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MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, APRIL, 1830.]

THE wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the covering of apologue; and, though this practice of theirs 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."

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 labor 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 mad-house,-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.

Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the gods," said this 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, Brah- This evil the progress of the human mind min," said the new comer, "thou art drunk or tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes mad!" more and more common, the patronage of indiAt this time the third confederate drew near.viduals becomes less and less necessary. In "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.

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the earlier part 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 dedica tions with which Halifax had been fed,asserted his own superiority over the pen sioned Boileau,-and glorified 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 when Mr. Moore pays a complimert of this be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished

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.

kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott | upon with a despicable ingenuity by people 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 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.

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 recounted, -direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. "Pathetic," "sublime," " splendid,"

From the time of Pope to the present day, the readers have been constantly becoming more and more numerous: and the writers," graceful, brilliant wit," "exquisite humour," 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 very 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 Mecenas 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 thirty 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.

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 inimita ble 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 the 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 din were employed in magnifying Bish's nors in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the lucky office, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Pack- higher and more respectable newspapers wood's razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, usually prefix the words "Advertisement," or all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady,-all the "From a Correspondent," to such paragraphs. wall-chalkers of Day and Martin-seem to But this makes little difference. The panegyhave taken service with the poets and novel-ric is extracted, and the significant heading ists of this generation. Devices which in the omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its ap lowest trades are considered as disreputable, pearance on the covers of all the Reviews and are adopted without scruple, and improved Magazines, with "Times" or "Globe" affixed,

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 practised, 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 it. All the pens that

ever

though the editors of the Times and the Globe | tised judges can; that he is not familiar with have no more to do with it than with Mr. Goss's the finest models; that he has never looked at way of making old rakes young again.

That people who live by personal slander should practise 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 rag-fair 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.

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 pre sent, however contemptible a poem or a novel It is no excuse for an author, that the praises may be, there is not the least difficulty in proof journalists are procured by the money or in- curing favourable notices of it from all sorts fluence of the publisher, and not by his own. of publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. It is his business to take such precautions as In the mean time, little or nothing is said on may prevent others from doing what must de- the other side. The author and the publisher grade them. It is for his honour as a gentle- are interested in crying up the book. Nobody man, and, if he is really a man of talents, it has any very strong interest in crying it down. will eventually be for his honour and interest Those who are best fitted to guide the public as a writer, that his works should come before opinion, think it beneath them to expose mere the public, recommended by their own merits nonsense, and comfort themselves by reflecting alone, and should be discussed with perfect that such popularity cannot last. This confreedom. If his objects be really such as he temptuous lenity has been carried too far. It may own without shame, he will find that they is perfectly true, that reputations which have will, in the long run, be better attained by suf- been forced into an unnatural bloom, fade alfering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. most as soon as they have expanded; nor have At present, we too often see a writer attempt- we any apprehensions that puffing will ever ing to obtain literary fame as Shakspeare's raise any scribbler to the rank of a classic. It usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher is, indeed, amusing to turn over some late volplays Buckingham to the author's Richard. umes of periodical works, and to see how Some few creatures of the conspiracy are dex- many immortal productions have, within a few terously disposed here and there in a crowd. months, been gathered to the poems of BlackIt is the business of these hirelings to throw up more and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many their caps, and clap their hands, and utter their "profound views of human nature," and "exquivivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, site delineations of fashionable manners," and and at last join in shouting for shouting's sake;"vernal, and sunny, and refreshing thoughts," and thus a crown is placed on the head which and "high imaginings," and "young breathhas no right to it, by the huzzas of a few serings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and vile dependants. "minglings with the beauty of the universe," The opinion of the great body of the reading and “harmonies which dissolve the soul in a public is very materially influenced even by passionate sense of loveliness and divinity," the the unsupported assertions of those who as-world has contrived to forget. The names of sume a right to criticise. Nor is the public the books and the writers are buried in as deep altogether to blame on this account. Most, an oblivion as the name of the builder of Stoneeven of those who have really a great enjoy- hedge. Some of the well-puffed "fashionable ment in reading, are in the same state, with novels" of the last, hold the pastry of the prerespect to a book, in which a man, who has sent year; and others of the class, which are never given particular attention to the art of now extolled in language almost too high-flown painting, is with respect to a picture. Every for the merits of Don Quixote, will, we have no man who has the least sensibility or imagina-doubt, line the trunks of eighteen hundred and tion, derives a certain pleasure from pictures. thirty-one. But though we have no apprehenYet 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 discriminate hands, as prac

sions that puffing will ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still think its influence most pernicious. Men of reai 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 goo

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 selfdefence 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 stoop to it are always degraded.

"But who could trace Thine unrestricted course,
Though Fancy follow'd with immortal force 1
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 filled 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 every body knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea,

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 easy "Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow." any bellman might, if a bellman would stoop to the necessary degree of meanness, become Mr. Robert Montgomery very cooly appro "a master-spirit of the age." We have no en-priates the image, and reproduces the stolen mity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know goods in the following form: 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 verses, 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 any thing 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

"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!

Atheists is then described in the following
The effect which the Ocean produces on
lofty lines:

"Oh! never did the dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand,
And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,
And, while creation staggered 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!"

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 shudders, and that it is this same dark-souled Atheist who hurls billowy crags upon the shore.

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
almost always the case with 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. Mont-
gomery-

"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, 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. He accordingly 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 him to pieces, instead of obeying his orders. There are very few who can safely venture to conjure with the rod of Sir Walter, and we are sure that Mr. Robert Montgomery is not one of them. Mr. Campbell, in one of his most pleasant 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 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 lapped 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, on the lambent beauty of 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 farther 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 alike 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! 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 ever carried his irreverent

familiarity so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and meditate 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 execu tion...--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 propo sition, 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 Quedtinburgh 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 by 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 ex. ploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a simi

lar occasion,

"Forse per forza gia di parlasia

Si stravolse cosi alcun del tutto:
Ma io nol vidi, nè 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 differ ence 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

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