the noble homage which he delights in offering to maternal and domestic virtue; such sketches as these demonstrate that there is no malignant worldly rancour in the display of his appalling satiric power, but a virtuous indignation, scorning folly, and hating vice and crime, whether ragged or ribanded, with a perfect hatred. But who art thou, whose passion-wither'd face Again, so exhaustless is his fertility, that, in the affluent consciousness of power, he tosses from him, with contemptuous waste, the following picture of a metropolitan fire, unmatched, I think, by any writer -certainly by Darwin's balanced and inflated descrip tion of a similar subject. A FIRE. But list! huge wheels roll o'er the jarring stones, While, grandly awful to the startled sight, Above the crackling roof fierce flames arise, Till the loose beams and flaking rafters fall, The concluding moral of this satire, addressed to the virtuous few who might be tempted by the unvarying sight of shallow knavery triumphant, and talented honesty in the dust, to disgust or doubt, has a softened flow of verse, suitable to the noble pathos and moral elevation of the philosophical sentiment. And thou, lorn wisdom's child, where'er thou art— And soar in mind above this venal age; Rich in thyself, partake the best content, A heart well govern'd, and a life well spent! In reverting to all the extracts from Mr. Montgomery's works, and looking to the distinct and peculiar excellencies which they exhibit in so wide a range of subject, and such various walks of poetry, I feel that I am more liable,—through that guarded and respectful cautiousness of discretion which every writer ought to observe in addressing the entire body of the thinking public,―to the charge of underrating, than to that of overrating Mr. Montgomery's poetical grade. To the evidential investigation of that grade, it would be unwise and ultra quam sat est' to add anything; but this, I now find, I may confidently do-challenge his adversaries to produce from any modern bard whatever (not even excepting Lord Byron) a larger number of forcible and noble passages in the domains of didactic poetry and satire. One more argument before I recapitulate and conclude. Besides the eminent and elevated merit of Mr. R. Montgomery's poetry (which for any critic to deny, in the face of the evidence here adduced, and in the face of the public, would be, to use the energetic language of St. Paul, to lie to his own soul"), his didactic works are characterised by a peculiarly high and equally-sustained tone of morals and religion. Hence one class of objectors. May he not breathe the ether of loftier sentiments than may suit the marsh miasma of certain literary coteries, Epicuri de grege porci ;—may not the mountain air to which the broad sail vans' of his eagle wings ascend, be such an atmosphere as the measured and measuring materialism of Utilitarian literature cannot breathe in and live? The Literary Gazette, referring to the religious character pervading Mr. R. Montgomery's didactic poetry, announces its appearance as a new poetical era. Great genius requires great excitement. Extraordinary events are requisite either as the precursors, the stimulants, or the accompaniments of genius. Galvanized into giant force by them, common events touch not its governing nerve; but if it be of heaven, 'heaven born,' it will, in its own unhurried and sure time, make itself manifest and stand. Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Darwin, Byron, were kindled by the feeling of their several eras, and represented that feeling. Milton embodied the puritanical perfectibility of his age. Darwin, with a different neology, and wielding the new and opposite energies of a deified materialism, harbingered the great revolution which ravaged France, and shook Europe to its foundations-whose vital momentum was a philosophical perfectibilityearthborn, of the earth-earthy.' Byron, and Napoleon (and correctly the first called himself The great Napoleon of the realms of rhyme)— represented the matured aspirations of the Revolution, in the full colossal strength of its intellectual ambition, and in the startling contrast of its termination- both dy H ing when the convulsive throes of the departing giant *, yielding up the ghost amidst eclipse and earthquake, proclaimed One woe is past.' The smoke of the evil cycle has now passed away, and it may be hoped that a day of moral enlightenment will succeed. Historical analogy confirms the hope. Tracing our road by its sugges tions, we may presume that the next era will probably be characterized by a re-ebbing tendency towards a deep and possibly progressive and permanent religious feeling. Poetry, as the expression of a nation's more elevated and excited feeling, will, as before, accompany the change-just as it rushed at once, with the change of manners and morals, from the lofty chastity and republican rigour of Milton, into the licentious ribaldry which stained the poetry of the Restoration: when the Willing Muses were debauch'd at court. If reasoning may warrant this expectation, facts too numerous to be cited here-facts pressing us on every side like the air-above, beneath, around us-evince that a great crisis of some kind is even now at hand; imo vero etiam instat in foris.' Cowper boldly predicts that the crisis will be a millennium, shortly to appear. (Winter Walk.) Croly, Irving, Faber, Frere, and Wolfe concur. There is more splendour than proba 6 * While exultingly referring to the Birmingham Union of that day, and to the nunc dimittis' of his friend Priestley, Darwin has a magnificent passage, comparing the French Revolution to a giant breaking the innumerable puny bands that bound him to the earth, like Gulliver the threads of the Lilliputians. |