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MONTGOMERY, ALEXANDER, an
early poet of considerable fame, appears to have been a younger son of
Montgomery of Hazelhead castle, in Ayrshire, a branch of the noble family
of Eglintoune. He flourished in the reign of James VI. but probably
wrote verses at an antecedent period, as some of his compositions are
transcribed in the Bannatyne Manuscript, which was written in 1568. The date
of his birth--further than that it was upon an Easter-day—the place and
nature of his education, and the pursuits of his early years, are all
involved in obscurity. He is said to have been brought up in the county of
Argyle; a fact which seems to gather some confirmation from a passage in
Dempster— "eques Montanus vulgo vocatus,"—as if he had acquired some common
nickname, such as "the Highland trooper;" for Montgomery never was knighted.
There is some reason to suppose that he was at one time a domestic or
commander in the guard of the regent Morton. His most familiar title,
"Captain Alexander Montgomery," renders it probable that the latter was the
nature of his office, for the word captain seems to have been first used in
Scotland, in reference to officers in the immediate service of the
sovereign. Melville, in his Diary, mentions that when Patrick Adamson was
promoted to the archbishopric of St Andrews, (an event which occurred in the
year 1577,) there was then at court "captain Montgomery, a good honest man,
and the regent’s domestic," who, recollecting a phrase which the new primate
had been accustomed to use in his sermons, remarked to some of his
companions, "for as often as it was reported by Mr Patrick, the prophet
would mean this, I never understood what the prophet meant till now."
Montgomery appears afterwards
to have been in the service of king James, who, in his Rewles and Cautelis,
published in 1582, quotes some of the poems of the subject of this memoir.
His services were acknowledged by a pension of five hundred merks,
chargeable upon certain rents of the arch-bishopric of Glasgow, which was
confirmed in 1583, and again in 1589. Various places throughout Scotland are
pointed out by tradition, as having been the residence of Montgomery,
particularly the ruins of Compston Castle, near Kirkcudbright, now involved
in the pleasure grounds connected with the modern mansion-house of
Dundrennan. In 1586, the poet commenced a tour of the Continent. After his
return, he was involved in a tedious and vexatious lawsuit respecting his
pension, which drew from him some severe remarks upon the lawyers and judges
of that time. Of his principal poem, "The Cherry and the Slae," the first
known edition was printed by Robert Waldegrave, in 1607. The poet appears,
from a passage in a memoir of Mure of Rowallan, [Lyle’s Ballads, London,
1827.] his nephew, to have died between this date and 1611.
"The poems of Montgomery,"
says Dr Irving, "display an elegant and lively fancy; and his versification
is often distinguished by a degree of harmony, which most of his
contemporaries were incapable of attaining. He has attempted a great variety
of subjects, as well as of measures, but his chief beauties seem to be of
the lyric kind. It is highly probable that his taste was formed by the study
of the Italian poets: he has left many sonnets constructed on the regular
model, and his quaint conceits seem not unfrequently to betray their Italian
origin. The subject of love, which has afforded so fertile a theme to the
poets of every age and nation, has furnished Montgomery with the most common
and favourite topic for the exercise of his talents . . . . . His most
serious effort is, ‘The Cherry and the Slae,’ a poem of considerable length,
and certainly of very considerable ingenuity . . . . The images are
scattered even with profusion; and almost every stanza displays the vivacity
of the author’s mind. In this, as well as in his other productions,
Montgomery’s illustrations are very frequently and very happily drawn from
the most familiar objects; and he often applies proverbial expressions in a
very pointed and pleasing manner . . . . The genuine explanation of the
allegory may perhaps be, that virtue, though of very hard attainment, ought
to be preferred to vice: virtue is represented by the cherry, a refreshing
fruit, growing upon a tall tree, and that tree rising from a formidable
precipice; vice is represented by the sloe, a fruit which may easily be
plucked, but is bitter to the taste."
"The Cherry and the Slae" has longer retained
popularity than any other poetical composition of the reign of James VI. It
continued to be occasionally printed, for popular use, till a recent period;
and in 1822, this, as well as the other poetical works of Montgomery,
appeared in a very handsome edition, under the superintendence of Mr David
Laing. Dr Irving contributed to the publication of a biographical preface,
from which we have already derived the present memoir. |
