Montgomery Puffiad Reviews

— 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

Contemporary Reviews of this Volume

Only one review of The Puffiad appears to have been published, although the volume’s existence is acknowledged directly or indirectly in at least two other reviews of Montgomery’s work. The full review is from Jeremy Bentham’s and James Mill’s Westminster Review of April 1828. The review may be by Henry Southern, the literary editor of the journal, but John Stuart Mill also wrote literary reviews. Despite the negativity of the review, the reviewer’s polemic against puffery mirrors, in both tone and argument, that of The Puffiad itself. The extreme brevity of the space in this review allotted to the poem in comparison to the broad and detailed discussion of puffery as a general phenomenon by itself functions as a statement on the poem’s perceived (in)significance.

“Puffing and The Puffiad.” Westminster Review 9 (April 1828): 441-50.

The Puffiad is a satire only in name. By an accident its author has hit upon a subject that invites the scourge of the moralist, but he has neither the lash, nor muscle, nor yet knowledge, how and where to strike. This is the age of puffery, and it would shew that satire, as a moral weapon, has grown into disuse, that no steel-pointed pen has hitherto written down the great practisers of this deceptive art. Surely the subject has deserved a few nervous cantos: the vice is a mischievous one: its professors are notorious; their vocation is universal; and there never was a mal-practice so naturally calculated to wither under the touch of ridicule. Leaving, however, his weak side of puffery to the twanging bow of the heroic satirist, we shall content ourselves with connecting together a few observations on the statistics of the art of puffery.

The grand object of the puffer is deception; and, since he is found in every department of trade, and invariably succeeds, if his purse be long enough, it is evident that the practice must sink deep into the morality of the country. There is between buyer and seller a constant interchange of falsehood and credulity: no public description of any mercantile article is to be believed: the habit of lying is engendered in all departments of commerce, the dupe takes his turn in duping, and ingenuity is again put upon the rack to discover some new form of delusion. Title-pages, prefaces, advertisements, and even critiques, may be clubbed together as one great LIE. The practice of puffing your property brings on the practice of puffing yourself, and hence all kinds of egotism and vanity, especially in the tribe of authors, editors, and critics. The fact is, that the puffers have an advantage over the world: the public gives them a partial credit for honesty, and believes two thirds of what it reads in print in honour of typography.

The grand medium of puffing is the periodical press: traders have long known it as a means of communicating the existence of their wares at particular places. When a supply was procured of a remarkable kind, or an article manufactured out of the usual course, it was not unnatural to advertise the world of the fact by the aid of daily journals. In particular instances, when the editor’s attention was called to the nature of the advertisement, he would, out of his desire to patronize that which might benefit the public, attract the notice of his readers to the subject, by pointing it out in a separate paragraph. How long it is since this primitive state of things ceased to exist! Alas! the simplicity of the advertiser is changed into roguery, and the benevolence of the editor into corruption. Advertisements are now couched in a style of the most barefaced effrontery; and under the mask of original remarks lurks a recommendation which the proprietor consents to father for a consideration. Newspapers are generally in the hands of individuals whose sole aim it is to make as much money as possible. If they are sufficiently well paid they will admit any thing into their columns: the reader is never sure: in a grave political leader, or in the slight record of a dreadful accident, let him beware of names, of shops, of articles useful on the occasions—a puff lies in ambush in every paragraph. Mr. ---- falls from his horse, solely that he may be relieved by Mr. ----'s bandage or Mr. ----'s tincture. An unhappy wretch is saturated with poison, that a new stomach pump, or a self-acting patent double squirt may perform the act of resuscitation.

The first puffers were either quack-doctors or auctioneers, we are not certain which: it is evident that the general scheme of the art was well understood in Sheridan’s time; and yet when his quick eye detected all its capabilities, it was only in its infancy. The monster had evidently Herculean proportions even in its cradle, its proportions have now expanded, and it broods over all the transactions of the great metropolis. Quacks and auctioneers, however, still maintain a kind of preeminence. “Every ill that flesh is heir to” may be readily cured by a reference to the “Chronicle,” or the “Courier,” with the farther aid of a post-paid letter, and an enclosed one-pound note. Beauty may be purchased; deformity converted into a charm; the colour of the hair may be changed into the glossiest of the favourite colours; false locks, false teeth, false features, false limbs, are supplied, if puffs are to be believed, on terms of the easiest description, and with the most flattering success. Should a doubt rush for an instant through the mind of the incredulous of facts so marvelous, there are Captain A., and Mr. B., and lady C., who have all been cured, mended, or metamorphosed, within a few weeks, and in the fervour of their gratitude hold themselves in perpetual readiness to vouch for the assertions to which they have set their hand and seal. Auctioneers have obtained a kind of prescription to lie: no one believes, and all are willing to smile at stretches of the imagination, which are considered purely professional. As his hammer pendulates, it is held as a duty that he should relieve the dullness of his conditions of sale by ideal pictures of parks without a blade of grass, woods without a tree, and rivers that trickle less water in a year than Mr. Robins mixes with his punch at the auction of a single estate. The gardens that bloom in the Newspapers are destitute of a flower, and the villas in elegant repair are tumbling down.

Advertisements are only a part of the machinery of the recondite art of horse-dealing, the most rascally of all the legal modes of procuring subsistence. The “fine pair of bloodhorses, rising five years old, the property of a gentleman going abroad, who may be referred to ;” the “short-legged fast-trotting cobb, belonging to a gentleman who has no longer any use for him, and whose only wish is to find a kind master for his favorite;” with all the rest of the forms of deception, are simply one mode of making money by the sale of “screws,” as the poor, made up, groggy, standing-over, wretched animals, generally are which are thus described with circumstantial falsehood.

Neither is the gentleman a better gentleman than the horse is a horse: “a gentleman going abroad,” or “giving up his horses,” is a part of the stud of the knavish horse-dealer. He is kept in boots and riding-coats, in handsome lodgings hard by, solely for the convenience of an easy reference; and is, of course, ever ready to give such a character of the inimitable horse he is so loath to part with, that the purchaser cannot fail to leave him in a fever of possession.

After the horse-dealers, and in the order of iniquity, come the advertising wine-merchants, who sell wine at prices cheaper than the price of importation; who secure the imaginary vintages of particular estates; who can give the hue of age to liquor from the wood, crust to the virgin bottle, and a blush to the cork, which alone of all the bargain, has ever seen the shores of a foreign country. The extent of the credulity of the public cannot be better proved than in the articles of wine and spirits. The prices of the advertisers have been proved frequently, and more particularly in a little work on the Adulteration of Wine and Spirits, published a few months ago, to be considerably less than the lowest price in the native country of the produce, when added to the duty necessarily exacted by the customs.

The branch of trade, however, which lies most directly in our path is that of the bookseller. And he scarcely yields to any of his competitors in the activity, the impudence, the falsehood, the elaborateness, or the iniquity, with which he pursues this system of delusion, when he pursues it at all; for we must not be too sweeping in our censures. In this department of business, above all others, are examples of men who are above any measure founded in deceit or unfairness: we speak here, as in other cases, of the notorious trumpeters of their wares who are very easily distinguished from the men who simply resort to newspapers for the purposes of announcement. The machinations of the bookseller extend beyond the two channels of puffery, the advertisements and paragraphs; they more deeply undermine the purity of the press, and it is this which we confess most bitterly excites our spleen. The power of the bookseller circumvents the newspaper proprietor; his advertising funds are immense, and he is thus enabled not only to corrupt one of the most copious sources of public instruction, but also to deteriorate the quality of literature itself, and materially to retard its progress in a right direction. This matter deserves some development.

The publishers compete with each other in endeavouring to force a demand for their works, or in order to secure a preference above others. The sum spent in advertising is either laid upon the price of the book, or it is deducted from the share of the author, and at any rate it is considered as essential an outlay as the expense of printing or paper. This sum is frequently so large that no increase of price to the public, or diminution of pay to the author, will make the publication of a single volume a profitable speculation, even if the whole of an ordinary impression be disposed of. In this case, the author is sometimes sent back to bolster up his book into two, that a greater price may be decently charged, and the expense of puffery defrayed. If a single book be published, and the propensity to puff be carried too far, it may happen that the whole number of copies printed may be sold, and still a loss incurred to the poor author who has to pay the balance of an account for his success. We know an instance of a little work published at five shillings, on which the puffery alone cost five and forty pounds, in which it moreover appeared that, although the entire impression, and this not a small one, was sold within a few copies, there still remained a large deficit against the author.

We may now see how the practice of laying out these enormous sums in advertising, operates on literature. The publisher, not only in some cases increases unnecessarily the bulk and the cost of his productions, but he naturally prefers, as a subject for advertising, that which is most calculated to attract the attention of the multitude, and also that which is in its nature calculated to procure the readiest sale, and thus return, in quick time, the capital which he has lavished upon it. It is needless to say, that the books of readiest sale are not likely to be the best, and that subjects, and modes of treatment which arrest the vulgar gaze, are not those which either a lover mankind or a lover of literature would wish to see circulated. They are in fact, incentives to vice or folly of some kind or other—immoral pictures of conduct, which, under the name of “fashionable life,” pass into a bad example: perhaps they are the feeble efforts of a catch-penny scribbler eager to pick the pockets of the credulous, under the grave exterior of a great name, a great event, or other topic at the moment in agitation. Thus are the exertions of writers diverted into an unprofitable direction, and the sacred appetite for information, now so happily roused, fed, and nauseated with inflammatory stuff, only calculated to breed mental fever and obstruction. The cool and quiet springs of instruction are neglected, and left to ruin and decay for the sake of an intemperate drink prepared by the quacks of the day. This, however, is far from being all. It remains now to be seen how the practice of expending large sums of money on new publications, still further perverts the interests of literature. We have already stated, as a well known fact, that newspapers are in the hands of men generally speaking, whose sole object is mercantile: they are only party engines, so far as it is necessary to fashion different articles to different tastes. Now the expense of a stamp enormously high, when joined to that of the broad sheet of paper, and a vast expanse of small printing, eats largely into the sale price of each copy of the journal, and leaves but very little for the payment of editors, reporters, and writers, and the remuneration of proprietors. It is a truth that they look to the advertisements as their first and best source of profit; and of these advertisements the booksellers supply a large and preponderating share. A publisher in a large way can put in or divert from the pockets of any newspaper proprietor, many hundred pounds a year. Here is the secret of laudatory critiques, of favourable quotations, of sly allusions, and grossly eulogistic paragraphs, paid or unpaid for, inserted as the impartial suggestions of the editor. A tacit compact subsists between the one trade and the other: the one to pay, the other to praise. Criticism, false but fair-seeming criticism, has thus become one the foul disguises in which the monster PUFF stalks abroad seeking whom he may gull. The process does not end here: first, a book is announced for several weeks before it appears. The title-page is advertised several times; then a few lines scattered here and there amongst other bartered compositions, appear, indicating that great expectation has been excited by the announcement which had been previously made by the same hand: a surmise is now set afloat that a distinguished personage is the author of the forthcoming work; then a bolder paragraph declares the manner, style, and subject, of the so much talked of production: all this time, the great guns of open advertisement are playing away on the public in the front columns, while the masked battery is only bringing its fire into action. At last the book is born into the world; the morn is ushered in by a consentaneous shout on the part of all the journals, that THIS DAY is published the work in question, and the repetition of THIS DAY continues, till it stares every body in the face, that THIS DAY is, at least, three months ago: then the style of lately more faintly declares the same joyous fact, until, by the aid of a new title-page, a second edition is vamped up, and then all the guns of the great battery of the press are once more opened, and the world is made aware, from east to west, and north to south, that the booksellers’ second hope is born again.

On the eve of publication a copy of the work is forwarded to the editor of each periodical of influence: bad or good the book must be noticed, because the publisher has put money in to the newspaper proprietor’s pocket: the notice must moreover be favourable, and the moment that a laudatory notice appears in the columns of the journal, some sentence is picked out, and the testimony is added to others similarly obtained: this array is again advertised: the purchaser of books reads the title indicating the subject he is interested in, followed by the eulogistic decisions of authoritative critics: first, he observes the vigilant Literary Gazette –then comes inferior authorities –Athenaeum, Morning Post, Literary Chronicle, Daily Puffer, Evening Blast, Trumpeter, Book Bellows, &c. &c. &c. Wretch, he buys! the delusion is complete: he is saddled with lampblack, dirty rags, and the author’s impertinence. The consequence of the baleful power thus committed into the hands of the publisher, are either that bad books are forced into circulation to the injury of morals, the destruction of literary taste, and the exclusion of a wholesome commodity: or that in apprehension of encountering trash, the bookbuyer keeps aloof from all modern works, and cultivates, perhaps, a distaste for the progress which, notwithstanding puffery is evidently being made in useful knowledge. Universal incredulity is unfortunately attended with the fatal curse of ignorance: it is better to be deluded out of the substance we have laid by for the purposes of intellectual cultivation, than to refrain from procuring literary food altogether. In this dilemma, it is exceedingly difficult to point out guides by which we may direct the choice of the student. It is better to have no guides at all in literature, than guides who are in the pay of the enemy. And this is the condition we have shown of the bulk of those who stand in this position to the public. It is no safeguard, that the character of the editor of a newspaper stands high: he may be above the reach of mercenary motives but his proprietor is not. Bargaining in his own peculiar department for the free expression of his opinions—which may be indeed fostered and itself puffed—Why? that the rest of the paper may be more saleable—the prostitute often assumes in her outward attire the modest garb of the virtuous, solely for the purpose of procuring a higher price for concealed sacrifices. It is thus with newspapers, a generous leader covers the mercenary follower—the editor is paid higher for being venal. Again, the generally high character of a journal for impartiality and incorruptibility is no security; for it is very possible that such character may have been solely established by sagacious worldlings, for the purpose of being sold at a good price. Seeing the estimation in which papers given to puffery are beginning to be held, or in other words, that in some particular instances the venality has been too gross, and the cheat exposed; speculators have conceived, that by maintaining their virtue until its existence became fully known and highly prized, they might then bring their honour to a good market. After a stand has been made long enough and firm enough to gain a character—then beware—let all the pure retire—favete linguis—the sacrifice in secret and in shame is about to be consummated. A vile tool may be had any where, but a tool with an edge is valuable beyond a low price.

Lofty pretensions, and repeated asseverations of honesty, are certainly no security for the performance of a duty. If they were, we might, perhaps, be enabled to make an exception to our general censure. Imagine a Briarean editor launching speculation after speculation; each puffed in its turn, as exceeding all prior example. Conceive him reaching the East with one hand, the West with another—wielding monthly instruments of publication with this paw, laying a thumb upon literature, a little finger upon politics, and no less than six huge claws on daily news. Add to the hundred hands, a hundred eyes, and a hundred mouths, and let each mouth sing the praises of its great SELF. Again, to the hundred eyes, hands, and mouths, be generous, and give him a hundred feet; with two let him straddle in the Strand; with another pair paddle in Thames-street; with another waddle over the trembling Bridge; two in the brightest calf’s skin, must stand sentinels in Bond-street; and let all the rest go from county to county, from town to town: all the mouths crying I, I, as the voice on the shore cryed PAN, PAN, the hands waving newspapers like flags, and the eyes everywhere on the stare, to fascinate the unwary. Is this an imaginable creation?

It may be worth while to say a few words on the causes which have led to the prostitution of the press, to the purposes of advertisers. One may, undoubtedly, be found in that excessive competition amongst traders, which leads them to resort to every means of attracting purchasers. This, again, arises partly out of the gambling spirit in which mercantile undertakings are entered; men determine to force a sale at any risk, and they either succeed in making a business, or in finding a place in the Gazette. The luxury of ornamental shops is a species of puffery; perpetual bills and placards announcing low prices and other fictions, are another species; the regular and constant channel of all these people is, however, through the newspapers. In the article of books, the market is absolutely overstocked, and the efforts of the publishers are directed as much to creating an appetite for particular works as to cutting out their competitors. It is in vain, however, to attempt to reach these evils by attacking them directly: the remedy lies in modifying the nature and character of the channels through which these appeals are made to the public. If the duty on newspapers were materially diminished, the price would be lessened, the circulation greatly enlarged, and the profits of the proprietor so much increased as to place him beyond the reach of the motives, that now influence him. By this arrangement, not only would the mass of public instruction be greatly magnified, but the quality of it would be wonderfully purified, and the happiest consequences might be expected to follow. If, in addition to this, the duty on advertisements were likewise considerably lowered, the opportunity of advertising would be so open to all, that the puffers would find that the multitude of calls upon public notice begat incredulity and neglect; the disease would be aggravated for the moment, but the cure would be certain and near at hand. In neither of these cases is it probable that the revenue at present derived would be diminished: in all likelihood, it would be greatly increased. Under the existing state of things, the remedies open are apparently two. If a daily newspaper were established by individuals of great wealth, who at the same time valued the public good, and loved the cause of truth, they might create such legitimate attractions in a journal—they might make it so intelligent as a public instructor, so accurate and copious as a reporter of intelligence, and so copious a caterer or innocent amusement as to command a sale which, even with the present high duties, would amply remunerate them for the outlay of a large capital. Such a journal might be independent of tradesmen. The second remedy is one which has been partially adopted in the establishment of the Society of Useful Knowledge. Since public critics are not to be depended upon, there is wisdom in collecting an assembly of enlightened individuals who will extend a guardian care over a class of publications, and give their sanction to works which they have satisfied themselves are worthy of publication. The value of the imprimatur of a society of this kind has been already felt; there is every reason to anticipate enlightened decisions and strict honesty in men who have been universally known as the patrons of all liberal institutions and beneficial doctrines. The acts of a society of this kind must, however, finally settle the light in which their authority is to be viewed.

The author of the Puffiad asks—
          ‘What pen shall justly praise the pleasing art,
           To pick the pocket, and beguile the heart?
           That crafty—curious—most convenient stuff,
           Belov’d by authors, and baptized a puff?
           A PUFF in learning, politics, and prayer—
           In virtue, vice—‘tis Puffery every where;
           Puff me—puff you—thus puffing on we go
           Until the last Puff puffs us all below!’
The answer to this question could not come more appropriately from any pen than that of him, who has been as much puffed for his age, and more undeservedly, than any rhymester of the last century. The author of the Puffiad is a Mr. Robert Montgomery, who has likewise written a divine poem called the “Omnipresence of the Deity.” This poem is a verbose and bombastic tissue of mere phrases: which the force of Puffery has absolutely elevated into the regions of fame, and a fifth edition. The Literary Gazette inflated the first Puff in its favour as may be seen in Mr. Montgomery’s own puffs—then, various other Journals joined in raising the wind, until there came a blast so long and loud from the incorruptible Times, that Printing-House-square must still re-echo with the sound. The Puffiad closes his satire with a selection of highly-wrought specimens of the art, under the head of Puffiana; and we recommend him, should his work reach a second edition, to add to them the glorious example which he has so assiduously circulated in his advertisements by the aid of that press which he so loudly abuses.—Lest he should not take our hint, we will undergo the nauseous task of copying a portion of this critical effort.

“Mr. Montgomery’s excellent poem on this awfully impressive subject (the Omnipresence of the Deity), has not more rapidly than deservedly arrived at a second edition. The work is dedicated by permission to the lord bishop of London, and is in every respect worthy the countenance and protection of that elevated dignitary. The author is, we understand, a very young man [he knew the age of the poet to a day we will engage], but in this production he has displayed a depth and maturity of thought, a strength and justness of reasoning, which would do honour to any writer of the present day. His versification combines, in no ordinary degree, energy and excellence; his figures are beautifully appropriate—they are never introduced merely at the suggestion of fancy, but are called in to illustrate some feeling of the mind or some affection of the heart. A glowing spirit of fervid devotion distinguishes the whole work. In every page we find
“Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”
The author appears to have felt that he stood in the presence of HIM whose greatness he was celebrating—to HIM he has prayed for inspiration, and from HIM he received it, &c. &c.
Times, April 1st, 1828.”

          ‘But when some rising rascal-quack in trade,
          By cash secures your paragraphic aid,
          Then braggart Freedom smooths her stoic frown,
          Nods her assent—and pockets half-a-crown.’
                                                                                   Puffiad, p. 97
It was but ordinarily grateful in Mr. Montgomery to add a note to these lines indicating that the TIMES, which had furnished him with this valuable testimony for his round of puffs, was an honourable exception to the practices of pocketing half-a-crown for “paragraphic aid.”—See note, Puffiad, p. 96.

Before we dismiss the book which we only noticed because the writer understands better how to select that to treat a subject, we may as well record that this Puffiad is in fact re-made up from a dull satire by the same author, written in the same tone of empty pomposity, entitled the Age Reviewed, which fell, still-born from the press, during the early part of last year. Mr. Montgomery is as little qualified to shine in satirical, as in divine poetry—and it is ungrateful in him now to expose in one species of verse, the arts by which he has been enabled to turn the other to account.