Chapter XXXIII: Part 33

It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author’s coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. “Pathetic,” “sublime,” “splendid,” “graceful,” “brilliant wit,” “exquisite humour,” and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower as thick and as sweet as the sugarplums at a Roman carnival. Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition. “Such attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned. Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that a writer of such transcendent talents, a writer who is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should show so little tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been constantly mingling in society.” These are but tame and feeble imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an attorney’s clerk or an apothecary’s assistant undertakes to tell the public in bad English and worse French, how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words “Advertisement,” or “From a Correspondent,” to such paragraphs. But this makes little difference. The panegyric is extracted, and the significant heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with Times or Globe affixed, though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it than with Mr. Goss’s way of making old rakes young again.

That people who live by personal slander should practise these arts is not surprising. Those who stoop to write calumnious books may well stoop to puff them; and that the basest of all trades should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite proper and as it should be. But how any man who has the least self-respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can condescend to persecute the public with this Ragfair importunity, we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants in the one way as in the other.

It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that his works should come before the public recommended by their own merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If his objects be really such as he may own without shame, he will find that they will, in the long-run, be better attained by suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present, we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as Shakspeare’s usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham to the author’s Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, and at last join in shouting for shouting’s sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which has no right to it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependants.

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticise. Nor is the public altogether to blame on this account. Most even of those who have really a great enjoyment in reading are in the same state, with respect to a book, in which a man who has never given particular attention to the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a delicacy of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he cannot distinguish hands, as practised judges distinguish them, that he is not familiar with the finest models, that he has never looked at them with close attention, and that, when the general effect of a piece has pleased him or displeased him, he has never troubled himself to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom he thinks more competent to judge than himself, and of whose sincerity he entertains no doubt, assure him that a particular work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency.

Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a poem or a novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the meantime, little or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the publisher are interested in crying up the book. Nobody has any very strong interest in crying it down. Those who are best fitted to guide the public opinion think it beneath them to expose mere nonsense, and comfort themselves by reflecting that such popularity cannot last. This contemptuous lenity has been carried too far. It is perfectly true that reputations which have been forced into an unnatural bloom fade almost as soon as they have expanded; nor have we any apprehensions that puffing will ever raise any scribbler to the rank of a classic. It is indeed amusing to turn over some late volumes of periodical works, and to see how many immortal productions have, within a few months, been gathered to the poems of Blackmore and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how many “profound views of human nature,” and “exquisite delineations of fashionable manners,” and “vernal, and sunny, and refreshing thoughts,” and “high imaginings,” and “young breathings,” and “embodyings,” and “pinings,” and “minglings with the beauty of the universe,” and “harmonies which dissolve the soul in a passionate sense of loveliness and divinity,” the world has contrived to forget. The names of the books and of the writers are buried in as deep an oblivion as the name of the builder of Stonehenge. Some of the well-puffed fashionable novels of eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold the pastry of eighteen hundred and thirty; and others, which are now extolled in language almost too high-flown for the merits of Don Quixote, will, we have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen hundred and thirty-one. But, though we have no apprehensions that puffing will ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still think its influence most pernicious. Men of real merit will, if they persevere, at last reach the station to which they are entitled, and intruders will be ejected with contempt and derision. But it is no small evil that the avenues to fame should be blocked up by a swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pretenders, who, though they will not ultimately be able to make good their own entrance, hinder, in the mean time, those who have a right to enter. All who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the unseemly scuffle must expect to be at first hustled and shouldered back. Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in dejection from pursuits in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. Others employ in self-defence the means by which competitors, far inferior to themselves, appear for a time to obtain a decided advantage. There are few who have sufficient confidence in their own powers and sufficient elevation of mind, to wait with secure and contemptuous patience, while dunce after dunce presses before them. Those who will not stoop to the baseness of the modern fashion are too often discouraged. Those who do stoop to it are always degraded.

We have of late observed with great pleasure some symptoms which lead us to hope that respectable literary men of all parties are beginning to be impatient of this insufferable nuisance. And we purpose to do what in us lies for the abating of it. We do not think that we can more usefully assist in this good work than by showing our honest countrymen what that sort of poetry is which puffing can drive through eleven editions, and how easily any bellman might, if a bellman would stoop to the necessary degree of meanness, become a “master-spirit of the age.” We have no enmity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know nothing whatever about him, except what we have learned from his books, and from the portrait prefixed to one of them, in which he appears to be doing his very best to look like a man of genius and sensibility, though with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve. We select him, because his works have received more enthusiastic praise, and have deserved more unmixed contempt, than any which, as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared within the last three or four years. 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 writing 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.”

The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with a description of the creation, in which we can find only one thought which has the least pretension to ingenuity, and that one thought is stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing:=

```“Last, softly beautiful, as music’s close,

```Angelic woman into being rose.”=

The all-pervading influence of the Supreme Being is then described in a few tolerable lines borrowed from Pope, and a great many intolerable lines of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s own. The following may stand as a specimen:=

```“But who could trace Thine unrestricted course,

```Though Fancy followed with immortal force?

```There’s not a blossom fondled by the breeze,

```There’s not a fruit that beautifies the trees,

```There’s not a particle in sea or air,

```But nature owns thy plastic influence there!

```With fearful gaze, still be it mine to see

```How all is fill’d and vivified by Thee;

```Upon thy mirror, earth’s majestic view,

```To paint Thy Presence, and to feel it too.”=

The last two lines contain an excellent specimen of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s Turkey carpet style of writing. The majestic view of earth is the mirror of God’s presence; and on this mirror Mr. Robert Montgomery paints God’s presence. The use of a mirror, we submit, is not to be painted upon.

A few more lines, as bad as those which we have quoted, bring us to one of the most amusing instances of literary pilfering which we remember. It might be of use to plagiarists to know, as a general rule, that what they steal is, to employ a phrase common in advertisements, of no use to any but the right owner. We never fell in, however, with any plunderer who so little understood how to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea,=

```“Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.”=

Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and reproduces the stolen goods in the following form:=

```“And thou vast Ocean, on whose awful face

```Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace.”=

So may such ill-got gains ever prosper!

The effect which the Ocean produces on Atheists is then described in the following lofty lines:=

```“Oh! never did the dark-soul’d ATHEIST stand,

```And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,

```And, while Creation stagger’d at his nod,

```Mock the dread presence of the mighty God!

```We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean’s roar,

```Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore

```We hear Him in the riot of the blast,

```And shake, while rush the raving whirlwinds past!”=

If Mr. Robert Montgomery’s genius were not far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose that it is at the nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s readers must take such grammar as they can get, and be thankful.

A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable theft. Sir Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the Isles:=

```“The dew that on the violet lies,

```Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes.”=

This is pretty taken separately, and, as is always the case with the good things of good writers, much prettier in its place than can even be conceived by those who see it only detached from the context. Now for Mr. Montgomery:=

```“And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies,

```Like liquid rapture upon beauty’s eyes.”=

The comparison of a violet, bright with the dew, to a woman’s eyes, is as perfect as a comparison can be. Sir Walter’s lines are part of a song addressed to a woman at daybreak, when the violets are bathed in dew; and the comparison is therefore peculiarly natural and graceful. Dew on a bramble is no more like a woman’s eyes than dew anywhere else. There is a very pretty Eastern tale of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us. The slave of a magician saw his master wave his wand, and heard him give orders to the spirits who arose at the summons. The slave stole the wand, and waved it himself in the air; but he had not observed that his master used the left hand for that purpose. The spirits thus irregularly summoned tore the thief to pieces instead of obeying his orders. There are very few who can safely venture to conjure with the rod of Sir Walter; and Mr. Robert Montgomery is not one of them.

Mr. Campbell, in one of his most pleasing pieces, has this line,=

```“The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky.”=

The thought is good, and has a very striking propriety where Mr. Campbell has placed it, in the mouth of a soldier telling his dream. But, though Shakspeare assures us that “every true man’s apparel fits your thief,” it is by no means the case, as we have already seen, that every true poet’s similitude fits your plagiarist. Let us see how Mr. Robert Montgomery uses the image.=

```“Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright,

```Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,

```While half the world is lapp’d in downy dreams,

```And round the lattice creep your midnight beams,

```How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,

```In lambent beauty looking from the skies.”=

Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid eyes, of the lambent beauty on which it is sweet to gaze, harmonise admirably with the idea of a sentry.

We would not be understood, however, to say, that Mr. Robert Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few lines further on, we find one which has every mark of originality, and on which, we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has plundered will ever think of making reprisals=

```“The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount,

```As streams meander level with their fount.”=

We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards.

We have then an apostrophe to the Deity, couched in terms which, in any writer who dealt in meanings, we should call profane, but to which we suppose Mr. Robert Montgomery attaches no idea whatever:=

```“Yes I pause and think, within one fleeting hour,

```How vast a universe obeys Thy power;

```Unseen, but felt, Thine interfused control

```Works in each atom, and pervades the whole;

```Expands the blossom, and erects the tree,

```Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea,

```Beams in each ray, bids whirlwinds be unfurl’d,

```Unrols the thunder, and upheaves a world!”=

No field-preacher surely ever carried his irreverent familiarity so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the importance of the interests which are under His care. The grotesque indecency of such an address throws into shade the subordinate absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of whirlwinds, the unrolling of thunder, and the upheaving of worlds.

Then comes a curious specimen of our poet’s English:=

````“Yet not alone created realms engage

```Thy faultless wisdom, grand, primeval sage!

```For all the thronging woes to life allied

```Thy mercy tempers, and thy cares provide.”=

We should be glad to know what the word “For” means here. If it is a preposition, it makes nonsense of the words, “Thy mercy tempers.” If it is an adverb, it makes nonsense of the words, “Thy cares provide.”

These beauties we have taken, almost at random, from the first part of the poem. The second part is a series of descriptions of various events, a battle, a murder, an execution, a marriage, a funeral, and so forth. Mr. Robert Montgomery terminates each of these descriptions by assuring us that the Deity was present at the battle, murder, execution, marriage or funeral in question. And this proposition which might be safely predicated of every event that ever happened or ever will happen, forms the only link which connects these descriptions with the subject or with each other.

How the descriptions are executed our readers are probably by this time able to conjecture. The battle is made up of the battles of all ages and nations: “red-mouthed cannons, uproaring to the clouds,” and “hands grasping firm the glittering shield.” The only military operations of which this part of the poem reminds us, are those which reduced the Abbey of Quedlinburgh to submission, the Templar with his cross, the Austrian and Prussian grenadiers in full uniform, and Curtius and Dentatus with their battering-ram. We ought not to pass unnoticed the slain war-horse, who will no more=

```“Roll his red eye, and rally for the fight”;=

or the slain warrior who, while “lying on his bleeding breast,” contrives to “stare ghastly and grimly on the skies.” As to this last exploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar occasion,=

````“Forse per forza gia di’ parlasia

````Si stravolse cosi alcun del tutto

````Ma io nol vidi, ne credo che sia.”=

The tempest is thus described:=

```“But lo! around the marsh’lling clouds unite,

```Like thick battalions halting for the fight;

```The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep

```Fierce through the air and flutter on the deep.

```Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts,

```Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,

```And the lash’d billows, rolling in a train,

```Rear their white heads, and race along the main”=

What, we should like to know, is the difference between the two operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately distinguishes from each other, the fierce sweeping of the tempest-spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac blasts from their caverns? And why does the former operation end exactly when the latter commences?

We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s descriptions. We have a shipwrecked sailor, who “visions a viewless temple in the air”; a murderer who stands on a heath, “with ashy lips, in cold convulsion spread”; a pious man, to whom, as he lies in bed at night,=

```“The panorama of past life appears,

```Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears”:=

a traveller, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the “cloud-battalion,” and the want of “heaven-lamps, to beam their holy light.” We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen from that incomparable passage in Crabbe’s Borough, which has made many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child. We can, however, conscientiously declare that persons of the most excitable sensibility may safely venture upon Mr. Robert Montgomery’s version. Then we have the “poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac boy,” who=

`````“Rolls his vacant eye

```To greet the glowing fancies of the sky.”=

What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow?=

```“A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,

```He loves to commune with the fields and floods.”=

How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead.

Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him:=

```“O Death! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth,

```The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!

```Careering round the world like tempest wind,

```Martyrs before, and victims strew’d behind

```Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,

```Dragging the world into eternity!”=

If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries.

We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio, “Why, this is a more excellent song than the other.” Mr. Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it,=

```“One great Enchanter helm’d the harmonious whole.”=

What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a helm has to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his argument thus:=

```“And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed

```All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named

```The spacious world, and all its wonders, born

```Designless, self-created, and forlorn;

```Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream,

```Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?”=

We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery’s logic. He informs us that lightning is designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the Deity who bids “thunder rattle from the skiey deep.” His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the lightning made itself.

But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s metaphysics are not at present our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism=

```“Then, blood-stain’d Murder, bare thy hideous arm

```And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm:

```Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime;

```Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!”=

Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, we need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing more is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a word with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, bare her arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope. But what possible motive Rebellion can have for weltering in her storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits may be, why they should be burst from their bonds, what their bonds may be, why they should battle with the time, what the time may be, and what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to understand.=

```“And here let Memory turn her tearful glance

```On the dark horrors of tumultuous France,

```When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,

```And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand.”=

Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these three metaphors would mean, we, know no more than we know what is the sense of the following passage=

```“Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime

```Picture the raging havoc of that time,

```When leagued Rebellion march’d to kindle man,

```Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van.

```And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter’d Queen,

```Who dropp’d no tear upon the dreadful scene,

```When gush’d the life-blood from thine angel form,

```And martyr’d beauty perish’d in the storm,

```Once worshipp’d paragon of all who saw,

```Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law.”=

What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging havoc which the foul orgies are to picture? Why does Fright go behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Murder fall behind Fright? Or why should not all the three walk abreast? We have read of a hero who had=

```“Amazement in his van, with flight combined,

```And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.”

Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, “Flower of Austria” is stolen from Byron. “Dropp’d” is false English. “Perish’d in the storm” means nothing at all; and “thy look obedience” means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgomery intends to say.

Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the soul:=

```“And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die,

```When dust and darkness round its temple lie?

```Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire.

```Dimless and quenchless, though the breath expire?”=

The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though dust and darkness lie round its temple, because an ethereal fire has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes, and has fire breathed into it?

Mr. Montgomery apostrophises the=

```“Immortal beacons,--spirits of the just,”--=

and describes their employments in another world, which are to be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and riding on living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder,=

```“Creation shudders with sublime dismay,

```And in a blazing tempest whirls away.”=

And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over and over again, in terms which would require some qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, verses fit only for the poet’s corner of the Morning Post, can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer’s poetry has been greater than that of Southey’s Roderick, and beyond all comparison greater than that of Cary’s Dante or of the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the examination of his first and most popular performance that we have none to spare for his Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, entitled Satan.

This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.

Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book above another. “Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason.” Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Lord Byron’s poetry, and Mr. Martin’s pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily.

The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: “Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.” And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told us that “the prince of darkness is a gentleman”; but we had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.

We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and moralises thereon as follows:=

```“Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed

```Around me: beauties in their cloud-like robes

```Shine forth,--a scenic paradise, it glares

```Intoxication through the reeling sense

```Of flush’d enjoyment. In the motley host

```Three prime gradations may be rank’d: the first,

```To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare’s mind,

```And win a flash of his Promethean thought,

```To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve

```A round of passionate omnipotence,

```Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,

```Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,

```On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,

```While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes

```Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire

```The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,

```With their corroded figures, rayless glance,

```And death-like struggle of decaying age,

```Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp

```Set forth to satirise the human kind!

```How fine a prospect for demoniac view!

```‘Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!’

```Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry.”=

Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, to show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery.

INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF ALLUSIONS

ABSOLUTE, Sir Anthony, a leading character in Sheridan’s play of The Rivals

A darker and fiercer spirit, Jonathan Swift, the great Tory writer (1667-1745)

Agbarus or Abgarus, the alleged author of a spurious letter to Jesus Christ. Edessa is in Mesopotamia

Alboin, King of the Lombards, 561-573, he invaded Italy as far as the Tiber

Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the Orlando Furioso

Aldus, the famous Venetian printer (1447-1515), who issued the Aldine editions of the classics and invented italic type

Alfieri, Italian dramatist, and one of the pioneers of the revolt against eighteenth-century literary and society models (1749-1803)

Algarotti, Francesco, a litterateur, friend of Voltaire. Frederic made him a count (1764)

Alnaschar, see “The History of the Barber’s Fifth Brother,” in the Arabian Nights

Alva, Duke of, the infamous governor of the Netherlands (1508-82)

Amadeus, Victor, “the faithless ruler of Savoy,” who for a bribe deserted Austria, whose troops he was commander-in chief of for France, in 1692

Arbuthnot, Dr., author of the History of John Bull, friend of Swift and Pope (1679-1735)

Arminius, a German who, as a hostage, entered the Roman army, but afterwards revolted and led his countrymen against Rome (d. 23 A.D.)

Armorica, France between the Seine and the Loire, Brittany

Artevelde, Von., Jacob v. A. and Philip, his son, led the people of Flanders in their revolt against Count Louis and his French supporters (fourteenth century)

Ascham, Roger, and Aylmer, John, tutors of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey respectively

Athalie, Saul, Cinna, dramas by Racine Alfieri, and Corneille respectively

Atticus, Sporus, i.e. Addison and Lord John Hervey, satirized in Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

Attila, King of the Huns, the “Scourge of God” who overran the Roman Empire but was finally beaten by the allied Goths and Romans (d. 453)

Aubrey, John, an eminent antiquary who lost a number of inherited estates by lawsuits and bad management (1624-97)

BADAJOZ and St. Sebastian, towns in Spain captured from the French during the Peninsular War

Bastiani, was at first one of the big Potsdam grenadiers; Frederic made him Abbot of Silesia

Bayes, Miss, with reference to the name used in The Rehearsal, by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to satirize Dryden, the poet-laureate

Bayle, Pierre, author of the famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique; professor of philosophy at Padua and at Rotterdam (1647-1706)

Beauclerk, Topham, Johnson’s friend, “the chivalrous T. B., with his sharp wit and gallant, courtly ways” (Carlyle), (1739-80)

Beaumarchais, see Carlyle’s French Revolution. As a comic dramatist he ranks second only to Moliere. He supported the Revolution with his money and his versatile powers of speech and writing. He edited an edition de luxe of Voltaire’s works (1732-99)

Behn, Afra, the licentious novelist and mistress of Charles II. (1640-89), who, as a spy in Holland, discovered the Dutch plans for burning the Thames shipping

Belle-Isle, French marshal; fought in the Austrian campaign of 1740 and repelled the Austrian invasion of 1744 (d. 1761)

Beloe William, a miscellaneous writer, whose version of Herodotus, so far from being flat, is, while “infinitely below the modern standard in point of accuracy, much above modern performance in point of readableness” (Dr. Garnett), (1756-1817)

Bender, 80 miles N.W. from Odessa, in S. Russia

Bentley, Richard, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an eminent philologist (1662-1742)

Bettesworth, an Irishman, lampooned in Swift’s Miscellanies

Betty Careless, one of Macaulay’s inventions which sufficiently explains itself

Betty, Master, a boy-actor, known as the Infant Roscius. Having acquired a fortune he lived in retirement (1791-1874)

Black Frank, Johnson’s negro servant, Frank Barber

Blackmore, Sir Richard, a wordy poetaster (d. 1729), who was the butt of all contemporary wits

Blair, Dr. Hugh, Scotch divine an critic, encouraged Macpherson to publish the Ossian poetry (1718-1800)

Blatant cast, the, does not really die. See the end of Faery Queen vi.

Bobadil and Beseus, Pistol and Parolles, braggart characters in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, Beaumont and Fletcher’s King and no King, Shakespeare’s Henry V., and All’s Well that Ends Well, respectively

Boileau, Nicholas, the great French critic, whose Art of Poetry long constituted the canons of French and English literary art (1636-1711)

Bolt Court, on the N. side of Fleet Street. Johnson lived at No. 8 from 1777 till his death in 1784

Borodino, 70 miles west from Moscow, where the Russians made a stand against Napoleon, 1812

Boscan, a Spanish imitator of Petrarch Alva’s tutor; served in Italy (1485-1533)

Bourne, Vincent, an usher at Westminster School, mentioned early in the “Essay on Warren Hastings,”

Boyle, Hon. Charles, edited the Letters of Phalaris which gave rise to the famous controversy with Bentley, for which, see the essay on Sir William Temple (vol. iii. of this edition)

Bradamante, in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, a Christian lady who loves the Saracen knight, Ruggiero

Brothers, Richard, a fanatic who held that the English were the lost ten tribes of Israel (1757-1824)

Brownrigg, Mrs., executed at Tyburn (1767) for abusing and murdering her apprentices

Bruhl, Count, the favourite of Augustus III. of Saxony who enriched himself at the risk of ruining his master and his country.

Bucer, Martin, a German reformer who mediated between Luther and Zwingli, and became Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (1491-1551)

Buchanan, George, Scottish scholar and humanist; tutor to Mary Queen of Scots and James VI. (1506-82)

Burn, Richard, an English vicar compiled several law digests among them the Justice of the Peace, (1709-85)

Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury, supported the claims of William of Orange to the English throne, and wrote the History of my Own Times (1643-1715)

Button’s, on the south side of Russell Street, Covert Garden succeeded Will’s as the wits’ resort

Butts, Dr. physician-in-ordinary to Henry VIII. (d. 1545) and one of the characters in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.

CACUS, the mythological giant who stole the oxen of Hercules

Camaldoli, Order of, founded by St. Romauld, a Benedictine (eleventh century) in the Vale of Camaldoli among the Tuscan Apennines

Cambray, Confederates of, the pope, the emperor. France and Spain who by the League of Cambray combined to attack Venice

Campbell, Dr. John, a miscellaneous political and historical writer (1708~75)

Capreae, or Capri, a small island nineteen miles south from Naples, the favourite residence of Augustus and Tiberius, and the scene of the latter’s licentious orgies

Capuchins, a branch of the monastic order of the Franciscans

Carlile, Richard, a disciple of Tom Paine’s who was repeatedly imprisoned for his radicalism. He worked especially for the freedom of the Press (1790-1843)

Carter, Mrs., a distinguished linguist and translator of Epictetus

Casaubon, Isaac, Professor of Greek at Geneva Curator of the Royal Library at Paris, Prebendary of Canterbury: a famous sixteenth-century scholar (1559-1614),

Catinat, French marshal in charge of the 1701 Italian campaign against Marlborough’s ally, Prince Eugene of Savoy

Cave, Edward, printer, editor, publisher, and proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine (1691-1754)

Chatelet, Madame du, Voltaire’s mistress, c 1733-47 (d. 1749)

Chaulieu, Guillaume, a witty but negligent poetaster (1639-1720)

Chaumette, Pierre, a violent extremist in the French Revolution who provoked even Robespierre’s disgust; guillotined, 1794

Childs, the clergy coffee-house in St. Paul’s. St. James’s (ib.) in the street of that name, was the resort of beaux and statesmen and a notorious gambling house

Chillingworth, William, an able English controversial divine; suffered at the hands of the Puritans as an adherent of Charles I. (1602-43)

Churchill, Charles, a clergyman and satirical Poet who attacked Johnson in The Ghost (1731-64)

Clootz, a French Revolutionary and one of the founders of the “Worship of Reason:” guillotined 1794

Colburn, (Zerah), b. at Vermont, U.S.A., in 1804, and noted in youth for his extraordinary powers of calculation (d. 1840)

Coligni, Gaspard de, French admiral and leader of the Huguenots; massacred on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, 1572

Colle, Charles, dramatist and song-writer (d. 1777); young Crebillon (d. 1777) wrote fiction

Condorcet, a French Marquis (1743-94) of moderate Revolutionary tendencies, who fell a victim to the Extremists He wrote extensively and clearly, but without genius

Constituent Assembly, the National Assembly of France from 1789 to 1792

Corderius, a famous sixteenth-century teacher--Calvin was a pupil of his--in France and Switzerland (d. 1564) who published several school-books

Cortes, conqueror of Mexico (1485-1547); the Spanish Parliament

Cotta, Caius, a famous Roman orator, partly contemporary with Cicero, who mentions him with honour

Courland, a province on the Baltic once belonging to Poland since 1795 to Russia

Coventry, Solicitor-General of England in 1616, Attorney-General in 1620 and Lord Keeper in 1625

Cradock, Joseph, a versatile writer and actor whose rambling Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs contain several anecdotes of Johnson and his circle (1742-1826)

Curll and Osborne, two notorious booksellers who owe their immortality to Pope’s Dunciad

Curtius, the noble Roman youth who leaped into the chasm in the Forum and so closed it by the sacrifice of Rome’s most precious possession--a good citizen

DACIER, Andrew, a French scholar who edited the “Delphin” edition of the classics for the Dauphin, and translated many of them (1651-1722)

Dangerfield, Thomas, Popish plot discoverer and false witness (1650?-1685)

Davies, Tom, the actor-bookseller who wrote the Memoirs of David Garrick, and was one of Johnson’s circle (1712-85). “The famous dogma of the old physiologists” is “corruptio unius generatio est alterius” (Notes and Queries, Ser. 8, vol. ix., p. 56)

Davila, a famous French soldier and historian who served under Henry of Navarre; wrote the famous History of the Civil War in France (1576-1631)

Della Crusca, the signature of Robert Merry (1755-98), the leader of a mutual-admiration band of poetasters, who had their head-quarters at Florence, and hence called themselves the Della Cruscans. Gifford (q.v.) pulverised them in his Baviad and Merviad

Dentatus, the old-type Roman who, after many victories and taking immense booty, retired to a small farm which he himself tilled

Desfontaines, a Jesuit who put out a pirated edition of Voltaire’s La Ligue

Dessaix, a distinguished, upright, and chivalrous French general under Napoleon, who fell at Marengo (1800)

Diafoirus, the name of two pedantic characters in Moliere’s Malade Imaginaire

Diatessaron, a harmony of the gospels, the earliest example being that compiled by Tatian c.170 A.D.

Digby, Lord, one of the Royalist leaders and a typical Cavalier

Diodorus author of a universal history of which fifteen books still remain (50 B.C.-13 A.D.)

Distressed Mother, by Ambrose Phillipps, modelled on Racine’s Andromaque

Domdaniel, a hall under the roots of the ocean, where gnomes magicians, and evil spirits hold council (see Southey’s Thalaba)

Domenichino, a celebrated Italian painter of sacred subjects; persecuted and possibly poisoned by his rivals (1581-1641)

Douw, Gerard, distinguished Dutch painter, one of Rembrandt’s pupils; his works are famed for their perfect finish and delicacy (1613-75)

Dubois, Guillaume, cardinal and prime minister of France, noted for his ability and his debauchery (1656-1723)

D’Urfey, Tom, a facetious comedian and song-writer, favoured by Charles II. Known for his collection of sonnets, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1628-1703)

ECLIPSE, a famous chestnut race-horse who between 3rd May, 1769 and 4th October, 1770, had a most successful record

Encyclopaedia, the famous work which, edited by D’Alembert and Diderot, and contributed to by the most eminent savants of France, was issued 1751-77, and contributed not a little to fan the flame of Revolution. The Philosophical Dictionary was a similar production

Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite courtier who took Cadiz in 1596

Euphelia and Rhodoclea...Comelia...Tranquilla, signatures to letters in the Rambler (Nos. 42, 46; 62; 51; 10,119)

Exons, i. e. “Exempts of the Guards,” “officers who commanded when the lieutenant or ensign was absent, and who had charge of the night watch,”

Eylau, 20 miles south from Konigsberg victory of Napoleon, 1807

FAIRFAX, Edward, one of the “improvers” of English versification. Translated Tasso in the same stanzas as the original, and wrote on Demonology (d. c. 1632)

Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands under Philip II. and the first commander of his age

Faunus, grandson of Saturn and god of fields and shepherds, later identified with the Greek Pan

Faustina, Empress, (i) wife of Antoninus Pius; (ii) daughter of (i) and wife of Marcus Aurelius. Both were equally licentious

Favorinus, a rhetorician and sophist, who flourished in Gaul, c. 125 A.D.

Felton, John, who assassinated the Duke of Buckingham in 1628

Ferguson, Sir Adam, M.P. for Ayrshire, 1774-80

Filmer, Sir Robert, advocated the doctrine of absolute regal power in his Patriarcha, 1680,

Flecknoe and Settle, synonyms for vileness in poetry (cp. Moevius and Bairus among the Romans). Flecknoe was an Irish priest who printed a host of worthless matter. Settle was a playwright, who degenerated into a “city-poet and a puppet-show” keeper; both were satirized by Dryden

Fleury, French cardinal and statesman, tutor and adviser of Louis XV. (1653-1743)

Florimel. (see Spenser’s Faery Queen, books iii. and iv.)

Fox, George, and Naylor, James, contemporaries of Bunyan, and early leaders of the Society of Friends or “Quakers,”

Fracastorius, Italian philosopher, mathematician, and poet ranked by Scaliger as next to Virgil

Fraguier, Pere, an eminent man of letters, sometime a Jesuit. An elegant Latin versifier, especially on philosophical themes (1666-1728)

Franc de Pompignan, Advocate-General of France, an Academician and an opponent of Encyclopaedists, in consequence of which Voltaire lampooned him (1709-84)

Franche Comte, that part of France which lies south of Lorraine and west of Switzerland

Freron, took sides with the Church against the attacks of Voltaire; had some reputation as a critic (d. 1776)

GALLIENUS and Honorius, late Roman emperors who suffered from barbaric invasions

Galt, John Scotch custom-house officer and novelist, wrote The Ayrshire Legatees, The Provost, Sir Andrew Wylie, etc.

Galway, Lord (Macaulay is not quite so severe on him in his History of England)

Ganganelli, who as Clement XIV. held the papacy, 1769-74, and suppressed the Jesuits

George of Trebizond, a celebrated humanist (1396-1486), professor of Greek at Venice in 1428 and papal secretary at Rome, C. 1450

Gibby, Sir, Sir Gilbert Heathcote

Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin and afterwards of the Quarterly Review, in which he attacked Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. His satires, the Baviad and the Maviad, had some reputation in their day (1757-1826)

Gilpin, Rev. Joshua G., rector of Wrockwardine, whose new and corrected edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress appeared in 1811

Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade; he took Jerusalem in 1099

Goldoni, “the founder of Italian Comedy” (1707-93), whose pieces supplanted the older Italian farces and burlesques

Gondomar, Count of, the Spanish ambassador at the court of James I. who ruined Raleigh, and negotiated the proposed marriage of Charles I. with the Infanta

Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great captain who took Granada from the Moors, Zante from the Turks, and Naples from the French (1443-1515)

Grecian, the, the resort of the learned in Devereux Street Strand

Grotius, a celebrated Dutch scholar, equally famed for his knowledge of theology, history, and law (d. 1645)

Gwynn, Nell, an orange girl who became mistress of Charles II. and the ancestress of the Dukes of St. Albans

HAILES, Lord, David Dalrymple, author of the Annals of Scotland (1726-92)

Hale, Sir Matthew, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench under Charles II, and author of several religious and moral works

Halford, Sir Henry, one of the leading physicians in Macaulay’s day (1766-1844)

Hamilton, Gerard, M.P. for Petersfield, and of a somewhat despicable character. The nickname was “Single-speech Hamilton,”

Harpagon, the miser in Moliere’s L’Avare

Hawkins, Sir John. a club companion of Johnson’s (d. 1780), whose Life and Works of Johnson (II vols., 1787-89) was a careless piece of work, soon superseded by Boswell’s

Hayley, William, Cowper’s friend and biographer (1745-1820). Byron ridiculed his Triumphs of Temper and Triumphs of Music, and Southey said everything was good about him except his poetry

Henriade, Voltaire’s La Ligue, ou Henri le Grand

Hierocles, a neo-Platonic philosopher (c. 450 A.D.), who after long labour collected a book of twenty-eight jests, a translation of which (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1741) has been attributed to Johnson

Hill, Aaron, playwright, stage-manager, and projector of bubble schemes (1685-1750). See Pope’s Dunciad, ii. 295 ff.

Hippocrene, “the fountain of the Muses, formed by the hoof of Pegasus”

Holbach, Baron, a French “philosophe” who entertained at his hospitable board in Paris all the Encyclopaedia (q.v.) writers; a materialist, but a philanthropist (1723-89)

Holofernes, the pedantic school-master in Love’s Labour ‘s Last

Home, John, a minister of the Scottish Church (1724-1808), whose tragedy of Douglas was produced in Edinburgh in 1756

Hoole, John, a clerk in the India House, who worked at translations, e.g. of Tasso and Ariosto, and original literature in his spare hours

Hotel of Rambouillet, the intellectual salon which centred round the Italian Marquise de R.(1588-1665), and degenerated into the pedantry which Moliere satirized in Les Preceiuses Ridicules

Hughes, John, a poet and essayist, who contributed frequently to the Tatler, and Guardian (1677-1720)

Hume, Mr. Joseph, English politician, reformer, and philanthropist (1777-1855)

Hurd, Richard, Bishop in succession of Lichfield, Coventry, and Worcester; edited in 1798 with fulsome praise the works of his fellow bishop Warburton of Gloucester

Hutchinson, Mrs., wife of Colonel Hutchinson, the governor of Nottingham Castle in the Civil War, whose Memoirs (published 1806) she wrote

Hutten, Ulrich von, German humanist and reformer (1488-1523)

IMLAC (see Johnson’s Rasselas, Ch. viii xii.)

Ireland’s Vortigern, a play represented by W. H. Ireland as Shakespeare’s autograph; failed when Sheridan produced it in 1796, and afterwards admitted a forgery

Ivimey, Mr., Baptist divine and historian of the early nineteenth century, who compiled a life of Bunyan

JANSENIAN CONTROVERSY, arose early in the seventeenth century over the Augustinian principle of the sovereign and the irresistible nature of divine grace, denied by the Jesuits. In connection with this controversy Pascal wrote his Provincial Letters

Jeanie Deans (see Scott’s The Heart Of Midlothian)

Jedwood justice; the little town of Jedburgh was prominent in border-warfare, and its justice was proverbially summary, the execution of the accused usually preceding his trial

Jonathan’s and Garraway’s, Coffee-houses in Cornhill and Exchange Alley respectively, specially resorted to by brokers and merchants

Jortin, John, an eminent and scholarly divine, who wrote on the Truth, Christian Religion and on History (1698-1770)

Julius, the second pope (1502-13) of that name, whose military zeal outran his priestly inclination. He fought against the Venetians, and the French

Justiza, M Mayor, “a magistrate appointed by King and the Cortes who acted as mediator between the King and the people.” Philip II. abolished the office)

KENRICK, William, a hack writer, who in the Monthly Review in 1765, attacked Johnson’s Shakespeare with “a certain coarse smartness” (1725?-79)

Kitcat Club, founded c. 1700 by thirty-nine Hanoverian statesmen and authors on the basis of an earlier society (see Spectator No. 9)