216 Mr. Robert Montgomery, and [AuG. 



" Crime 



Hath paid atonement to the law of life, 

 And agonized o'er that which is to come" 



" For some can dare the prisoned mind unbar, 

 And glance unearthliness behind the veil 

 That mantles their mortality" 



" He rebuked^ 

 The ocean calming at his fearful glance" 



" Approving smiles from such as thee" 



" The sun-faced morn comes gliding o'er the waves, 

 That billow dancingly to wear her smile" 



" This ebbing music all uncharmed some feel, 

 While others, in its wafting decadence, 

 Hear dream-like echoes." 



Throughout his works Mr. Montgomery seems not to have the slightest 

 notion of the difference between the transitive and intransitive verb. 

 He makes as many blunders in his English, as Mr. Clarkson has made 

 in his Latin grammar. In fact, he has yet to study the first rules of Syn- 

 tax, which we hope he will manage to get by heart before he next 

 attempts to rival Milton. A little grammar is a great recommendation to 

 a poet. In one of the above extracts, Mr. Montgomery talks of " the 

 earth agonizing" (instead of being agonized) ; evidently unconscious 

 that to agonize is an active, not a neuter verb. In the same sense, he 

 uses the phrases, " the waves billow dancingly" " the blood danced 

 beauty/' &c. Still more deplorable is his ignorance when he speaks 

 of " the wafting decadence" of music ; as if the decadence (that is, 

 the falling tones of melody) had in itself any power of wafting. The 

 word should be, " wafted." Of tawdry epithets our poet is a most 

 abundant coiner. He " misuses the king's English most damnably." 

 Such terms as " insinuous" " fictious" " blasphemeful" " regretful" 

 -" unheedful" " museful" -" dareful" " voiceful" " sceneful" 

 " pangless" " fameless" " play some" " gay some" " gamesome" 

 ff darksome" " delightsome" " thundry" " empeopled" " regioned" 

 " dungeoned in prison" " victimize," and so forth, are but a few 

 among hundreds of others with which Mr. Montgomery has thought fit 

 to embellish Satan. Of bombast, he is a no less celebrated professor, 

 more so, indeed, than the great Tom Thumb himself. We subjoin a 

 specimen or two. Wishing simply to inform us that Egypt is sultry, he 

 tells us it is a country 



" Where hot suffusion suffocates the winds." 



Bombastes Furioso, as the reader may perhaps recollect, desires a coach 

 to be called in the same sonorous style : 



" Go call a coach, and let a coach be called, 

 And let the man that calls it be the waiter ; 

 And in his calling let him nothing call 

 But coach coach coach ! Oh, for a coach, ye gods !" 



The firing of cannon is thus described : - 



" The cannon- thunder chased the daunted winds." 

 Imagine the noise of the firing running after the winds, and the latter 



