Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks, which down their channels fret, The clouds that gather round the setting sun That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; 66 RELIGION'S CONSOLATIONS AMIDST EARTHLY CHANGE. And what are things eternal ?-Powers depart, * Possessions vanish, and opinions change, And passions hold a fluctuating seat : But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, Duty exists;-immutably survive, For our support, the measures and the forms, Which an abstract intelligence supplies, Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not: Of other converse, which mind, soul, and heart, Do, with united urgency, require, What more, that may not perish? Thou dread Source, Prime, self-existing Cause and End of all, That in the scale of being fill their place, Above our human region, or below, Set and sustained ;-Thou-who did'st wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that thyself, Therein, with our simplicity a while Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed Who, from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, Or from its death-like void, with punctual care, For apprehension those transcendent truths In youth were mine; when stationed on the top The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, NATURE MYTHOLOGIZED BY THE GREEKS. -In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched And, in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear 1 Phœbus Apollo.-See note 6, p. 14. 2 Diana (Artemis). The crescent moon is her symbol. It was the cognizance of the Byzantine emperors, and was adopted by the Turkish conquerors. (Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes, By echo multiplied from rock or cave), Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven, When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fonnt, and thanked The Zephyrs, fanning as they passed, their wings, A SIMILE. Within the soul a faculty abides, From the incumbrances of mortal life, From error, disappointment,—nay, from guilt ; 1 Naiads, the nymphs of the springs; Oreads, those of the mountains. For The name Pan gives origin to the word panic; Polyaenus. The personal attributes of Pan-horns and hoofs-have originated the popular ideas of the figure of Satan. Pan, see note 5, p. 179. THE impression created on Cowper's mind by the perusal of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" was one of sadness, that the biographer's delineations should exhibit in genius so much of failing, of meanness, and of littleness :' and, truly, Johnson's work cannot be read without the feeling that he revels with delight in dragging into conspicuousness everything that can be tortured into blame; in suspecting motives, and in depreciating merits; that he is credulous of evil, and cold to good report. And this tendency is exemplified chiefly in his higher prey, in Milton, Dryden, Pope, &c.: humbler names he either quietly passes with complacent moral approval, or actually by praise moulds into the semblance of virtue or respectability. His life of Savage, placed in contrast with those especially of Milton or Pope, exhibits one of the most striking examples of this disposition of the Aristarchus of the eighteenth century. And all this is the more singular, when we consider the general justice of his literary judgments in the cases of the men to whom he seems personally most hostile. The memoirs of poets, from Johnson's days downwards, including names as memorable in literature as some of those whom he has visited with his lash, display an apparent amount of superiority in all the really valuable qualities of mind and heart, that implies either a condemnation of the principles of the critic's views of human nature, or a vast advance among literary men of the better elements of character. The failings and follies of genius are certainly proverbial; but, in our own century, they seem to have exchanged the relation of rule for that of exception. We have connected these remarks with the name of Mr Montgomery, because he is a poet who, in Johnson's phrase, " descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper ;" and who, by a consistent and virtuous advocacy of political principles opposed to the Johnsonian code, would, if parity of reason may be trusted, have drawn down on his character an equal measure of the critic's wrath as innocently as did, perhaps the greater men to whom we have alluded. Mr Montgomery, having survived the calumnies and persecutions of his laborious public life, has retired in his age, not only with a character unblemished, but respected and beloved as the advocate of all that is generous in principle and sentiment, and the active promoter of every scheme of practical benevolence. After being twice the victim of the mistaken jealousy of his country's laws, he lives the honoured pensioner of his sovereign. Mr Montgomery's works consist of numerous smail pieces, some of which rank among the most popular religious poetry of the country; his larger poems are "The Wanderer in Switzerland," "The West Indies," "Greenland," The World before the Flood," and "The Pelican Island." His writings abound with vigorous, though frequently artificially combined, description: the style is perhaps too diffuse, and we miss in it characteristic and specific features; but the spirit of his poetry is throughout pure and elevating. 1 See Roscoe's Introduction to the Life of Pope; and the Letter of Cowper. 2 The Sheffield Iris," which the poet edited for upwards of thirty years. During the jealous times that succeeded the commencement of the war of the French Revolution, he was twice incarcerated in York Castle, for alleged political offences committed in his journal.-See his own vindication, Works, vol. i., Edit. 1841. I i He comes, he comes; the infuriate Geyser springs As if the beauteous sun were raining down The eye, still gazing down the dread profound, 1 For a prose description of the hot springs of Iceland, see Henderson's Journal. Montgomery's representation may be compared with Byron's picture of the Staubbach, the sky-born waterfall" (Wordsworth), in the Canton of Berne (see quotation from his "Swiss Journal" in Murray's Hand-book for Switzerland, or in Moore's Byron, vol. ii. p. 30); with the same poet's Velino Cataract, Childe Harold, Cant. iv., St. 69; and with Coleridge's Lines on a Cataract, adapted from Count Stolberg. Montgomery's concluding lines look like an allegory of his political opinions. |