The Express.
London, England, 1859-11-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE

Poems by James Montgomery. Selected and edited
by the Rev. ROBERT ANIS WILLIIOTT. Illus-
trated. Routledge.
Selections are tantalising affairs, but they are
pardonable in some cases, and in few are they more
so than in the case of James Montgomery. He was
a poet whose life was almost too long for hie fame,
and whose " productions" are out of all measure dis-
proportionate to his poetry. There is a likeness of
him prefixed to this edition, and the resemblance to
Wordsworth is just of • kind to suggest the salsifies
of their works. Wordsworth " took an interest" in
Montgomery from first reading the " Wanderer in
Switzerland,' in which poem the Erhisburok Review
caught the utterances of ' a musical and melancholy
fine gentleman on the lower slopes of Ferneries, very
weakly, very finical, and very affected." In all
but the last, perhaps, the critic of the Edin-
burgh was curiously correct in his definitions.
James Montgomery was not en affected man, as we
understand the term to indicate • conscious eccen-
tricity. And there are qualities in his writings
which the reviewer did not take into account, but
which are Waite as conspicuous as the melancholy, or
the male, or UP gentility, or the weakness, or the
finicism. We should prefer, with Mr. Willmott, to
consider " the romantic fancy, the tender heart, and
the abundant imagery" which are displayed by the
Moravian poet.
The illustrations to this volume by Messieurs
Pickersgill, R.A., John Gilbert, Birket Foster, Wolf,
Harvey, Duncan, and Harrison Weir, are remark-
able for finish. Some are full of beauty ;
and a few others, again, are as vigorous
and striking as they could have been had
their compass been vastly extended. The pro-
lific pencil of Mr. Foster is liable to a suspicion
of indoor practice ; but if we may give faith to hear-
say, the landscapes of this artist are veritable
studies; and indeed there are numberless tokens or
an intimacy with nature and, at least, of an ever-
present sense of natural beauty, which could not well
be maintained upon mere studio recollections. Mr.
Gilbert stands more confessedly mannerist. He has
worked so long upon • stock of effects that it would
not be difficult or unsafe to predicate his "treat-
ment" of any given subject. The zoological sketches
of Mr. Harrison Weir seem to us wanting in life,
if not in truth of form. But he has given us
one admirable picture, a flight of sea-birds,
with a strange group of rocks in the foreground,
and a wonderful sunset across the sea. Nothing
else in the baok, however, approaches in artistic
merit a scene by Mr. Duncan. A ship in a calm,
by moonlight, with outspread sails, black and bat-
like, and "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted
ooean," is the object so finely depicted by Mr. Dun-
can. It is an illustration to the missionary poem
entitled "Greenland."

All the drawings in the book, to the number of a
hundred, have been engraved on wood by the
Brothers Dalziel. The work, especially in the case
of Mr. Birket Faster, entails a surprising amount of
labour, which has been executed with conscientious
fidelity. The printing and all the points of finish
are of a sumptuous kind, and as a gift book the
volume is not likely to be excelled.