The Press. — London, England, 1855-01-27 00:00:00

IC ittraturt. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery. By John. Holland and James Everett. London : Longmans. BIOGRAPHY is so delightful a department of literature that it is provoking to meet with specimens of it which one is compelled to condemn. There are few men who have attained any honourable eminence whose lives do not deserve some record, and such record, if composed with ordinary judgment, is sure to afford pleasant reading. It has been very well observed that all history is resolvable into biography; the knowledge of what men have done and suffered is the knowledge it imports us most to know, and is the founda tion on which we must erect the superstruc ture of our own lives. The greatest among us possesses little of intellectual acquirement he can call his own, in comparison of that which he has inherited or acquired from others. James Montgomery was a true poet. He has written pieces which will last as long as the English tongue. He was not a volu minous writer. He composed slowly and with great labour, but he had, like other gifted men, his moments of inspiration, and then the hoarded products of his brain came forth as gems of the purest water, without flaw or blemish. His "Grave" is one of the most perfect lyrics in our tongue, sublime in conception, original in rythm, elevated in sen timent, and of the most exquisite delicacy in expression. It appears superfluous to praise a piece so well known, but we are prone to over look the surpassing beauty of some compositions simply because they are familiar. We pity the person who can even recal this noble poem to mind without emotion. It made a deep impression on Byron, and many years later he composed a piece in the same stanza, which by ibe melody bad left a lasting impression on his ear. If any one would see how inferior Byron with his superlative gen ius could be to the poor She ffi eld bard he need only compare with the " Grave " of the latter the lines writ ten by the noble bard at Missolonghi, said to be the last he ever wrote : It thou regret thy youth, why live ? The land of honourable death Is here—up to the field and givo Away thy breath. The life of Montgomery was very uneventful ; he spent nearly the whole of his days in Sheffield, closely engaged in the drudgery of conducting, as proprietor, editor, and printer, a weekly newspaper; yet we should have been glad of a memoir which fairly related his career, traced the progress of his mild genius, exhibited his character, and even included some of his correspondence. But the authors of this work have published two volumes of " Memoirs," which come down no later than 1812, and have put together a mass of matter in no other order than chronological succes sion, of about the dullest and most worthless kind which we ever had the misfortune to meet with in print. What can be thought of the taste which swells these volumes with old newspaper cuttings, and retails scraps of the commonplace conversations which occurred between the poet and the editors of this work, both, as we understand, dissenting ministers of Sheffield? Where the trial of Montgomery is related the most approved form of penny-a line reporting is adopted, ex. gr. Mr. Vaughan rose on the part of the defendant, and ad dressed the court and jury in a speech of considerable length, which was delivered with the most impressive energy, and heard, notwithstanding frequent interruptions from the gentlemen on the bench, with the most profound attention," /ie. The commencement of the book shows the unhappy notion which these simple gentlemen have conceived of the duty of a biographer. The poet was named Montgomery : very well. Then the name is to be traced from " the Con quest downwards," and particular enumera tion must be made of all the eminent persons who have borne it ; but after " Domesday Book," and " Chevy Chase," and the " Ameri can War," the confession is made that Mont gomery could trace his blood from none of the worthies mentioned. Of his ancestors it is said "he knew but little. He had heard it THE PRESS. " said that his great-grandfather was a gentle " man and had wasted an estate." All the flourish, therefore, concerning the name of Montgomery, and its occurrence in " the early records of the peerage," might very well have been omitted. But this is an example of the manner in which the book is made up. Be cause Montgomery's father was a Moravian minister the history of the Moravian Church is given, and because he resided some time in the West Indies, the origin and progress of the mission in that part of the world is related. By a similar process of expansion the life of any being in the world might be made to fill a thousand volumes as easily as one. As to the style of these joint biographers one example will suffice. In describing the childish days of young Montgomery, it is said : The inventive powers of the young bard were ever in active operation ; and, imagining himself adequate to pro duce something superior to merely lyrical compositions, he plumed his wings for a higher flight, and, hovering in delight over poetic ground, he at length perceived a subject which forcibly struck him, seized upon it with the aviuity with which the descending eagle rushes on her prey, and bore it away to the solitude of his study. What occupied his mind and his pen in this instance was a mock-heroic poem, in imitation of Homer's " Frogs and Mice." This is the very style of " the tuneful Tubb " in Little Pedlington. It is vain to expect ordinary sense from a person who could write such prose-run-mad as this. It is true that we do not often meet with such fine passages, but the whole volumes are unfavourably distinguished by lack of dis cretion ; and the pomp 0113 manner in which trivial events are often mentioned is ridiculous. Thus it is related that when Montgomery was in London, in his nineteenth year, he never entered a theatre, and actually did not visit the British Museum. But it is added : There was one striking spectacle, with which the resi dents of the metropolis are unhappily but too familiar, which he did go to see, a great fire. The Albion flour mills, near lllackfriara-bridge, were burnt down on the Ist of March,l79l,—Montgomery witnessed the conflagration. This incident is told with as much emphasis as though it formed an epoch in the life of the poet, and led to important results, though the subject is never alluded to again. Every scrap of information that can be collected relative to Montgomery's early days is related with the same particularity. Thus it is stated that when he went to church at Wath he sat in the next pew to that occupied by " the late " Thomas Tuke, Esq., his two sisters, and a " relative, Miss Wainwright." And then fol lows a record of one of the poet's youthful irregularities : Nancy Wainwright was one of our Wath beauties, who, I am afraid, says Montgomery, I sometimes looked at in church more than was proper. Discarding all the irrelevant matter cob lected by these most diligent of all biographers, the incidents of Montgomery's life, to the period when the second volume closes, in his forty-first year, are few and simple. His father, as we have said, was a Moravian minister of humble origin, and it was while he was in the pastoral charge of a small congregation of the United Brethren at Irvine, a seaport in Ayr shire, that James Montgomery was born, on the 4th November, 1771. It is shown in this book, that had his father and mother not removed from Ireland when they did he would have been born in that island, and this demonstration is followed by the profound reflection that "on such apparently slight " accidents does a man sometimes become " identified with his native country ! " The authors evidently consider that there was something peculiarly providential in the poet being born in Scotland, though the event seems to have been in no way more connected with his subsequent life and fortunes than his witnessing the destruction of the Albion Hour-mills, or his casting admiring glances towards Nancy Wainwright at church. When Montgomery was six years old, he was taken to the Moravian settlement, Ful neck, near Leeds, to be educated, and this incident is, of course, recorded with due emphasis : They arrived Oct. 18, 1777, a day and month memorable as those on which, as Montgomery used to say, his English life commenced, and on which, seventeen years afterwards, he was arrested as a libeller ! The details given of the educational method of this Moravian institution are curious. The SATURDAY, boy was instructed in Latin, Greek, German, and French, and also in history, geography, and music. But the course was too extensive for his years, or not adapted to his taste, as he does not appear to have made much pro gress in languages. Very early he conceived a taste for poetry : On being interrogated on the subject, " The master," said he, " took several of the children out one day, and read' Blair's Grave' to them behind a hedge. My mull: lion was strongly arrested, and a few lines made a powerful impression upon my mind. I said to myself, 'lf ever 1 become a poet, I will write something like this.'" A clumsy attempt is made in parts of these volumes to reproduce the style of Boswell, by giving the conversation between the poet and his biographers. The plan would be un objectionable if the matter related were of more importance. We subjoin a specimen : Holland: " What particular part of Blair's poem im• pressed you most? " Montgomery : " The Grave-Digger." Everett : "Is is not remarkable that au author so de servedly popular should have written so little?" Mont gomery: There are two or three other pieces of his c omposition, but of a very inferior character. His 'Grave' is powerful , somewhat rough." Holland: " Were there any other authors who can be said at that time to have inspired you with a love of po et y ? " Montgomery : " The next poem which I heard read—for 1 was not permitted to read it myself—was Blackmore's Prince Arthur' : this far surpassed anything I had either heard or imagined; it was real to me some time after I had heard the Grave,' and had even attempted the composition of hymns. There was a rumbling majesty in the lines, which cora • pl e tely captivated my mind, and confirmed the resolution produced by Blair : I resolved I would be a Blackmore." Everett: " Sir Richard interested you, then, I suppose, merely for his novelty? " Montgomery, pleasantly : You may say what you will against Sir Richard, but he was a great man." Blair's " Grave " must have made the more impression on him from his state at the time, for he wrote nearly twenty years afterwards : At school, even when I was driven like a coal ass through the Latin and Greek grammars, I was distin gutshed for nothing but indolence and melancholy, brought upon me by a raging and lingering fever, with which I was suddenly seized one fine summer day, as I lay under a hedge with my companions listening to our master whilst he read us some animated passages from Itlair's poem on the " Grave." The boys at Fulneck seem to have been encouraged to write verses, and Montgomery, we learn, had by his tenth year filled a small volume with his rhymes. The specimen given here shows only an imitative faculty, as verses like these would never have naturally suggested themselves to the mind of so young a boy : NIGHT SCENE FROM AN ODE TO SOLITUDE. Let me wander slow, and rove, Through the solitary grove ; Universal silence reigns Save where Philomel complains, And the turtle for the fate Of his lately murdered mate. But the imaginative character of the poet was shown by his lying awake at night to complete verses. "'this wakefulness," he said, "became " a habit which in after life never wholly for sook me." In 1783 (Montgomery being then only twelve years of age) his parents sailed to engage in the West Indian Mission, and he never saw them more. They suffered greatly during a dreadful hurricane in Tobago, in 1790, and in October of that year his mother died. "God is truly " present here," said a minister who watched by her bedside, as she tranquilly expired with out the least pain. Her partner did not long survive her. "He fell happily asleep," accord ing to one of the brethren, in June, 1791, and a grove of tamarind trees now marks his grave in the island of Barbadoes. The young poet was intended by the brethren for a teacher in their school, but he could not be prevailed on to use proper diligence in his studies. " The fact is," as Montgomery him self once told Mr. Holland in plain terms, " I " was turned out of the school at Fulneck on " account of alleged indolence." The brethren then resolved to place him to a trade, and he was entered in the shop of a retail baker at Mirfield, where he was subseq uentl y appre ticed. But, after a short experience of this way of life, he determined on quitting it, and when in his sixteenth year ran away from his master with a single change of linen and three and sixpence in his pocket. His conscienti ousness was shown by his leaving his best suit behind him. He walked southward, and on the second evening of his journey reached Wentworth, where he heard that a youth was iimmonv