James Montgomery
MONTGOMERY, JAMES (1771-1854),
poet, was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, 4 Nov.
1771. His family, originally Scottish, had for
several generations been settled in
Ulster, where his great-grandfather is said to have
possessed and dissipated a landed estate. His
father, John Montgomery, had at all events
been born in the condition of a labourer
at Ballykennedy, co. Antrim, in 1733. Having
embraced the tenets of the Moravians, who
had founded a settlement in the neighbourhood,
to which they had given the name of
Grace Hill, the elder Montgomery became a
minister; married a member of the Moravian
community in 1768, and at the time of
his son's birth had just arrived at Irvine to
take charge of the Moravian congregation,
at that time the only one in Scotland. He
returned to Ireland in 1775, and in 1777
James was sent to school at the Moravian
establishment at Fulneck, near Leeds. His
parents proceeded in 1783 as missionaries to
Barbados, and there his father died of yellow
fever in 1791. His mother, Mary Montgomery,
had died at Tobago in the previous year.
Meanwhile James had met with some adventures.
Neglecting the studies considered
essential at Fulneck, he employed himself in
the composition of two epic poems, one on
Alfred, the other entitled 'The World,' in
the manner of Milton. The principle incident
in the latter was the Archangel Michael
taking Satan by surprise and lopping off one
of his wings. The Moravians for a time
clipped Montgomery's own wings by placing
him with a baker; but the employment
proved intolerable, and in 1787 Moutgomery
ran away with three and sixpence in his
pocket and a bundle of verses, which proved
more valuable than might have been expected,
for a poem, written out fairly and presented
to Earl Fitzwilliam, brought him a
guinea. He was, nevertheless, soon obliged
to apply for a character to his old instructors
and to his master, who treated him with
much kindness, and he obtained a situation
in a general store in the little town of Wath.
After a year he quitted this and made his
way with his manuscripts to London, but,
finding no encouragement from the publishers,
returned to Wath, and remained
there till April 1792, when, by answering
an advertisement in the 'Sheffield Register,'
he obtained a situation as clerk and bookkeeper
in the office of that newspaper. This
change brought Montgomery into intellectual
society; his literary talent began to be
appreciated; he gradually became an extensive
contributor to the paper; and an unexpected
circumstance opened up the path to
independence. This was the prosecution and
flight of Mr. Gales, the proprietor and editor
of the 'Register,' and an ardent reformer, on
account of a letter found on the person of
Thomas Hardy on his apprehension, and attributed
to Gales, who was in fact cognizant
of its having been sent, though he was not
the actual writer. Gales escaped to America;
money to carry on the paper was found by a
wealthy townsman named Naylor, and Montgomery
became the working editor of the
journal, which endeavoured to disarm the
hostility of the government by changing its
title to the 'Sheffield Iris,' and adopting a
more moderate line in politics. In 1795
Naylor retired from the paper on account of
his marriage, and it became the property of
Montgomery, who also entered into business
as a general printer. Within a few years he
was enabled to pay off the purchase-money
of the journal, and to obtain a highly respectable
competence. Before this was achieved,
however, he had to bear the brunt of two
prosecutions for libel, each of which resulted
in his conviction and imprisonment for a
term in York Castle. though neither could
affix the least stigma to his character. The
first prosecution (January 1796) was on account
of a ballad in commemoration of the
Fall of the Bastille, a few copies of which
had been sold to a travelling hawker; it
had been printed by Montgomery's predecessor,
and had in fact no reference to the
events of the day. It was subsequently
shown by official correspondence that the
prosecution was instituted as a means of
intimidating the Sheffield political clubs. The
second prosecution (January 1796) Montgomery
undoubtedly brought upon himself
by statements respecting the behaviour of a
magistrate, Colonel Athorpe, in dispersing a
riotous assemblage, which could not be fully
justified, although the explanations he was
ready to have offered would probably have
been accepted but for the embittered state
of political feeling at the time. After his
release in July he published the 'Prison
Amusements' which had enlivened his confinement,
and in 1798 a volume of essays entitled
'The Whisperer,' under the pseudonym
of 'Gabriel Silvertongue.' He subsequently
destroyed every copy he could lay
his hands on; while a novel, in four volumes,
completed during his second imprisonment,
was destroyed in manuscript.
For some time the 'Iris' was the only
newspaper in Sheffield; but beyond the ability
to produce fairly creditable articles from week
to week, Montgomery was entirely devoid of
the journalistic faculties which would have
enabled him to take advantage of his position.
Other newspapers arose to fill the place
which his might have occupied, and in 1825
the journal passed into other hands. During
the greater part of this period he had given
more attention to poetry than to journalism.
'The Ocean' (1805) attracted little attention,
but 'The Wanderer of Switzerland'
(1806), founded upon the French conquest
of Switzerland, took the public ear at once,
on account of the subject, and from the
merit of some of the miscellaneous pieces
accompanying it, especially the really fine
and still popular lyric, 'The Grave.' The
principal poem is as a whole very feeble,
though a happy thought or vigorous
expression may be found here and there. The
volume nevertheless speedily went through
three editions, and its sale was not materially
checked by a caustic review from the pen
of Jeffrey (Edinb. Rev. January 1807), which
indeed gained Montgomery many friends.
He himself became a reviewer, taking an
important part in the newly established
'Eclectic Review,' in which he afterwards
declared that he had noticed every contemporary
of note except Byron. His criticism
evinces little insight; he is a tolerably safe
guide where no guidance is needed, but is
slow, though by no means through unwillingness
to appreciate the merits of contemporaries.
A more thoroughly impartial critic
never wrote. The success of 'The Wanderer'
brought him in 1807 a commission from
the printer Bowyer to write a poem on the
abolition of the slave trade, to be published
along with other poems on the subject in
a handsome illustrated volume. The subject
was well adapted to Montgomery's
powers, appealing at once to the philanthropic
enthusiasm in which his strength
lay, and to his own touching associations with the West Indies.
Its poem entitled 'The West Indies' accordingly appeared in Bowyer's
illustrated publication in 1809. It is a great improvement
on 'The Wanderer,' and, although rather rhetoric than poetry,
is in general well conceived and well expressed, and skilful as
well as sincere in its appeals to public sentiment. On its first
appearance in Bowyer's volume it proved a failure, but
when published separately (London, 1810, 12mo) it obtained great popularity.
'The World before the Flood' (1812), also in heroic verse,
is a more ambitious attempt, and displays more poetic fire and spirit than
any of Montgomery's previous performances;
nor is it so deficient in human interest as might have been expected in an epic
in the wars of the giants and the patriarchs. The
descriptive passages frequently possess great
merit, which is even exceeded in Montgomery's
next considerable effort, 'Greenland' (1819), a poem founded on the Moravian
missions to Greenland. Montgomery's last important poem,
'The Pelican Island' (1826), also contains very fine descriptive
passages, but with more preaching has less human interest than
'Greenland,' and is muted by being written in blank verse, of
which the author was by no means a master. A considerable part
of his reputation with the public at large rests upon his numerous
hymns, which were collected in 1853. The finest were those written
in his earlier years, including 'Go to dark Gethsemane,' 'Songs
of praise the Angels sang,' and 'For ever with the Lord.' Over
a hundred of his other hymns are still in use (JULIAN,
Dict. of Hymnology, p. 764).
After retiring from the 'Iris,' Montgomery
continued to reside at Sheffield, where he
had come to be accounted a local hero, and
grew more and more in the respect of his fellow-townsmen by
his exemplary life and activity in furthering every good work,
whether philanthropic or religious. In 1830 and 1831 he
delivered lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution, which
were published in 1833. They are, perhaps, of all his
writings those which it is easiest to praise
unreservedly, the opinions being almost invariably just,
and conveyed with a force and sometimes even a poetry of diction
which nothing in his previous criticisms had seemed
to promise. In 1831 he also compiled from the original documents
the journals of D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, who had been deputed
by the London Missionary Society to visit their stations in the
South Sea Islands, China, and India. In 1835 he received a
pension of 150l. on the recommendation of Sir Robert Peel, and
about the same time contributed fairly adequate accounts of
Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso to Lardner's 'Cabinet Cyclopaedia.'
The remainder of his life was devoted to religious and philanthropic
undertakings. He died rather suddenly on 30 April 1854. He was
honoured by a public funeral, and a monument designed by John Bell was
erected over his grave in the Sheffield cemetery. He was unmarried.
Montgomery was emphatically a good man; greatness, whether
intellectual or poetical, cannot be claimed for him. He had
sound plain sense; his conversation,
from the copious specimens recorded by his biographers, was
instructive and entertaining, but neither brilliant nor profound;
his letters, though expressive of his admirable character, are in general
grievously verbose. As a poet he is only eminent in descriptive
passages, for which he is usually indebted to books rather than
his own observation of nature. There are some indications of
creative power in 'The World before the Flood,' and the character
of Javan is well drawn; but, as Mrs. Holland remarked, he drew
from himself. The minor pieces which have obtained a wide circulation
usually deserve it, but they are buried in his works among masses of
commonplace which should never have been printed. He is largely
indebted for his fame to the approbation of religious circles, better
judges of his sentiments than of his poetry: this has, on the other
hand, occasioned unreasonable prejudice against him in other
quarters. On the whole he may be characterized as something
less than a genius and something more than a mediocrity.
The best portraits of Montgomery are those respectively painted by
the sculptor Chantrey in 1805, and by John Jackson in 1827. A full-length
by Barber is in the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Institute.
The first collective edition of Montgomery's poems, edited by himself,
appeared in four volumes, London, 1841, 8vo. This passed through several
editions, the most recent being that of 1881. His poems form
volumes in the 'Lansdowne Poets,' the 'Chandos Poets,' and the 'Chandos
Classics.'
[The life of Montgomery has been written
with the most formidable prolixity by his
friends, Dr. John Holland and the Rev. James
Everett, in seven volumes, London, 1854-6.
The compendious biography by J. W. King,
1858, is easier to consult, but is full of
affectations and irrelevancies. Carruthers's Memoir,
prefixed to the American works, is, on the other hand,
too meagre. There are numerous references to
Montgomery in Southey's Correspondence and similar
contemporary collections. Cf. S. O. Hall's Book of
Memories, 1883, pp. 81-93; and two essays by Mr. G. W.
Tallent-Bateman--an estimate and a valuable bibliography--in
the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1889, pp. 385-92, 435-40.]
R. G.
From: Dictionary of National Biography