For water and a crust they crave, Quoth Jacquez, "That were sorry cheer You'd go to bed but "rusty." So forth he brought a flask of rich Wine fit to feast Silenus, Alternately, the host and spouse Regaled each pardon-gauger, 'Bout churches like balloons convey'd And wells made warm, where holy maid And if their hearers gaped, I guess, Then striking up duets, the frères From these to glees and catches. At last they would have danced outright, If Jacquez had not drunk Good Night, The room was high, the host's was nigh: Had wife or he suspicion That monks would make a raree-show Or that two confessors would come, 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: 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 Meanwhile, as they perspired with dread, 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 Yes, Boniface, 'tis time we were "Would that, for absolution's sake, A last kind mutual flogging. "O Dominick! thy nether end Should bleed for expiation, And thou shouldst have, my dear fat friend, But having ne'er a switch, poor souls! 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, Their host and hostess snoring. Then scamper'd off like Jehu, Fell heavy on his parts behind, That broaden'd with the plumping. There long beneath the window's sconce 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!" Men left their beds, and night-capp'd heads Popp'd out from every casement; Doors bang'd, dogs bay'd, and boys hurra'd, Who, charging him before police, Demands of Dominick surly, "Ass-" quoth the priest, "ass-assins, sir, 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." "T was Boniface, as mad's King Lear, Ah! once how jolly, now how wan THE END OF CAMPBELL'S WORKS. Stanzas to the Memory of the Rev. T. Spencer 152 Human Life..... A Voyage round the World 153 The Tombs of the Fathers Memoir of James Montgomery. THE little port of Irvine in the county of Ayr-own 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 poct. 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! 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. |