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, But nature owns thy plastic influence there! The last two lines contain an excellent spe cimen 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 amus ing 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 By ron, in a passage which every body knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea, "Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow." "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! 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 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, The all-pervading influence of the Supreme Atheists is then described in the following "Oh! never did the dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand, 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 shud ders, 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 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. 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, 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, 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, In the next place, if level with its fount. 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, 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 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 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 operations of which this part of the poem refirm the glittering shield." The only military minds 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 As to this last exand grimly on the skies." ploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar occasion, "Forse per forza gía di parlasia Si stravolse così 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 sweepj 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 No field-preacher ever carried his irreverent tempest-spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac blasts from their caverns? And We should be sorry to stake our faith in a 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 traveller, 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 it in Mr. Robert Montgomery's alteration. Then we have the "poor, mindless, pale-faced, maniac boy," who "Rolls his vacant eye, higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery's logic. Does he believe that lightning, and babbles, and the phenomena of dreams, are designless and self-created? If he does, 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!" fication, and belongs, we need not say, to that Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personschool 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 burst from their bonds, -what their bonds may be,-why they should battle with the time,-what the time may be, floods."—and what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to understand. To greet the glowing fancies of the sky." "A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, Often as death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him. "O Death! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth, If there be any one line in this passage about 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, 44 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, we do not quite understand. He proceeds with his argument thus: "And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named; "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 band, shakes the hand of Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of the metaphors would mean, we know no more than we know what is the sense of the following pass age: "Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime Picture the raging havoc of that time, Who dropped no tear upon the dreadful scene, "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 Aus tria" is stolen from Byron. "Dropped" is false English. "Perish'd in the storm" means nothing at all; and "thy look obedience" means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgo-ner of the Morning Post-can produce emolumery intends to say. ment and fame? The circulation of this Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the writer's poetry has been greater than that of 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 A man as stiff as marble, shuddering and gibbering violently, would certainly present so curious a spectacle, that the shades, if they came in his way, might well stare. 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. Southey's Roderic, and beyond all comparison greater than that of Carey'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. Marry, But the Satan is Of the two poems, we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas Moore to rank one bad book above another. this is somewhat. This is rhyme. other is neither rhyme nor reason.' a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of 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 Pandemonium, 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 "Creation shudders with sublime dismay, quality. Mad Tom had told us, that "the And in a blazing tempest whirls away.' prince of darkness is a gentleman;" but we And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks had yet to learn that he is a respectable and its writer with the master-spirits of the age! pious gentleman, whose principal fault is, that This is what has been described over and over he is something of a twaddle, and far too liberal again, in terms which would require some of his good advice. That happy change in his qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! character which Origen anticipated, and of It is too much. that this patchwork, made by which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be stitching together old odds and ends of what, rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradiwhen new, was, for the most part, but tawdry cated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on that so old an offender should now and then which it ought to rot, and to be held up to ad-relapse for a short time into wrong disposimiration 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 cor tions. 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 tone. We would seriously advice 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 moral izes thereon as follows: "Music and pomp their mingling spirit shed Around me; beauties in their cloud-like robes Attend the second, are a sensual tribe,« Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to indi viduals, literature must be purified of this taint. And, to show that we are not actuated by any feelings 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. |