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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."

"T was 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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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!
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.

At fourteen years of age, besides two manu- icile, to plunge into that paradise of honor and script volumes of his verses, he had composed a fame which fancy had so gorgeously depicted. mock-heroic poem of a thousand lines, in three He was not an articled apprentice, and therefore cantos: it was an imitation of "The Frogs and he violated no contract by his elopement. He Mice" of Homer. From his companions and was at this time but sixteen years of age, and thus friends he received praises which excited him to young he cast himself upon fortune, a wild and fresh exertions. He planned several epic poems, inexperienced adventurer. for nothing short of an epic would satisfy his The usual result followed. The world had apcraving desire for literary fame, till after much peared a fairy picture in his imagination, but it of resolve and re-resolve, he began one under proved in reality to be just what it is, a region the title of "Alfred the Great." Of this poem he of struggles and disappointments. On the fourth completed two books; the boldness of the attempt day after his departure from Fulnick, he found seems to have alarmed the good fathers of the himself obliged to enter into a situation similar Fulnick academy. Such a flight by a youth des- to that which he had held but a short time pretined for the study of divinity (the profession viously, at a place called Wash. From thence which they had in prospect for their pupil being he wrote to his late employer and demanded a that of a minister), was by no means suitable to character, for he had hitherto preserved his their ideas of the fitness of things. The young own without the slightest moral taint. The maspoet panted for the great world, to live among ter consulted his Moravian friends, who respectand study mankind; the brethren strove to stifle ed the virtues and talents of Montgomery, and these desires, and to lead back the erring ima- agreed to give him any character necessary, but gination of their pupil to serious realities, and desired that he might be invited to return to devotional resignation. The world to him was them. The worthy man set off accordingly, and yet a pure mystery, while his longing desire to met Montgomery in an inn-yard, on his arrival mingle in it no discipline could repress. His at Wash, and they rushed at once by a sort of health became affected in the contest. The irre- kindred sympathy into each other's arms. It sistible promptings of genius, however, were was in vain, however, that the master invited ultimately triumphant. The Moravian brethren, his late pupil to return, by the most flattering finding they could not succeed in recalling him offers of profit; the young poet resisted them to the line of conduct and study which they all. The benefactor was not the less kind. He deemed proper for a minister of their persuasion, supplied his wants; sent him the clothes and and seeing that an opposite desire was fixing it- property he had left in his possession, and gave self deeper and deeper in his heart, had the good him a testimonial of his esteem in a written sense to give up their object, and to place him document to exhibit when required. In his new in trade with a brother believer, who was in situation he remained about a year, during which business at Mirfield, near Wakefield, in the same period he punctually fulfilled the duties of his county. station; but nursed at the same time the som Montgomery thus affords another instance of bre character which his peculiar religious educa. the triumph of genius over almost insuperable tion, and the bent of his genius, both contributed obstacles. Nature awoke in his bosom those to encourage.

mysterious impulses which have been developed Mr. Harrison, a bookseller of Paternoster-row, in many other minds similarly constituted-in having received a volume of his poems in manumany other master spirits, which have made script, before he quitted Wash for London, took to themselves immortal names in all ages and him on his arrival into his employ, and recomcountries, breaking the gloom in which the acci-mended him to cultivate his talents, which in dents of birth and fortune may have placed time, he told him, he had no doubt would render them, and becoming shining lights to the world. him distinguished. The toil of a bookseller's In his new situation, little congenial to an aspiring clerk, in the dingy purlieus of the Row, was a mind, Montgomery continued but a year. He complete cure for Montgomery's delusion re. had formed in his imagination the most elevated specting the great world, its glorious honors, and erroneous ideas of the great world; he saw and all its bright dreams of immortality. Having it in perspective, all glorious and honorable; he in vain endeavored to induce a bookseller to panted to be distinguished among men; and full treat with him for a prose tale, he left Mr. Harof the delusions of youth in this respect, in which rison's employ at the end of eight months, and we are all more or less prone to indulge in the returned into Yorkshire to the situation he had morning of life, he penned a letter to his master, previously held. It is no slight proof of Montand with a few clothes and three shillings and gomery's excellent character and disposition, that sixpence in money in his pocket, he left his dom- he won the affection of his employers succes.

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