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 {211}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, polities, 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 Pandæmonium, 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 {212}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 spirits shed