And shiver each splinter of wood, And while peace and plenty I find at my board, And when I at last must throw off this frail covering Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again: And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow; As this old worn-out stuff which is threadbare to-day, May become everlasting to-morrow. HERBERT KNOWLES. HERBERT KNOWLES, a native of Canterbury Clear the deck, stow the yards, and bouse everything (1798-1817), produced, when a youth of eighteen, tight, And under reefed foresail we 'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, I heard our good chaplain palaver one day For, says he, do you mind me, let storms e'er so oft the following fine religious stanzas, which, being published in an article by Southey in the Quarterly Review, soon obtained general circulation and celebrity they have much of the steady faith and devotional earnestness of Cowper. Lines written in the Churchyard of Richmond, Yorkshire. Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. Matthew, xvii. 4. Methinks it is good to be here, If thou wilt, let us build-but for whom? But the shadows of eve that encompass with gloom Shall we build to Ambition? Ah no! Affrighted, he shrinketh away; For see, they would pin him below In a small narrow cave, and, begirt with cold clay, To Beauty? Ah no! she forgets Nor knows the foul worm that he frets The skin which but yesterday fools could adore, For the smoothness it held or the tint which it wore. Shall we build to the purple of Pride, The trappings which dizen the proud? Alas, they are all laid aside, And here 's neither dress nor adornments allowed, But the long winding-sheet and the fringe of the shroud. To Riches? Alas! 'tis in vain ; The treasures are squandered again; To the pleasures which Mirth can afford, Ah! here is a plentiful board! But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer, Shall we build to Affection and Love? Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side, Unto Sorrow?—the dead cannot grieve; Which Compassion itself could relieve. 143 Unto Death, to whom monarchs must bow? Ah no! for his empire is known, And here there are trophies enow! Beneath the cold dead, and around the dark stone, Are the signs of a sceptre that none may disown. The first tabernacle to Hope we will build, And look for the sleepers around us to rise! The second to Faith, which insures it fulfilled; And the third to the Lamb of the great sacrifice, Who bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies. ROBERT POLLOK. In 1827 appeared a religious poem in blank verse, entitled The Course of Time, by ROBERT POLLOK, which speedily rose to great popularity, especially among the more serious and dissenting classes in Scotland. The author was a young licentiate of the Scottish Secession Church. Many who scarcely ever looked into modern poetry were tempted to peruse a work which embodied their favourite theological tenets, set off with the graces of poetical fancy and description; while to the ordinary readers of imaginative literature, the poem had force and originality enough to challenge an attentive perusal. The Course of Time is a long poem, extending to ten books, written in a style that sometimes imitates the lofty march of Milton, and at other times resembles that of Blair and Young. The object of the poet is to describe the spiritual life and destiny of man; and he varies his religious speculations with episodical pictures and narratives, to illustrate the effects of virtue or vice. The sentiments of the author are strongly Calvinistic, and in this respect, as well as in a certain crude ardour of imagination and devotional enthusiasm, the poem reminds us of the style of the old Scottish theologians. It is often harsh, turgid, and vehement, and deformed by a gloomy piety which repels the reader, in spite of many fine passages and images that are scattered throughout the work. With much of the spirit and the opinions of Cowper, Pollok wanted his taste. Time might have mellowed the fruits of his genius; for certainly the design of such an extensive poem, and the possession of a poetical diction copious and energetic, by a young man reared in circumstances by no means favourable for the cultivation of a literary taste, indicate remarkable intellectual power and force of character. The Course of Time,' said Professor Wilson, though not a poem, overflows with poetry.' Hard as was the lot of the young poet in early life, he reverts to that period with poetic rapture : Wake, dear remembrances! wake, childhood-days! Loves, friendships, wake! and wake, thou morn and even! Sun, with thy orient locks, night, moon, and stars! Robert Pollok was destined, like Henry Kirke White, to an early grave. He was born in the year 1799, at Muirhouse, in the parish of Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, and after the usual instruction in country schools, was sent to the university of Glasgow. He studied five years in the divinity hall under Dr Dick. Some time after leaving college, he wrote a series of Tales of the Covenanters, in prose, which were published anonymously. His application to his studies brought on symptoms of pulmonary disease, and shortly after he had received his license to preach, in the spring of 1827, it was too apparent that his health was in a precarious and dangerous state. This tendency was further confirmed by the composition of his poem. Removal to the south-west of England was pronounced necessary for the poet's pulmonary complaint, and he went to reside at Shirley Common, near Southampton. The milder air of this place effected no improvement, and after lingering on a few weeks, Pollok died on the 17th of September 1827. The same year had witnessed his advent as a preacher and a poet, and his untimely death. The Course of Time, however, continued to be a popular poem, and has gone through a vast number of editions, both in this country and in America, while the interest of the public in its author has led to a memoir of his life, published in 1843. Pollok was interred in the churchyard at Millbrook, the parish in which Shirley Common is situated, and some of his admirers have erected an obelisk of granite to point out the poet's grave. Love.-From Book V. Hail love, first love, thou word that sums all bliss! But who would that expound, which words transcends, Of early love, and thence infer its worth. It was an eve of autumn's holiest mood. Its Maker. Now and then the aged leaf Such was the night, so lovely, still, serene, As violet meek, excessive ardour streamed, Her voice, scarce uttered, soft as Zephyr's sighs On her the moon looked steadfastly; the stars To emblem her he saw. A seraph kneeled, Seemed fittest, pleased him best. Sweet was the thought! But sweeter still the kind remembrance came And as they met, embraced, and sat embowered And God approving, blessed the holy joy! Friendship.-From the same. Nor unremembered is the hour when friends So much desired and coveted by all. Nor wonder thou-thou wonderest not, nor need'st. Was seen beneath the sun; but nought was seen Than face of faithful friend, fairest when seen And talked the speech, and ate the food of heaven! 62 For all are friends in heaven, all faithful friends; By hand of art, where nature sowed herself, Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and stars; Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters; Happiness. From the same. Whether in crowds or solitudes, in streets True, these were of themselves exceeding fair; The Christian faith, which better knew the heart Of man, him thither sent for peace, and thus Declared: Who finds it, let him find it there; Who finds it not, for ever let him seek In vain; 'tis God's most holy, changeless will. True Happiness had no localities, No tones provincial, no peculiar garb. Where Duty went, she went, with Justice went, And went with Meekness, Charity, and Love. Where'er a tear was dried, a wounded heart Bound up, a bruised spirit with the dew Of sympathy anointed, or a pang Of honest suffering soothed, or injury Repeated oft, as oft by love forgiven; Where'er an evil passion was subdued, Or Virtue's feeble embers fanned; where'er A sin was heartily abjured and left; Where'er a pious act was done, or breathed A pious prayer, or wished a pious wish; There was a high and holy place, a spot Of sacred light, a most religious fane, Where Happiness, descending, sat and smiled. But these apart. In sacred memory lives The morn of life, first morn of endless days, Most joyful morn! Nor yet for nought the joy. 145 Shall tell what strange variety of bliss All new! when thought awoke, thought never more Nor happy only, but the cause of joy, Which those who never tasted always mourned. What tongue!-no tongue shall tell what bliss o'er flowed The mother's tender heart, while round her hung And who hath not been ravished, as she passed All who had hearts here pleasure found: and oft And watched them run and crop the tempting flower- Of praise-and answered curious questions, put Gems leaping in the coronet of Love! JAMES MONTGOMERY. JAMES MONTGOMERY, a religious poet of deservedly high reputation, was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, November 4, 1771. His father was a Moravian missionary, who died whilst propagating Christianity in the island of Tobago. The poet was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, near Leeds, but declined being a priest, and was put apprentice to a grocer at Mirfield, near Fulneck. In his sixteenth year, with 35. 6d. in his pocket, he ran off from Mirfield, and after some suffering, became a shop-boy in the village of Wath, in Yorkshire. He next tried London, carrying with him a collection of his poems, but failed in his efforts to obtain a publisher. In 1791, he obtained a situation as clerk in a newspaper office in Sheffield; and his master failing, Montgomery, with the aid of friends, established the Sheffield Iris, a weekly journal, which he conducted with marked ability, and in a liberal, conciliatory spirit, up to the year 1825. His course did not always In run smooth. In January 1794, amidst the excitement of that agitated period, he was tried on a charge of having printed a ballad, written by a clergyman of Belfast, on the demolition of the Bastille in 1789; which was then interpreted into a seditious libel. The poor poet, notwithstanding the innocence of his intentions, was found guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment in the castle of York, and to pay a fine of £20. January 1795 he was tried for a second imputed political offence-a paragraph in his paper which reflected on the conduct of a magistrate in quelling a riot at Sheffield. He was again convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment in York Castle, to pay a fine of £30, and to give security to keep the peace for two years. 'All the persons, says the amiable poet, writing in 1840, who were actively concerned in the prosecutions against me in 1794 and 1795, are dead, and, without exception, they died in peace with me. I believe I am quite correct in saying, that from each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of goodwill, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness. I mention not this as a plea in extenuation of offences for which I bore the penalty of the law; I rest my justification, in these cases, now on the same grounds, and no other, on which I rested my justification then. I mention the circumstance to the honour of the deceased, and as an evidence that, amidst all the violence of that distracted time, a better spirit was not extinct, but finally prevailed, and by its healing influence did indeed comfort those who had been conscientious sufferers.' Mr Montgomery's first volume of poetry-he had previously written occasional pieces in his newspaper-appeared in 1806, and was entitled The Wanderer of Switzerland, and other Poems. It speedily went through two editions; and his publishers had just issued a third, when the Edinburgh Review of January 1807 'denounced the unfortunate volume in a style of such authoritative reprobation as no mortal verse could be expected to survive.' The critique, indeed, was insolent and unfeeling-written in the worst style of the Review, when all the sins of its youth were full-blown and unchecked. Among other things, the reviewer predicted that in less than three years nobody would know the name of The Wanderer of Switzerland, or of any other of the poems in the collection. Within eighteen months from the utterance of this oracle, a fourth impression-1500 copiesof the condemned volume was passing through the press whence the Edinburgh Review itself was issued, and it has now reached nearly twenty editions. The next work of the poet was The West Indies, a poem in four parts, written in honour of the abolition of the African slave-trade by the British legislature in 1807. The poem is in the heroic couplet, and possesses a vigour and freedom of description, and a power of pathetic painting, much superior to anything in the first volume. Mr Montgomery afterwards published Prison Amusements, written during his nine months' confinement in York Castle in 1794 and 1795. In 1813 he came forward with a more elaborate performance, The World before the Flood, a poem in the heroic couplet, and extending to ten short cantos. His pictures of the antediluvian patriarchs in their happy valley, the invasion of Eden by the descendants of Cain, the loves of Javan and Zillah, the translation of Enoch, and the final deliverance of the little band of patriarch families from the hand of the giants, are sweet and touching, and elevated by pure and lofty feeling. Connected with some patriotic individuals in his own neighbourhood in many a plan for lessening the sum of human misery at home and abroad,' our author next published Thoughts on Wheels (1817), directed against state lotteries; and The Climbing Boy's Soliloquies, published about the same time, in a work written by different authors, to aid in effecting the abolition, at length happily accomplished, of the cruel and unnatural practice of employing boys in sweeping chimneys. In 1819 he published Greenland, a poem in five cantos, containing a sketch of the ancient Moravian Church, its revival in the eighteenth century, and the origin of the missions by that people to Greenland in 1733. The poem, as published, is only a part of the author's original plan, but the beauty of its polar descriptions and episodes recommended it to public favour. The only other long poem by Mr Montgomery is The Pelican Island, suggested by a passage in Captain Flinders's voyage to Terra Australis, describing the existence of the ancient haunts of the pelican in the small islands on the coast of New Holland. The work is in blank verse, in nine short cantos, and the narrative is supposed to be delivered by an imaginary being who witnesses the series of events related, after the whole has happened. The poem abounds in minute and delicate description of natural phenomena-has great felicity of diction and expression-and altogether possesses more of the power and fertility of the master than any other of the author's works. 6 Besides the works we have enumerated, Mr Montgomery threw off a number of small effusions, published in different periodicals, and short translations from Dante and Petrarch. On his retirement in 1825 from the 'invidious station' of newspaper editor, which he had maintained for more than thirty years, through good report and evil report, his friends and neighbours of Sheffield, of every shade of political and religious distinction, invited him to a public entertainment, at which the late Earl Fitzwilliam presided. There the happy and grateful poet ran through the story of his life even from his boyish days,' when he came amongst them, friendless and a stranger, from his retirement at Fulneck among the Moravian brethren, by whom he was educated in all but knowledge of the world. He spoke with pardonable pride of the success which had crowned his labours as an author. 'Not, indeed,' he said, with fame and fortune, as these were lavished on my greater contemporaries, in comparison with whose magnificent possessions on the British Parnassus my small plot of ground is no more than Naboth's vineyard to Ahab's kingdom; but it is my own; it is no copyhold; I borrowed it, I leased it from none. Every foot of it I enclosed from the common myself; and I can say that not an inch which I had once gained have I ever lost.' In 1830 and 1831 Mr Montgomery was selected to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution on Poetry and General Literature, which he prepared for the press, and published in 1833. A pension of £200 per annum was, at the instance of Sir Robert Peel, conferred upon Mr Montgomery, which he enjoyed till his death in 1854, at the ripe age of eighty-three. A collected edition of his works, with autobiographical and illustrative matter, was issued in 1841 in four volumes, and Memoirs of his Life and Writings have been published by two of his friends, John Holland and James Everett. A tone of generous and enlightened morality pervades all the writings of this poet. He was the enemy of the slave-trade and of every form of oppression, and the warm friend of every scheme of philanthropy and improvement. The pious and devotional feelings displayed in his early effusions colour all his poetry. In description, however, he is not less happy: and in his Greenland and Pelican Island there are passages of great beauty, evincing a refined taste and judgment in the selection of his materials. His late works had more vigour and variety than those by which he first became distinguished. Indeed, his fame was long confined to what is termed the religious world, till he shewed, by his cultivation of different styles of poetry, that his depth and sincerity of feeling, the simplicity of his taste, and the picturesque beauty of his language, were not restricted to purely spiritual themes. His smaller poems enjoy a popularity almost equal to those of Moore, which, though differing widely in subject, they resemble in their musical flow, and their compendious happy expression and imagery. Greenland. 'Tis sunset; to the firmament serene 1 The term ice-blink is generally applied by mariners to the nocturnal illumination in the heavens, which denotes to them the proximity of ice-mountains. In this place a description is attempted which has been long distinguished by this peculiar name by the of the most stupendous accumulation of ice in the known world, Danish navigators.-MONTGOMERY. |