Poetaster, was born at Bath in 1807, the natural son of one Gomery, a clown. In 1830 he entered Lincoln College, Oxford; in 1833 took his B.A. with a fourth class; in 1835 was ordained; and, with the exception of four years in Glasgow (1838–42), was minister of Percy Street Chapel, London, until his death on 3d December 1855. Of his thirty-one works in verse and prose, two—“The Omnipresence of the Deity” (1828; 29th ed. 1855) and “Satan” (1830)—are remembered by Macaulay’s onslaught in the “Edinburgh Review” for April, 1830.
Personal
Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery, commonly called Satan Montgomery because the author of “Satan,” of the “Omnipresence of the Deity,” and of various poems which pass through edition after edition, nobody knows how or why? I understand that his pew (he is a clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of the congregation, and that the same fair hands have made and presented to him, in the course of a single season, one hundred pairs of slippers. Whereupon somebody said to this Reverend Satan, “I never knew before, Mr. Montgomery, that you were a centipede.”
I send you a treasure. I do believe it is the autograph of the great Robert Montgomery. Pray let me have it again. I would not lose such a jewel on any account. I have read it, as Mr. Montgomery desires, in the presence of God; and in the presence of God I pronounce it to be incomparable. Glorious news! Robert Montgomery writes to Longman that there is a point at which human patience must give way. Since the resignation and Christian fortitude of a quarter of a century have made no impression on the hard heart and darkened conscience of Mr. Macaulay, an injured poet must appeal to the laws of his country, which will doubtless give him a redress the more signal because he has been so slow to ask for it. I retain you. Consider yourself as fee’d.
Called upon Mr. Robert Montgomery, preacher and poet, as he calls himself. He is full of excitement about the value of his own works. He is undoubtedly clever, and a man of sterling genius; but his great and lamentable weakness—his personal vanity—is really painful to witness. It was with much difficulty I could get away from him. The following is a specimen of the way he usually treats his darling subject—the extension of his fame:—“Now, my dear Mr. Blakey, I esteem your writings highly: you and I are far beyond the age. Now, do quote me wherever you can, and do it largely, and in the highest terms of eulogy. Our grand principles are the same; therefore, you can do it better than any one else. Now, mind, ‘Robert Montgomery, preacher and poet, not James.’ I know I tower far above all my enemies. I have had a Satanic struggle with them for years, but now I am at the top of the tree. Whenever you can get a paragraph into any newspaper or magazine, do remember and give me a lift. You know it is our duty to assist each other.” I cannot tell the fiftieth part of what he talked on this subject. But the spectacle was very lamentable, and really humiliating. He filled my pockets full with his works.
Beyond his vanity, there was no harm in him; nay, his nature was generous and kindly.
The Rev. Robert Montgomery, the author of “Satan,” once consulted me concerning the illustrating of another of his great poems, “Woman.” He was a handsome and popular clergyman, full of words, but his poetic gift perhaps fairly to be estimated from some lines in “The Real Devil’s Walk,” a rather lengthy imitation of Coleridge’s. Montgomery meets the Devil in Piccadilly; and they pass without greeting, for
| “Montgomery knew nothing of Satan, | |
| Though Satan knew Montgomery.” |
General
Shepherd.—“The verra deevil himself’s got dull in the haum’s o’ that Rab Montgomery—cauldrifed, as if hell were out o’ coals,—a’ its blast-furnaces choked up wi’ blue silent ashes—and the dammed coorin’ and chitterin’ in corners, as if fire were frost.”
His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet, out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery’s verses, which when disposed in certain orders and combinations, have made, and will again make, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle, in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the “heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.”
Horace instructs us that neither gods nor man endure mediocre poetry, and consequently Mr. Montgomery had no course, but to address his song to the third estate, whose liberal patronage of every thing bad may reasonably be reckoned on. The arch enemy’s ear for discord must needs be gratified by such verses as we see before us, and as a love of deceit he will be pleased with lines simulating poetry by the capital letter at the head of each,
| “Like dead-sea fruits that tempt the eye, | |
| But burn to ashes on the lips.” |
I never could get through a volume of Robert’s yet.
First, however, we shall discharge to Mr. Montgomery that debt which our critical duty imposes upon us. The time, we think, has arrived when Mr. Montgomery may glean from criticism some valuable and impartial suggestions. The sweeping and virulent abuse which was lavished so indiscriminately on his poetry necessarily creates reaction. And every honest and generous mind must feel more willing to praise than to defame one who has been so unfairly assailed. Yet, knowing the natural vanity of a poet, we doubt, while to many we shall seem to overvalue Mr. Montgomery’s present performance, whether we shall even satisfy himself of our desire to be just. Be that as it may—as Mr. Montgomery himself says in his Preface, commenta opinionum delet dies. We shall proceed at once to quote passages which will prove, we fully trust, to the satisfaction of every candid reader, that our author’s powers have been greatly maligned; and that whatever the rank to which as a poet he belongs—he at least possesses many and not inconsiderable attributes of his high calling.
Humour may be divided into three classes; the broad, the quiet, and the covert. Broad humour is extravagant, voluble, obtrusive, full of rich farce and loud laughter:—quiet humour is retiring, suggestive, exciting to the imagination, few of words, and its pictures grave in tone:—covert humour, (which also comprises quiet humour), is allegorical, typical, and of cloven tongue—its double sense frequently delighting to present the reverse side of its real meaning, to smile when most serious, to look grave when most facetiously disposed. Of this latter class are the comic poems of the ingenious Robert Montgomery, a humourist whose fine original vein has never been rightly appreciated by his contemporaries. He has been scoffed at by the profane for writing unmeaning nonsense, when that very nonsense had the most disinterested and excellent moral aim; he has passed for a quack, when he nobly made his muse a martyr; he has been laughed at, when he should have been admired; he has been gravely admired when his secret laughter should have found response in every inside. He has been extensively purchased; but he has not been understood…. At some future time, and when his high purpose can no longer be injured by a discovery of its inner wheels and movements, springs and fine escapements—at such a period, he may perhaps vouchsafe a key to all his great works; meantime, however, in his defense, because we are unable to bear any longer the spectacle of so total a misconception of a man’s virtues and talents in the public mind, we will offer a few elucidatory comments upon two of his larger productions…. Here are his own soft yet reproachful, sweet yet terrible words—no German flute was ever more tenderly searching, nor, when based on an ophecleide accompaniment, more confounding.
Granted that he had very little, if any, of “the vision and the faculty divine;” granted that some of his similes were so impossible as to prove that with him words sometimes stood for real thoughts; yet the manifest gusto with which Macaulay performed his task of flagellation was little to his credit. Let any one read but two pages of the forgotten poems, and he will see that the poor clergyman had done nothing to deserve so tremendous an infliction of the bastinado.
One may well have thought that Pye had provided enough weak poetry for one publisher, but for Pye and Tupper together one can hardly find apology sufficiently ample. Had Robert Montgomery joined, and made the trio, it would have been the last straw, which neither the reputation of Hatchard or any other mortal publisher could have survived.
With an unfortunate facility in florid versification Montgomery combined no genuinely poetic gift. Macaulay, in trying to anticipate the office of time, only succeeded in rescuing him from the oblivion to which he was properly destined. His style of preaching is said to have resembled that of his poetical effusions.
