The Wanderer of Switzerland "a glowing lyric of liberty, and a fiery denunciation of the war-spirit of revolutionary France-was published towards the close of this "night of weeping." It was his first poem of any magnitude, and met with a success beyond his most sanguine expectations. It won for him an acknowledged place among the great poets of the day. When the second edition had been sold in little more than two months, Montgomery wrote: "There was a time when such unexpected success in that path in which I have been long seeking immortality on earth, at the expense of immortality in heaven, would have transported my hopes into the paradise of fools, and raised me in my own imagination to that height of vanity at which the head grows giddy. * * But * *though this * success will not turn my brain as it would once have done, yet it has quickened my pulse a little, and made my withered hopes blossom from the dead." With these revived hopes and quickened pulse, he girded himself for new triumphs in his chosen calling; and each succeeding effort raised him higher in the estimation of all true and intelligent lovers of the poetic art. Only comparatively short intervals elapsed between the publication of his larger and more important pieces. In 1809 appeared "The West Indies "-a heroic poem on the abolition of the slave-trade-full of scorching anathemas upon "that execrable sum of all villainies," and glowing descriptions of tropic scenery, Where Creation seems No more the work of Nature, but her dreams. Among the many beautiful passages which abound in this Poem, none has been more generally admired than that which describes the love of country and of home as common to all ages and nations :— There is a land, of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside; "Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?" Art thou a man ?-a patriot?-look around; O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam, That land thy country, and that spot thy home.* Four years later came "The World before the Flood," which many have regarded as the finest effort of his muse. The poem, suggested by a passage in Milton's Paradise Lost," is an apt similitude of events sup 66 *The "West Indies" was literally written to order. Mr. Bowyer projected a series of plates to commemorate the abolition of slavery by an Act of the British Legislature, and requested Montgomery to write a descriptive poem illustrative of the various scenes which the pictures represented. "Wherefore," says the Poet, "having ever since I penned a paragraph, either in verse or prose, for a newspaper, availed myself of every fair opportunity to expose the iniquities and abominations of the Slave Trade and Slavery, I gave my whole mind to the theme." The pecuniary remuneration was one hundred guineas. The passage from Milton which contains the germ of Montgomery's poem, occurs in the Eleventh Book of "Paradise Lost," and is as follows: "In other parts the sceptred heralds call To council, in the city gates;-anon, posed to have happened among the tribes of the earlier world. The value of the Parable, for such it confessedly is, apart from its poetic merit, must be estimated by the moral and religious influence which it is calculated to exert upon the mind and heart of the reader. It abounds in beauties, and displays a fine imagination and a lofty piety. Its description of the death of Adam is universally admired; and its vivid picturings of the conflicts between the vicious and the good in antediluvian times, cannot fail to enchain the attention. Then came 66 Greenland," in the composition of which all his religious sympathies were enlisted. The scenery of the ice-bound north, and the early trials of Moravian missionary life in that snow-covered region, are delineated with singular accuracy and beauty. As one of those lovely pictures of nature in which Montgomery's poetry so richly abounds, the opening paragraph is worth quoting: The moon is watching in the sky; the stars Grey-headed men and grave, with warriors mixed, Of middle age, one rising, eminent In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong, Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law, Through all the plain, and refuge none was found." D Ocean outstretched with infinite expanse, The tide, o'er which no troubling spirits breathe, A double image, pictured on the deep, Yet, like the host of heaven, that never rest, The pageant glides through loneliness and night, "The Pelican Island" was published in 1827, and this we regard as the masterpiece of his lyre. Imagining himself a purely spiritual existence, the Poet wings his way on a sort of ethereal pilgrimage, and describes the magnificent glories of ocean, air, and sky which meet him in his course. Hovering over the great South Pacific, he eagerly watches the formation of a lovely Coral Island, and traces its history from the first act of the mason insect in the depths of ocean, to the time of its becoming the abode of man. The Pelican is the first living thing to alight upon the new-formed home. The human population is described as living in all the horrors of savagism so common to those favoured spots of creation. In the progress of their history, however, there arises a chief of no common order. Thoughts of immortality and of a Supreme Being begin to work in his soul. Blood-shed and oppression are banished from his dominion. His mental agony increases as the vague traditions of his ancestry start up before his mind. Idol gods are abandoned, and he ventures at last to kneel upon a rocky cliff and offer an affecting supplication “to the Unknown God," in whom he now believes. In this state of high expectancy he suddenly expires; and here, to our great mortification, the poem ends with the intimation that "within the volume of the heart," thoughts and which, Unbodied yet in vocal words, await The quickening warmth of poesy to bring Another day, a nobler song may show. If we are disposed to controvert the theory of advancement from savagery to civilisation and religion, without any external aid, upon which the greater part of the poem is based, we are no less alive to the masterly art with which the theory is wrought out and adorned. The whole composition is a fairy-land of beauty, on which, if you set foot, the enchanter's spell is upon you, and you are compelled to roam its entire length and breadth, in order to examine and admire every tree, and shrub, and sleeping floweret, and living thing, with which it is so densely crowded.* *The Pelican Island "was suggested by a passage in Captain Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis. Describing one of those numerous gulfs which indent the coast of New Holland, and are thickly spotted with small islands, he says: Upon two of these we found many young Pelicans unable to fly. Flocks of the old birds were sitting upon the beaches of the lagoon, and it appeared that the islands were their breeding places; not only so, but, from the number of skeletons and bones there scattered, it should seem that D2 |