210 Mr. Robert Montgomery, and QAua. 



" Oh, liyes there, Heaven, beneath thy dread expanse, 

 One hopeless, dark idolater of Chance?" &c. 



If, barren in his own resources, Mr. Montgomery must needs steal from 

 his betters, let him at least have the honesty to confess the theft. 



" Ages has awful Time been travelling on, 

 And all his children to one tomb have gone ; 

 The varied wonders of the peopled earth 

 In equal turn have gloried in their birth: 

 We live and toil, we triumph and decay 

 Thus age on age rolls unperceived away : 

 And thus 'twill be, till Heaven's last thunders roar, 

 And Time and Nature shall exist no more." 



Indeed ! This is really most surprising intelligence. See what it is to 

 be a philosopher as well as a poet ! " Ages has awful Time been tra- 

 velling on !" What a discovery ! " And all his children to one tomb 

 have gone !" How astonishing ! " We live and toil, we triumph and 

 decay !" You don't say so ! " Age on age rolls unperceived away !" 

 Miraculous young man ! 



** And lo ! the sea along her ruined shore 

 The white waves gallop with delirious roar, 

 Till Ocean, in her agonizing throe, 

 Bounds, swells, and sinks, like leaping hills of snow ; 

 While downward tumbling crags and torrents sweep, 

 And wildly mingle with the blaze-lit deep. 

 Imagination, furl thy wings of fire, 

 And on eternity's dread brink expire ; 

 The last, the fiery chaos hath begun ; 

 Quenched is the moon, and blackened is the sun. 

 The stars have bounded 'mid the airy roar, 

 Crushed lie the rocks, and mountains are no more. 

 And lo, the teeming harvest of the earth, 

 Reaped from the grave to share a second birth ; 

 Millions of eyes, with one deep dreadful stare, 

 Gaze upward through the burning realms of air, 

 While shapes, and shrouds, and ghastly features gleam. 

 Like lurid snow-flakes in the moonlight beam." 



The above description of the last day has been prodigiously admired. It 

 has been pronounced sublime original Miltonic ! According to Mr. 

 Clarkson, it is superior to any thing in the Pleasures of Hope or Me- 

 mory, " in grand simplicity of design, and massy sublimity of effect." 

 To the former especially, insomuch as it is " less evirated by a fasti- 

 dious timidity in overpolishing." To us it appears, not so much a 

 description, as a catalogue. Item : so many stars bounding. Item : so 

 many rocks tumbling down. Item : so many eyes staring up. Item : 

 a quenched moon, a blackened sun, and there's the Day of Judgment ! 

 " There's Percy for you !" Now in what respect does all this differ 

 from the last scene of a melodrame ? The wolf's glen in Der Freis- 

 chiitz is equally sublime. There, too, we have stars bounding, moons 

 quenched, suns blackened, &c. Mr. Montgomery wanted only a fox- 

 hunt in the air to have made the parallel complete. In how different a 

 style does Mr. Pollock treat the same subject ! A few magic words 

 a few mysterious hints complete a picture that no one who has read the 



