Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/209

Rh each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of good-will, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness."

Having failed to obtain poetical renown by his youthful effusions, Mr. Montgomery informs us that he resolved to secure it by such means as made many of his contemporaries notorious. He wrote doggrel verse after the model of Peter Pindar, and prose in the style of Fielding and Smollett, occasionally imitating the wild flights of the German plays and romances. To the failure of these attempts he refers in this characteristic remark:—"A Providence of disappointment shut every door in my face, by which I attempted to force my way to a dishonourable fame;" and he congratulates himself on having been saved from appearing as the author of works of which he should afterwards have felt ashamed. His first successful poetical effort was "The Wanderer of Switzerland," which appeared in 1806. This poem, descriptive of the sufferings of the Swiss, when the independence of their country was destroyed by France, was severely handled in the "Edinburgh Review," and afterwards defended by Lord Byron. It was followed by "The West Indies," written to accompany a series of pictures published as a memorial of the abolition of the slave-trade. In this genial labour, to which the poet says he gave his whole mind, as affording him an opportunity of exposing the iniquities of slavery and the slave-trade, he was associated with Grahame, the author of "The Sabbath," and Miss Benger, who wrote several works in history and biography. In 1813 appeared "The World before the Flood," suggested to the poet by a passage in the eleventh book of "Paradise Lost," referring to the translation of Enoch. This was followed in 1819 by "Greenland," a poem in five cantos, the plan, which was not fully carried out, being to describe the original condition of the country and its people, and exhibit the changes wrought by the introduction of the gospel by the Moravian missionaries. The last and best of Montgomery's works, "The Pelican Island," was published in 1827, and confirmed the author's title to a high place amongst the British poets. It is the most imaginative of all his writings, and abounds in fresh and vigorous description. Each of the principal poems, issued at intervals, was accompanied by minor and miscellaneous compositions, many of them of great merit, and possessing the elements of lasting popularity. "The Prison Amusements" is the name given to a series of small poems on various subjects, written during his incarcerations in York Castle. "The Grave" appeared in the first volume of the poet's works, and is one of the best known of his minor pieces.

In "Thoughts on Wheels," the poet denounced the national wickedness and folly of the State lotteries, and powerfully contributed to the abolition of this disgraceful method of replenishing the public treasury. In this poem, Montgomery introduces an apostrophe to Britain, breathing a lofty strain of patriotism and piety. When he visited Scotland in 1841, he read these verses at a public breakfast to which he was invited in Glasgow, as expressing his personal feelings towards his native land and its noble institutions. The sufferings of chimney-sweepers' apprentices engaged his sympathy, and drew from his pen a series of verses, under the title of "The Climbing Boy's Soliloquies." He paraphrased a number of the Psalms of David in "Songs of Zion," but admitted, when in Scotland, that no version of the Psalms came up to that used, in the Presbyterian Churches for scriptural simplicity and truthfulness to the original. "The Common Lot," "The Little Cloud," "Night," "Robert Burns," "The Daisy in India," "Friends," "A Voyage Round the World,"