Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/207

Rh entertained and propagated liberal opinions, as the young poet soon discovered. Mr. Gales was obliged to flee from England, to avoid prosecution for printing an article which incurred the displeasure of the despotic government of the day. The poet now became the editor and publisher of the paper, changing its name to the "Sheffield Iris." Although more prudent and moderate than his predecessor, he was also more gifted, and therefore more obnoxious to men in power, who set a watch for his halting. The whole nation was convulsed by the example and influence of the French revolution, and political feeling ran high in Sheffield, when Montgomery undertook the labours and responsibility of editorship. Reverting, thirty-one years afterwards, in his valedictory address to his readers, to this era of his life, he said:—"With all the enthusiasm of youth, for I had not then arrived at years of discretion, I entered into the feelings of those who avowed themselves the friends of freedom, justice, and humanity. Though with every pulse of my heart beating in favour of the popular doctrines, my retired and religious education had laid restraints upon my conscience, which (I may fearlessly say so) long kept me back from personally engaging in the civil war of words raging in the neighbourhood, beyond occasional rhyme, paragraph, or essay, in the newspaper, written rather for the purpose of showing my literary than my political qualifications. Ignorant of myself, and inexperienced in the world as a child of seven years old, having actually not lived so long among its everyday inhabitants, even when I became editor of the "Iris," I nevertheless was preserved from joining myself to any of the political societies till they were broken up in 1794, when, I confess, I did associate with the remnant of one of them for a purpose which I shall never be ashamed to avow; to support the families of several of the accused leaders, who were detained prisoners in London, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and who were finally discharged without having been brought to trial." The rule of his editorial conduct, he adds, was " a plain determination, come wind or sun, come fire or water, to do what was right." It was in 1794 that the "Iris" was commenced, and it was carried on "through a series of sufferings, desertions, crosses, and calamities without a name," persecuted by the aristocrats and abandoned by the Jacobins; yet the editor outlived the hostility of his enemies, won their confidence and friendship, and for years after 1805, which ended, as he observes, the "romance" of his life, he was supported, by the same arms that had fought against him, in a path of moderate prosperity. The more romantic incidents of the period referred to were his being twice prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged political offences. An example was wanted, as he tells us, to deter others from doing what he had not yet done, but what they were doing with impunity. He had scarcely been installed a month in the editorial chair, when he was one day called into the bookseller's shop, where business-orders were received, to see an old grotesque-looking ballad-monger, who was offering twelve songs for a penny, and running glibly over a catalogue of their names. Presenting Montgomery with a specimen of the article, he inquired what would be the cost of six quires of the same. The reply was, that the presses were better employed than in printing such commodities, and he was recommended to apply elsewhere. "But you have this standing in your office," was the rejoinder; whereupon, expressing his ignorance of the fact, Montgomery took up the printed leaf, and found that it contained two copies of verses, with each of which he had long been familiar, although he had never before seen them in that particular form. In a wood cut figure of