"The loud Atlantic ocean,
On Scotland’s rugged breast,
Rocks, with harmonious motion,
His weary waves to rest,
And gleaming round her emerald isles
In all the pomp of sunset smiles.
On that romantic shore
My parents hailed their first-born boy;
A mother’s pangs my mother bore,
My father felt a father’s joy;
My father, mother—parents now no morel
Beneath the Lion Star they sleep,
Beyond the western deep,
And when the sun’s noon-glory crests the waves,
He shines without a shadow on their graves."

The boy remained for ten years at Fulneck, where he was carefully educated, it being the wish of the Brethren to train him for the ministry; but the bent of his mind not being in that direction, the intention was not persisted in. His first poetical impulse was received from reading Blair’s "Grave." At the age of twelve he produced some small poems, and his taste for poetry was cherished by reading extracts from Milton, Thomson, and Young, together with such books as he could procure and enjoy by stealth. He was sent to earn his bread as an assistant in a chandler’s shop, but did not take kindly to the occupation, ran away from his master, and after another year of service with a second, at last set off to London with 3s. 6d. in his pocket, to seek fame and fortune. He offered a manuscript volume of verse to Mr. Harrison, publisher, Paternoster Row, who rejected the poetry, but engaged the poet as a clerk. In this situation he continued for eight months, but feeling the drudgery irksome, he made his way back to Yorkshire. In 1792 he obtained employment in the establishment of Mr. Gales, a bookseller in Sheffield, who had commenced a newspaper named the "Sheffield Register." Montgomery found the labour of a journalist congenial to his tastes; but those were difficult times for men who entertained and propagated liberal opinions, as the young poet soon discovered. Mr. Gales was obliged to flee from England, to avoid prosecution for printing an article which incurred the displeasure of the despotic government of the day. The poet now became the editor and publisher of the paper, changing its name to the "Sheffield Iris." Although more prudent and moderate than his predecessor, he was also more gifted, and therefore more obnoxious to men in power, who set a watch for his halting. The whole nation was convulsed by the example and influence of the French revolution, and political feeling ran high in Sheffield, when Montgomery undertook the labours and responsibility of editorship. Reverting, thirty-one years afterwards, in his valedictory address to his readers, to this era of his life, he said:—"With all the enthusiasm of youth, for I had not then arrived at years of discretion, I entered into the feelings of those who avowed themselves the friends of freedom, justice, and humanity. Though with every pulse of my heart beating in favour of the popular doctrines, my retired and religious education had laid restraints upon my conscience, which (I may fearlessly say so) long kept me back from personally engaging in the civil war of words raging in the neighbourhood, beyond occasional rhyme, paragraph, or essay, in the newspaper, written rather for the purpose of showing my literary than my political qualifications. Ignorant of myself, and inexperienced in the world as a child of seven years old, having actually not lived so long among its everyday inhabitants, even when I became editor of the "Iris," I nevertheless was preserved from joining myself to any of the political societies till they were broken up in 1794, when, I confess, I did associate with the remnant of one of them for a purpose which I shall never be ashamed to avow; to support the families of several of the accused leaders, who were detained prisoners in London, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and who were finally discharged without having been brought to trial." The rule of his editorial conduct, he adds, was "a plain determination, come wind or sun, come fire or water, to do what was right." It was in 1794 that the "Iris" was commenced, and it was carried on "through a series of sufferings, desertions, crosses, and calamities without a name," persecuted by the aristocrats and abandoned by the Jacobins; yet the editor outlived the hostility of his enemies, won their confidence and friendship, and for years after 1805, which ended, as he observes, the "romance" of his life, he was supported, by the same arms that had fought against him, in a path of moderate prosperity. The more romantic incidents of the period referred to were his being twice prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged political offences. An example was wanted, as he tells us, to deter others from doing what he had not yet done, but what they were doing with impunity. He had scarcely been installed a month in the editorial chair, when he was one day called into the bookseller’s shop, where business-orders were received, to see an old grotesque-looking ballad-monger, who was offering twelve songs for a penny, and running glibly over a catalogue of their names. Presenting Montgomery with a specimen of the article, he inquired what would be the cost of six quires of the same. The reply was, that the presses were better employed than in printing such commodities, and he was recommended to apply elsewhere. "But you have this standing in your office," was the rejoinder; whereupon, expressing his ignorance of the fact, Montgomery took up the printed leaf, and found that it contained two copies of verses, with each of which he had long been familiar, although he had never before seen them in that particular form. In a wood-cut figure of Liberty and the British Lion, he now recognized the frontispiece of an extinct periodical conducted by his predecessor; and on inquiring in the printing-office, he found that the ballads had been put in type surreptitiously by one of Mr. Gales’ apprentices, for the use of his companions, and that the ballad-vender had lately, for old acquaintance sake, been furnished by the foreman with a quantity for sale. On learning these particulars, Montgomery allowed the poor fellow to obtain what he wanted. Eighteen pence worth of the ballads was accordingly worked off, and paid for. In two months afterwards Montgomery was arrested, on a magistrate’s warrant, for publishing a certain seditious libel respecting the war then waging between his majesty and the French government, entitled, "A Patriotic Song, by a Clergyman of Belfast," which song had, in fact, been composed in 1792, a year before the war with France commenced, and referred solely to the invasion of France by the armies of Austria and Prussia. It was enough that the song had been printed by Montgomery, and vended by a ballad-monger, who went about crying "Straws to sell!" and giving away the ballad into the bargain. A constable purchased a straw, obtained the ballad to boot, and took the ballad-seller into custody. Upon the evidence of the constable and the ballad-monger, Montgomery was found guilty of the publication, by a jury, at Doncaster sessions, January 22, 1795; and the sentence of the court was three months’ imprisonment in the castle of York, and a fine of £20. Forty-four years afterwards, in 1839, Mr. Montgomery received a packet, containing several of the original documents connected with his trial. Amongst these was a letter from the Duke of Portland, then the home-secretary, to a local magistrate, approving of the steps taken against the song-seller and the publisher. The "compliments" of the attorney-general, Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, were, according to instructions from Mr. White, solicitor to the treasury, to accompany the brief to three counsel named, and the Sheffield solicitor’s bill of costs was indorsed Rex v. Montgomery. " Thus (says the poet) I learned that I had actually suffered, not to say enjoyed, the honour of a State prosecution." A fragment of the original draft of the brief was also received, stating that "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." The second offence for which Mr. Montgomery was tried and imprisoned, was the printing, in his paper, of a paragraph reflecting hardly upon the conduct of a magistrate in quelling a riot at Sheffield in 1795. The trial took place at Doncaster sessions in 1796, a verdict was given against the defendant, and he was 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. Mr. Montgomery never complained of this trial and sentence; and he records, in the introduction to his "Prison Amusements," that the magistrate whom he had offended, took the opportunity, a few years afterward, of showing him both kindness and confidence in an affair of business, and that his conduct evinced that his mind was as much discharged of hostile feeling towards his editorial opponent, "as, I trust (says the latter), mine was of resentment against him." In the same spirit, the poet in his valedictory address in 1825, said—"I can now add that all the persons who were actively concerned in the prosecutions against me in 1794 and 1795 are dead, and without exception they died in peace with me. I believe I am quite correct in saying, that from each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of good-will, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness."

Having failed to obtain poetical renown by his youthful effusions, Mr. Montgomery informs us that he resolved to secure it by such means as made many of his contemporaries notorious. He wrote doggrel verse after the model of Peter Pindar, and prose in the style of Fielding and Smollett, occasionally imitating the wild flights of the German plays and romances. To the failure of these attempts he refers in this characteristic remark:—"A Providence of disappointment shut every door in my face, by which I attempted to force my way to a dishonourable fame;" and he congratulates himself on having been saved from appearing as the author of works of which he should afterwards have felt ashamed. His first successful poetical effort was "The Wanderer of Switzerland," which appeared in 1806. This poem, descriptive of the sufferings of the Swiss, when the independence of their country was destroyed by France, was severely handled in the "Edinburgh Review," and afterwards defended by Lord Byron. It was followed by "The West Indies," written to accompany a series of pictures published as a memorial of the abolition of the slave-trade. In this genial labour, to which the poet says he gave his whole mind, as affording him an opportunity of exposing the iniquities of slavery and the slave-trade, he was associated with Grahame, the author of "The Sabbath," and Miss Benger, who wrote several works in history and biography. In 1813 appeared "The World before the Flood," suggested to the poet by a passage in the eleventh book of "Paradise Lost," referring to the translation of Enoch. This was followed in 1819 by "Greenland," a poem in five cantos, the plan, which was not fully carried out, being to describe the original condition of the country and its people, and exhibit the changes wrought by the introduction of the gospel by the Moravian missionaries. The last and best of Montgomery’s works, "The Pelican Island," was published in 1827, and confirmed the author’s title to a high place amongst the British poets. It is the most imaginative of all his writings, and abounds in fresh and vigorous description. Each of the principal poems, issued at intervals, was accompanied by minor and miscellaneous compositions, many of them of great merit, and possessing the elements of lasting popularity. "The Prison Amusements" is the name given to a series of small poems on various subjects, written during his incarcerations in York Castle. "The Grave" appeared in the first volume of the poet’s works, and is one of the best known of his minor pieces.

In "Thoughts on Wheels," the poet denounced the national wickedness and folly of the State lotteries, and powerfully contributed to the abolition of this disgraceful method of replenishing the public treasury. In this poem, Montgomery introduces an apostrophe to Britain, breathing a lofty strain of patriotism and piety. When he visited Scotland in 1841, he read these verses at a public breakfast to which he was invited in Glasgow, as expressing his personal feelings towards his native land and its noble institutions. The sufferings of chimney-sweepers’ apprentices engaged his sympathy, and drew from his pen a series of verses, under the title of "The Climbing Boy’s Soliloquies." He paraphrased a number of the Psalms of David in "Songs of Zion," but admitted, when in Scotland, that no version of the Psalms came up to that used in the Presbyterian Churches for scriptural simplicity and truthfulness to the original. "The Common Lot," "The Little Cloud," "Night," "Robert Burns," "The Daisy in India," "Friends," "A Voyage Round the World," and numerous hymns, are amongst the minor compositions which have made his name familiar wherever there is piety to feel their force and taste to appreciate their beauty. His collected poetical works were published by Longman and Co., London, in four 12mo volumes, in 1841, and an edition in one volume appeared in 1851. This was followed in 1853, by "Original Hymns, for Public, Private, and Social Devotion." Montgomery also produced several prose writings, lectured on poetry, and edited "The Christian Poets," published by Collins in Glasgow. The religious character of his larger poems has, no doubt, limited the range of his readers, but both in this country and in America, his works enjoy a high reputation; and in the United States, have run through numerous editions. The purity of his language, the fluency of his numbers, and above all the evangelical spirit of his religious compositions, have exerted a considerable influence upon public taste and feeling. The tendency of all he wrote was to purify and elevate. The catholicity of his religious poems reflects the spirit of their author, who was singularly free from sectarian narrowness. His latter years were devoted to active usefulness and works of beneficence in Sheffield, where he was universally known and beloved. He died at his residence, the Mount, in that town, April 30, 1854, in his eighty-third year, and was honoured with a public funeral. The venerable poet had enjoyed, for some years, a well-deserved literary pension from government, of £150 a-year.