212 Mr. Robert Montgoinery, and Auo. 



The thought there is vulgar common-place mechanical ; the language 

 frigid and grandiloquent. It is like a chimney-sweep tricked out in a 

 court-dress. 



It may be said, perhaps, that in the foregoing strictures, we have 

 been too severe on Mr. Clarkson's new " heliacal emersion ;" that we 

 have not shewn sufficient consideration for his youth. We know not 

 what particular claims he has on us on this score. He is considerably 

 older than Shelley when he composed his imaginative Queen Mab ; con- 

 siderably older than Keates when he published his magnificent frag- 

 ment Endyinian ; older than Chatterton when he immortalized the 

 Bristowe Tragedy ; older than Pope when he wrote Windsor Forest ; 

 as old as Akenside when he sang the Pleasures of Imagination / as old 

 as Campbell when he lent brilliancy to those of Hope ; as old as 

 Byron when he replied to his Reviewers in the English Bards ; and 

 as old as Milton when he hymned the Masque of Comus. What 

 right then has he, in particular, to claim exemption from criticism 

 on the score of youth ? The plea was disallowed in poor Keates's 

 case ; it was disallowed also in that of Shelley's. Why, then, should 

 Mr. Montgomery -or his officious critics for himchallenge a different 

 verdict ? Is he not satisfied with the applause he has already secured ? 

 When was youthful poet more unwisely more extravagantly puffed ? 

 Has he not been promised a tomb in Westminster Abbey we think it 

 but right that the gentleman who promised this tomb should pay the 

 expences of its erection and been styled alternately the Juvenal and 

 Milton of his age ? Above all, has not Mr. Clarkson written a pam- 

 phlet in his favour > 



Dismissing then as untenable the plea of youth for why should not the 

 Omnipresence stand the test of criticism as well as the Pleasures of Hope 

 or Imagination ? Mr. Montgomery may possibly object to the frivolous- 

 ness the verbal captiousness the fastidious severity of our objections. 

 He may say, we have unwarrantably depreciated him. We reply, we 

 have merely pulled him off his stilts, and set him fairly on his feet. But 

 granted even that we have harshly condemned him, others have as 

 extravagantly over-rated him. Surely, then, the balance is equal ! As 

 regards the verbal captiousness of our criticism, our justification is, that 

 in the publicly-proclaimed Milton of his age, we have a right to look, if 

 not for fancy or feeling, at least for common-sense and grammar. 

 With a far greater shew of justice, may Mr. Montgomery com- 

 plain that our strictures on the Omnipresence are drawn from an 

 early edition. We give him the full benefit of this complaint ; 

 but may add, by way of answer, that it was this very edition 

 thus faulty thus inflated thus crammed with absurdities in their 

 rankest exuberance which first procured him the appellation of the 

 " modern Milton" from one of his reviewers ; the promise of a tomb in 

 Westminster Abbey from another; and the most fulsome adulation 

 from the majority. 



Of the Universal Prayer, &c. Mr. Montgomery's next production 

 we shall make short work. It is a pompous thanksgiving vague 

 indefinite in imagery elaborate in language superficial in thought; 

 and made up for the most part of such sing-song common-places as, 

 a storm, a shipwreck, a sun-set, a moon-rise, a day-break, a consump- 

 tive young woman; an innocent boy, and two raree-shows, one of 

 heaven, the other of hell ; the former of which, Mr. Clarkson assures 



