PORTRAIT GALLERY.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

IN glancing mentally over the unwritten literary annals of the last eighty years, what a vast and wonderful variety of phenomena present themselves to our gaze! What a history were that which would portray for us the manifold and multiform schools of poetry and criticism, which have been successively evoked or influenced by the changeful circumstances of that time; and how would he stir our bosoms, who could once more, by the nameless magic of genius, awaken within us the varied and conflicting emotions, the hopes, the fears, the forebodings, which agitated their various actors and votaries, during that strange and eventful period! If, even when we stand upon the platform of manhood, and turn our eyes upon the bright paths and gay companions of boyhood and youth, an undistinguishable throng of sad and sweet recollections crowd upon our minds; if the dreams and remembrances of every old age furnish a more pleasing, though a mournful, mental occupation than the present environment of the hoary head; what an inexhaustible fund of the strangest recollections; what an endless maze and phantasmagory of vicissitudes, of hazards, of reputations, of schools, of governments, must shape itself out in hues of gladness and of sorrow, before the poet or literary man who has seen the snows of the last eighty winters! Of James Montgomery this can be said. Born when the first faint mutterings which foreboded the mighty thunderbursts that closed the last century were just beginning to be heard, he was an ardent rhyming youngster when Mirabeau was flashing his lightnings over the assembled French legislators in the Salle de Menus, and when the Bastille was tottering before the rabid thousands of Paris. He was the proprietor and editor of a journal when the little Corsican was wreathing his brows with the diadem of Charlemagne, and Toussaint l'Ouverture was minutely mimicking the ceremony in Hayti. He aided with most strenuous endeavour the cause of slave emancipation, and celebrated the consummation in song. He saw Beau Brummelism arise from the realm of the Anarch old, and return to its native Chaos! He saw the world all join in rapturous applause of the genius of Scott; he witnessed the avatar of the satanic and sentimental schools; he heard the jubilant critics (deeming their power immortal) laugh and bark at Wordsworth and Coleridge; he saw Europe sink into troubled slumber after the last thunder-peals of Waterloo. He has lived to a time of railways and telegraphs, of steamlooms and cotton kings, of Californias and Bathursts. He saw Byron consigned to a mournful and too early grave, and he waited till Wordsworth sunk into his rest like a shock of corn fully ripe. And now he alone, or almost alone, survives-loved by many, honoured and respected by all-looking with an eye still lively upon the faces of a new and strange generation, and not even the iron tongue of criticism-the most heartless of entities-daring to speak a word against him!

It is our intention in the following paragraphs to glance at a few of the more remarkable events and circumstances in Mr Montgomery's career, and to suggest a few hints as to his place in our poetic literature, rather than to present our readers with a complete biography or critique.

James Montgomery was born at Irvine, in the county of Ayr, on the fourth day of November, 1771; just at the time when Robert Burns-a boy in his thirteenth yearmight be roving on the banks of the Doon, a little to the southward, in the same county. His father was, we understand, a Moravian minister. Scotland has thus the honour of being the birthplace of Mr Montgomery, but can lay claim to little more. When he was still a very young child-three and a half years old-his parents removed to Ireland; whence, in 1777, he was sent to the seminary of Fulneck, in Leeds. Here he remained till 1787, and then took his departure to Mirfield, near Wakefield. By this time the features of the man were beginning to show themselves very distinctly in the boy; he found the duties of a small retail concern,' in which for

nearly two years he had employment, by no means so congenial as the penning of verses; and finally, bursting the small bonds which confined him, he struck out, in the fearlessness of boyish ignorance, into the great sea of literary adventure. In 1790, we find him located with a bookseller in Paternoster Row, London, having at length found something like a kindly resting-place for the solo of his foot. In London, however, he did not rest, and in 1792 he took up his abode in Sheffield, which has continued to be his residence until the present time. He supported himself by literary exertion, contributing to the Sheffield Register.' In 1794, he entered upon more regular and important duties. In July of that year, the Iris' was published, under the joint management of Mr Montgomery and Mr Gales. The latter shortly withdrew, and left his youthful coadjutor to the whole toil and risk of the undertaking. This brings us to an important and interesting part of Mr Montgomery's career.

It was the period of the French Revolution; intense excitement pervaded all parties; prosecutions for sedition, or the appearance of sedition, were the order of the day. The government was thrown into tremulous perturbation by the slightest appearance of commotion, and was ever and unscrupulously prepared to visit with severe penalties the slightest appearance of disaffection. In the present day when our legislators look with such a calm, unmoved eye upon the occasional clamour of demagogues, and properly leave the various kinds of stump oratory and quackery to spend their strength in unresisted exertions-we experience a difficulty in imagining the watchful solicitude with which those who held the reins of power in the beginning of the French war looked upon men who were liberal in their opinions, or who could think without abhorrence of French politics. Wordsworth was deemed by some a dark and dangerous man, whose democracy was the more to be dreaded that it lay under the mask of taciturnity. The mild Coleridge, and another of the Lake brethren, were actually such objects of fear and suspicion to government, that a spy was put upon them to watch their proceedings. In a more serious and alarming shape, the storm burst on James Montgomery. He shared with almost all ardent and enthusiastic young men of the time, a predilection for liberal sentiments. To use his own phrase, every pulse of his heart was beating in favour of the popular doctrines. His position, too, was singularly adapted to arm against him the rigours of state malice. Mr Gales, of the Sheffield Register,' with whom he was at first associated in the management of the Iris,' was very obnoxious to government, and the accumulated hatred which had been entertained for the senior partner was transferred, apparently with handsome interest, to the junior. We can conceive, moreover, that men in power-having obtained a sufficient knowledge of Mr Montgomery's abilities to rank them among the decidedly dangeroussnatched greedily the first opportunity of inflicting a stroke which might daunt or discourage the youthful editor. He was in fact pitched upon as the scape-goat to bear much. This is placed beyond doubt by the following extract from the original draught of the brief delivered to the counsel for the prosecution: This prosecution is carried on chiefly with a view of putting a stop to the meetings of the associated clubs in Sheffield; and it is hoped that, if we are fortunate enough to succeed in convicting the prisoner, it will go a great way towards curbing the insolence they have uniformly manifested, and particularly since the late acquittals.' When the wolf has his eye on the lamb, the most inexpugnable syllogisms on the part of the fated victim are found ineffective. If it was not you, it was your father, and that is all one,' was, if we mistake not, the final and unanswerable rejoinder which preluded the application of the wolf's fangs to the limbs of the unresisting pleader; 'if you are innocent, your partner is guilty, and it is all one,' was, in effect, the language of the government in prosecuting Mr Montgomery. The proximate circumstances of his arrest and conviction are worth relating; they give us a slight but clear glance into the time.

Mr Gales, during the time of his connection with that

printing office which ultimately became Mr Montgomery's, had an apprentice concerning whom we know two facts: the first is, that his name was Jack; the second, that he, on one occasion, being, we presume, of patriotic temper, set up types in the office, for the printing of a certain song -the composition of Mr Scott, of Dromore-in jubilant commemoration of the destruction of the Bastille. It had been composed in 1792, and alluded, in denunciatory patriotic tone, to the invasion of France by the Austrians and Prussians under Brunswick. The types set up by Jack were not taken down by that personage, but remained standing in the office until Mr Montgomery became sole editor; the precise date of Jack's operations we cannot fix. About a month after the commencement of Mr Montgomery's connection with the Iris,' a ballad-seller happened to pass the office-door; a printer in the establishment, hearing the proclamation of the wares, was attracted by its being in the voice of an old acquaintance; he called him in, and, by way of civility, pointed out to him Jack's songs, with the suggestion that they might enable him to turn a penny. The suggestion was adopted, and the ballad-seller came to an arrangement with Mr Montgomery, to whom the printer referred him, for a certain number of copies. The copies were duly received and paid for. Two months afterwards,' we quote Mr Montgomery's words, one of the town constables waited upon me, and very civilly requested that I would call upon him at his residence in the adjacent street. Accordingly I went thither, and asked him for what purpose he wanted to see me. He then produced a magistrate's warrant, charging me with having, on the 16th day of August preceding, printed and published a certain seditious libel respecting the war then raging between his Majesty and the French government, entitled A Patriotic Song, by a clergyman of Belfast.' I was quite puzzled to comprehend to what production from my press the charge alluded, not the remotest idea of the ballad-seller occurring to me at the moment. Accordingly I expressed my ignorance, and begged to see the paper that contained the libel. He then showed me a copy of the song which I had allowed to be printed, as aforementioned, at the request of a hawker whom I had never seen before nor since. I said immediately, I recollect that very well; but this song cannot be a libel on the present war, because it was published, to my knowledge, long before hostilities between England and France began in 1793, having been composed for an anniversary celebration of the destruction of the Bastille, and referring solely to the invasion of France by the Austrian and Prussian armies under the Duke of Brunswick, in July 1792. That, however, was a question not to be settled between the constable and me. The former, on further inquiry, told me that on the 16th of August, as he was going down the High Street, he observed the aforesaid ballad-monger, and heard him crying, 'Straws to sell!' As it was his business to look after vagrants, he went up to the man and bought a straw of him, for which he paid a halfpenny; but, complaining that it was a dear bargain, the other gave him one of these songs to boot. On looking at the contents, he thought there was something not right about them or the manner of their disposal. Hereupon he told the chapman that he would be a wholesale customer, and take both himself and his stock into safe keeping. The prisoner, terrified at the thought of going to jail, immediately informed him how, where, and from whom he had got the papers. He then took him before a magistrate, who, on hearing the case, committed the culprit to Wakefield House of Correction as a vagrant, where he had been detained till the West Riding Sessions, on the 16th of October, the day on which it had been deemed expedient to arrest me as the principal in the affair. All this was news to me, and quite as unwelcome as it was amusing and instructive. The trick of selling a straw, and giving something not worth one with it, was a lesson which, having never learned before, certainly reduced to the amount of its value the vast stock of ignorance of the world with which I had set out in it; which, however, was otherwise so rapidly diminishing by my daily experience, that I had

a fair prospect of becoming, within a reasonable time, as wise in my generation as the people with whom I had to deal then and in the sequel.'

This august and momentous matter-which, among other imposing results, furnished some respectable solicitor with a bill of costs indorsed Rex. v. Montgomery, J. B.'s bill, £66: 8: 2d.'-afforded occasion for the display of much forensic and oratorical ability, learned gentlemen perorating for more than five hours. All this eloquence has happily passed into its final repose, but its result was, that Mr Montgomery was sentenced to three months' imprisonment in the Castle of York, and a fine of twenty pounds.' This was not the last time Mr Montgomery experienced the effects of that hatred with which he was regarded by the public authorities. Within a short period after his first incarceration, he was again brought to trial, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment in York Castle, to pay a fine of thirty pounds to the king, and to give security to keep the peace for two years. This time, if not equity, there was at least law on the side of the prosecution, and Mr Montgomery expresses himself as on the whole satisfied.

For no less a period than nine months, then, within a year and a half, was James Montgomery the inmate of a prison. It did not break his heart; and in two epistles to a friend, published under the inviting title of The Pleasures of Imprisonment,' he gives a graphic, interesting, and hearty account of his daily proceedings. An extract or two from this clever jeu d'esprit cannot fail to interest readers; it is a good instance of a brave heart looking a sour fortune resolutely in the face, and flinging at her, from merry eye, quips and cranks, and wauton wiles, until the answering smile is forced to kindle on her cheek:'You ask, my friend, and well you may, You ask me how I spend the day. I'll tell you in unstudied rhyme How wisely I befool my time: Expect not wit nor fancy, then, In this effusion of my pen;

These idle lines- they might be worse-
Are simple prose in simple verse.

Each morning, then, at five o'clock,

The adamantine doors unlock;

Bolts, bars, and portals, crash and thunder;
The gates of iron burst asunder;
Hinges that creak, and keys that jingle,
With clattering chains in concert mingle;
So sweet the din, your dainty ear
For joy would break its drum to hear;
While my dull organs, at the sound,
Rest in tranquillity profound:
Fantastic dreams amuse my brain,
And waft my spirit home again.
Though captive all day long, 'tis true,
At night I am as free as you;
Not ramparts high, nor dungeons deep,
Can hold me when I'm fast asleep.
But everything is good in season;
I dream at large-and wake in prison.
Yet think not, sir, I lie too late;
I rise as early even as eight:
Ten hours of drowsiness are plenty,
For any man, in four-and-twenty.
You smile and yet 'tis nobly done,
I'm but five hours behind the sun!
When dress'd, I to the yard repair,
And breakfast on the pure fresh air;
But though this choice Castalian cheer
Keeps both the head and stomach clear,
For reasons strong enough with me,
I mend the meal with toast and tea.
Now, air and fame, as poets sing,
Are both the same, the self-same thing.
Yet bards are not chameleons quite
And heavenly food is very light:
Who ever dined or supp'd on fame,
And went to bed upon a name?

The following is in a different strain, but no less replete with cleverness and hilarity; the thought is worked out with great ingenuity, and there is an airy picturesqueness in the sketching, which characterises Mr Montgomery's best manner:

Sometimes to fairy-land I rove:
Those iron rails become a grove;
These stately buildings fall away
To moss-grown cottages of clay;
Debtors are changed to jolly swains,
Who pipe and whistle on the plains;
Yon felons grim with fetters bound
Are satyrs wild with garlands crown'd;
Their clanking chains are wreaths of flowers;
Their horrid cells ambrosial bowers;
The oaths, expiring on their tongues,
Are metamorphosed into songs:
While wretched female prisoners, lo!
Are Dian's nymphs of virgin snow.

Those hideous walls with verdure shoot;
These pillars bend with blushing fruit;
That dunghill swells into a mountain;
The pump becomes a purling fountain;
The noisome smoke of yonder mills
The circling air with fragrance fills;
This horsepond spreads into a lake,
And swans of ducks and geese I make;
Sparrows are changed to turtle-doves,
That bill and coo their pretty loves;
Wagtails, turn'd thrushes, charm the vales,
And tomtits sing like nightingales.

No more the wind through key-holes whistles,
But sighs on beds of pinks and thistles;

The rattling rain, that beats without,
And gurgles down the leaden spout,

In light delicious dew distils,
And melts away in amber rills;-
Elysium rises on the green,

And health and beauty crown the scene.

'Rex. v. Montgomery' appears not to have had a very effective victory; the young heart shows no symptom of breakage. Prisons, in fact, seem to have no terrors fit to tame the energy or restrain the flights of genius. Sunnier painting of the smiling motherly face of nature, or more melodiously-flowing harmony than delight us in Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini,' it were a fastidious critic who would desire; and a sprightlier or heartier running fire of smart wit than pervades the far-famed Tour of Dr Syntax,' it were difficult to find; yet both of them were written in prison. The eloquent perorators who congratulated themselves on the success of their piquant and persuasive pleadings, must have looked a little abashed when their victim, audaciously unrepentant, published the small series of poems entitled Prison Amusements.'

In the summer of 1796, Mr Montgomery was finally released from prison, and recommenced his editorial func

tions.

In the whole history of Mr Montgomery hitherto, we cannot fail being much struck with the elastic irrepressible

but, when it was found that the ferocious exultation had to feed itself on Prison Amusements' and the like, it subsided into a low moan or growl, and finally deceased. 'They were mistaken,' says Mr Montgomery, with pardonable pride, and so soon, as well as so thoroughly, were they convinced of their mistake, that from that day I do not remember I ever again experienced any annoyance from one of them. Twice, indeed, in later years, I was menaced with legal visitation from persons who did not avow themselves openly, but who, when they might have fought, exercised the best part of valour,' and in their discretion' let me alone.' Whether let alone or not, Mr Montgomery put his arm to the wheel with determined energy; and, gradually quelling all appearance of opposition, he went on with an ever-widening circle of friendship and of fame, until he became an object of pride and respect to his townsmen. In 1825, he withdrew from the discharge of editorial functions in connection with the 'Iris,' and on that occasion he issued a farewell address to his readers, from which we quote the following general glance at his mode of conducting the journal; it is the honest, plain-spoken declaration of an upright man, free alike from the blustering pretension of conceit, and the affected modesty of sentimental self-depreciation: 'From the first moment when I became the director of a public journal, I took my own ground; I have stood upon it through many years of changes, and I rest by it this day, as having afforded me a shelter through the far greater portion of my life, and yet offering me a grave when I shall no longer have a part in anything done under the And this was my ground: a plain determinationcome wind or sun, come fire or water-to do what was right. I lay stress upon the purpose, not on the performance; for that was the pole-star to which my compass was pointed, though with considerable variation of the needle; for, through characteristic weakness, perversity of understanding, or self-sufficiency, I have often erred, failed, and been overcome by temptation on the wearisome pilgrimage through which I have toiled-now struggling through the Slough of Despondency,' then fighting with evil spirits in the Valley of Humiliation;' more than once escaping martyrdom from Vanity Fair;' and once at least (I will not say when) a prisoner in Doubting Castle,' under the discipline of Giant Despair.' Now, though I am not writing this address in one of the shepherd's tents on the 'Delectable Mountains,' yet, like Bunyan's Christian, I can look back on the past, with all its anxieties, trials, and conflicts, thankful that it is past. Of the future I have little foresight, and I desire none with respect to this life, being content that shadows, clouds, and darkness dwell

sun.

it, if I yet may hope that 'at evening time there will

be light."

'A raven grim, in black and blue,

As arch a knave as c'er you knew;
Who hops about with broken pinions,
And thinks these walls his own dominions.
This wag a mortal foe to Bill is;
They fight like Hector and Achilles.'

Besides all which, his fancy could at any moment convert the felons into satyrs, and the felonesses into Dian's nymphs of virgin snow. So that, on the whole, it was found a matter of extreme difficulty to break his spirit; and, finally, it was deemed wisest to abandon the attempt. At first there was 'ferocious exultation' over his fall;'

racter.

James Montgomery was an early rhymster. An intense desire of fame possessed him in his boyhood, and prompted his running away from Fulneck. With assiduous and unresting endeavour, he pursued the phantom, and found himself led farther and farther into the morass. Fame would not come, and Mr Montgomery sunk from the enthusiastic ardours of youth into moody dispiritment, and an almost total distrust of poetry. He still had enough of vital fire left to enable him to discharge all his office duties; but the flights of the imagination, and the soft dalliance of the muse, had given place to despondency, and something very like chagrin. There had been, in fact, a radical defect, a deep-lying taint, in the whole mental con