103 

 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



THE MESSIAH; A POEM IN Six BOOKS. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. LONDON: 



JOHN TURRILL. 1832. 



PERHAPS, the proper method of reviewing this poem would be to decide whether 

 the paper was good, the type clear, and the price reasonable. We look upon it as 

 a mere pecuniary venture, put forth for the double purpose of extracting eight 

 shillings and sixpence from the pockets of the pious, and of ingratiating its author 

 with the clergy. If, then, we take exception to the poetry if we even condemn 

 it as a mass of unintelligible, nauseous, and impious truth we may be turned 

 round upon by the author and told, " Well, what of that? It answers the end 

 proposed, that of filling my pockets and others are of a very different opinion with 

 respect to its merits." 



* Sufficient for the week is the critic thereof." Others know best whom it may 

 be expedient to praise in their works but we must, nevertheless, in opposition 

 to any avowed admiration of this poem, assert our belief, that a more contempti- 

 ble production was scarcely ever before palmed off upon the public for poetry. 

 And let no one accuse us of severity, hypercriticism, or malignity. We confess 

 that we do feel most indignant that an infamous system of trade criticism should 

 have so long prevailed in this country a system under which a Robert Mont- 

 gomery may flourish while a Wordsworth, a Coleridge, and a Shelley, are neg- 

 lected and despised. 



This poem is, it seems, the Four Evangelists done into blank verse, and inter- 

 spersed with reflections of the author, which might as well have been left out or, 

 perhaps, serve as well where they are we know not which. Certain we are, that 

 they are never to be perused by mortal man. Or to say nothing of Mr. Montgomery's 

 audacity; poets of his stainp are equal to any subject, and can write with equal 

 facility and felicity in all. But he must needs take our word for it, he cannot 

 manage blank verse. Much may be done, we admit, by a diligent study of this 

 most difficult of all verse even where there is no perception or feeling of the 

 harmony of numbers ; but it is quite clear to us for Mr. Montgomery has practised 

 enough that he never will arrive at a decent mastery, even of the mechanical 

 structure. Of the harmony of the measure he knows nothing very few of our 

 modern poets do ; but we have a right to expect something a shade better than the 

 monstrous cadence of such verse as this; the march, or rather the hobble of 

 which, is accelerated occasionally by a brisk line of eight syllables and impeded 

 as often by the long interposition of a bruised and jointless Alexandrine. Let us 

 give a few specimens of the former: 



The chosen people ; thus began 



Enraptured ! what a brightness clad 



But, ah ! her frame's convulsive heave 



Shall tremble, and the check of kings 



So mutter'd each, but mildly fiim 



For judgment ; should he dare condemn, &c. 



with a sample of the Alexandrines, or compulsion, or verses in spite of themselve g . 



The lofty and the excellent in mind adores 

 Of dying hope and faded joy ; if life be lone 

 Of patriarchs and prophets speak ; beneath the shade 

 Of desolation over king and kingdom pour'd 

 Like Hagar in the wilderness, to weep and die 

 He listen'd ; for a leaf -fall in the charmed air. 

 with many others. 



We must restrict ourselves to a very few specimens of the fine writing which is 



1 / 1 ,1 t> 1 / 1 f* *^1 Al_ ' V * 



to be found in this poem. Speaking of some persons who put faith in nothing butjl0ji 



W 



what their reason constrains them to believe, our author says, 

 There are who deem no revelation true 



That doth not, by divine compulsion, awe 

 The universal mind to grand belief.' 



