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

JANUARY 27,1855. wanted in a " general store" in the neighbour ing village of Wath. The owner agreed to engage him if the consent of his late master could he obtained, and Montgomery accordingly wrote to him. There must, in spite of his alleged indolence at school, have been some thing extremely engaging in the boy, as his master and the Moravian brethren regarded him with great kindness. His letter was laid before the brethren, and his master was corn missioned to go and see him, and, if possible, bring him back. Montgomery said:— lie came to me in person at Rotherham, where I waited for an answer. I was so affected by his appearance that I ran to meet him in the inn•yard; and he was so over whelmed at the sight of me that we clasped each other's arms on horseback, and remained weeping, without speaking a word, for some time, to the great amusement of many, very many spectators. It required all my resolution to resist bie entreaties and persuasions to return, but I at length overcame; and when he left me the next day he gave a very handsome written character, and also called himself on my future employer to recommend me to him. lie also supplied me with money, and sent my clothes and other things which 1 had left behind. It was not in Montgomery's nature to remain long in the general shop at Wath, though most kindly treated. He employed his leisure time iu composition, sent a volume of MS. poetry to a publisher in London, and after a twelve month's sojourn at Wath left it to seek, as so many adventurous youths have done before and since, his fortune in London. To this point his career resembles in many respects that of the poet Crabbe, though he was not lucky enough to meet with an Edmund Burke to befriend him. In London he was not fortunate. The publishers to whom he applied, regarded his MSS. with prudent suspicion, and, after some months of struggle and disappointment, he returned "in the heavy coach" to Wath, where, occupied with the business of the " general store," he remained till he reached his majority. Soon after this he read in the Sheffield Register that a clerk was wanted in the office of the proprietor. Mr. Gales was an auc tioneer, bookseller, and printer, and had started a newspaper as a profitable adjunct to his business. The rise of journalism in this country suggests a curious chapter in our annals. At first pursued for trading pur poses alone, it then acquired political impor tance, and has now risen to the dignity of a " fourth estate." Montgomery applied for the vacancy, was accepted, and was thenceforth a member of a newspaper establishment. Mr. Gales knew his value, and pointed him out as an admirable paragraph writer. At this time the French revolution and con sequent war stronly agitated the public mind. The circulation of the Register, assisted by occasional contributions from Montgomery's pen, advanced ; but unfortunately it took an extreme democratic tone. Tumultuous meet ings were held on Castle-hill : Gales was mixed up with the incautious proceedings of the agitators, and, to escape the aroused vigilance of Government, deemed it advisable to drop his Register, and go into hiding. Montgomery instantly started the Iris, and with this paper the fortunes of his life became afterwards in separably associated. This paper was regarded with suspicion. Montgomery made no secret of his democratic principles, and braved prosecution. As a consequence, legal proceedings were twice taken against him in the stormy period of 1794-5 ; but, though he was on each occasion sentenced to imprisonment, there was little personal animosity manifested against him, and his prosecutors and judges afterwards became his friends. The paper improved as it assumed more of a poetical character, and the literary ability occasionally displayed in it saved it from being considered as a purely democratic organ. Fortunately for Montgomery, the manage ment of a newspaper at that time was light in comparison with the labour which it now de mands. He was never personally active. His means were narrow. His income from the newspaper, added to that from his printing business, was small. But he found time to furnish contributions—principally poetical criticisms—to the Eclectic Review, and also to prepare some poems for the press. In 1806, being then in his thirty-fifth year, he pub lished his poems of " The Grave " and " The Common Lot," which established his claim, in THE PRESS. the mind of candid critics, to an honourable place among living poets. The origin of The Grave " may be quoted here as a curious lite rary anecdote, and as illustrative of the eccen tric workings of a poetic mind : The fact was, this popular little poem originated in a circumstance, trivial enough in itself, but curious as con nected with the history of the verses in question. Mont gomery had a favourite English bullfinch, which he pur chased from a poor man at Norton, who had taught it to whistle the Scotch air called " Jockey to the Fair," as well as parts of some others. Its notes were exceedingly soft and varied ; " not," he observed, " like those of certain wire throated birds, but rather like the sweet tones of a Bute ; and when Bully sung, he seemed not so much to modu late with his bill, in the manner of song birds in general, but, as it were, to produce the sounds from his belly in the manner of a ventriloquist." This feathered favourite died, after having been Montgomery's entertaining com panion for five years; and the two stanzas at the com mencement of the " Grave " were actually written for the purpose of being buried with the bullfinch, and the copy of them was laid aside, and out of sight, a considerable time. Turning them up one day casually, " I thought," said he, " they were too good to be buried; I therefore pursued the train of thought which they elicited, and thus originated the poem." Holland : " How did you dispose of the dead bird ?" Montgomery : " I sealed him up in a paper coffin, with a copy of the verses, and buried him in Cook Wood. There was one verse in the original more particularly lamenting the bullfinch, which of course did not appear iu the ' Grave 'as published. Ido not now recollect it.' On the publication of Montgomery's " Wan derer of Switzerland," the Edinburgh Review, at this time on the look out for " great delin quents," determined to make an example of Montgomery, and Jeffrey himself threw all the gall of his nature into the ink with which he penned the article intended to crush him. The critique is audacious, but nothing more. In some respects it is even a greater mistake than the one levelled at Byron, as it shows a yet more extraordinary incapacity of discern ing the promise of poetic genius. It pained Montgomery deeply, but does not seem to have injured the sale of his volume in the slightest degree. The " half profits" brought him altogether 8001., while the poem itself gained him many friends. A paragraph of the review is worth quoting as showing how miserably the public may be imposed on in literary matters by any ape who pretends to superior taste and discernment : Mr. Montgomery is one of the most musical and me• lancholy fine gentlemen we have lately descried on the laver slopes of Parnassus. He is very weakly, very finical, and very affected. His affectations too are the most usual and the most offensive of those that are com monly met with in the species to which he belongs. They are affectations of extreme tenderness and delicacy, and of great energy and enthusiasm. Whenever he does not whine he must rant, &c. No literary organ has ever made such mon strous mistakes on poetry as the Edinburgh Review. The founders of it were no more capable of judging poetry than a blind man is of distin guishing colours, or a donkey of appreciating melody. But, with that strange perversity which often attends a certain degree of intel lectual sharpness, they conceived that poetical criticism was their mission, and that it was their duty to judge and sentence every poet who did not conform to the standard of Dryden and Pope. From this date there is little to relate in the life of Montgomery. Two cantos of his " World before the Flood " were written in 1810. But when the second volume of the memoirs closes, in November, 1812, the poem was yet on the anvil. " It has been three " years in my hands," writes Montgomery (Nov. 12, 1812), " during which time it has " been written once completely, and then " broken up and half written on a new plan, " and a second time remodelled. Many vexa " tions and interruptions I have suffered in " the progress of it, and have sometimes.laid it " aside for months in despondency. At pre " sent I begin to think I may finish it on its " present plan in the course of a few weeks, " and then I shall immediately set about re " vising for the press." His progress had been slow, but it had been steady. He was at this time greatly respected in Sheffield, and he had gained a name in the world. It is only to be regretted that so much of his time was occupied with pursuits uncongenial to his nature. He was a true poet, not only in intellect, but in the sensi bility of his constitution, and we believe would have written more, and have risen higher, had he, like Wordsworth, been placed in a position to indulge his tastes without restraint. It may be remarked, however, that ho always held that external objects had no power over the mind when it was engaged in the act of composition. We believe that the sentiment of the following paragraph is literally true Mr. Everett one day remarked to Montgomery that Mat lock would be a fine situation fur the permanent residence of a poet, as the beauty and variety of the scenery, ac cording to the current opinion, would induce sublime thoughts. He partly exploded the notion; observing that he should have to lament for his own situation if it was so. " From the room in which I sit to write," said Montgo mery, " and where some of may happiest pieces have been produced—those, I mean, which are most popular—all the prospect I have is a confined yard, where there are some miserable old walls and the backs of houses, which present to the eye neither beauty, variety, nor anything else calcu lated to inspire a single thought, except concerning the rough surface of the bricks, the corners of which have either been chipped off by violence, or fitted away by the weather. No ; as a general rule, whatever of poetry is to be derived from scenery, must be secured before we sit down to compose ; the impressions must be made already and the mind must be abstracted from surrounding objects. It will not do to be expatiating abroad in observation when we should be at home in ooncentration of thought," The memoirs of the poet Crabhe are conve niently comprised in one small volume, though, on the whole, his life is rather more eventful than that of James Montgomery. We regret that these biographers did not follow so excel lent an example. One volume, instead of the four (at least) which we imagine are intended, would have been very welcome to the public; but the really important matter is at present smothered under a heap of mere verbal rub bish. In the " correspondence " are some interesting letters from !Southey. We conclude with some pasages front them, illustrative of this indefatigable author's intellectual activity and religious belief : Keswick, May 6, 1811. I have passed through many changes of belief, as is likely to be the case with every man of ardent mind who is not early gifted with humility. Gibbon shook niy belief in Christianity when I was a school-boy of seventeen. When 1 went to college it was in the height of the French Hero lution—and I drank deeply of that cup. 1 had a friend there whose name you have seen in my poems—Edmund Seward, an admirable man in all things, whose only fault was that he was too humble; fur humble, even to a fault, he was. In his company my religious interests were strengthened. But to those who have any religious feel ing, you need nut be told how chilling and withering the lip-service of a university must be. Sick of the college, chapel, and church, we tried the meeting-louse ; and there we were disgusted too. Seward left college meaning to take orders; I, who had the same destination, became a deist after he left us, and turned my thoughts to the pro fession of physic. Ciodwin's book fell into my hands; many of his doctrines appeared as monstrous to we then as they do now; but I became enamoured of a philoso phical rnillenium. Coleridge came from Cambridge to visit a friend at Oxford on his way to a journey in Wales. That friend was my bosom oempaniou: Culeridge was brought to my rooms—and that meeting hied the future fortunes of us both. Coleridge had at that time thought little of politics ; in morals he was as loose as men at a university usually are : but he was a Unitarian. My morals were of the sternest stoicism : that same feeling which made me a poet kept me pure—before I had used Werther and Rousseau for Epictetus. Our meeting was mutually agreeable; I re formed his life, and he disposed me towards Chris by showing me that none of the arguments that h me to renounce it were applicable against the scheme. He remained three or four weeks at and we planned an Utopia of our own, to be fouuded Ia . wilds of America upon the basis of common property — each labouring fur all—a Pantisoeracy—a republic of Bea son and Virtue. For this dream I gave up every other prospect. How painfully and slowly I was awakened from it, this is not the time to say ; for my purpose is but to show you where I have been upon my pilgrim's progress, and how far I have advanced upon the way. I became a Sucinian from the reasonableness of the scheme ; and still more so be cause 1 wag shocked by the consequences of irreligion, such as they were seen in my daily intercourse with sceptics, unbelievers, and atheists. I reasoned on it till I learnt and felt how vain it is to build up a religion wholly upon historical proofs. I learnt that religion could never be a living and quickening principle if we only assented to it as a mere act of the understanding. Something more was necessary—an operation of grace—a manifestation of . . the Spirit—in inward revelation--a recognition of re vealed truth. This drew me towards Quakerism, yet with too clear a perception of the errors and follies of the Quakers to be wholly in union with them. In what has all this ended? you will ask. That lam still what in old times was milled a seeker , --a sheep without a fold, but not without a shepherd; clinging to all that Christ has dearly taught, but shrinking from all attempts at defending, by articles of faith, those points which the gospels have left indefinite. lamof no visible church, but assuredly I feel myself in the communion of saints. Keswick, Jan. 2, MIS. Yon wish me a sounder frame, both of body and mind, than your own. My body, God be thanked 1 is as con venient a tenement as its occupier could desire. NS hen you see me you will fancy me far advanced in consumption, so little is there of it ; but there has never been more: and though it is by no means unlikely (from family predlaposi•