MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

(APRIL, 1830.)

1. The Omnipresence of the Deity: a Poem. BY ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Eleventh Edition. London: 1830.

drew near. "Let us ask this man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, "Oh stranger, what dost thou call this beast ?'

min said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses;" and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.

2. Satan: a Poem. By ROBERT MONT- " Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, GOMERY. Second Edition. London: 1830." it is a fine sheep." Then the BrahTHE wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay. Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember A pious Brahmin, it is written, made rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit a vow that on a certain day he would sop. The moral, like the moral of sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed every fable that is worth the telling, morning he went forth to buy one. lies on the surface. The writer eviThere lived in his neighbourhood three dently means to caution us against the rogues who knew of his vow, and laid practices of puffers, a class of people a scheme for profiting by it. The first who have more than once talked the met him and said, "Oh Brahmin, wilt public into the most absurd errors, thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for but who surely never played a more sacrifice." "It is for that very pur- curious or a more difficult trick than pose," said the holy man, "that I when they passed Mr. Robert Montcame forth this day." Then the im-gomery off upon the world as a great postor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue, callest thou that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, "it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," said the Brahmin, "either thou or I must be blind."

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poet.

In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to proJust then one of the accomplices duce, pass into their character. They came up. "Praised be the gods," said become the parasites and slaves of the this second rogue," that I have been great. It is melancholy to think how saved the trouble of going to the mar- many of the highest and most exquiket for a sheep! This is such a sheep sitely formed of human intellects have as I wanted. For how much wilt thou been condemned to the ignominious sell it?" When the Brahmin heard labour of disposing the commonplaces this, his mind waved to and fro, like of adulation in new forms and brightone swinging in the air at a holy fes-ening them into new splendour. Hotival. "Sir," said he to the new comer, race invoking Augustus in the most "take heed what thou dost; this is no enthusiastic language of religious venesheep, but an unclean cur." "Oh ration; Statius flattering a tyrant, and Brahmin," said the new comer, "thou the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of art drunk or mad!" bread; Ariosto versifying the whole At this time the third confederate | genealogy of a niggardly patron; Tasso

man then living, except himself, could have produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the literary character so much better than they had done.

From the time of Pope to the present

extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a med-house: these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which those must submit who, not possessing a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read. This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the middle day the readers have been constantly of the last century a marked change becoming more and more numerous, took place. The tone of literary men, and the writers, consequently, more both in this country and in France, and more independent. It is assuredly became higher and more independent. a great evil that men, fitted by their Pope boasted that he was the "one talents and acquirements to enlighten poet" who had "pleased by manly and charm the world, should be reways;" he derided the soft dedications duced to the necessity of flattering with which Halifax had been fed, as-wicked and foolish patrons in return serted his own superiority over the pen- for the sustenance of life. But, though sioned Boileau, and gloried in being not the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale of his writings, realised a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. Whether the old or the new vice be The idea of either of those gentlemen the worse, whether those who formerly looking out for some lord who would lavished insincere praise on others, or be likely to give him a few guineas in those who now contrive by every art of return for a fulsome dedication seems beggary and bribery to stun the public laughably incongruous. Yet this is with praises of themselves, disgrace exactly what Dryden or Otway would their vocation the more deeply, we shall have done; and it would be hard to not attempt to decide. But of this we blame them for it. Otway is said to are sure, that it is high time to make a have been choked with a piece of bread stand against the new trickery. The which he devoured in the rage of puffing of books is now so shamefully hunger; and, whether this story be and so successfully carried on that it is true or false, he was beyond all ques- the duty of all who are anxious for the tion miserably poor. Dryden, at near purity of the national taste, or for the seventy, when at the head of the lite-honour of the literary character, to join rary men of England, without equal or in discountenancing the practice. second, received three hundred pounds the pens that ever were employed in for his Fables, a collection of ten thou- magnifying Bish's lucky office, Rosand verses, and of such verses as no manis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's

we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors from the time of Mæcenas to that of Harley would not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing.

All

razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, thought expedient that the puffer all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all should put on a grave face, and utter the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin, his panegyric in the form of admoniseem to have taken service with the Foets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our boot-maker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters.

tion. "Such attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned. Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that a writer of such transcendent talents, a writer who is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should show so little tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been constantly mingling in society." These are but tame and feeble imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant undertakes to tell the public in bad English and worse French, how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words " Advertisement," or "From a Correspondent," to such paragraphs. But this makes little difference. The panegyric is extracted, and the significant heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with "Times" or 'Globe" affixed, though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it than with Mr. Goss's way of making old rakes young again.

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It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simpleminded people. "Pathetic," "sublime," "splendid," "graceful," "brilliant wit," That people who live by personal exquisite humour," and other phrases slander should practise these arts is equally flattering, fall in a shower as not surprising. Those who stoop to thick and as sweet as the sugar-plums write calumnious books may well stoop at a Roman carnival. Sometimes to puff them; and that the basest of greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is

all trades should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite proper and as it should be. But how any man who has the least self-respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can condescend to persecute the public with this Rag-fair importunity, we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts,

as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants in the one way as in the other.

be easily persuaded by a knot of con noisseurs that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a delicacy of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he cannot distinguish hands, as practised judges distinguish them, that he is not familiar with the finest models, that he has never looked at them with close attention, and that, when the general effect of a piece has pleased him or displeased him, he has never troubled himself to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom he thinks more competent to judge than himself, and

It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that his works should come before the public recommended by their own merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If his objects of whose sincerity he entertains no be really such as he may own without shame, he will find that they will, in the long run, be better attained by suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present, we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as Shakspeare's usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham to the author's Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, and at last join in shouting for shouting's sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which has no right to it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependents.

doubt, assure him that a particular work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency.

Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a poem or a novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the mean time, little or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the The opinion of the great body of the publisher are interested in crying up reading public is very materially influ- the book. Nobody has any very strong enced even by the unsupported asser- interest in crying it down. Those who tions of those who assume a right to are best fitted to guide the public opicriticize. Nor is the public altogether nion think it beneath them to expose to blame on this account. Most even mere nonsense, and comfort themselves of those who have really a great enjoy-by reflecting that such popularity canment in reading are in the same state, not last. This contemptuous lenity with respect to a book, in which a man who has never given particular attention to the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating the best pictures,

has been carried too far. It is per-
fectly true that reputations which have
been forced into an unnatural bloom
fade almost as soon as they have ex-
panded; nor have we any apprehen-
sions that puffing will ever raise any
scribbler to the rank of a classic.
is indeed amusing to turn over some
late volumes of periodical works, and

It

to see how many immortal productions them. Those who will not stoop to have, within a few months, been ga- the baseness of the modern fashion are thered to the Poems of Blackmore and too often discouraged. Those who do the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many stoop to it are always degraded. "profound views of human nature," We have of late observed with great and "exquisite delineations of fashion-pleasure some symptoms which lead us able manners," and "vernal, and sunny, to hope that respectable literary men and refreshing thoughts," and "high of all parties are beginning to be impaimaginings," and "young breathings," tient of this insufferable nuisance. And and "embodyings," and "pinings," we purpose to do what in us lies for the and "minglings with the beauty of the abating of it. We do not think that we universe," and "harmonies which dis- can more usefully assist in this good work solve the soul in a passionate sense of than by showing our honest countrymen loveliness and divinity," the world has what that sort of poetry is which puffing contrived to forget. The names of the can drive through eleven editions, and books and of the writers are buried how easily any bellman might, if a in as deep an oblivion as the name of bellman would stoop to the necessary the builder of Stonehenge. Some of degree of meanness, become a" masterthe well puffed fashionable novels of spirit of the age." We have no enmity eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know the pastry of eighteen hundred and nothing whatever about him, except thirty; and others, which are now ex- what we have learned from his books, tolled in language almost too high- and from the portrait prefixed to one flown for the merits of Don Quixote, of them, in which he appears to be will, we have no doubt, line the trunks doing his very best to look like a man of eighteen hundred and thirty-one. of genius and sensibility, though with But, though we have no apprehensions less success than his strenuous exerthat puffing will ever confer permanent tions deserve. We select him, because reputation on the undeserving, we still his works have received more enthusithink its influence most pernicious. astic praise, and have deserved more Men of real merit will, if they perse- unmixed contempt, than any which, as vere, at last reach the station to which far as our knowledge extends, have they are entitled, and intruders will be appeared within the last three or four ejected with contempt and derision. years. His writing bears the same reBut it is no small evil that the avenues lation to poetry which a Turkey carpet to fame should be blocked up by a bears to a picture. There are colours swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pre- in the Turkey carpet out of which a tenders, who, though they will not picture might be made. There are ultimately be able to make good their words in Mr. Montgomery's writing own entrance, hinder, in the mean which, when disposed in certain orders time, those who have a right to enter. and combinations, have made, and will All who will not disgrace themselves by again make, good poetry. But, as joining in the unseemly scuffle must ex- they now stand, they seem to be put pect to be at first hustled and shouldered together on principle in such a manner back. Some men of talents, accord-as to give no image of any thing "in ingly, turn away in dejection from pursuits in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. Others employ in self-defence the means by which competitors, far inferior to themselves, appear for a time to obtain a decided advantage. There are few who have sufficient confidence in their own powers and sufficient elevation of mind to wait with secure and contemptuous patience, while dunce after dunce presses before

the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth."

The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with a description of the creation, in which we can find only one thought which has the least pretension to ingenuity, and that one thought is stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing :

"Last, softly beautiful, as music's close, Angelic woman into being rose,”