The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-01 00:00:00

TAIT'S MAGAZINE.

After an interval of a month we are delighted to
perceive the criticisms of George Gilfillan resumed.
There is an earnestness about his manner most plea-
sant in a time which partakes somewhat overmuch of
literary frigidity. Even where, to the thinking of
most individuals, there would be the least opportunity
for rising into enthusiasm, his ardent emotions are
kindled into a flame of words ; and he here, for ex-
ample, presents us with many fervid sentences of
eulogium and censure upon the character and
writings of "James Montgomery." We cannot but
conceive that the introduction to the paper affords us
a very sorry and painful spectacle—a man of un-
doubted and elevated intellect, like the bard of Shef-
fiel3, standing forward (in accordance with the an-
nouncement of a placard) upon a platform in a
Scottish city " to address a meeting on the subject of
Moravian missions"—mouthing there by the hour to
the gaping curiosity of a very scanty and unselect audi-
ence, and winding up his oration by long quotations
from his own poetry ! There is something degrading
in all this ; it evinces a mean and morbid appetite for
the most vulgar description of fame ; it is peddling
for popularity. Well may the writer inquire in
astonishment, " Is this progress of his (Montgo-
mery's) altogether a proper, a poet's progress ?
Would Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth have sub-
mitted to it ?" Was it worthy the author of the
" Pelican Island," " Greenland," the " World before
the Flood," the " West Indies," the " Wanderer in
Switzerland," or those solemn and thrilling " Verses
from the Grave ?" We cannot think of this hunger-
ing after the very meanest kind of mob adulation in
an old man, of so much purity and elevation of
thought, without a feeling of sorrow and astonishment.
James Montgomery has never written any continuous
or sustained poem capable of perpetuating his name, but
among his fugitive verses there are many that cannot
well be forgotten, or that the world will willingly let
(lie : his lines, breathed, as it were, from the grave,
and his " Stanzas at Midnight," for instance. If his
ideas are ever quaint or contorted, James Montgo-
mery is, even then, if possible, more plaintive than
ever. Take, as a specimen, those verses upon Autumn
—beautiful verses, which, like a pet fragment of
music, has been transformed into a spirit "haunting,'
as Bulwer has exquisitely said, " the halls and gal-
leries of our memory:"—
" Sweet Sabbath of the year!
While evening lights decay,
Thq parting steps methinks I hear
Steal from the world away.
" Amid thy silent bowers,
'Tis sad, but sweet, to dwell;
Where falling leaves and dropping flowers
Around me breathe farewell."

Again, what can be more quaint and yet more
eminently mournful than the following comparison in
the same poem ?
" A deep and crimson streak
Thy dying leaves disclose;
- As on Consumption's waning cheek
'Mid ruin blooms the rose."

James Montgomery has a mind too gifted and a
soul too sensitive to derive any real or permanent
satisfaction from the triumphs of a vagrant lecturer.
Let him remember this, and henceforth shun such
asperities. That most indefatigable writer Mrs. Gore,
not contented with producing nine volumes of
ordinarily-sized novels during the past season, a
Christmas story in December, a book of sketches, an
effort at poetical celebrity, et cetera, actually begins
another romance in the present number of Tait, en-

* There have been some subsequent changes in these
matters.