Page:The Maclise Portrait-Gallery.djvu/152

 and the subject of his poem pass each other without recognition,—at least on the side of the poet:—

—where the explanation of the epithet is given in a note, "Brummagem, or Bromicham,—synonym of the adjective base,—of no sterling value."

In opposition to these adverse criticisms, a champion stepped forward to do battle for the poet. This was a Mr. Edward Clarkson, who, in 1830, published a book entitled Robert Montgomery and his Reviewers; with some Remarks on the Present State of English Poetry and the Laws of Criticism, London, 8vo, pp. 164. This little volume is well and generously written, but hardly hits the mark. Its errors, verbal and critical, are pointed out in Fraser's Magazine, vol. i. p. 721; and later in the same periodical it is proclaimed, "Regina said, 'Let Bob Montgomery, the rhyming monkey, and Ned Clarkson, his accompanying bear, be utterly annihilated from the face of the earth,' and lo! annihilated they were immediately, and no one wastes a moment about the existence or small doings of such puny worthless pismires."

As I write, an epigrammatical quatrain comes to my memory, though without the unde derivatur to make it complete:—

"ON A VERY WORDY VERSE BUILDER.

A man of Montgomery's vanity would often have his portrait painted. There is one before me by Thomson from a painting by Derby; there is another by C. Grant; while Maclise has had in his eye the Byronic portrait by Hobday, the original of which, according to Macaulay, "appears to be doing his very best to look like a man of genius, though with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve." Poet or poetaster, he may think himself well off; "damned with faint praise," or consigned to the lower depths of Tartarus with unmitigated condemnation, it is much, as I take it, to have obtained a permanent niche in Fraser's Pantheon, where he sits serene in imperturbable complacency,

"Æternumque tenet per sæcula nomen."

I think that it was just after the publication of the Omnipresence of the Deity that Montgomery entered himself at Oxford, with a view of reading for holy orders. He properly, says his critic in Fraser, chose Lincoln as his college,—"of which he may rival its glorious bell,—the mighty Tom,—in the volume, sonorousness and emptiness of its windy music." He graduated B.A., 1833; M.A., 1838; being placed in the fourth class, in literis humanioribus, at the examination at the end of Easter term, 1833. When ordained, he speedily took rank as a popular preacher, and was ever ready to give his services for the benefit of religion or