MONTGOMERY,
JAMES, was the last of the brilliant galaxy of poets (excepting
Samuel Rogers) which illuminated the hemisphere of British literature in the
early part of the present century. He was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire,
November 4, 1771. His father was a Moravian minister stationed at that time
in Irvine. The house where the poet was born still exists, and is an object
of interest to strangers visiting the town. It was originally a detached
building, situated in the centre of an open space, and consisted of a pretty
large room, which was used as a chapel by the Moravian congregation, and a
separate apartment in which the family lived, and where the poet was born.
The house is now surrounded by other buildings, and what was once the chapel
is occupied as a weaver’s shop. The poet’s father must have been in
straitened circumstances, as he found it necessary to devote part of his
time to a manual occupation; and a townsman and friend of the poet’s, who
has furnished the writer with several other particulars of his early
history, remembers being informed by an old friend, thirty years ago, that
he recollected attending the chapel one evening in his youth, when the
poet’s father closed the service by addressing the congregation in substance
as follows:—"I am a man of simple tastes and habits, but I cannot live upon
air; and therefore, individuals present will have an opportunity, when they
retire, of leaving behind them what they think proper towards my support."
The Moravian cause seems not to have found a genial soil in Irvine, as, on
the removal of the poet’s father to Ireland, in 1775, no preacher appears to
have succeeded him. The town of Ayr now possesses the only Moravian
congregation in Scotland. From the period when his father was ordered by the
Moravian body to do duty at their establishment of Gracehill, near
Ballymena, in Ireland, and whither he accordingly removed his family, till
the year 1841, being a period of sixty-six years, James Montgomery had not
once visited Scotland. He was between four and five years of age when he
left Irvine, but his recollections of his early years were extremely vivid,
and on the occasion of his visIt to his native town, he related some of them
with great delight to a meeting of the inhabitants assembled to do him
honour. One of these anecdotes was connected with his removal from Ireland
to the Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds, in Yorkshire. He had received
the elements of his education from "Jemmy M’Caffery," the village
schoolmaster at Gracehill, and being now between six and seven years of age,
it was determined to send him to school in England. Taking a child’s
farewell of his mother, he and his father embarked in a vessel bound for
Liverpool, and were overtaken by a violent storm. The poet remembered how
his childish terror was soothed by the affection of his father, and his
confidence restored by his expressions of trust in the providence of God and
the love of his Redeemer. The effect produced upon the boy attracted the
attention of the master of the vessel, who, himself evincing considerable
solicitude in the trying circumstances, observed—"I would give a hundred
guineas for the faith of that child." Mr. Montgomery took great pleasure in
looking back upon the incidents of the voyage, as having called forth
memorable evidence of the simple faith and piety of his father. James was
placed in the Moravian institution at Fulneck in October, 1777. Another of
his early reminiscences related to this school. It was visited on one
occasion by the celebrated Lord Monboddo, whose figure the poet recalled as
dressed in a rough closely-buttoned coat, with top boots, and carrying in
his hand a large whip, such as huntsmen use. He inquired if there was any
Scotch boy in the school; and the teacher having produced young Montgomery,
Lord Monboddo looked the future poet sternly in the face, and, after
addressing to him some counsels suitable to his years—holding the whip
towards him, as the boy thought, in unpleasant proximity—"Mind, Sir," he
added, "that I trust you will never do anything to disgrace your country."
"This," said the poet, "I never forgot, nor shall I forget it while I live.
I have, indeed, endeavoured so to act hitherto, that my country might never
have cause to be ashamed of me; nor will I, on my part, ever be ashamed of
her." In 1783, John Montgomery and his wife, the father and mother of the
poet, proceeded to the West Indies, as missionaries. The only allusion in
Montgomery’s poems to the place of his birth occurs in the verses written on
revisiting Fulneck school in 1806, and the remembrance of Irvine recalled
the image of his sainted parents, both of whom had died in the West Indies:—
"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.
The ostensible object of Mr.
Montgomery’s visit to Scotland, in 1841, when he was accompanied by the Rev.
Mr. Latrobe, was the promotion of the missions of the United Brethren; but
he also avowed a strong desire to see the place of his nativity before he
died. His reception by the magistrates and inhabitants of Irvine was most
enthusiastic. In Edinburgh and Glasgow, also, he was received with the
utmost respect. In Irvine he visited, at her own request, Mrs. Thomson, an
aged lady, who had been intimate with his parents, and had often carried him
in her arms when a child. His interview with this venerable person, and his
visit to the house where he was born, excited profound feeling in the heart
of the poet. In the old chapel, where the weavers were at work, he was
gratified to find a copy of the verses quoted above, glazed, framed, and
hung up in a conspicuous place, where it had often previously been seen by
visitors. One of the gentlemen present commenced to read the verses, but his
reading not pleasing the poet, he repeated them himself with peculiar grace
and tenderness. Whilst these pages are passing through the press (1855), a
proposal is being favourably entertained by the townsmen of the poet to
purchase the house in which he was born, and preserve it as a monument to
his memory. |