TH MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY APRIL, 1830 NOTE ON THE ESSAY HE essay on Robert Montgomery's poems adds nothing to Macaulay's reputation and might have been allowed to drop out of his collected works. Literary criticism can be of lasting value only when it concerns itself with what is truly literary. A "slashing" attack upon a fourth-rate author merely excites or amuses for the moment. It may indeed hasten the inevitable hour when that which does not deserve to live must perish, but it cannot suppress puffing or extirpate charlatanism. As Horace Walpole remarked, it is no use to cure mankind of a folly unless you could cure them of foolishness. Although an empty and pretentious writer may deserve to be exposed in a review as richly as a rogue may deserve to be set in a pillory, a man of genius is almost as unworthily employed in reviling the one as in pelting the other. Serenely to ignore what is worthless and to fix his own attention and the attention of others upon what is precious-this is the wisdom of a critic as well as the instinct of a humane nature. Montgomery had sense enough to be pained by the sort of fame which the following review gave him and begged for its suppression; a favour which Macaulay would have done well to grant. MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY 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: THE 1830. HE 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.1 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 this second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as 1 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 1 Pilpay, or more correctly Bidpai, is the supposed author of a celebrated collection of Hindu fables of great antiquity which has been translated into many languages. Nothing is known about him. heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." "Oh Brahmin," said the new comer, "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?" 66 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 Æsop. 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; Statius1 flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread; Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron; 2 Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the 1 Publius Papinianus Statius flourished in the latter part of the first century A. D. Besides a number of occasional poems known as Silve, he wrote an epic poem on the story of Thebes. The tyrant whom he flattered was Domitian, and the minion was Earinus, a favourite eunuch of the emperor. 2 The niggardly patron was the Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, son of Hercules I., Duke of Ferrara. The versified pedigree will be found in the Orlando Furioso, canto 3. wretched creature1 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.2 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 way;" he derided the soft dedications with which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own superiority over the pensioned Boileau,5 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, realised a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence." Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing 6 1 The wretched creature was Alfonso II., Duke of Ferrara, who had once been Tasso's patron. But there was some excuse for his cruelty. 2A characteristic exaggeration. Neither of Horace, nor of Statius, nor of Ariosto, nor of Tasso, could it be said with even a remote approach to truth that they wrote when there were scarcely any to read. 3 Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise, -Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, lines 336-337. 4" Proud as Apollo on his forked hill, -Ibid., lines 231-234. 5" Could pensioned Boileau lash, in honest strain, 611 -Imitations of Horace, satire i., lines 111-112. "Above a patron, though I condescend -Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, lines 265-266. 7 Pope's original poems brought him little money, but his translation of the Iliad made him independent. "After making all allowance for payments to his literary assistants Pope obtained for his translation between £5,000 and £6,000, a sum which, even in these days, would not be thought inconsiderable by the most popular of authors as remuneration for a single work, and which was then wholly unpre cedented. Dryden received for his translation of Virgil at the most £1,300, and Tonson's agreement with him was not at the time thought illiberal" (Courthope, Life of Pope, p. 156). The last volumes of the translation were published in May, 1720, when Pope was just thirty-two years old. |