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Memoir of James Montgomery.

THE little port of Irvine in the county of Ayrshire, North Britain, was the place where JAMES MONTGOMERY first saw the day. He was born on the fourth of November, 1771. His father was one of that singular and exemplary body of Christiaus denominated Moravians, a sect by no means numerous in Great Britain, and least of all in Scotland: the religious tenets with which the subject of the present memoir was thus impressed in his earliest youth, have tinged his writings, and been reflected in his subsequent conduct through life. He did not long remain in his native town, for, at four years of age, his father took him over to Ireland, his parents having fixed their residence at Gracehill in the county of Antrim. He sojourned, however, but a short time in Ireland, for his father, most probably with the view of affording him the benefits either of a better education, or one more consistent with his own religious tenets, sent him to England, and he was placed at a Moravian seminary at Fulnick in Yorkshire, where he remained ten years.

own faith. His instruction was, however, carefully attended to, and he was taught assiduously the Greek, Latin, French, and German languages, independently of the common and inferior acquirements deemed necessary to pupils in every station of life.

Before Montgomery had attained his tenth year, he exhibited his inclination for poetry. The peculiar opinions and discipline of the Moravians were calculated to cherish his propensity for the Muse. The monotony of his life, the well-nigh cloistered seclusion of the scholars, and the system which inculcated the doctrines of the brethren, nurtured that sombre and melancholy bias which is always inherent in the poetical temperament. The indulgence of the imagination under such circumstances tends to render the mind exquisitely susceptible of external impressions. The love of Jesus Christ, to which every instruction of the Moravian brethren directs the mind of the pupil, and which is the chief 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 negroes in the doctrines of Christianity. Both father and mother fell victims to that pestilential climate, the one in Barbadoes, and the other in Tobago. To their fate it is the poet so beautifully alludes when he writes

My father-mother-parents, are no more!
Beneath the Lion star they sleep
Beyond the western deep;

And when the sun's noon glory crests the waves,
He shines without a shadow on their graves!—
Montgomery was not the only offspring thus
left to the wide world; his parents had two other
children, who were, it is said, placed under the
guardianship of the benevolent body of Christians
to which their parents had belonged. During
the time the subject of the present memoir was
at Fulnick, he was carefully excluded from the
world. The institutions of the Moravian brethren
are almost monastically rigid. For ten years that
he was in this seminary he scarcely saw or con-
versed with any individual who was not of their

of the Moravians were the seducers of Montgomery into the flowery paths of poesy. Religious aspirations, the tender affection, the beauty of holiness, kindled the love of sacred song in his callow bosom. A little volume was soon filled 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 time of the English poets, for they were carefully kept out of sight by his instructors, lest some dangerous passage should give a pruriency for unhallowed and contagious principles. The little volume was therefore wholly his own. The father of one of the boys had sent a volume of selected poems from Milton, Thomson, and Young, to his son, yet, though the choicest and most moral passages only were selected, it was clipt and mangled by the good brethren before it was delivered to its owner. The natural consequence ensued,-Montgomery clandestinely borrowed books, and read them by stealth.

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At fourteen years of age, besides two manuscript volumes of his verses, he had composed a mock-heroic poem of a thousand lines, in three cantos: it was an imitation of The Frogs and Mice» of Homer. From his companions and friends he received praises which excited him to fresh exertions. He planned several epic poems, for nothing short of an epic would satisfy his craving desire for literary fame, till after much of resolve and re-resolve, he began one under the title of « Alfred the Great.» Of this poem he completed two books; the boldness of the attempt seems to have alarmed the good fathers of the Fulnick academy. Such a flight by a youth destined for the study of divinity (the profession which they had in prospect for their pupil being that of a minister), was by no means suitable to their ideas of the fitness of things. The young poet panted for the great world, to live among and study mankind; the brethren strove to stifle these desires, and to lead back the erring imagination of their pupil to serious realities, and devotional resignation. The world to him was yet a pure mystery, while his longing desire to mingle in it no discipline could repress. His health became affected in the contest. The irresistible promptings of genius, however, were ultimately triumphant. The Moravian brethren finding they could not succeed in recalling him to the line of conduct and study which they deemed proper for a minister of their persuasion, and seeing that an opposite desire was fixing itself deeper and deeper in his heart, had the good sense to give up their object, and to place him in trade with a brother believer, who was in business at Mirfield, near Wakefield, in the same county.

Montgomery thus affords another instance of the triumph of genius over almost insuperable obstacles. Nature awoke in his bosom those mysterious impulses which have been developed in many other minds similarly constituted-in many other master spirits, which have made to themselves immortal names in all ages and countries, breaking the gloom in which the accidents of birth and fortune may have placed them, and becoming shining lights to the world. In his new situation, little congenial to an aspiring mind, Montgomery continued but a year. He had formed in his imagination the most elevated and erroneous ideas of the great world; he saw it in perspective, all glorious and honourable; he panted to be distinguished among men; and full of the delusions of youth in this respect, in which we are all more or less prone to indulge in the morning of life, he penned a letter to his master, and with a few clothes and three shillings and sixpence in money in his pocket, he left his do

micile to plunge into that paradise of honour and fame which fancy had so gorgeously depicted. He was not an articled apprentice, and therefore he violated no contract by his elopement. He was at this time but sixteen years of age, and thus young he cast himself upon fortune, a wild and inexperienced adventurer.

The usual result followed. The world had appeared a fairy picture in his imagination, but it proved in reality to be just what it is, a region of struggles and disappointments. On the fourth day after his departure from Fulnick, he found himself obliged to enter into a situation similar to that which he had held but a short time previously, at a place called Wash. From thence he wrote to his late employer and demanded a character, for he had hitherto preserved his own without the slightest moral taint. The master consulted his Moravian friends, who respected the virtues and talents of Montgomery, and agreed to give him any character necessary, but desired that he might be invited to return to them. The worthy man set off accordingly, and met Montgomery in an inn-yard, on his arrival at Wash, and they rushed at once by a sort of kindred sympathy into each other's arms. It was in vain, however, that the master invited his late pupil to return by the most flattering offers of profit; the young poet resisted them all. The benefactor was not the less kind. He supplied his wants; sent him the clothes and property he had left in his possession, and gave him a testimonial of his esteem in a written document to exhibit when required. new situation he remained about a year, during which period he punctually fulfilled the duties of his station; but nursed at the same time the sombre character which his peculiar religious education, and the bent of his genius, both contributed to encourage.

In his

Mr Harrison, a bookseller of Paternoster-row, having received a volume of his poems in manuscript, before he quitted Wash for London, took him on his arrival into his employ, and recommended him to cultivate his talents, which in time, he told him, he had no doubt would render him distinguished. The toil of a bookseller's clerk, in the dingy purlieus of the Row, was a complete cure for Montgomery's delusion respecting the great world, its glorious honours, and all its bright dreams of immortality. Having in vain endeavoured to induce a bookseller to treat with him for a prose tale, he left Mr Harrison's employ at the end of eight months, and returned into Yorkshire to the situation he had previously held. It is no slight proof of Montgomery's excellent character and disposition, that he won the affection of his employers succes

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sively, who all treated him like a son. So strong quitted England, was unluckily published from was the attachment of his master at Wash, his office. It was written by a clergyman to that even in the future troubles of the poet's commemorate the destruction of the Bastille in life he supported him, not merely with empty 1789, and was sung openly at Belfast in 1792. consolation, but with more solid and substantial The war broke out nine months after it was aid. The master sought out his former servant written, and half the newspapers in the kingdom when he was on the point of being tried in a had printed it; yet the unlucky ballad-singer, at court of law for libel, and comforted and con- whose suggestion it was carried to the press to soled him. strike off a few copies, was arrested selling them at Wakefield, became evidence against the printer, and in 1795 Montgomery was found guilty of publishing." This would not do for the ser vile judges, who made the jury re-consider their verdict, and after an hour's hesitation, they brought in a verdict of guilty. Montgomery was fined twenty pounds, and imprisoned for three months, in the Castle of York. As always happens in a country like England, when freedom of mind is interfered with, the sufferer is borne above persecution by those honest sympathising spirits that step forward to his support. Montgomery found his newspaper and business carefully superintended by a friend, and he was welcomed from prison as the victim of an unjust sentence. On his deliverance from his incarceration, he resumed his professional labours, and avoided every extreme in politics. He printed numerous essays in his paper under different heads; some humorous, others serious, but all agreeable and entertaining. These essays were published in a volume, long out of print, and now not easily attainable.

The bent of Montgomery's mind was still towards literature. A newspaper which had been very popular, published at Sheffield by a Mr Gales, had received many of the young poet's contributions. This paper was called the Sheffield Register. It does not appear that Montgomery contributed any political writing to its pages, his communications being chiefly poetical; but he assisted Mr Gales in his occupation, and removed to Sheffield for that purpose in 1792. In the following year Montgomery was assailed by illness, during which he was nursed, and most kindly treated in the family of Mr Gales, having been, as usual, successful in winning the sympathies of those around him. It was not long after this that a political prosecution was instituted against the proprietor of the Sheffield Register, and Mr Gales left England to avoid a prosecution. At that time the quailing cause of arbitrary authority, and divine political right, was making its last struggles against freedom and common sense. Libels were sought for, and prosecuted with rigour, and not even the most cautious individual of honest principles could be deemed safe from attack. Montgomery on the departure of Mr Gales, being assisted by a friend, became the publisher of the newspaper himself; the name of which he changed to that of the Iris. It was now conducted with less party violence than before, while a greater variety of miscellaneous matter was to be found in its columns. The cause supported by Montgomery was always that of political independence, humanity, and freedom. The tone of his paper was exceedingly temperate, but firm: indeed it was so moderate as to give offence to all violent party men who dealt in extremes, and imagined the cause of liberty could only be supported by noisy declamation. In his newspaper he had a series of articles inserted under the title of « The Enthusiast, which attracted particular attention from being pictures of his own mind. There were other articles which drew much notice, from the impress of genius they exhibited.

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Notwithstanding the moderation of our poeteditor, it was not long before the fangs of the harpies of the law were upon him. A song written and prepared for publication before Mr Gales

When the emissaries of the law lie in wait to entangle a victim, they never fail to discover some charge, that may be twisted to bear them out in their object. Montgomery had scarcely resumed his duties, when two men were killed in a riot in the streets of Sheffield by the soldiery. He gave a narrative of the circumstances, correct enough, there is no doubt; but a volunteer officer, who was also a magistrate, feeling his dignity or honour hurt by the statement, preferred a bill of indictment for libel against the printer. It was tried at Doncaster in January 1796. The defence made justified the truth of the statement on very satisfactory testimony, but in vain; Montgomery was found guilty, and sentenced to six months imprisonment and a fine of thirty pounds. It is remarkable, that before the death of the individual who was the cause of this prosecution, he seemed conscious of the injustice he had done Montgomery, by treating him with sedulous attention after the expiration of his term of imprisonment; and once, when presiding in a court of justice, calling him from among the crowd to sit by his side on the bench, that he might be kept from

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