How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the
Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed,
in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the
dead.
Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something
new to say about him.
“O Death! though dreadless vanquisher of earth,
The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!
Careering round the world like tempest wind,
Martyrs before, and victims strew’d behind;
Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,
Dragging the world into eternity!”
If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the
dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may
be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie
before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries.
We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio,
“Why, this is a more excellent song than the other.” Mr. Robert
Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove,
that, as he elegantly expresses it,