Critical and Historical Essays Volume II Part 40

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 a.s.sures 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.s.suring 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 Ca.s.sio, "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 s.p.a.cious 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage

"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."