— 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

Woman, the Angel of Life.  London:  Turrill, 1833.

Contemporary Reviews

Introductory Note on the following reviews and commentaries:

I could not locate any reviews that specifically discussed Woman, the Angel of Life, although a few of the reviews mentioned the poem in a discussion of his poetry as a whole. The first article I listed is not a review, but I included a portion of it for the sake of its mention of the poem. I did find several noteworthy reviews, however, on his other poems and his poetry in general. For the most part, the reviews were very negative, and very brutal (no wonder most of them were anonymous!). I included the review by Macaulay because it was probably the most famous review of Montgomery's work, and the review itself has been criticized as being very harsh. Macaulay picks apart many passages of both Omnipresence to the Deity and Satan. He claims that most of the poem does not make sense, and that the poem is without substance. Despite the severity of this review, the points made are very clever, and the review is entertaining to read. Many of the other reviews criticize Montgomery for evaluating his work against that of more famous poets such as Byron and Wordsworth.

While there were a few positive reviews about Montgomery's poetry, they did not go into as much detail, or support their arguments to the extent of the negative reviews. In general, the reviews contained altogether too much "fluff." While reading them, I kept waiting for the writers to "get to the point," because it seems like they spent half of the review building up to it. Furthermore, the writers of the reviews would stray completely from the point, discussing some other poet, before returning to Montgomery. The style that reviews are written in has obviously dramatically changed since then, or people would not make it past the first paragraph.

…By a leap, as from darkness into light, he then produced "Woman, the Angel of Life." The title of his book is good. I should advise everyone to go no further than the first page, for the angelic influences give way to Robert Montgomery's verbiage…

ART. IX-1. The Omnipresence of the Deity, a Poem. By Robert Montgomery. Eleventh Edition. London. 1830. 2. Satan, a Poem. By Robert Montgomery. Second Edition. London. 1830.

THE wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay.

A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said, "Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice." "It is for that very purpose," said the holy man, "that I came forth this day." Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue; callest thou that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, "it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," said the Brahmin, either thou or I must be blind."

Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the gods," said the second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?" When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. "Sir," said he to the new comer, "take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." "Oh Brahmin," said the new corner, "thou art drunk or mad!"
At this time the third confederate drew near. "Let us ask this man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, "Oh stranger, what dost thou call this beast?" "Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, "it is a fine sheep." Then the Brahmin said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses"; and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.

Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Aesop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of people who have more than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious or a more difficult trick than when they passed Mr. Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet.
In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to produce, pass into their character. They become the parasites and slaves of the great. It is melancholy to think how many of the highest and most exquisitely formed of human intellects have been condemned to the ignominious labour of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in new forms and brightening them into new splendour. Horace invoking Augustus in the most enthusiastic language of religious veneration; Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread; Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron; Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a madhouse: these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which those must submit who, not possessing a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read.

This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the middle of the last century a marked change took place. The tone of literary men, both in this country and in France, became higher and more independent. Pope boasted that he was the "one poet" who had "pleased by manly ways"; he derided the soft dedications with which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own superiority over the pensioned Boileau, and gloried in being not the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale of his writings, realized a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. The idea of either of those gentlemen looking out for some lord who would be likely to give him a few guineas in return for a fulsome dedication seems laughably incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway would have done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway is said to have been choked with a piece of bread which he devoured in the rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or false, he was beyond all question miserably poor. Dryden, at near seventy, when at the head of the literary men of England, without equal or second, received three hundred pounds for his Fables, a collection of ten thousand verses, and of such verses as no man then living, except himself, could have produced, Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the literary character so much better than they had done.

From the time of Pope to the present day the readers have been constantly becoming more and more numerous, and the writers, consequently, more and more independent. It is assuredly a great evil that men, fitted by their talents and acquirements to enlighten and charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the sustenance of life. But, though we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors from the time of Maecenas to that of Harley would not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing.

Whether the old or the new vice be the worse, whether those who formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now contrive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply, we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is high time to make a stand against the new trickery. The puffing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully carried on that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the purity of the national taste, or for the honour of the literary character, to join in discountenancing the practice. All the pens that ever were employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters.

It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. "Pathetic," "sublime," "splendid," "graceful," "brilliant wit," "exquisite humour," and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower as thick and as sweet as the sugarplums at a Roman carnival. Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition. "Such attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned. Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that a writer of such transcendent talents, a writer who is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should show so little tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been constantly mingling in society." These are but tame and feeble imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant undertakes to tell the public in bad English and worse French, how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words "Advertisement," or "From a Correspondent," to such paragraphs. But this makes little difference. The panegyric is extracted, and the significant heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with Times or Globe affixed, though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it than with Mr. Goss's way of making old rakes young again.

That people who live by personal slander should practice these arts is not surprising. Those who stoop to write calumnious books may well stoop to puff them; and that the basest of all trades should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite proper and as it should be. But how any man who has the least self-respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can condescend to persecute the public with this Ragfair importunity, we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants in the one way as in the other.

It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that his works should come before the public recommended by their own merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If his objects be really such as he may own without shame, he will find that they will, in the long-run, be better attained by suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present, we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as Shakspeare's usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham to the author's Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, and at last join in shouting for shouting's sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which has no right to it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependants.

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize. Nor is the public altogether to blame on this account. Most even of those who have really a great enjoyment in reading are in the same state, with respect to a book, in which a man who has never given particular attention to the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a delicacy of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he cannot distinguish hands, as practiced judges distinguish them, that he is not familiar with the finest models, that he has never looked at them with close attention, and that, when the general effect of a piece has pleased him or displeased him, he has never troubled himself to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom he thinks more competent to judge than himself, and of whose sincerity he entertains no doubt, assure him that a particular work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency.
Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a poem or a novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the meantime, little or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the publisher are interested in crying up the book. Nobody has any very strong interest in crying it down. Those who are best fitted to guide the public opinion think it beneath them to expose mere nonsense, and comfort themselves by reflecting that such popularity cannot last. This contemptuous lenity has been carried too far. It is perfectly true that reputations which have been forced into an unnatural bloom fade almost as soon as they have expanded; nor have we any apprehensions that puffing will ever raise any scribbler to the rank of a classic. It is indeed amusing to turn over some late volumes of periodical works, and to see how many immortal productions have, within a few months, been gathered to the poems of Blackmore and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many "profound views of human nature," and "exquisite delineations of fashionable manners," and "vernal, and sunny, and refreshing thoughts," and "high imaginings," and "young breathings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and "minglings with the beauty of the universe," and "harmonies which dissolve the soul in a passionate sense of loveliness and divinity," the world has contrived to forget. The names of the books and of the writers are buried in as deep an oblivion as the name of the builder of Stonehenge. Some of the well-puffed fashionable novels of eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold the pastry of eighteen hundred and thirty; and others, which are now extolled in language almost too high-flown for the merits of Don Quixote, will, we have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen hundred and thirty-one. But, though we have no apprehensions that puffing will ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still think its influence most pernicious. Men of real merit will, if they persevere, at last reach the station to which they are entitled, and intruders will be ejected with contempt and derision. But it is no small evil that the avenues to fame should be blocked up by a swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pretenders, who, though they will not ultimately be able to make good their own entrance, hinder, in the mean time, those who have a right to enter. All who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the unseemly scuffle must expect to be at first hustled and shouldered back. Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in dejection from pursuits in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. Others employ in self-defense the means by which competitors, far inferior to themselves, appear for a time to obtain a decided advantage. There are few who have sufficient confidence in their own powers and sufficient elevation of mind, to wait with secure and contemptuous patience, while dunce after dunce presses before them. Those who will not stoop to the baseness of the modern fashion are too often discouraged.
Those who do stoop to it are always degraded.

We have of late observed with great pleasure some symptoms which lead us to hope that respectable literary men of all parties are beginning to be impatient of this insufferable nuisance. And we purpose to do what in us lies for the abating of it. We do not think that we can more usefully assist in this good work than by showing our honest countrymen what that sort of poetry is which puffing can drive through eleven editions, and how easily any bellman might, if a bellman would stoop to the necessary degree of meanness, become a "master-spirit of the age." We have no enmity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know nothing whatever about him, except what we have learned from his books, and from the portrait prefixed to one of them, in which he appears to be doing his very best to look like a man of genius and sensibility, though with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve. We select him, because his works have received more enthusiastic praise, and have deserved more unmixed contempt, than any which, as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared within the last three or four years. His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words In Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations, have made, and will again make, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything "in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth."
The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with a description of the creation, in which we can find only one thought which has the least pretension to ingenuity, and that one thought is stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing:
        Last, softly beautiful, as music's close,
        Angelic woman into being rose.
The all-pervading influence of the Supreme Being is then described in a few tolerable lines borrowed from Pope, and a great many intolerable lines of Mr. Robert Montgomery's own. The following may stand as a specimen:
        But who could trace Thine unrestricted course,
        Though Fancy followed with immortal force?
        There's not a blossom fondled by the breeze,
        There's not a fruit that beautifies the trees,
        There's not a particle in sea or air,
        But nature owns thy plastic influence there!
        With fearful gaze, still be it mine to see
        How all is fill'd and vivified by Thee;
        Upon thy mirror, earth's majestic view,
        To paint Thy Presence, and to feel it too.
The last two lines contain an excellent specimen of Mr. Robert Montgomery's Turkey carpet style of writing. The majestic view of earth is the mirror of God's presence; and on this mirror Mr. Robert Montgomery paints God's presence. The use of a mirror, we submit, is not to be painted upon.

A few more lines, as bad as those which we have quoted, bring us to one of the most amusing instances of literary pilfering which we remember. It might be of use to plagiarists to know, as a general rule, that what they steal is, to employ a phrase common in advertisements, of no use to any but the right owner. We never fell in, however, with any plunderer who so little understood how to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea,
        Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.
Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and reproduces the stolen goods in the following form:
        And thou vast Ocean, on whose awful face
        Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.
        So may such ill-got gains ever prosper!
The effect which the Ocean produces on Atheists is then described in the following lofty lines:
        Oh! never did the dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand,
        And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,
        And, while Creation stagger'd at his nod,
        Mock the dread presence of the mighty God!
        We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean's roar,
        Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore
        We hear Him in the riot of the blast,
        And shake, while rush the raving whirlwinds past!
If Mr. Robert Montgomery's genius were not far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose that it is at the nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But Mr. Robert Montgomery's readers must take such grammar as they can get, and be thankful.

A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable theft. Sir Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the Isles:
        The dew that on the violet lies,
        Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes.
This is pretty taken separately, and, as is always the case with the good things of good writers, much prettier in its place than can even be conceived by those who see it only detached from the context. Now for Mr. Montgomery:
        And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies,
        Like liquid rapture upon beauty's eyes.
The comparison of a violet, bright with the dew, to a woman's eyes, is as perfect as a comparison can be. Sir Walter's lines are part of a song addressed to a woman at daybreak, when the violets are bathed in dew; and the comparison is therefore peculiarly natural and graceful. Dew on a bramble is no more like a woman's eyes than dew anywhere else. There is a very pretty Eastern tale of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us. The slave of a magician saw his master wave his wand, and heard him give orders to the spirits who arose at the summons. The slave stole the wand, and waved it himself in the air; but he had not observed that his master used the left hand for that purpose. The spirits thus irregularly summoned tore the thief to pieces instead of obeying his orders. There are very few who can safely venture to conjure with the rod of Sir Walter; and Mr. Robert Montgomery is not one of them.

Mr. Campbell, in one of his most pleasing pieces, has this line,
         The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky.
The thought is good, and has a very striking propriety where Mr. Campbell has placed it, in the mouth of a soldier telling his dream. But, though Shakspeare assures us that "every true man's apparel fits your thief," it is by no means the case, as we have already seen, that every true poet's similitude fits your plagiarist. Let us see how Mr. Robert Montgomery uses the image.
        Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright,
        Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,
        While half the world is lapp'd in downy dreams,
        And round the lattice creep your midnight beams,
        How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
        In lambent beauty looking from the skies.
Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid eyes, of the lambent beauty on which it is sweet to gaze, harmonize admirably with the idea of a sentry.

We would not be understood, however, to say, that Mr. Robert Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few lines further on, we find one which has every mark of originality, and on which, we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has plundered will ever think of making reprisals
        The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount,
        As streams meander level with their fount.
We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards.
We have then an apostrophe to the Deity, couched in terms which, in any writer who dealt in meanings, we should call profane, but to which we suppose Mr. Robert Montgomery attaches no idea whatever:
        Yes I pause and think, within one fleeting hour,
        How vast a universe obeys Thy power;
        Unseen, but felt, Thine interfused control
        Works in each atom, and pervades the whole;
        Expands the blossom, and erects the tree,
        Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea,
        Beams in each ray, bids whirlwinds be unfurl'd,
        Unrolls the thunder, and upheaves a world!
No field-preacher surely ever carried his irreverent familiarity so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the importance of the interests which are under His care. The grotesque indecency of such an address throws into shade the subordinate absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of whirlwinds, the unrolling of thunder, and the upheaving of worlds.

Then comes a curious specimen of our poet's English:
        Yet not alone created realms engage
        Thy faultless wisdom, grand, primeval sage!
        For all the thronging woes to life allied
        Thy mercy tempers, and thy cares provide.
We should be glad to know what the word "For" means here. If it is a preposition, it makes nonsense of the words, "Thy mercy tempers." If it is an adverb, it makes nonsense of the words, "Thy cares provide."

These beauties we have taken, almost at random, from the first part of the poem. The second part is a series of descriptions of various events, a battle, a murder, an execution, a marriage, a funeral, and so forth. Mr. Robert Montgomery terminates each of these descriptions by assuring us that the Deity was present at the battle, murder, execution, marriage or funeral in question. And this proposition which might be safely predicated of every event that ever happened or ever will happen, forms the only link which connects these descriptions with the subject or with each other.

How the descriptions are executed our readers are probably by this time able to conjecture. The battle is made up of the battles of all ages and nations: "red-mouthed cannons, uproaring to the clouds," and "hands grasping firm the glittering shield." The only military operations of which this part of the poem reminds us, are those which reduced the Abbey of Quedlinburgh to submission, the Templar with his cross, the Austrian and Prussian grenadiers in full uniform, and Curtius and Dentatus with their battering-ram. We ought not to pass unnoticed the slain war-horse, who will no more
          Roll his red eye, and rally for the fight;
or the slain warrior who, while "lying on his bleeding breast," contrives to "stare ghastly and grimly on the skies." As to this last exploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar occasion,
         Forse per forza gia di' parlasia
         Si stravolse cosi alcun del tutto
         Ma io nol vidi, ne credo che sia.
The tempest is thus described:
         But lo! around the marsh'lling clouds unite,
         Like thick battalions halting for the fight;
         The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep
         Fierce through the air and flutter on the deep.
         Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts,
         Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,
         And the lash'd billows, rolling in a train,
         Rear their white heads, and race along the main
What, we should like to know, is the difference between the two operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately distinguishes from each other, the fierce sweeping of the tempest-spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac blasts from their caverns? And why does the former operation end exactly when the latter commences?

We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery's descriptions. We have a shipwrecked sailor, who "visions a viewless temple in the air"; a murderer who stands on a heath, "with ashy lips, in cold convulsion spread"; a pious man, to whom, as he lies in bed at night,
         The panorama of past life appears,
         Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears:
A traveler, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the "cloud-battalion," and the want of "heaven-lamps, to beam their holy light." We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen from that incomparable passage in Crabbe's Borough, which has made many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child. We can, however, conscientiously declare that persons of the most excitable sensibility may safely venture upon Mr., Robert Montgomery's version. Then we have the "poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac boy," who
         Rolls his vacant eye
         To greet the glowing fancies of the sky.
What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow?
         A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,
         He loves to commune with the fields and floods.
How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead.

Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him:
         O Death! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth,
         The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!
         Careering round the world like tempest wind,
         Martyrs before, and victims strew'd behind
         Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,
         Dragging the world into eternity!
If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries.

We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio, "Why, this is a more excellent song than the other." Mr. Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it,
         One great Enchanter helm'd the harmonious whole.
What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a helm has to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his argument thus:
         And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed
         All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named
         The spacious world, and all its wonders, born
         Designless, self-created, and forlorn;
         Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream,
         Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?
We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery's logic. He informs us that lightning is designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the Deity who bids "thunder rattle from the skiey deep." His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the lightning made itself.

But Mr. Robert Montgomery's metaphysics are not at present our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism
        Then, blood-stain`d Murder, bare thy hideous arm
        And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm:
        Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime;
        Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!
Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, we need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing more is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a word with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, bare her arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. But what possible motive Rebellion can have for weltering in her storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits may be, why they should be burst from their bonds, what their bonds may be, why they should battle with the time, what the time may be, and what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to understand.
        And here let Memory turn her tearful glance
        On the dark horrors of tumultuous France,
        When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,
        And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand.
Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these three metaphors would mean, we, know no more than we know what is the sense of the following passage
        Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime
        Picture the raging havoc of that time,
        When leagued Rebellion march'd to kindle man,
        Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van.
        And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter'd Queen,
        Who dropp'd no tear upon the dreadful scene,
        When gush'd the life-blood from thine angel form,
        And martyr'd beauty perish'd in the storm,
        Once worshipp'd paragon of all who saw,
        Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law.
What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging havoc which the foul orgies are to picture? Why does Fright go behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Murder fall behind Fright? Or why should not all the three walk abreast? We have read of a hero who had
        Amazement in his van, with flight combined,
        And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.
Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, "Flower of Austria" is stolen from Byron. "Dropp'd" is false English. "Perish'd in the storm" means nothing at all; and "thy look obedience" means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgomery intends to say.

Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the soul:
        And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die,
        When dust and darkness round its temple lie?
        Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire.
        Dimless and quenchless, though the breath expire?
The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though dust and darkness lie round its temple, because an ethereal fire has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes, and has fire breathed into it?

Mr. Montgomery apostrophizes the
        Immortal beacons,--spirits of the just,--
And describes their employments in another world, which are to be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and riding on living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder,
        Creation shudders with sublime dismay,
        And in a blazing tempest whirls away.
And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over and over again, in terms which would require some qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, verses fit only for the poet's corner of the Morning Post, can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer's poetry has been greater than that of Southey's Roderick, and beyond all comparison greater than that of Cary's Dante or of the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the examination of his first and most popular performance that we have none to spare for his Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, entitled Satan.

This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.

Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. "Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason." Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, Sir Walter Scott's novels, Lord Byron's poetry, and Mr. Martin's pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily.

The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: "Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it." And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman"; but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.

We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralizes thereon as follows:--
        Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
        Around me: beauties in their cloud-like robes
        Shine forth,—a scenic paradise, it glares
        Intoxication through the reeling sense
        Of flush'd enjoyment. In the motley host
        Three prime gradations may be rank'd: the first,
        To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare's mind,
        And win a flash of his Promethean thought,
        To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve
        A round of passionate omnipotence,
        Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,
        Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
        On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,
        While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
        Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire
        The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,
        With their corroded figures, rayless glance,
        And death-like struggle of decaying age,
        Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
        Set forth to satirize the human kind!
        How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
        'Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!'
        Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry.
Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, to show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition; our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery.

We have been bothered and stunned with the bawling and braying of Arcadian nightingales, in praise of the sacred poetry of young Montgomery. It may all be very fine, we dare say-only the beauties are not manifest to our opaque vision. That youthful gentleman commenced his literary career by writing a satire against all the world, in language by no means smacking of the most elevated standard. He then brings forth some hundred lines "On the Omnipresence of the Deity," and then another satire, "On the Art of Puffing"-forgetting, the while, the means by which his own poem had been made to succeed; and this is followed by a volume containing an odd collection on Hell, Damnation, the Day of Judgment, and other inflammatory subjects; though even their fiery materials failed to give any thing save a feeble glow-worm light to his versified conceits. And now the gentleman has taken hold of Satan by his horns, as undauntedly as an Indian juggler would handle his
          Painted basilisk or spotted snake.
And the herd of wonder-stricken jack-asses amongst the devout and the ignorant, vociferate papa! And wonderful! And astonishing boy! And surpassing sanctity! Of the sanctity enshrined within the young gentleman's heart we will not say one word: God forbid; for amongst the most gratifying, nay, glorious sights, which mortality can behold, is "youthful devotion"-that devotion, indeed, which, inducing an indifference to worldly vanities, makes us hunger after an everlasting redemption in heaven, through the discharge of all the essential duties incidental to this our sublunary existence. It is to be hoped that Mr. Montgomery is thus happily circumstanced. But true devotion, in our humble opinion, is inconsistent with vanity; and what but this indifferent motive could have induced such a mere stripling to set himself up as a corrector of abuses, and a satirist of his age? Perhaps he thought that as Byron had done something of that sort, why should not he be allowed to follow the example? Is not this pure, unadulterated, genuine vanity? All the puffing and straining of the frog, however, will never bloat him to the size of the ox; and that which was pardonable in the author of Childe Harold is inexcusable in the piping bard of the Omnipresence of the Deity;--not on account of any super-excellence in the one when compared with the other, but simply because of the difference in their motives. Byron's was the retaliating blow of a high-minded, passionate young man, to revenge what he conceived a gross insult, and to gain, if he could, a malicious triumph! God knows he never boasted of devotion; and if he had, all the world would have taken his word for an attempted pleasantry, and therefore have laughed heartily at him. Byron, however, was afterwards so sorry on account of his angry effusion, that he suppressed it. But Mr. Montgomery came forward with determinable prepense, and thought that a satirical flagellation on the world would be the surest way to make himself heeded. And certainly he laid it lustily about him-a very Quixote amongst muleteers and windmills, and to as little purpose, and productive of as insignificant effects. After this he certainly begged the pardon of those most respectable individuals whose backs he had attempted to belabour with stripes; and he got into favour, and condescended to take advantage of the advocacy and friendly services of those very men whom, in the previous moments of his superabundant pride, he would have admonished and instructed. There was in all this very little evidence of devoutness of heart, or of that equable, undeviating, upright-minded, all-enduring spirit breathed into the heart by pure religion. Shortly after he had sung the praises of the Deity, and manifested, as his advocates alleged, a wonderful degree of devotion for so young a person, he took in hand again the satirical rod, in order to teach his betters. The attempt again proved abortive, and he was again forgive by his kind-hearted critics, though the devil had seduced him from the contemplation of spiritual matters, to the examination of the low, petty, piddling matters of bookselling by means of puffing. What but vanity prevailed in this youthful champion of religion to drop down to this cold clayey earth, and lay aside the pleasing, prosing, ten-syllabic concoctions suggested to his fancy by the spirit of new revelation? Then came the volume dealing in the infernals; containing, if we remember rightly, a certain portrait of the spiritual bard, with dark and sideturned ringlets sweeping over the right temple, and bare neck, and broad open shirt-collar failing over the shoulders, and eyes up-raised to heaven, as though he was engaged in mental prayer. And we ask fairy, was this small matter the result of piety, and zeal for God, and hear-felt devotion? Or was it the puny, sorry indication of a most contemptible vanity? Let his warmest friend answer us, in sincerity, aye or no. Perhaps they will say it was the thoughtless act of a very young man. This we deny; for even a greater man than the thousand Montgomeries in a heap, had been laughed at, sneered at, for a similar piece of folly. Had not Mr. Montgomery heard these sneers?-had he not joined in them? Then why, in the name of true and holy devotion, did he suffer himself to be daubed forth a la Byron? All this is evidence of the unsettled state of the young man's mind. Let him be assured that no religion finds a resting place in the bosom actuated by the slightest leaven of vanity. Poor Henry Kirke White, in his days of levity, "had supposed," says Mr. Pigott, "that morality of conduct was all the purity required; but when he discerned that purity of the very thoughts and intentions of the soul, also, was requisite, he was convinced of his deficiencies, and could find no comfort to his penitence but in the atonement made for human frailty by the Redeemer of mankind, and no strength adequate to his weakness, and sufficient for resisting evil, but the aid of God's Spirit, promised to those who seek it from above in the sincerity of earnest prayer."

True genius is solitary and meditative. It shuns observation, and feeds its craving and appetite where eye cannot witness it actions, nor yet can ear hear the faintest articulations of its untamed fancies; and it will never visit the haunts of men until it is certain of a favourable reception-sure of gaining an auditory-sure of being listened to with attention. By observation, by deep reflection, by severe study, by painful recollections, it will heap up knowledge for itself; that when it shall speak, it may do so from the exuberance of matter, and not through the effort of running after, and catching hold of, thinly-scattered ideas. Now, this last is evident in all Mr. Montgomery's writings; and he has come forward a half-educated young man, and one, consequently, but crudely constructed in his mind, to speak to us, and instruct us in the high themes or Revelation, of First Sin, of Atonement, of Redemption, and a Future Life. To do fitting honour to these, are there not required the most exalted knowledge, and the keenest sense-the deepest learning, and the subtlest reason? Has Mr. Montgomery these? Or, if he possess them, has he given evidence of that possession? Could Milton have produced his Paradise Lost, or Dante hi divine Comedy, unless all the learning of their age had been engrafted on their minds? Mr. Montgomery and all his admirers are woefully mistaken, if they suppose that learning is not Justas much an essential for poetry of the highest class, as imagination, or taste, or knowledge of the language in which we write.

Again; no youthful instructor is every listened to by mankind. Even in the economy of our blessed Savior's life, the prejudices of the world were consulted; and he came not forward to teach, to instruct, and to redeem, until his form had been clothed in the fullness and majesty of manhood. The devout Mr. Montgomery comes forward and inflicts his crude elaborations on the world at the age of two or three and twenty! And the wonder-stricken admirers of the youthful bard have noted this down also to the already sufficiently extended list of his manifold perfections. We could have wished to have entered more deeply into this matter, had we space. As it is, we will give some specimens from his last poem, premising that we mean to put it to a test, which, if genuine, pure, and undoubted, it will very easily withstand.

Here is a passage, which we will place in prose lines; and we beg to assure our readers, that they constitute a very favourable specimen of the poem.

The night hath drowsed, the revelry is o'er, and nature woos me. A dawn, like a shining sea, advances through the orient heavens. Enormous phantasies of waking light, as foam from a volcano's fiery lips, now welter forth around in rich transcendency of beams (!!!) For, lo! The surfaced moon, arranged in clouds of crimson bloom, comes gliding o'er the waves that billow dancingly to wear her smile (!!) and veils the world with her glory. Rocks and hills salute her with magnificence (!!!) With their greenest pomp the woods and plains are mantled, and night tears glisten in her rosy beams (?) But inn yon valleys, where from bosomed (?) cots, like burning incense, wreathy smoke ascends. How beautiful the flush of life! The birds are winged for heaven, and steep the air in song (?): while, in the gladness (?) of the new-born breeze, the young leaves flutter; and the flowerets shake their innocence (!) and bloom. And ye bright streams! Ye woodland vagrants, humming to the wind in wine-like flexure!!!!!! How ye rove along on mead and bank, where violets love to dwell in solitude and stillness: All is fresh and gaysome! Now the peasant, with an eye bright as the noon-ray sparkling through a shower comes forth and carols in they warming beam, thou sky-god, throned in all they wealth of light; sure airy painters have enriched thy sphere with regal pageantry; such cloudy pomps adorn the heavens, a poet's eye would dreams his ancient gods had all returned again, and hung their palaces around the sun!!!!!

Now, we appeal to any competent judge, high or low, learned or unlearned, so only he have some slight idea of composition, and we ask Is such a passage to be tolerated? Let not Mr. Montgomery or his advocates imagine that we are dealing unfairly by him, in thus printing his ten-syllabic divisions as prose lines. True poetry can stand this test. Take a passage of Byron, or of Milton, or of Wordsworth, or of Southey, or of Shakespeare, or of John Wilson, or of Shelley, and write them down as you will, transpose the words as you will, preserving always grammatical order, and it will still be pure, unadulterated poetry in essence, though wanting the outward grab, the musical cadence, and the rhythm. Take, again, a passage from glorious Jeremy Taylor, or Edmund Burke, or Milton's prose works, or Bourdaloue, or the ordinary speech of a simple, untutored, and tattooed savage,--and there, again, in essence, you have pure, unadulterated, beautiful, heart-stirring poetry. Gold is still precious, and retains its pristine value, beat it into any form you please,--convert it, if you will, into an emperor's diadem or a Peruvian culinary utensil. But true genius is always sure of the prey it pursues. Its imagination fastens on the object of its desire, and makes it its own. Its possessions in that object is distinct, definite, undivided, and whole. But it is otherwise with individuals of weaker or half capacity. They may lay hold; but they cannot retain: they may attempt; but the opposing force will offer such opposition as only to leave a solitary and poor fragment in their hands.

Let our readers, or Mr. Montgomery's advocates, con the passage which we have transcribed, and let them conscientiously answer us, Is there any thing but false or imperfect imagery, monstrous tropes, ignorant use of language, empty rodomontade, and prodigious bombast, conspicuous from one end to the other? A schoolmaster ought to be whipped by his own scholars if he not only did not reprehend, but severely punish, any boy who laid before him such bombastic and insufferable nonsense.

Mr. Montgomery, however, has a feeling above his critics, past, present, and to come,--and means to treat them with total disregard. We are sorry for this evidence of a self-sufficient feeling; for if the adage be true, that "no one is too old to learn," how much more will the spirit of the adage apply to the young, who should be ever ready to receive instruction, and listen to the suggestions of a friendly adviser. He, however, fancies that every critic must be wrong-and a liar to boot.
        Approving smiles from such as thee (!)
        Would be the sunshine of my fame;
        What brighter wreath can Glory see,
        Than that entwined in Virtue's name?

        One heavenward thought, one high desire,—
        If such have felt my fancy's aid,
        Howe'er the cold may scorn my lyre,
        It's darkest woes are all repaid.

        The words that many a heart have wrung,
        The vengeance of the dull and vain,
        The arrows of each lying tongue,—
        They shall not reach my heart again."
Mr. Montgomery is, withal, very angry with us, poor, wretched writers as we are:—
   (Diabolus Loquitur).
         And ye, my chosen crew, especial race,
        Whose vile artillery of noisy words
        Unceasing rattles in deluded ears
        What ignorance adores,—no hell-taught shape
        Among mankind let loose, could blast them more
        Than ye, vicegerents of infernal power,
        By that undreading fool, Philosophy. (!!)
        How glorious is the race you run! Though worn,
        Life-weary, dull, or savagely endow'd;
        With eyes, on which the universe hath flash'd
        No meanings (!) beautifully link'd to love
        Or fellowship, with the creative whole; (!)
        And hearts where Genius owns no spark divine,
        That fancy loves, or feeling can adore,—
        Without one impulse of impassion'd truth,
        Ye sit in judgment on the good and wise,
        Supremely charm'd with ignorance, and power.
        To could the bright, and lie away the pure,—
        To wrench, distort, and misapply,—to scorn
        The sacred, or the flippant tongue endow
        With all that passion pleads, or pride admires,
        Is your high task:—and nobly is it done!

The passages marked in italics, we defy gods, men, and beasts-nay, even the great devil himself-to unravel and understand.

Even the printers and the printers' devils are not spared. Listen, all ye catamarans, rapscallions, and tatterdemalions, from Dan even unto Beersheba;—from Ebony and Ballantyen of Modern Athens, even unto thee, most sapient though youthful Fraser, happy publisher of this our Magazine—and thou, Moyes, from they den in Took's Court:—Hear, ye printers-and ye printers' devils-of what kind, or quality, or degree, or colour,—whether black, or white, or gray-Listen, ye sons of confusion, to the words of Robert Montgomery-for he is speaking to you through the mouth of your larger prototype-Satan-the great horned and long-tailed devil-ye ragamuffins and sinners as ye are!
       Thus doth Sathanus speak of the press ye live by:—

        That mighty lever that has moved the world,
        The Press of England,—from her dreadless source
        Of living action, here begins to shake
        The far-off isles, and awe the utmost globe!
        She is a Passion, Pour'd into Mankind,
        Dark, deep, and silent oft, but ever felt;
        Mixed with the mind, and feeling with a food
        Of thought, the moral being of a soul;
        Or, shaping solemn destinies for Time,
        And dread Eternity. Terrific Power
        Thou might'st have half annihilated Hell,
        And her great denizens, by glorious sway:
        But now, so false, so abject, and so foul
        Become,—no blasting Pestilence e'er shed
        Such ruin from her tainted wings, as thou
        May'st carry in thy circulating floods
        Of thought and feeling, into human hearts.
        One wrecks the body,—thou dost havoc souls,
        And who shall heal them? Let they temples rise,
        Britannia!—they are but satiric piles
        Of sanctity, while poison in thy press
        Is pour'd, and on its lying magic live
        Thy thousand vulgar, who heart-famished seem,
        When Slander feeds not with her foul excess
        Their appetite for infamy.—

We never knew before that the planet called earth was the queen of the universe; but rather, that it was like as a grain of sand cast upon the sea-shore, almost as a cipher in the great scale of creation. It was this feeling that made Sir Isaac Newton amongst the meekest of men, for he was deeply aware of the hollowness and rottenness of our mortal pride. Mr. Montgomery, however, having studied astronomy, gives us a very different notion of our importance. He says of the earth:
        Then roll thee on, thou high and haughty world,
        And queen it bravely o'er the universe!
In another part of his poem the author personifies Mount Ararat, placing the winter as a hat or a cap on his head; and were it not for the word "laughing," we should suppose that he put the summer to the unworthy purposes of a foot-stool. But as it is, we suppose, summer is intended to be a pretty little infant. However, even this straining will not help the writer from the horns of the dilemma where he has placed himself: where he evinces the halting pace of an ignorant grammarian. The antithesis is not complete. If summer be a personification, so should winter be; and if winter is intended to be a personification, in the name of Mr. Montgomery's own devil, what should he or she do, squatted on the head of Mount Ararat? Here are the lines:—
        He thrones a Winter on his awful head,
        And lays the summer laughing at his feet!
The idea, after all, is borrowed; but with Mr. Montgomery's bungling and usual ignorance. Mr. Moore has made use of it; and though in the shape of a conceit, yet it is a very pretty one, prettily expressed, and grammatically perfect in all its parts and members. Here it is:—
        ______Lebanon;
        Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
        And whitens with eternal sleet;
        While summer, in a vale of flowers,
         Is sleeping rosy at his feet.
Here, it will be observed, summer and winter are not in juxta-position, nor have they met the antithesis.

With these remarks, it is time to lay aside Mr. Montgomery's book; wishing him, in the meantime, and with the greatest sincerity, a speedy and lasting improvement.

"ART. V. -Satan. By R. Montgomery, 12mo. P. 391. S. Maunder. 1830." The Westminister Review. London. Vol. 12. April 1830.

It would be a satisfaction to the Arch One to see the price at which he is rated in Mr. Montgomery's list. The Omnipresence of the Deity is valued at seven shillings and sixpence; A Universal Prayer for the same money; while Satan stands at half a guinea! He is not only highly-priced, but he is particularly distinguished. The Omnipresence of the Deity is plumped up with "other poems." Satan alone has a book to himself. The pride of Lucifer, proverbially abundant, must needs be swelled by these marks of consideration, and thus it is, that men are prone to send apples where there are orchards. To him who has much, more is given; bad qualities are fed with compliments delicately indirect, and so the pattern people of this virtuous age demoralize the very Devil himself. When Mercury made experiment of his estimate among men, he experienced a far different treatment. "But the other Deities," said the dealer to the disguised God, "and I will fling you that fellow into the bargain." Should Satan go in masque as a Saint to Mr. Maunder's in Newgate Street, he will find a more flattering treatment of his fiend-head, for, with the exception of the place of publication, which seems rather more personal than consists with taste, he has every reason to be gratified with the consideration in which he is held, and the value put on him-and as for the venue, which savours of disrespect, he would hardly have been at home in Paternoster-Row.

Tony Lumpkin makes the profound remark, that he reads the superscription of letters addressed to himself without difficulty, while the interior, which is by some considered the cream of the correspondence, is all buz to his eyes, and baffles his comprehension. Similar to this is our remarkable case with regard to a certain or uncertain kind of poetry. We chiefly relish the title pages, which are easy reading, and generally the most unexceptionable page in the book. Mr. Montgomery begins well-Satan, by Montgomery, a bold and original authorship. Then turning the leaf, we are somewhat startled by these words on the next page, TO MY FRIEND. As there is only the difference of the dog's letter between friend and the quality of the subject, we looked to the Errata, thinking it probable there was a misprint of fiend; but none is acknowledged, we supposed the friend is one whom it is not decorous more distinctly to particularize. It is the fashion of the day to make biography a work of friendship. Moore writes the life of Byron; Campbell is the historian of Lawrence; Paris takes the life of Davy, and Mr. Montgomery handles Satan. Indeed, on looking again at the Address, we discover the ingenuity of the device, on one page stands "To my Friend," "Satan, Book 1st," is the next title, completing the Dedication. As thus, To my Friend Satan his First Book. Horace instructs us that neither gods nor man endure mediocre poetry, and consequently Mr. Montgomery had no course, but to address his song to the third estate, whose liberal patronage of every thing bad may reasonably be reckoned on. The arch enemy's ear for discord must needs be gratified by such verses as we see before us, an as a lover of deceit he will be pleased with lines simulating poetry by the capital letter at the head of each,
        Like dead-sea fruits that tempt the eye,
        But turn to ashes on the lips.
As Milton may be read in Heaven so this is precisely the book fit for Hades, and though we trust we hate the Enemy as vehemently as all good Christians ought to hate him, yet we own we wish him no worse than a patient perusal of this work to his honour. He will here bathe in a stream of molten lead. Every page is fraught with the weariness that protracts time, and makes a duodecimo a doomsday book.

For the common-place of the thoughts, and the lumbering awkwardness of the verse, where shall we find lines more fit for vexation than these:
        The bloom of life, the bright deceit,
        The heavenliness of youth of o'er,
        And joys that blossom'd once so sweet
        Array them in their spring no more.
"The heavenliness of youth is o'er," Ye nymphs of Nick what a line is there for ye to sing! How suited to adust lips, and tongues parched to coal. This heavenliness passes away with the crunch of cinders! What demons mouth can twirl it off without a contortion trebly demoniacal. It is a precious Pierian gargle for throats of the tunefulness of Tartarus. Our poet obviously knows how to strike the Infernal Lyre or Liar-we care not how the Printer sets it.

From the following, indeed, it appears that Mr. Montgomery is hand in glove with Satan, and qualified from intimate acquaintance with his sentiments, opinions, observations, and feelings, to give an account of his travels:—
        And such a wanderer on earth,
        The viewless Power I've dared to draw,
        And humanly have given birth
        To all he felt and all he saw.
He says he understands him particularly well,
        And what art thou? The dark Unknown
        Thy name to mortals bound and blind;
        Yet, like a faint-heart mystic tone,
        Thy meaning hovers o'er my mind.
He is completely possessed of the Devil.
        I see thee in the vigil star
        I hear thee in the thunders deeps
        And like a feeling from afar,
        Thy shadow riseth o'er my sleep.

Mr. Montgomery puts the devil through three books, but we cannot pretend to give an account of his representation of his views and feelings, because we have not the fortune of comprehending the meanings of the Prophet of the Evil one, whose language is of appropriate darkness. An idea does break in upon us-that, like St. Dunstan, he takes the enemy by the nose, but we cannot speak with certainty. He represents him, however, as a good believer, which is some praise for so bad a character (and indeed we question whether without a profession of faith, the devil himself could make his way through the world), and gives us to understand that he is greatly indebted to the Press, which is the fountain of all mischief, a Versailles Jet of pus and poison.

"The Omnipresence of the Deity, a Poem by Robert Montgomery." Emerald and Baltimore Literary Gazette (1828-1829). August 9, 1828; 1, 17, APS Online p. 129.

It is refreshing, among the trash and insipidity that is daily pouring from the press, to meet, occasionally, with something, capable of fixing the attention, and rewarding the toil of perusal. It is comforting to meet the evidence that the true Promethean fire is not yet all absorpt, and tarnished to its native sky. It was with such feelings as these, that we ran over the pages of Mr. Montgomery's poem, "The Omnipresence of the Deity." Although it does not answer the expectations we formed of it, from the stir it made in England, upon its first coming out, being then pronounced second in sublimity to Milton alone, still we think it the production of a poetic genius of the first order; and of one who may aspire, one day, to fill a high seat upon the English Partisans. Since the melancholy set of Byron's star, the ___ of England have been greeted by no new brilliant bgut in their poetic firmament. Amonog their standing poets, rhyming has become too much a trade, to produce any thing of originality and beauty. The muses scorn to be hirelings-Their gifts must be free-will offerings, or they are mean and valueless.

The poem before us, owes something, perhaps, to the sublimity of its subject. It ___ less than the ____, Eternal, Omnipresent, ____. Surely, if any thing can wake the soul, and fire the imagination, it must be this. The idea of God, contains, within itself, the very essence of Sublimity-Vastness-Obscurity-Power. A pure and perfect intellect pervading the universe,--within our very souls,--knowing every shade of thought and feeling,--at the same time, equally present in the most distant star, shedding forth each particle of light, which travels its mighty journey to our eyes. Supporting, it its ephemeral being, the slightest insect that floats upon the breeze, and guiding the balanced earth about its orbit. Conceive what object you will of sublimity, and God is sublimer still. Think of the vast ocean-The God who made the ocean is vaster still. Think of the ocean storm,--its power;--the thunderbolt,--its resistless force-Yet He that stilleth the waves, and hurleth the lightning, is mightier still. Think of the cloud-capt mountain-The God who laid its fountain of old, is sublimer still.

The same may be said, perhaps, of the Paradise Lost of Milton-that it owes its sublimity to the subject. This, however, is no derogation from the merit of the work, or from the author's genius. For what, but the sublimity of his genius, led him to choose such a subject. It was not from a design to compose a poem of unequalled sublimity, that Milton chose the subject he did; but it was the natural flight of a towering intellect. The same sublimity breaks forth in the earliest of his poetic essays. At the age of nineteen, we find, in the careless exercise of a college vacation, such lofty strains as these:—
        Yet I had rather, if I were to chuse,
        Thy service in some graver subject use,
        Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
        Before thou clothe thy fancy in fit sound;
        Such where the deep transported soul may soar
        Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door
        Look in, and see each blissful Deity,
        How he before the thunderous throne doth lit,
        Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings
        To the touch of golden wings, while Hebe brings
        Immortal nectar to her kingly sire;
        Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire,
        And misty regions of wide air next uner,
        And hills of snow and lofts of piled thunder.

So sung the future author of the battles of the Angels, and who shall say, that the bard has not done more than fulfill the gigantic promise of his youth? But to return to our author. The poem commences with an address to Deity.
        Thou Uncreate, Unseen, and Undefined;
        Source of all life, and fountain of the mind;
        Pervading Spirit, whom no eye can trace,
        Felt through all time, and working in all space,
        Imagination cannot paint that spot
        Around, above, beneath, where thou art not.

        Before the glad stars, hymned to new-born earth,
        Or young creation reveled in its birth,
       The spirit moved upon the pregnant deep,
       Unchained the waveless waters from their sleep,
       Bade Time's majestic wings to be unfurled,
      And out of darkness drew the breathing world.
Had the author written no more, we should have known him as a poet of no ordinary endowment. There is no straining to rise, but a horizontal fight of a soul habitually elevated. 'Tis the eagle in his lofty career, lifting himself toward heaven, and daring to gaze even in the sun's intolerable brightness.

After this introduction, the poem proceeds with the most striking manifestations of Deity in the creation,--in the terrors of Sinai,--in the winds,--in the thunder. In that part, we were peculiarly struck with the following:
        A thunder-storm!-the eloquence of Heaven,
        When every cloud is from slumber riven,
        Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan,
        And felt Omnipotence around him thrown?

        Oh! Now to be alone on some grand height,
        Where Heaven's black curtains shadow all the sight,
        And watch the swollen clouds their bosoms clash,
        While fleet and far the living lightnings flash,—
        To mark the caverns of the sky disclose
        The furnace flames that in their wombs repose,
        And see the fiery arrows fall and rise,
        In dizzy chase along the rattling skies,—
        How stirs the spirit while the echoes roll,
        And God in thunder rocks from pole to pole!

The staple of this poem, the reader must have already seen is description. In this, Mr. Montgomery certainly excels. Especially is he great in the stormy and stirring scenes. The following will show, that he is no less happy in the calm, the still, the tender:—
        Sweet Sabbath morn! From childhood's dimple prime,
        I've loved to hail the calm-renewed time;
        Soft steal thy bells upon the pensive mind,
        Telling of friends and times long wing'd away,
        And blissful hopes harmonious with the day,
        On thy still dawn while holy music peals,
        And far around the lingering echo steals,
        What heart communes net with the day's repose,
        And lapp'd in angel dreams, forgets it woes?

A defection in this poem, is its want of personality. We have too much inanimate nature, and too little of man. The following passage is a redeeming page in this regard:—
        Young, chaste, and lovely, pleased yet half afraid,
        Before yon altar droops a plighted maid,
        Clad in her bridal robes of taintless white,
        Dumb with the scene, and trepid with delight;
        Around her hymeneal guardians stand,
        Each with a tender look and feeling bland;
        And oft she turns her beauty-beaming eye,
        Dimmed with a tear for happiness gone by!
        Then coyly views, in youth's commanding pride,
        Her own adored one, panting by her side;
        Like lilies bending from the noon-tide blaze,
        Her bashful eyelids droop beneath his gaze;
        While love and homage blend their blissful power,
        And shed a hold round his marriage hour.

The poem closes with a description of judgment. I reminds us of Byron's dream-
        Hark! From the arch of heaven a trumpet sound
        Thunders the dizzy universe around;
        From North to South, from East to West, it rolls
        A blast that summons all created souls;
        And swift as ripples rise upon the deep,
        The dead awaken from their dismal sleep:
        The sea has heard it.—coiling up with dread,
        Myriads of mortals flash from out her bed,
        The graves fly open, and with awful strife,
        The dust of ages startles into life.

We have a word to add, upon the religious tendency of this poem. Nothing elevates, and at the same time purifies the mind so much, as the association of Deity with every thing great and sublime in nature,--with every thing pure and tender in the moral world. Poetry, then, performs its noblest office, when it excites to action, within us, the loftiest sentiments, and then offers them up in grateful sacrifice to the Author of our being.

When an author presents his credentials upon ordinary and acknowledged grounds, we accept or reject him upon known and recognized principles. Should he toil to an eminence, for the purpose of casting a shadow side by side with those of Shakespeare and Milton, we adjust a glass and measure its length fearlessly; should he wrap himself in the gloomy solitude, the sublime egotism of Byron, we sound the depths of his misanthropy-the intensity of his passion with a remorselessness becoming our vocation; further, if Scott-like, he trick himself with bard and shield, with trumpet blare and tourney pomp, we mount our Rosinante in hot pursuit. More than this, we thread the lakes of Cumberland or Westmoreland, nothing loath, if so be Coleridge or Wordsworth tempt him to wizard dell, or "to life down in green pastures and beside still waters;" but, when he betakes himself to sanctuary-when he clings to the horns of the altar-our reverence dare not approach him: we are no reckless bravo to pluck him thence-no Captain of a Host to tear the unfortunate Joab from the place of sacrifice.

This being the case, we open the poems of Robert Montgomery with a critical misgiving-a wariness, becoming a man already disarmed, standing before his foe, divested of sword and spear, while he is there with closed helmet, and armed to the teeth. Let us examine the case in point. Poetry is not doctrine-it is aspiration-it is no the truth of a party, of a sect, but the universal truth. It is not labor-the anvil and the spad-the great muscle and sweated brow-but the mysterious utterings of a human heart, the hear which, "as face answereth to face in water, so doth the heart of man to man," and which works in its silent kingdom, independent of the mechanism of toil. It is the voice of all nature in her perpetual cadences (not the whistle of a locomotive)-it is the shout and the death-song of the warrior (not the essay of a peace man)-the fervid hope of the patriot (not the voice of a statesman)-it is the joy or the despair of the lover (not the sober bliss of the married man, who had best be silent); it is the language of Religion, the religion that strives upwards to God, whether from the rude sacrifice of the Indian, the altar of the Parsee, the breast of Ganges, or the cathedral of the Christian; but it is not the great, the sublime mystery of our Redemption-it is not the veiled councils of the Most High, such as Angels desire to look into, and before which even Poetry meekly stays her hand, and silently adores. Her is the utterance of all human mystery, approximating to the Divine, but silent before those sacred oracles which Milton and Dante alone have touched, to issues such as we are able to endure.
She is human with an eye heavenward. Jurisprudence, Philosophy, Creed, Labor, in their manifold shapes, are all children of Minerva-a sober, respectable, prose talking progeny-digging after a certain good, which is understandable-utilitarian and wise-but there is no poetry amongst them. The Poet, looking at the hear of man, battling with its destiny in the midst of these, grasps at the gushing of its emotions, its hopes and aspirations, and thus becomes the universal voice. The passion may be far from wise, the hope forlorn, and the aspiration impeded, yet it is the common and the true, and he strikes the key with a bold hand, sure of a response. The Utilitarian use of poetry is a death-blow to song.

According to the utilitarian standard-Othello should have put his case to the Chacellor, Lear have kept the scepter in his own hands, or rather have parceled out his lands to the individual people instead of feeling a triumvirate-and Hamlet should have talked about optical illusions. Milton, Festus-like, should have redeemed his terrible Satan, because he had been an instrument of good by testing virtue. This is making the child of impulse, of spontaneity, of intuition, a cold, plodding, and matter-of-fact reasoner; an armed and Gorgon-shielded intellect, before which the whole offspring of fancy are turned to stone and from which the shafts of Apollo rebound innocuous. But to our book.

That Robert Montgomery is a good man, a good theologian, a warm admirer of nature-a clear if not profound thinker, a genial friend, warm, generous, and appreciative-we fully believe-that thus far he has the best elements for poetry we admit-but, a man may be all this, he may even go further and his cadences fill exquisite melody, and yet fall short of the Poet. Shelley has said that a Poet, "makes the familiar appear as if it were not familiar," in other words he creates an illusion. The mist may rise from the wayside and stagnant pool, he beholds only its transformation into the rainbow The man who sees all things judiciously, properly, in their right bearings, may be very wise, but he is not Poet. We will not undertake to say that a Poet must not be wise, for he must be truly so, he must be able not only to see the common and obvious, which all minds see, but he must go beyond this; and over and above, by the intensity of his own perception and passion, he must cast a new and higher radiance-cast the hues of his own ideal world so over the actual that men shall sympathize therein-be lifted into his own seventh heaven, and see things otherwise hidden from their sight. Such being our views, we must lay aside the volume before us, with cordial sympathy for the purity and truthfulness of its sentiment, the loftiness of its subject matter for thought, and excellence of its moral bearing.

There is a great Art which the Poet learns from intuition, namely, the subject which is of itself poetic, which he seizes as his own, and then the time to drop it. This involves the great secret of poetic power. Wordsworth failed in this respect possibly as much as any man who ever held claims to the name of Poet; and were it not for his own beautiful spirit pervading the very atmosphere he breathes, we should often deny his claims-but the gush of power in the Intimations of Immortality, the ringing melody of its numbers, like an organ tone, drown the voice of our reveling, and from our own hearts arise the sublime soundings of his Ode to Duty, and we are silent. The Poems of Robert Montgomery are long, and evidently labored. Thought of great beauty are profusely scattered, which remind us of those stern old antique heads we sometimes meet, looking so well in plain, heavy frames, and make us regret that they are not set in subdued and quiet prose, rather than rendered into blank verse. Take the following as illustrative, which we have thrown without the change of a syllable into the form of printed prose.

Duty
Duty,—dread and awful thing! That upward, 'mong the attributes eterne reaches afar, responsibly august, and downward to the Spirit's waling hell extendeth: that which olds our being fast; and binds together with uniting band all facts and feelings, faculties, desires, all that we suffer, fancy, dream, or do, fro life's first pulse of reason, to the last; for judgement duty all in one contracts; to finite deed gives infinite result, calls the dead past to resurrection life, harangues the guilty,--and that hour predicts when memory into one concentrated whole gone life shall grasp, and startled conscience hear how the last trumpet can our thoughts restore.

The "Infant in Prayer" is a proof that less ambitious subjects will often develop an unexpected mine of true poetic feeling:

        The Infant in Prayer
        "The smile of childhood, on the cheek of age."

        A child beside a mother kneels
        With lips of holy love,
        And fain would lisp the vow it feels,
        To Him enthron'd above.

        The cherub gaze, that stainless brow,
        So exquisitely fair!—
        Who would not be an infant now,
        To breathe an infant's prayer?

        No crime hath shaded its young hear,
        The eye scarce knows a tear;
        'Tis bright enough from earth to part
        And grace another sphere!

        And I was once a happy Thing,
        Like that which now I see,
        No May-bird on ecstatic wing,
        More beautifully free:

        The cloud that bask'd in noontide glow
        The flower that danced and shone,
        All hues and sounds, above, below,
        Were joys to feast upon!

        Let wisdom smile—I oft forget
        The colder haunts of men,
        To hie where infant hearts are met,
        And be a child again;

        To look into the laughing eyes
        And see the wild thought play,
        While o'er each cheek a thousand dyes
        Of mirth and meaning stray.

        O Manhood! Could thy spirit kneel
        Beside that sunny child,
        As fondly pray, and purely feel
        With soul as undefil'd,

        That moment would encircle thee,
        With light and love divine;
        They gaze might dwell on Deity,
        And Heaven itself be thine!

Having thus expressed the views of the Literary World, it is but courteous towards Mr. Gurney, the poetic editor of this, to many, acceptable volume, to quote here his well-expressed sentiments regarding Montgomery's writings:
"the most superficial reader of Montgomery's poems cannot fail to perceive their occasional daring, and always more or less striking sublimity of thought, their moral and religious grandeur, their vast, and sometimes astonishing, force and power, the poetical beauty of the descriptive passages occurring in them, and the great command of language of the author, despite the drawback of an occasional exaggeration. Add to these the undoubted rhythmical beauty and variety of Montgomery's blank verse, which is commonly relieved by the most artistic pauses or stops of various kinds; not, be it observed, introduced on system and for effect, but obviously the external development of that 'inward melody of the poet's soul' which undoubtedly resides within him.. It is easy for a certain class of critics, or, indeed, for any men, to deride the equal and oft-times majestic flow of Montgomery's 'heroic stanza' even in which his 'Omnipotence' is composed; but it may be greatly questioned whether many or any of these contemners could attain to similar effects. Still, Mr. Montgomery's forte does not reside in these, but in blank verse which is the fitting garb of his greater didactic works, and which, of all mediums of poetic expression, is the truest test of genius."

Wilson. English Belles-Lettres. Atkinson's Casket. Philadelphia. May 1834. p. 232, (3 pages).

Robert Montgomery is a poet at once devout and satirical. He has been sternly censured and highly praised; his chief fault lies in choosing topics too holy and heavy for human handling, and his chief merit is fluency of language and moral fervour of thought.

Article 1-No Title. The Baltimore Monument. A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Polite Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts (1836-1838). Baltimore: Oct 29, 1836. Vol. 1, Issue. 4; p. 32 (1 page).

A POET IN THE PULPIT-Robert Montgomery, the well known author of many sweet poems, chiefly of a religious cast, has joined the church, and will, it is said, be located in Liverpool. According to the journal of that city, he carries with him into the pulpit the glittering language of poetry. He is about 27, and has a good delivery. The paper adds:

The gorgeousness of his distinction-the rounded beauty of his sentences-the measured music of his declamation-the earnestness of his appeals-the poetic imagery of his discourses-have combined to make him exceedingly popular at St. Jude's (in the absence of Mr. McNeile). Many of his auditors, we suspect, admire him even when they loose the thread of a discourse, enveloped in a maze of beautiful diction, taking it for granted that what they do not understand must be very admirable; like an old lady of our acquaintance, "'Tis all very fine, I believe it must be, because he's a poet."

Prepared by Dani Sommer, University of Nebraska, December 2004.
     © Dani Sommer, 2004.