appearance that one never wanted or needed the help in the
first place; Montgomery needs no puffs to secure his reputation. Instead, Montgomery
stakes a claim for his own poetry as that of the higher sort: the Augustan,
purely English poetry pursued for its capacity to teach and delight rather than
titillate, as the popular trash was intended to do. The attack on Colburn (if,
indeed, he is the target) appears to be something of a rear-guard action, in
which Montgomery dismisses all puffs as mendacious, even those on his behalf;
he distances himself from the periodical press and appeals for the praise of
merit:
Now mark the one
whose mind commands a store
Of all that wit or wisdom
can adore:
How nobly different wrestles
HE for fame!
He hires no trumpet to
prelude his name,
He wants no hand to drag
him to the goal,
But reaches it by energy
of the soul;
And, though some clouds
of envy may oershroud
His struggling light,
nor let it be allowd,
And stars of vulgar fame
may pertly frown
Upon his dim approach
to fair renown,
Like the broad sun, hell
brighten into day,
Blaze on the world, and
blot them all away! (107)
This is the final stanza of the poem, and it is difficult not to view it as
the culmination of a long case of special pleading. Montgomery was no doubt
sensitive to the fact that he was widely perceived as being the beneficiary
of puffs for his earlier work, and thus, he may have seen The Puffiad
as the means by which he could separate himself from the common crowd of puffed
authors and lobby for the peculiar merit of his religious epics. If that is
the case, then Montgomery failed from the outset. The author of the sole review
of The Puffiad notes that the poem could not come more appropriately
from any pen than that of [Montgomery], who has been as much puffed for his
age, and more undeservedly, than any rhymester of the last century (Westminster
Review 449).
Montgomery apparently had a rather high opinion of himself, a perception noted as early as 1830 by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review when he remarked on a portrait of Montgomery appended to one of his volumes in which he appears to be doing his very best to look like a man of genius and sensibility (200). Frasers picked up the torch from here in its review of Satan, printing a parody of the portrait in which Montgomery peers at his own image in a mirror as Satan peeks from over the top of the mirror frame (99). Montgomerys expansive literary ambitions would not be well served by a public identification as a puffed author, and he may, therefore, have felt that a pre-emptive attack was necessary. Reputation not money appears to be a more plausible motive for his defensiveness. In the end, The Puffiad is largely a failure both as satire and as a defense against the more perceptive (and honest) critics of his work, but it sheds much light on Montgomerys contemporary reputation and on his own ambitions as a poet.
Works Cited
Hazlitt, William. On Patronage and Puffing. Table Talk:
or, Original Essays. 1822. Complete Works of William Hazlitt.
Vol. 8. Ed. P.P. Howe. London: Dent and Sons, 1931.
[Macaulay, T.B.]. Mr. Robert Montgomerys Poems, and the Modern Practice
of Puffing. Edinburgh Review 51 (1830): 193-210.
[Montgomery, Robert]. The Puffiad: A Satire. London: Maunder,
1828.
Mr. Robert Montgomerys Poetry. Frasers Magazine
for Town and Country 1 (February 1830): 95-9.
Puffing, and The Puffiad. Westminster Review 9 (April
1828): 441-50.
Robert Montgomery and His Critics. Frasers Magazine
for Town and Country 1 (July 1830): 721-6.
Strachan, John. "'The Praise of Blacking': William Frederick Deacon's Warreniana
and Early Nineteenth-century Advertising-related Parody." Romanticism
On the Net 15 (August 1999) [November 2004] .
Prepared by Derek Leuenberger, University of Nebraska, December 2004.
© Derek Leuenberger, 2004.