```“Immortal beacons,--spirits of the just,”--=
and describes their employments in another world, which are to be,
it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and riding on
living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic is described with
what we suppose is meant for energy. We then have the deathbed of a
Christian made as ridiculous as false imagery and false English can make
it. But this is not enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described,
and a roaring cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous
subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes
wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing
hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves
gallop. Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of
Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert
Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar.
The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity then
begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A car comes forward
driven by living thunder,=
```“Creation shudders with sublime dismay,
```And in a blazing tempest whirls away.”=
And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the
master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over and
over again, in terms which would require some qualification if used
respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by
stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry
frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and
to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what
must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we
have quoted, verses fit only for the poet’s corner of the Morning Post,
can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer’s
poetry has been greater than that of Southey’s Roderick, and beyond all
comparison greater than that of Cary’s Dante or of the best works of
Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert Montgomery has favoured the
public with volume after volume. We have given so much space to the
examination of his first and most popular performance that we have none
to spare for his Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the
puffing journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to
literary immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication,
entitled Satan.
This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of acclamation.
But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so unfounded, so
impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit of resistance. In
several magazines and reviews, accordingly, Satan has been handled
somewhat roughly, and the arts of the puffers have been exposed with
good sense and spirit. We shall, therefore, be very concise.
Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the Deity,
for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank one bad book
above another. “Marry, this is somewhat. This is rhyme. But the other
is neither rhyme nor reason.” Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil
pronounces in five or six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning
geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical
amusements, Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Lord Byron’s poetry, and Mr.
Martin’s pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural,
particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies so
conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to learn that,
whatever may be thought of those performances on earth, they give full
satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he is there thought to have hit
off the likenesses of the various Thrones and Dominations very happily.
The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job: “Whence
comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down
in it.” And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery has not failed to make his
hero go to and fro, and walk up and down. With the exception, however,
of this propensity to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad
Tom had told us that “the prince of darkness is a gentleman”; but we
had yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose
principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too liberal
of his good advice. That happy change in his character which Origen
anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, seems to be rapidly
taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated in a moment. It is not
strange, therefore, that so old an offender should now and then relapse
for a short time into wrong dispositions. But to give him his due, as
the proverb recommends, we must say that he always returns, after two
or three lines of impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously
advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in
different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the
name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less
absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity,
from a good than from a bad angel.
We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken at
random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive, than any
other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes to the play, and
moralises thereon as follows:=
```“Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
```Around me: beauties in their cloud-like robes
```Shine forth,--a scenic paradise, it glares
```Intoxication through the reeling sense
```Of flush’d enjoyment. In the motley host
```Three prime gradations may be rank’d: the first,
```To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare’s mind,
```And win a flash of his Promethean thought,
```To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve
```A round of passionate omnipotence,
```Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,
```Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
```On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,
```While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
```Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire
```The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,
```With their corroded figures, rayless glance,
```And death-like struggle of decaying age,
```Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
```Set forth to satirise the human kind!
```How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
```‘Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!’
```Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry.”=
Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert Montgomery,
we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to individuals,
literature must be purified from this taint. And, to show that we are
not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity towards him, we hereby
give notice that, as soon as any book shall, by means of puffing, reach
a second edition, our intention is to do unto the writer of it as we
have done unto Mr. Robert Montgomery.