1830.] Mr. Edward Clarkson. 209 



Mr. Montgomery here informs us, with a gravity worthy of the occasion, 

 that God rested on the seventh day ! Can we be otherwise than grateful 

 for such very original intelligence ? 



" Then like the sun slow- wheeling to the wave/' 



An evident but unacknowledged plagiarism from a similar line in the 

 Pleasures of Hope viz. " To hail the sun slow- wheeling to the deep." 



e< And on with helm and plume the warriors come. 

 And the glad hills repeat the stormy drum." 



Mr. Campbell, in the poem to which we have just alluded, speaks with 

 no less truth than vigour of " the stormy music of the drum." Mr. R. 

 Montgomery, like most imitators, has disfigured this image, in order to 

 make it pass current for his own. Instead of the music, he makes the 

 drum itself stormy by way, we presume, of adding boldness to the 

 metaphor. 



" Pulseless and pale, beneath the taper's glow 

 Lies her loved parent now a clayey show." 



The attic elegance of the expression, " clayey show," is the chief re- 

 commendation of the above charming couplet. 



" To see the fiery eye-ball fiercely roll, 

 As if it wrestled with the parting soul ; 

 Or hear the last clod crumble on the bed, 

 And sound the hollow mansion of the dead- 

 This this is woe; but deeper far that gloom 

 That haunts us when we pace the dreary room, 

 And shadow forth an image of our love, 

 Rapt to Elysian realms of light above." 



The sentiment of this passage, to say nothing of its poetry, is curious 

 and deserves attention. It is a dreadful thing, it seems, to watch the 

 last agonies of a dying man, but infinitely more dreadful to reflect that 

 he has gone to heaven. Certainly, if heaven be such a place as Mr. 

 Montgomery has described it in his <f Vision," that is to say, a sort of 

 Vauxhall on a large scale, we can imagine that a staid domestic gen- 

 tleman would not be over-rejoiced to hear of his friend's safe arrival 

 there, 



" Who hung yon planet in its airy shrine ? 



And dashed the sun-beam from its burning mine ? 

 Who bade the ocean-mountains swell and leap, 

 And thunders rattle from the skiey deep ? 

 One great Enchanter helmed th* harmonious whole- 

 Creator, God, the grand primaeval Soul !" 



The tenth time, at least, that we have been assured of this important 

 fact. 



" And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed 

 All that the ear perceives, or tongue has named- 

 The spacious world, and all its wonders born, 

 Designless self-created and forlorn," &c. 



This is an arrant plagiarism from a similar passage in the Pleasures 

 of Hope, beginning with, 

 MM. New Series VOL. X. No. 56. 2 D 



