Born, at Irvine, Ayrshire, 4 Nov. 1771. To Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds, 1777–87. Worked as shop-assistant, 1787–92. Clerk in office of “Sheffield Register” (afterwards “Sheffield Iris”), April 1792; editor, 1794; proprietor, 1795–1825. Imprisoned in York Castle for libel, Jan. to April 1795, and Jan. to July 1796. Contrib. to “Eclectic Rev.,” and other periodicals. Prolific writer of poetry. Lectured on Poetry at Royal Institution, 1830 and 1831. Crown Pension, 1835. Unmarried. Died, in Sheffield, 30 April 1854. Buried in Sheffield Cemetery. Works: “Prison Amusements” (under initials: J. M.), 1797; “The Whisperer” (under pseud. “Gabriel Silvertongue”), 1798; “The Ocean,” 1805; “The Wanderer of Switzerland,” 1806; “Poems on the abolition of the Slave Trade” (with J. Grahame and E. Benger), 1809; “The West Indies,” 1810; “The World before the Flood,” 1813; “Verses to the Memory of the late Richard Reynolds,” 1817; “Greenland,” 1819; “Songs of Zion,” 1822; “The Chimney-Sweeper’s Friend,” 1824; “Prose by a Poet” (anon.), 1824; “The Christian Psalmist,” 1825; “The Pelican Island,” 1826; “The Christian Poet,” 1827 (2nd edn. same year); “An African Valley,” 1828; “An Essay on the Phrenology of the Hindoos and Negroes,” 1829; “Verses in commemoration of … J. Hervey,” 1833; “Lectures on Poetry,” 1833; “A Poet’s Portfolio,” 1835; “Hymns for the opening of Christ Church, Newark on Trent,” 1837; “Our Saviour’s Miracles,” 1840; “Poetical Works,” 1841; “Original Hymns,” 1853. He edited: Cowper’s “Poems,” 1824; “Journal of Voyages and Travels, by the Rev. D. Tyerman and G. Bennet,” 1831; “The Christian Correspondent,” 1837; Milton’s “Poetical Works,” 1843; “Gleanings from Pious Authors,” 1850. Life: “Memoirs,” by J. Holland and J. Everett (7 vols.), 1854–56.

Personal

  His appearance speaks of antiquity and not of decay. His hair has assumed a snowy whiteness, and the lofty and full-arched coronal regions exhibit what a brother poet has well termed the “clear, bald polish of the honored head;” but the expression of the countenance is that of middle life. It is a thin, clear, speaking countenance; the features are high, the complexion fresh, though not ruddy, and age has failed to pucker either cheek or forehead with a single wrinkle…. The figure is quite as little touched by age as the face. It is well, but not strongly made, and of the middle size; and yet there is a touch of antiquity about it, too, derived, however, rather from the dress than from any peculiarity of the person itself. To a plain suit of black Mr. Montgomery adds the voluminous breast-ruffles of the last age, exactly such things as, in Scotland, at least, the fathers of the present generation wore on their wedding-days.

  As a model of the Christian citizen, he stands pre-eminent. Steadfastly promoting public improvements, and patiently fostering every charitable enterprise, catholic in spirit and loyal to conscience, unselfish in his aims and rich in practical wisdom, prudent in counsel and warm in his affections, he identified himself with all the best interests of Sheffield, and took a high place in the confidence and respect of his towns-fellows. Nor were his labors of love bounded by Sheffield. Welcoming all the new-born activities, which mark the Church of Christ during the present century, he engaged in their furtherance with singular devotedness. And even when age and infirmities might justly have pleaded exemption from duty, a scrupulous fidelity to its claims kept him to his post even to the end.

  Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England may be proud of a man who did so much that was good and so little that was bad; in whose long life, indeed, we find nothing that was not designed, and calculated to advance the temporal and spiritual welfare of humanity…. Few poets ever suffered more severely at the hands of critics; and, acting on a naturally sensitive nature, the attacks of Jeffrey in the Edinburgh and of lesser Zoiluses in other reviews, probably had the effect they are designed to produce. In a letter I received from him in 1837, Montgomery thus alludes to himself: “The disappointment of my premature poetical hopes brought a blight with it, from which my mind has never recovered. For many years, I was as mute as a molting-bird; and when the power of song returned, it was without the energy, self-confidence, and freedom which happier minstrels among my contemporaries manifested.”

General

  We took compassion upon Mr. Montgomery on his first appearance; conceiving him to be some slender youth of seventeen, intoxicated with weak tea, and the praises of sentimental Ensigns and other provincial literati, and tempted, in that situation, to commit a feeble outrage on the public, of which the recollection would be a sufficient punishment. A third edition, however, is too alarming to be passed over in silence; and, though we are perfectly persuaded, that in less than three years nobody will know the name of the “Wanderer of Switzerland,” or any of the other poems in this collection, still we think ourselves called on to interfere, to prevent, as far as in us lies, the mischief that may arise from the intermediate prevalence of so distressing an epidemic. It is hard to say what numbers of ingenious youth may be lead to expose themselves in public by the success of this performance, or what addition may be made in a few months to that great sinking-fund of bad taste, which is daily wearing down the debt which we have so long owed to the classical writers of antiquity…. When every day is bringing forth some new work from the pen of Scott, Campbell, Rogers, Baillie, Sotheby, Wordsworth, or Southey, it is natural to feel some disgust at the undistinguishing voracity which can swallow down three editions of songs to convivial societies and verses to a pillow.

  Never did any volume more truly deserve the reception which it found. Faults there were in it; for where is the volume without them? The longest of the poems [“The Wanderer of Switzerland”] is an experiment, treating an heroic subject in lyric measure and upon a dramatic plan…. Notwithstanding the inherent and irremediable defect of the poem, no person capable of appreciating poetry could read it without perceiving that it was the production of a rich and powerful mind…. There stands upon record only one piece of formal criticism as mischievous as this; [Jeffrey’s review of “The Wanderer”] and that is the criticism upon Kirke White in a Monthly Journal, of which the notorious folly and injustice have been reprobated by the thousands who regret and admire that extraordinary and excellent youth…. Twice three years have elapsed; the poems are still heard of, still read and admired, and purchased, and re-edited; and, what must be still more alarming to the careful guardian of the public taste, a second volume [“The West Indies, and other Poems”] has been published.

  Delicacy, tenderness, and a sacred feeling of the highest order, mark the effusions of Montgomery’s highly-cultivated muse.

  His bursts of sacred poetry, compared with his “Greenland,” remind us of a person singing enchantingly by ear, but becoming languid and powerless the moment he sits down to a note-book.

  It was said by the Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner—and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in our imagination. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled—and these qualities shine serenely in “The Pelican Island.” In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it moulder—not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time’s mutations.

  A new controversial pamphlet in verse [“The West Indies”] on this exhausted subject, containing all the old commonplaces of bleeding negroes and bloodthirsty planters, clanking chains and echoing whips,—even though embodied in vigorous and harmonious versification and relieved by sketches of natural scenery of singular freshness and beauty,—was but ill-calculated to afford pleasure to the lovers of genuine poetry…. Few, we suppose, have read the poem twice through, though many may often have turned back to such passages as those which describes the charm with which love of country invests alike the bleakest as well as the richest shore.

  James Montgomery is the most popular of the religious poets who have written in England since the time of Cowper, and he is more exclusively the poet of devotion than even the bard of Olney. Probably no writer is less indebted to a felicitous selection of subjects, since the themes of nearly all his longer productions are unpleasing and unpoetical; but for half a century he has been slowly and constantly increasing in reputation, and he has now a name which will not be forgotten, while taste and the religious sentiment exist together…. The minor poems of Mr. Montgomery, his little songs and cabinet pieces, will be the most frequently read, and the most generally admired. They have the antique simplicity of pious George Withers, a natural unaffected earnestness, joined to a pure and poetical diction, which will secure to them a permanent place in English literature. The character of his genius is essentially lyrical; he has no dramatic power, and but little skill in narrative. His longest and most elaborate works, though they contain beautiful and touching reflections, and descriptions equally distinguished for minuteness, fidelity, and beauty, are without incident or method; but his shorter pieces are full of devotion to the Creator, sympathy with the suffering, and a cheerful, hopeful philosophy.

  The most genuinely religious poet of the age. With a wisdom, founded not on calculation, but on a sacred sense of duty, he had made even his ambition subservient to his aspirations as a Christian, and he has thus reared for himself a pedestal in the poetic Walhalla of England peculiarly his own. The longer his fame endures, and the wider it spreads, the better it will be for virtue and for man.

  With the exceptions, perhaps, of Moore, Campbell, and Hemans, I doubt indeed if an equal number of the lyrics of any other modern poet have so completely found their way to the national heart, there to be enshrined in hallowed remembrance…. One great merit which may be claimed for James Montgomery is, that he has encroached on no man’s property as a poet; he has staked off a portion of the great common of literature for himself, and cultivated it according to his own taste and fancy.

  Of all dull, stagnant, unedifying entourages, that of middle-class Dissent, which environed Montgomery, seems to me the stupidest.

  The beautiful sacred lyrics of Montgomery live not only in our church-books of psalmody, but some are also embalmed in the common heart of Christendom. Who does not remember his fine poem, “Oh, where shall rest be found?” And where shall we find a nobler burst of elevated sentiment in song than is to be found in his Advent hymn, “Angels, from the realms of glory?”

  A mild and gentle poet, the author of many verses dear to pious souls.

  As a poet he is only eminent in descriptive passages, for which he is usually indebted to books rather than his own observation of nature. There are some indications of creative power in “The World before the Flood,” and the character of Javan is well drawn; but, as Mrs. Hofland remarked, he drew from himself. The minor pieces which have obtained a wide circulation usually deserve it, but they are buried in his works among masses of commonplace which should never have been printed. He is largely indebted for his fame to the approbation of religious circles, better judges of his sentiments than of his poetry: this has, on the other hand, occasioned unreasonable prejudice against him in other quarters. On the whole he may be characterised as something less than a genius and something more than a mediocrity.

  Was a rather copious and fairly pleasing minor bard, no bad hand at hymns and short occasional pieces, and the author of longer things.

  It is not however by these longer poems that the name of James Montgomery will be perpetuated. It is as a religious poet, and as a writer of sacred lyrics which give expression to the aspirations and reflections of devout hearts, that he will be longest remembered; and it is not too much to say that in this department of poetic work his permanence seems fairly secure. Over a hundred of his hymns are said to be still in use…. His Christian songs are vigorous in thought and feeling, simple, and direct in diction, broad in Christian charity, lofty in spiritual aspiration, and entirely free from cant. As such they form a not unworthy opening section for a volume devoted to the sacred poetry of the century.