PREFACE.

WE introduce to our readers James Montgomery. His English biographers, Mr. John Holland and Rev. James Everett, with affectionate assiduity have issued his life in seven volumes. Precious as the most insignificant memorials of him must be to personal friends, and interesting as are all the links which bind a man to his own country, a great portion of this ample detail possesses little, if any interest, to an American public. It therefore has been our work to sift out from this the true wheat of his life, and mould it anew.

With none of the classic richness of Rogers, the weird originality of Coleridge, the introspective sweetness of Wordsworth, or the fascinating romance of Scott, there is a moral earnestness, an unaffected grace, a purity of diction, which penetrate the heart and place his poetry among the permanent literature of England.

The Christian element of his hymns gave them wings. Besides expressing what the renewed soul has felt through all ages, he gave utterance to many of the new forms