Part 16

Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid eyes, on the lambent beauty of which it is sweet to gaze, harmonize admirably with the idea of a sentry.

We would not be understood, however, to say, that Mr. Robert Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few lines further on, we find one {203}which has every mark of originality, and on which, we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has plundered will ever think of making reprisals:

“The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount,

As streams meander level with their fount."

We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards.

We have then an apostrophe to the Deity, couched in terms which, in any writer who dealt in meanings, we should call profane, but to which we suppose Mr. Robert Montgomery attaches no idea whatever.

“Yes! pause and think, within one fleeting hour,

How vast a universe obeys Thy power;

Unseen, but felt, Thine interfused control

Works in each atom, and pervades the whole;

Expands the blossom, and erects the tree,

Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea,

Beams in each ray, bids whirlwinds be unfurl’d,

Unrolls the thunder, and upheaves a world!”

No field-preacher surely ever carried his irreverent familiarity so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the importance of the interests which are under his care. The grotesque indecency of such an address throws into shade the subordinate absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of whirlwinds, the unrolling of thunder, and the upheaving of worlds.

Then comes a curious specimen of our poet’s English:

“Yet not alone created realms engage

Thy faultless wisdom, grand, primeval sage!

For all the thronging woes to life allied

Thy mercy tempers, and Thy cares provide."

{204}We should be glad to know what the word “For” means here. If it is a preposition, it makes nonsense of the words, “Thy mercy tempers.” If it is an adverb, it makes nonsense of the words, “Thy cares provide.”

These beauties we have taken, almost at random, from the first part of the poem. The second part is a series of descriptions of various events, a battle, a murder, an execution, a marriage, a funeral, and so forth. Mr. Robert Montgomery terminates each of these descriptions by assuring us that the Deity was present at the battle, murder, execution, marriage, or funeral in question. And this proposition, which might be safely predicated of every event that ever happened or ever will happen, forms the only link which connects these descriptions with the subject or with each other.

How the descriptions are executed our readers are probably by this time able to conjecture. The battle is made up of the battles of all ages and nations: “red-mouthed cannons, uproaring to the clouds,” and “hands grasping firm the glittering shield.” The only military operations of which this part of the poem reminds us, are those which reduced the Abbey of Quedlinburgh to submission, the Templar with his cross, the Austrian and Prussian grenadiers in full uniform, and Curtius and Dentatus with their battering-ram. We ought not to pass unnoticed the slain war-horse, who will no more

“Roll his red eye, and rally for the fight;"

or the slain warrior who, while “lying on his bleeding breast,” contrives to “stare ghastly and grimly on the skies.” As to this last exploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar occasion,

“Forse per forza gia di’ parlasia

Si stravolse lost alenn del tutto:

Ma iô nol vidi, nè credo clie sia."

{205}The tempest is thus described:

“But lo! around the marsh’lling clouds unite,

Like thick battalions halting for the fight;

The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep

Fierce through the air, and flutter on the deep.

Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts,

Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,

And the lash’d billows, rolling in a train,

Rear their white heads, and race along the main!”

What, we should like to know, is the difference between the two operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately distinguishes from each other, the fierce sweeping of the tempest-spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac blasts from their caverns? And why does the former operation end exactly when the latter commences?

We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s descriptions. We have a shipwrecked sailor, who “visions a viewless temple in the air;” a murderer who stands on a heath, “with ashy lips, in cold convulsion spread;” a pious man, to whom, as he lies in bed at night,

“The panorama of past life appears,

Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears;"

a traveller, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the “cloud-battalion,” and the want of “heaven-lamps, to beam their holy light.” We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen from that incomparable passage in Crabbe’s Borough, which has made many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child. We can, however, conscientiously declare that persons of the most excitable sensibility may safely venture upon Mr. {206}Robert Montgomery’s version. Then we have the “poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac boy,” who

Rolls his vacant eye,

To greet the glowing fancies of the sky.”

What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow?

“A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,

He loves to commune with the fields and floods."

How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead.

Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him.

“O Death! though dreadless vanquisher of earth,

The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!

Careering round the world like tempest wind,

Martyrs before, and victims strew’d behind;

Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,

Dragging the world into eternity!”

If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries.

We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio, “Why, this is a more excellent song than the other.” Mr. Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it,

One great Enchanter helm’d the harmonious whole"

What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a {207}helm has to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his argument thus:

“And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed

All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named;

The spacious world, and all its wonders, born

Designless, sell-created, and forlorn;

Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream,

Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?"

We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery’s logic. He informs us that lightning is designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the Deity who bids “thunder rattle from the skiey deep.” His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the lightning made itself.

But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s metaphysics are not at present our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism.

“Then, blood-stain’d Murder, bare thy hideous arm,

And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm:

Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime;

Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!”

Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, we need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing more is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a word with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, bare her arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope. But what possible motive Rebellion can have for weltering in her storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits may be, why they should burst from their bonds, what their bonds may be, why they should battle with the time, what the time may be, and {208}what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to understand.

“And here let Memory turn her tearful glance

On the dark horrors of tumultuous France,

When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,

And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand."

Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these three metaphors would mean, we know no more than we know what is the sense of the following passage:

“Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime

Picture the raging havoc of that time,

When leagued Rebellion march’d to kindle man,

Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van.

And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter’d Queen,

Who dropp’d no tear upon the dreadful scene,

When gush’d the life-blood from thine angel form,

And martyr’d beauty perish’d in the storm,

Once worshipp’d paragon of all who saw,

Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law."

What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging havoc which the foul orgies are to picture? Why does Fright go behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Murder fall behind Fright? Or why should not all the three walk abreast? We have read of a hero who had

“Amazement in his van, with flight combined,

And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind."

Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, “Flower of Austria” is stolen from Byron. “Dropp’d” is false English. “Perish’d in the storm” means nothing at all; and “thy look obedience’’ means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgomery intends to say. {209}Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the soul:

“And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die,

When dust and darkness round its temple lie?

Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire,

Dimless and quenchless, though the breath expire?"

The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though dust and darkness lie round its temple, because an ethereal fire has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes, and has fire breathed into it?

Mr. Montgomery apostrophizes the

“Immortal beacons,--spirits of the just,"

and describes their employments in another world, which are to be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and riding on living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then begin to advance. {210}The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder.

“Creation shudders with sublime dismay,

And in a blazing tempest whirls away."

And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over and over again, in terms which would require some qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, verses fit only for the poet’s corner of the Morning Post, can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer’s poetry has been greater than that of Southey’s Roderick, and beyond all comparison greater than that of Cary’s Dante or of the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged Mr. Robert Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the examination of his first and most popular performance that we have none to spare for his Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, entitled Satan.

This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the {211}puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.

Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. “Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason.” Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, polities, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Lord Byron’s poetry, and Mr. Martin’s pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandæmonium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily.

The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: “Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.” And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that “the prince of darkness is a gentleman” but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking {212}place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment.

It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of “Gabriel.” The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.

We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralises thereon as follows:

“Music and Pomp their mingling spirits shed

Around me; beauties in their cloud-like robes

Shine forth,--a scenic paradise, it glares

Intoxication through the reeling sense

Of flush’d enjoyment. In the motley host

Three prime gradations may be rank’d: the first,

To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare’s mind,

And win a flash of his Promethean thought,--

To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve

A round of passionate omnipotence,

Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,

Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,

On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,

While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes

Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire:

The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,

With their corroded figures, rayless glance,

And death-like struggle of decaying age,

Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp

Set forth to satirize the human kind!--

How fine a prospect for demoniac view!

‘Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!’

Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry."

{213}Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint, And, to show that we are not actuated by any feelings of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery.

SADLER’S LAW OF POPULATION. (1)

(_Edinburgh Review_, July 1830.)

We {214}did not expect a good book from Mr. Sadler: and it is well that we did not; for he has given us a very bad one. The matter of his treatise is extraordinary; the manner more extraordinary still. His arrangement is confused, his repetitions endless, his style everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similes,--all the worst of their respective kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabby finery with so much profusion and so little discrimination, that they remind us of a company of wretched strolling players, who have huddled on suits of ragged and faded tinsel, taken from a common wardrobe, and fitting neither their persons

(1) _The Law of Population: a Treatise in Six Books, in Disproof of the Perfecundity of Human Beings, and developing the real Principle of their Increase_. By Michael Thomas Sadlek, M. P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830.

{215}nor their parts; and who then exhibit themselves to the laughing and pitying spectators, in a state of strutting, ranting, painted, gilded beggary. “Oh, rare Daniels!”

“Political economist, go and do thou likewise!”

“Hear, ye political economists and anti-populationists!” “Population, if not proscribed and worried down by the Cerberean dogs of this wretched and cruel system, really does press against the level of the means of subsistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to urge society through advancing stages, till at length the strong and resistless hand of necessity presses the secret spring of human prosperity, and the portals of Providence fly open, and disclose to the enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and rewarded labour.” These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr. Sadler’s eloquence. We could easily multiply them; but our readers, we fear, are already inclined to cry for mercy.

Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes, sometimes rightly quoted, sometimes wrongly,--sometimes good, sometimes insufferable,--sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and sometimes, for aught we know, Mr. Sadler’s own. “Let man,” cries the philosopher, “take heed how he rashly violates his trust;” and thereupon he breaks forth into singing as follows:

“What myriads wait in destiny’s dark womb,

Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb!

’Tis his to blot them from the book of fate,

Or, like a second Deity, create;

To dry the stream of being in its source,

Or bid it, widening, win its restless course;

While, earth and heaven replenishing, the flood

Rolls to its Ocean fount, and rests in God."

If these lines are not Mr. Sadler’s, we heartily beg {216}his pardon for our suspicion--a suspicion which, we acknowledge, ought not to be lightly entertained of any human being. We can only say that we never met with them before, and that we do not much care how long it may be before we meet with them, or with any others like them, again.

The spirit of this work is as bad as its style. We never met with a book which so strongly indicated that the writer was in a good humour with himself, and in a bad humour with everybody else; which contained so much of that kind of reproach which is vulgarly said to be no slander, and of that kind of praise which is vulgarly said to be no commendation. Mr. Malthus is attacked in language which it would be scarcely decent to employ respecting Titus Oates. “Atrocious,” “execrable,” “blasphemous,” and other epithets of the same kind, are poured forth against that able, excellent, and honourable man, with a profusion which in the early part of the work excites indignation, but, after the first hundred pages, produces mere weariness and nausea. In the preface, Mr. Sadler excuses himself on the plea of haste. Two-thirds of his book, he tells us, were written in a few months. If any terms have escaped him which can be construed into personal disrespect, he shall deeply regret that he had not more time to revise them. We must inform him that the tone of his book required a very different apology; and that a quarter of a year, though it is a short time for a man to be engaged in writing a book, is a very long time for a man to be in a passion.

The imputation of being in a passion Mr. Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which “it were impious to be calm;” and he boasts that, “instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has {217}imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom throughout.” If Mr. Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principle of population should be carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, we can have no personal objections. We are quite as little afraid of a contest in which quarter shall be neither given nor taken as he can be. But we would advise him seriously to consider, before he publishes the promised continuation of his work, whether he be not one of that class of writers who stand peculiarly in need of the candour which he insults, and who would have most to fear from that unsparing severity which he practises and recommends.