J.-I think we have talked long enough upon our melancholy subject. Permit me to close the conversation with an anecdote of old Wycherley. When he felt himself dying, he sent for his young wife, and told her that he had a last request to make to her, which was, that she would not again marry an old man!

No. XXVIII.

THE NEW TIMON.

H.-Who is the author of the New Timon-a poem published by Colburn, and of which so many reviews have appeared in the papers lately?

A. Why that is a question which I am unable to answer with certainty; but I am inclined to attribute it to Robert Montgomery.

H.-What, the author of Luther, Satan, The Omnipresence of the Deity, and other poems on religious subjects?

A.-The same. He is sometimes called Satan Montgomery. H.-Why, I thought the reverend gentleman never wrote on any subjects that might not be regarded as strictly professional.

A. The poems that he puts his name to are all of the kind you speak of: but recollect that this production is anonymous. Perhaps, you are not aware that he is the author of a long satirical poem, also published anonymously, entitled the Age Reviewed. H.-I never read the poem-indeed I never heard of it —is it good for any thing?

A.-It exhibits a sort of clap-trap apparent cleverness, but there is no real pith or point in it. It has an air of strength from the excessive coarseness of the abusive epithets. Anything more essentially vulgar, I think, I never had the bad fortune to meet with in English Literature. There is scarcely an eminent name unconnected with Toryism and High Church principles that is not foully libelled in this malignant satire.

H.-You surprize me. Are you certain that the Age Reviewed was Robert Montgomery's production.

A. Certain and could prove it-though I am not sure that he ever avowed his claim to it publicly. But I know that he offered it after the first edition to a publisher in London. Now, there are a great many lines in the New Timon that resemble the style and tone of the most successful passages in the Age Reviewed, though increased experience and skill in the art of composition, and a maturer mind, have enabled the writer to produce a work infinitely superior in its general character to his early satire. H.-But the New Timon is not a satire at all.

A. If it be not a satire, it has, at all events, many satirical passages, and is written in the same heroic couplet measure as the Age Reviewed, and has a touch of the same mannerism. The ridicule of Alfred Tennyson in the New Timon is precisely in the style of the early satire, written, if I remember rightly, when Montgomery had only just passed his one-and-twentieth year.

H.-Oh, if he wrote the satire at that early age, we should make allowances for its defects.

A. I should say that charity might allow it to pass quietly into eternal oblivion, if the boy had not been father of the manif the poet in his middle age had not repeated the sins of his early life. It is true that the foaming abuse of the satire is not seen in his later and graver performances, but they display the same illiberality and the same virulence towards all who differ from him in politics or religion. To me there seems an obvious insincerity in his poems on religious subjects. He treats the Deity with an awful familiarity. He seems to regard the Creator of the universe only as a good subject for sonorous verse-a sort of literary speculation. The unspeakable mystery and majesty of God never daunt him. He appears to think only of the popularity and profit of sacred rhymes. Thus

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

It is an awful thing to make a trade of the attributes of the Deity.

H. Are you not uncharitable and unfair in your judgment? What right have you to question the sincerity of the poet?

A. I think any tolerable judge of poetry can tell when an author is sincere and when not. Every one can see at a glance, for example, that Cowper's love of God and Nature is sincere that his "raptures" are "genuine," and not "conjured up for occasions of poetic pomp." Every one can see that Robert Burns, a poet of a different character, and whose themes were less sacred, was not less sincere than Cowper. He wrote from his own warm heart, and thus he electrifies the hearts of others. There is an indescribable sort of internal evidence in all poetry that lets the reader into the secret of the writer's feelings.

H. I should be more ready to found a decided opinion upon that internal evidence when it is in a writer's favor than when it is against him; for a mistake on the unfavorable side is a cruel injustice.

A. But with respect to Robert Montgomery there is not only the internal evidence I speak of; but that want of Christian charity and kindness in his judgments on others, which confirms the appearances of insincerity in those professions of extraordinary piety, which are attended with so many vulgar artifices of style.

H.-Well-to put aside this branch of our discussion, let me know what you think of the New Timon as a poem.

The

A. It is clever-but it will hardly live a twelvemonth. story is poor and ill developed. The hero, the New Timon, is a rich East Indian, who is represented to be as moody and as savage as Byron's Corsair. If the author had ever seen anything of the East Indians of Calcutta, he would hardly have painted his hero in such strange colors. There is great fluency of verse, and sometimes the reader meets with a vigorous line; but, upon the whole, it is stilted and buckramed. There is a false emphasis in the tone, and a monotony in the rhythm. The mob of readers would not perhaps perceive that there is no natural spring or vibration in the metre, and would be apt to mistake a sort of convulsive grasping at effect, for the movement of real strength;

but critics, accustomed to look more closely, and judge more accurately, would hardly be so deceived. It is with readers of poetry, as it is with the ordinary observers of pictures-very few can distinguish the easy touch of true genius and genuine inspiration, from the painful elaborations of less gifted natures. H. I do not know that, I am inclined to think that the public are, after all, the best judges of poetry.

A. Not in the first instance; except in rare cases. Generally speaking, the critic has to direct the judgment of the many. Addison opened the eyes of the English people to the merits of their greatest Epic poet, and Wordsworth and Coleridge have been forced into notice by the critics. It is true that the critic could not always keep a poet from oblivion. After a certain time if the public do not continue to recognize and appreciate a poet's genius, he sinks into obscurity, in despite of all the fostering of favorable criticism. What has become of the "matchless Orinda" whom Dryden so extravagantly praised ?—Who reads Hayley— though few writers have received more compliments from contemporary critics?

H.-The revolutions in the public taste are marvellous.

A.-I suspect we are in the habit of confounding the praises of critics with the public favor. There are very few instances indeed of poets, who have once fairly obtained a place in the public heart, and then sunk into neglect. Homer and Virgil have more admirers than ever, and who can imagine for a moment that the merits of Milton and Shakspeare will ever lose their attraction?

H.-To return to the New Timon-do you remember any of its passages that remind you of the Age Reviewed?

A. I recollect but little of it—but a single line occurs to me Though Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse.

Now this absurd specimen of alliteration is precisely in the style of a great number of lines in the long satire of the Age Reviewed. I have not seen that satire for years, but I remember one line of it

And push a poem up Parnassus' hill.

There is the same extraordinary fondness for alliteration, and the same weak convulsive efforts to be strong, in this poem as in the satire: but still, as a whole, the present poem is very superior indeed to its predecessor. If the New Timon be really, as I think it is, the production of Robert Montgomery, his mind has certainly not stood still.

H.-I am told that he is an eloquent preacher, and much admired and beloved by his congregation. He is evidently not an ordinary writer. On the contrary, he is distinguished by great literary enthusiasm, and, though rather deficient in taste and judgment, there are passages scattered here and there over his works, that prove him to possess poetical genius, though the kind and degree of it has perhaps never been very fairly explained by our periodical writers. He has been extravagantly overpraised, and just as extravagantly abused and ridiculed. The extraordinary sale of his works is partly, I suppose, to be attributed to their religious character, though James Montgomery's poems, for which there is a less urgent demand in the book market, are quite as full of Christian sentiment.

A. A great deal more so-James writes with more taste, more elegance, and more precision, and the air of genuine piety in all he writes, is unmistakeable. He never handles sacred subjects irreverently.

H.-Nor does Robert-at least with intentional irreverence; though I confess I do not like his style of allusion to the Almighty, in his poem of the Omnipresence of the Deity-but that was a very juvenile work, and his later works indicate, I think, a deeper and truer religious feeling.