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For water and a crust they crave,
Those mouths that, even on Lent days,
Scarce knew the taste of water, save
When watering for dainties.

Quoth Jacquez, "That were sorry cheer
For men fatigued and dusty;
And if you supp'd on crusts, I fear
You'd go to bed but crusty."

So forth he brought a flask of rich

Wine fit to feast Silenus,
And viands, at the sight of which
They laugh'd like two hyenas.

Alternately, the host and spouse

Regaled each pardon-gauger,

Who told them tales right marvellous,
And lied as for a wager-

'Bout churches like balloons convey'd
With aeronautic martyrs ;

And wells made warm, where holy maid
Had only dipt her garters.

And if their hearers gaped, I guess,
With jaws three inch asunder,
"T was partly out of weariness,
And partly out of wonder.

Then striking up duets, the frères
Went on to sing in matches,
From psalms to sentimental airs,

From these to glees and catches.

At last they would have danced outright,
Like a baboon and tame bear,

If Jacquez had not drunk Good Night,
And shown them to their chamber.

The room was high, the host's was nigh: Had wife or he suspicion

That monks would make a raree-show
Of chinks in the partition?—

Or that two confessors would come,
Their holy ears outreaching
To conversations as humdrum
Almost as their own preaching?

Shame on you, friars of orders grey,

That peeping knelt, and wriggling, And when ye should have gone to pray, Betook yourselves to giggling!

But every deed will have its meed:
And hark! what information
Has made the sinners, in a trice,
Look black with consternation.

The farmer on a hone prepares

His knife, a long and keen one; And talks of killing both the frères, The fat one and the lean one.

To-morrow by the break of day,
He orders, too, saltpetre

And pickling tubs-But, reader, stay,
Our host was no man-eater.

The priests knew not that country-folks
Gave pigs the name of friars;
But startled, witless of the joke,
As if they trod on briers.

Meanwhile, as they perspired with dread,
The hair of either craven

Had stood erect upon his head,

But that their heads were shaven.

'What! pickle and smoke us limb by limb? God curse him and his larders!

St. Peter will bedevil him

If he saltpetre friars.

"Yet, Dominick, to die!-the bare Idea shakes one oddly;

Yes, Boniface, 'tis time we were
Beginning to be godly.

"Would that, for absolution's sake,
Of all our sins and cogging,
We had a whip to give and take

A last kind mutual flogging,

"O Dominick! thy nether end

Should bleed for expiation,

And thou shouldst have, my dear fat friend,
A glorious flagellation."

But having ne'er a switch, poor souls!
They bow'd like weeping willows,
And told the Saints long rigmaroles

Of all their peccadilloes.

Yet, 'midst this penitential plight,

A thought their fancies tickled; "Twere better brave the window's height Than be at morning pickled.

And so they girt themselves to leap,
Both under breath imploring
A regiment of saints, to keep

Their host and hostess snoring.

The lean one 'lighted like a cat,

Then scamper'd off like Jehu,
Nor stopp'd to help the man of fat,
Whose cheek was of a clay hue-
Who, being by nature more design'd
For resting than for jumping,

Fell heavy on his parts behind,

That broaden'd with the plumping.

There long beneath the window's sconce
His bruises he sat pawing,
Squat as the figure of a bonze

Upon a Chinese drawing.

At length he waddled to a sty;

The pigs, you'd thought for game-sake, Came round and nosed him lovingly, As if they'd known their namesake. Meanwhile the other flew to town, And with short respiration Bray'd like a donkey up and down, Ass-ass-ass-assination!"

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Men left their beds, and night-capp'd heads
Popp'd out from every casement;
The cats ran frighten'd on the leads;
Dijon was all amazement.

Doors bang'd, dogs bay'd, and boys hurra'd,
Throats gaped aghast in bare rows,
Till soundest sleeping watchmen woke,
And even at last the mayor rose-

Who, charging him before police,

Demands of Dominick surly,
What earthquake, fire, or breach of peace
Made all this hurly-burly?

"Ass" quoth the priest, "ass-assins, sir,
Are (hence a league, or nigher)
About to salt, scrape, massacre,
And barrel up a friar."

Soon, at the magistrate's command,

A troop from the gens-d'armes' house Of twenty men rode sword in hand,

To storm the bloody farm's house.

As they were cantering toward the place,
Comes Jacquez to the swine-yard,
But started when a great round face
Cried, "Rascal! hold thy whinyard."

"Twas Boniface, as mad's King Lear,

Playing antics in the piggery:
"And what the devil brought you here,
You mountain of a friar, eh?"

Ah! once how jolly, now how wan
And blubber'd with the vapors,

That frantic capuchin began
To cut fantastic capers-

Crying, "Help! hollo! the bellows blow,
The pot is on to stew me;

I am a pretty pig-but no!

They shall not barbacue me."

Nor was this raving fit a sham;
In truth he was hysterical,
Until they brought him out a dram,

And that wrought like a miracle.

Just as the horsemen halted near,

Crying, "Murderer, stop, ohoy, oh!" Jacquez was comforting the frère

With a good glass of noyau—

Who beckon'd to them not to kick up
A row; but waxing mellow,
Squeezed Jacquez' hand, and with a hickup
Said, "You're a damn'd good fellow."
Explaining lost but little breath :---

Here ended all the matter;
So God save Queen Elizabeth,

And long live Henri Quatre!

The gens-d'armes at the story broke
Into horse-fits of laughter,
And, as if they had known the joke,
Their horses neigh'd thereafter.
Lean Dominick, methinks, his chaps
Yawn'd weary, worn, and moody;
So may my readers' too, perhaps,
And thus I wish 'em good day.

178

THE END OF CAMPBELL'S WORKS.

THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

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The Tombs of the Fathers

193

Memoir of James Montgomery.

THE little port of Irvine in the county of Ayr-Jown faith. His instruction was, however, carefully shire, North Britain, was the place where JAMES attended to, and he was taught assiduously the MONTGOMERY first saw the day. He was born on Greek, Latin, French, and German languages, the 4th of November, 1771. His father was one independently of the common and inferior acof that singular and exemplary body of Christians quirements deemed necessary to pupils in every denominated Moravians, a sect by no means nu- station of life.

merous in Great Britain, and least of all in Scot

Before Montgomery had attained his tenth land: the religious tenets with which the subject year, he exhibited his inclination for poetry. of the present memoir was thus impressed in his The peculiar opinions and discipline of the Moearliest youth, have tinged his writings, and been ravians were calculated to cherish his propensity reflected in his subsequent conduct through life. for the Muse. The monotony of his life, the He did not long remain in his native town, for, well-nigh cloistered seclusion of the scholars, and at four years of age, his father took him over the system which inculcated the doctrines of the to Ireland, his parents having fixed their resi- brethren, nurtured that sombre and melancholy dence at Gracehill in the county of Antrim. He bias which is always inherent in the poetical sojourned, however, but a short time in Ireland, temperament. The indulgence of the imagination for his father, most probably with the view of under such circumstances tends to render the affording him the benefits either of a better edu- mind exquisitely susceptible of external imprescation, or one more consistent with his own re-sions. The love of Jesus Christ, to which every ligious tenets, sent him to England, and he was instruction of the Moravian brethren directs placed at a Moravian seminary at Fulnick in the mind of the pupil, and which is the chief Yorkshire, where he remained ten years. awakener of their feelings, they making the Soon after the establishment of Montgomery at second Person of the Trinity the object of broFulnick, his father and mother left Ireland for the therly affection as well as of adoration, was a West Indies. The elder Montgomery had under-captivating theme for the young poet. The hymns taken the duty of a missionary to instruct the of the Moravians were the seducers of Montnegroes in the doctrines of Christianity. Both gomery into the flowery paths of poesy. Religious father and mother fell victims to that pestilential aspirations, the tender affection, the beauty of climate, the one in Barbadoes, and the other in holiness, kindled the love of sacred song in his Tobago. To their fate it is the poet so beautifully callow bosom. A little volume was soon filled alludes when he writes

My father-mother-parents, are no more!

Beneath the Lion star they sleep

Beyond the western deep;

with the effusions of his young imagination, and first developed that genius to which the virtuous part of mankind have since not hesitated to do the justice it merits. He knew nothing at this And when the sun's noon glory crests the waves, time of the English poets, for they were carefully He shines without a shadow on their graves!— kept out of sight by his instructors, lest some Montgomery was not the only offspring thus dangerous passage should give a pruriency for left to the wide world; his parents had two other unhallowed and contagious principles. The little children, who were, it is said, placed under the volume was therefore wholly his own. The father guardianship of the benevolent body of Christians of one of the boys had sent a volume of selected to which their parents had belonged. During poems from Milton, Thomson, and Young, to the time the subject of the present memoir was his son, yet, though the choicest and most moral at Fulnick, he was carefully excluded from the passages only were selected, it was clipt and world. The institutions of the Moravian brethren mangled by the good brethren before it was deare almost monastically rigid. For ten years that livered to its owner. The natural consequence he was in this seminary, he scarcely saw or con- ensued,-Montgomery clandestinely borrowed versed with any individual who was not of their books, and read them by stealth.

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