Part 31

From the period of his imprisonment in this place, Mr. Montgomery has continued to reside in Sheffield. For the long period of half-a-century he has been essentially bound up with the literary and social progress of the place. Editing, for the greater part of that period, the Iris newspaper, on which his name and writings conferred a popular celebrity; and from time to time sending forth one of his volumes of poetry, there is no question that the influence of his taste and liberal opinions has been greatly instrumental in the growth of that spirit of intelligence and moral culture which highly distinguish Sheffield. With the religious world, as was to be expected, James Montgomery has always stood in high esteem, and in the most friendly relation. The names of Montgomery and Sheffield will always mutually present each other to the mind of the man of taste. Through his own exertions, the proceeds of his pen, and a small pension of £150 a-year, in testimony of his poetic merit, the poor orphan who set out from the little shop at Mirfield to seek fame and fortune with less than five shillings in his pocket, has now for some years retired to an enjoyment of both; and no man ever reached the calm sunshine of life's evening with a purer reputation, or a larger share of the grateful affection of his townsmen, or of the honor of his countrymen in general. One of his oldest friends, from whose written statements I have been enabled to draw some of the facts here given, has sketched the following well merited character of James Montgomery: "It may be said, that nature never infused into a human composition a greater portion of kindness and general philanthropy. A heart more sensibly alive to every better, as well as every finer feeling, never beat in a human breast. Perhaps no two individuals, in manners, pursuits, character, and composition, ever more exactly corresponded with each other, than Montgomery and Cowper. The same benevolence of heart, the same modesty of deportment, the same purity of life, the same attachment to literary pursuits, the same fondness for solitude and retirement from the public haunts of men; and to complete the picture, the same ardent feeling in the cause of religion, and the same disposition to gloom and melancholy. His person, which is rather below the middle stature, is neatly formed; his features have the general expression of simplicity and benevolence, rendered more interesting by a hue of melancholy that pervades them. When animated by conversation, his eye is uncommonly brilliant, and his whole countenance is full of intelligence. He possesses great command of language; his observations are those of an acute and penetrating mind, and his expressions are frequently strikingly metaphorical and eloquent. By all who see and converse with him he is esteemed; by all who know him, he is beloved."

Strangers visiting Sheffield will have a natural curiosity to see where Montgomery so many years resided, and whence he sent forth his poems and his politics. That spot is in the Hartshead; one of the most singular situations for such a man and purpose often to be met with. Luckily, it is in the center of the town, and not far to seek. Going up the High-street, various passages under the houses lead to one common center--the Hartshead, a sort of _cul de sac_, having no carriage-road through, but only one into it, and that not from the main street. The shop, which used to be the Iris office, is of an odd ogee shape, at the end of a row of buildings. It has huge ogee-shaped windows, with great, dark-green shutters. The door is at the corner, making it a three-cornered shop. It is now a pawnbroker's shop, the door and all round hung with old garments. The shelves are piled with bundles of pawned clothes, ticketed. The houses round this strange, hidden court, in which it stands, are nearly all public houses, as the Dove, and Rainbow, and the like, with low eating-houses, and dens of pettifogging lawyers. From what funny corners do poetic lucubrations, to say nothing of political ones, sometimes issue! The Hartshead seems just one of that sort of places in which the singular orgies of the working children of Sheffield, traced out by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the condition of children and young persons in the manufacturing districts, are held. "There are beer-houses," says the Rev. Mr. Farish, "attended by youths exclusively, for the men will not have them in the same houses with themselves. In those beer-houses the youths of both sexes are encouraged to meet, and scenes destructive of every vestige of virtue or morality ensue."

The sub-commissioner visited several of these places, attended by a policeman. He says: "We commenced our visits at about half-past nine at night. In the first place we entered, there were two rows of visitors along each side of the room, amounting to forty or fifty. They were almost entirely boys and girls under seventeen years old. They were sitting together, every boy having apparently his companion by his side. A tall woman, with one or two attendants, was serving them with drink, and three or four men were playing on wind instruments in a corner. Several boys were questioned as to their ages and occupations. Some were grinders, some hafters, and a few had no calling which it was convenient to name to the police. Some were as young as fourteen, but mostly about fifteen or sixteen years old. The younger children do not usually remain so late at these places. We visited several others. In some they were singing, in others dancing, in all drinking. In three successively they were playing at cards, which the police seized. On one occasion we went into a long and brilliantly lighted room, of which the ceiling was painted like a bower. Benches and tables were ranged along the side of each wall. This place was up a dark and narrow lane, and was crowded with young people and men and women of notorious character. There must have been a hundred persons there."

But from a glance at the orgies, which, spite of all that education and the philanthropist have so long been doing, still are to be found in the dark purlieus of the manufacturing town, we must hasten to bid adieu to the poet of religion and refinement. James Montgomery resides at the Mount, on the Glossop road, the WEST END of Sheffield. It is, I suppose, at least a mile and a half from the old Iris office, and is one regular ascent all the way. The situation is lovely, lying high; and there are many pleasant villas built on the sides of the hill in their ample pleasure-grounds, the abodes of the wealthy manufacturers. The Mount, _par excellence_, is the house, or rather terrace, where Montgomery lives. It is a large building, with a noble portico of six fine Ionic columns, so that it looks a residence fit for a prince. It stands in ample pleasure grounds, and looks over a splendid scene of hills and valleys. The rooms enjoy this fine prospect over the valleys of the Sheaf and Porter, which, however, was obscured while I was there with the smoke blowing from the town.

In the drawing-room hangs the portrait of the Incognita, on whom the beautiful lyric under that title was written, and which may be found in the same volume as Greenland. As is there stated, he saw the picture at Leamington; it hung, in fact, in his lodgings, and completely fascinated his fancy--and no wonder. One may imagine the poet, continually met on returning from his walks by that "vision of delight," addressing it in the words of that charming poem.

It is evidently a family portrait, and is no doubt by Lely or Kneller, probably by the latter; at all events by a master. It is of the size of life, three-quarters figure; a slender young lady in a pale silk dress. She is very beautiful, and the expression of her countenance is extremely amiable. All that Mr. Montgomery could learn from his landlady was, that it had belonged to Sir Charles Knightly of Warwickshire; and there can, therefore, be little doubt that this fascinating creature, fit to inspire any poet, was one of his family. The landlady, no great judge of either beauty or art, said she was willing to sell it for _two guineas_, and Montgomery, in a joyful astonishment, at once paid her the money, and secured the prize.

Below Mr. Montgomery's house, on the other side of the road, lie the botanic gardens. These stretching down the hillside, lie charmingly. They are extensive and delightful. The kind and active poet, though in his seventy-fifth year, would accompany me to see them. You enter by a sort of Grecian portico, and to the right hand along the top of the gardens, see a fine long conservatory, in which the palms, parasitical, and other tropical plants are in the most healthy state. The curator, a very sensible Scotchman, seemed to have a particular pleasure in pointing out his plants to us. What struck me most was, however, not so much the tropical plants, as the size to which he has cultivated certain plants which we commonly see small. The common, sweet-scented heliotrope, in a pot, was at least five feet high, and had a stem quite woody, and at least an inch in diameter. It formed, in fact, a tree, and being in full bloom, filled all the conservatory with its odor. The fuchsias were the same, though this is not so unusual. They were tied up to rods, and reaching to the very roof, formed archways hung with their crimson blossoms. The scarlet geraniums were the same; had stems nearly as thick as one's wrist, and were not, I suppose, less than twelve feet high. How much superior to the dwarf state in which we usually keep this magnificent plant! The curator said that they cut all the side branches from these plants quite close, in the autumn or early spring, and that they shoot out afresh and flower.

The gardens themselves are extensive, beautifully varied, richly stocked, and sloped with fine turf. In one place you come to secluded waters and thickets; in another to an open wide lawn, all filled with beds of every imaginable kind of roses in glowing masses; in another, to the remains of the original forest, with its old trees and heathery sward; and with fine views over the neighboring valleys in different directions. It is a most delightful place for walking in, and is naturally a great resort and luxury of the poet. We traversed it, I suppose, for a couple of hours in all directions, and talked over a multitude of poets and poetry. I was glad to find Montgomery as ardent an admirer of Tennyson and of Moile's State Trials as myself, my review of the latter poet in the Eclectic having first brought them under his notice. At the gate of these pleasant gardens I take my present adieu of James Montgomery, the most genuinely religious poet of the age. With a wisdom, founded not on calculation, but on a sacred sense of duty, he had made even his ambition subservient to his aspirations as a Christian, and he has thus reared for himself a pedestal in the poetic Walhalla of England peculiarly his own. The longer his fame endures, and the wider it spreads, the better it will be for virtue and for man.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Walter Savage Landor is one of the class of fortunate authors. He was born with the silver spoon in his mouth; and he was far more fortunate than the host of those who are born thus; he cared little for the silver spoon of indulgence, and has always been ready to help himself to his share of the enjoyment of life with the wooden ladle of exertion. His fortune has given him all those substantial advantages which fortune can give, and he has despised its corrupting and effeminating influence. It gave him a first-rate education; a power of going over the surface of the earth at his pleasure, of seeing all that is worth seeing at home and abroad, of indulging the real and true pleasure of surveying the varieties and the sublimities of scenery, and studying the varieties and genuine condition of man. Hence his original talents, which were strong, have been strengthened; his mind, which was naturally broad, has been expanded; his classical tastes have been perfected by the scenery of classic countries, while he read the ancient works of those countries, not twisted into pedantic one-sidedness in monkish institutions of barren learning. To him classical literature was but the literature of one, though of a fine portion of the human race. He imbibed it with a feeling of freshness where it grew, but at the same time he did not avert his eyes from the world of to-day. It was humanity in its totality which interested him. Hence the universality of his genius; the healthiness of his tastes; the soundness of his opinions. In stretching his inquiries into all corners of the world he loosened himself from the restrictions of sects, parties, and coteries. Born an aristocrat, he has nevertheless remained fully conscious of the evils of aristocracy; educated at the schools and in the bosom of the Established Church, he is as vividly sensible of the pride and worldliness of the hierarchy as any dissenter, without the peculiar bigotry and narrowness of dissent. Born a gentleman, he has felt with and for the poor; being interested, if men of landed estate are interested, in things remaining as they are, he has announced himself, in no timid terms, for advance, liberty, and law for the many.

These are the characteristics of the man and of his works. His prose and his poetry, his life and his conversation, alike display them. The man is a man of large and powerful physical frame, of a passionate, impulsive, yet reflective mind. There is no disguise about him. He lives, he writes, he talks, from the vigorous strength of this great and equally developed nature, and you can not be a day in his society without hearing him enunciate every principle of his action, and much of its history. His sentiments and doctrines seem continually to radiate on all around him, from the living central fire of a heart which feels, as a sacred duty, every great truth, which the mind has received into its settled conviction. It is therefore astonishing, after a few hours' conversation with him, to find on opening his works how much of his philosophy you are acquainted with. But though you soon learn, through the noble transparency of Landor's nature, what are his principles of action, you do not soon reach the extent of his thoughts. Those which play about his great principles, which illustrate and demonstrate them, are endless in their variety, and astonish you not the less by their originality than by their correctness. His extensive range of observation through nature, through men and things, has stored his mind with an inexhaustible accumulation of imagery, equally beautiful and effective. Whenever you meet with similes drawn from life or from nature in Landor's writings, you may rely upon their accuracy.

The same accuracy marks his conclusions regarding man and society. He is one of the few who, with the inherited means to distinguish himself in politics, to ascend in the scale of artificial life, to acquire fame and wealth by the ordinary means of promotion, has reserved himself for a higher ambition, that of directing the future rather than the present, and of living as a philosophical reformer when the bulk of his cotemporaries are dead forever to this world. For this purpose he has stood aloof from the movements of the hour; he has refused to sit in Parliament; he has gone and spent years abroad, when shallower thinkers would presume the only patriotic position was at home; and by these means he has qualified himself, in various countries and various society, but chiefly through the steady use of his faculties in poring through men and books, and viewing them on all sides, unfettered by interest and uninfluenced by hope, except that of arriving at a true knowledge of things, to speak with authority. From these causes it is that there have been and there are few men who will so permanently and so beneficially act on the progress of society as Walter Savage Landor. The independence of his position and of his nature, his thoroughly high and honorable disposition, seeking truth and hating meanness, thus aided by the wide sphere of his observation, stamp upon his experience the characters of indisputable truth and genuine wisdom. He has no petty bias to any party, any school, any religious sect--all his aspirations are for the benefit of man as man, and whatever comes in the way of the growth of what is intrinsically true, beautiful, and beneficent, he attacks with the most caustic sarcasm; strikes at it with the most ponderous or trenchant weapons that he can lay hands upon, and, careless of persons or consequences, calls on all within hearing to help him to annihilate it. In this respect his fortune has enabled him to do much with impunity.

He promulgates doctrines, and attacks selfish interests, in a manner which would, on the other hand, bring down destruction on an author who had to live by his labors. There are critics, and those calling themselves liberal, too, who have crushed others for the very deeds for which they have applauded and still continue to applaud Savage Landor. Why? Because they know that Landor is invulnerable through his property. If they raised the hue and cry against him of democrat, republican, of violent or revolutionary, he would still eat and drink independent of them; his book would remain, and his position and influence would enable it at length to testify against them. There is, moreover, a large class of critics who see principles, when they see them at all, through the medium of a man's condition in the world, and that which is audacious in a poor man, becomes only a generous boldness in a rich. If I were to select the opinions of Savage Landor on half-a-dozen great questions from his works, and quote him in all his undisguised strength upon them, I could show half-a-score men of less fortune who have been immolated by Landor's own admirers for the proclamation of these identical opinions, or whose works have been left unnoticed because they could not very consistently condemn in them what they had eulogized in him! How few men in this country can afford to be honest!

But not the less do I recognize, nor the less estimate, the sacrifices of Landor to immortal truth. Though he could not be deprived of his daily bread for his sins of plain speaking, yet he has had his share of the malevolence of the low and selfish. The reptiles have bitten, and no doubt have stung, at times, deeply, when he has trodden them beneath his feet, or flung among them his clinging and scalding Greek fire. But he knows that the fruit of his life will not be lost. Already he has lived long enough to see that the tide of opinion and reform is setting in strongly in the direction which he has indicated. It is amazing what progress the truth has made within the last twenty years; and a man like Landor knows that at every future step it must derive fresh strength from his writings. He has pandered to no corruption, he has flattered no fashion; his efforts are all directed to the uprooting of error and the spread of sound reason; and, therefore, the more the latter prevails the more his writings will grow into the spirit of the age. There are those who say that Landor's writings never can be popular. They are greatly mistaken. There is a large reading class, every day becoming larger, in which, were they made cheap enough, they would find the most lively acceptation. It is the class of the uncorrupted people itself. His opinions, and his manly, uncompromising spirit, are just what fall on the popular spirit like showers in summer. They are drank in with a thirsty avidity, and give at once life and solace. In this respect I do not hesitate to place them among the very first of the age.

The poetry of Savage Landor has not been so much read as his prose. His Imaginary Conversations have eclipsed his verse. Yet there is great vigor, much satire, and much tender feeling in his poems, which should render them acceptable to all lovers of manly writing. His Gebir was written early. The scene lies chiefly in Egypt, and introduces sorcerers, water nymphs, and the like characters, which might charm a youthful imagination, but are too far removed from reality to make them general favorites. Yet there is much fine, imaginative, and passionate poetry in this composition. His Hellenics transport you at once to the ordinary life of ancient Greece, and are written with great force, clearness, and succinct effect. His dramas of Count Julian, Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert, The Siege of Ancona, etc., are reading dramas, very fine of their kind. They abound with splendid writing and the noblest sentiments. Giovanna of Naples is one of the finest and most beautiful characters conceivable; and Fra Rupert has furnished Landor with a vehicle for expressing his indignant contempt of a proud, arbitrary, and hypocritical priest. There are many occasional verses, in which the poet has expressed the feelings of the moment, arising out of the connections and incidents of his life; and these are equally remarkable for their tenderness and their very opposite quality of caustic satire. I must not allow myself to do more than quote a few passages from his poetical writings, which are characteristic of the man. This fine one occurs in the last of his Hellenics, p. 486, vol. ii. of his uniform edition:--

"We are what suns, and winds, and waters make us; The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills Fashion and win their nurslings with their smiles. But where the land is dim from tyranny, There tiny pleasures occupy the place Of glories and of duties; as the feet Of fabled fairies, when the sun goes down, Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. Then justice, called the Eternal One above, Is more inconstant than the buoyant form That burst into existence from the froth Of ever varying ocean; what is best Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deformed. The heart is hardest in the softest climes, The passions flourish, the affections die."

This true sentiment is put into the mouth of Count Julian--page 506, vol. ii.

"All men with human feelings love their country. Not the high-born or wealthy man alone, Who looks upon his children, each one led By its gay handmaid from the high alcove, And hears them once a-day; not only he Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires The name of some far village all his own; Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills Touch the lost clouds upon the level sky: No; better men still better love their country. 'Tis the old mansion of their earliest friends, The chapel of their first and best devotions. When violence or perfidy invades, Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there, And wiser heads are drooping round its moats, At last they fix their steady and stiff eye, There, there alone, stand while the trumpet blows, And view the hostile flames above its towers Spire, with a bitter and severe delight."

There is not less truth than satire in this:--

"In all law-courts that I have ever entered The least effrontery, the least dishonesty, Has lain among the prosecuted thieves."--P. 557.