And when, through the window, looks in on us one full glance of a clear large star, how startlingly it seems, like a conscious, mild, yet piercing eye; how strongly it points, how soothingly it mingles with our meditations, and, as with a pencil of fire, points them away into still remoter and more mysterious regions of thought! Such a meditation Montgomery has embodied in these beautiful verses: but then HE is up amid the midnight and all its stars; he is out amid the Alps, and is catching on his brow the living breath of that rarest inspiration which moves amid them, then and then alone.

We mentioned Cowper in conjunction with Montgomery in a former sentence. They resemble each other in the pious purpose and general simplicity of their writings, but otherwise are entirely distinct. Cowper's is a didactic, Montgomery's a romantic piety. Cowper's is a gloomy, Montgomery's a cheerful religion. Cowper has in him a fierce and bitter vein of satire, often irritating into invective; we find no traces of any such thing in all Montgomery's writings. Cowper's withering denunciations seem shreds of Elijah's mantle, torn off in the fiery whirlwind. Montgomery is clothed in the softer garments, and breathes the gentler genius of the new economy. And as poets, Montgomery, with more imagination and elegance, is entirely destitute of the rugged strength of sentiment, the exquisite keenness of observation, the rich humour and the awful personal pathos of Cowper.

Montgomery's hymns (properly so called), we do not much admire. They are adapted, and seem written, for such an assemblage of greasy worshippers, such lank-haired young men, such virgins wise and foolish, such children small and great, as meet to lift up their "most sweet voices" within certain well-known sanctuaries. They have in them often a false gallop of religious sentimentalism. Their unction has been kept too long, and has a savour not of the sweetest: they abound less indeed than many

"dear Lord,”

of their class, in such endearing epithets as "dear Christ," "sweet Jesus," &c.; but are not entirely free from these childish decorations. That one song, sung by the solitary Jewish maiden in "Ivanhoe" (surely the sweetest strain ever uttered since the spoilers of Judah did by Babel's streams require of its captives a song, and were answered in that melting melody which has drawn the tears and praises of all time), is worth all the hymn-books that were ever composed. Montgomery's true hymns are those which bear not the name, but which sing, and for ever will sing, their own quiet tune to simple and pious spirits.

Of Montgomery's prose we might say much that was favourable. It is truly "Prose by a Poet," to borrow the title of one of his works. You see the poet every now and then dropping his mask, and showing himself in his true character. It is enough of itself to confute the vulgar prejudice against the prose of poets. Who indeed but a poet has ever written, or can ever write good prose, prose that will live? What prose, to take but one example, is comparable to the prose of Shakspere, many of whose very best passages-as Hamlet's description of man, Falstaff's death, the speech of Brutus, or that dreadful grace before meat of Timon, which is of misanthropy the quaintest and most appalling quintessence, and seems fit to have preceded a supper in Eblis-are not in verse? Montgomery's prose criticism we value less for its exposition of principles, or for its originality, in which respects it is deficient, than for its generous and eloquent enthusiasm. It is delightful to find in an author, who had so to struggle up his way to distinction, such a fresh and constant sympathy with the success and the merits of others. In this point he reminds us of Shelley, who, hurled down at one time, by universal acclamation, into the lowest abyss of contempt, both as an author and a man, could look up from it, to breathe sincere admiration toward those who had usurped the place in

Y

public favour to which he was, and knew he was, entitled. We are not reminded of the Lakers, whose tarn-like narrowness of critical spirit is the worst and weakest feature in their characters. Truly a great mind never looks so contemptible as when, stooping from its pride of place, it exchanges its own high aspirations after fame for poor mouse-like nibblings at the reputation of others.

Many tributes have been paid of late years to the "Pilgrim's Progress." The lips of Coleridge have waxed eloquent in its praise; Southey and Macaulay have here embraced each other; Cheever, from America, has uttered a powerful sound in proclamation of its unmatched merits: but we are mistaken if its finest panegyric be not that contained in Montgomery's preface, prefixed to the Glasgow edition. In it all the thankfulness cherished from childhood, in a poet's and a Christian's heart, toward this benign and beautiful book, comes gushing forth; and he closes the tribute with the air of one who has relieved himself from a deep burden of gratitude. Indeed, this is the proper feeling to be entertained toward all works of genius; and an envious or malign criticism upon such is not so much a defect in the intellect as it is a sin of the heart. It is a blow struck in the face of a benefactor. A great author is one who presents us with a priceless treasure; and if we at once reject the boon and spurn the giver, ours is not an error simply, it is a deadly crime.

The mention of Bunyan and Montgomery in conjunction, irresistibly reminds us of a writer who much resembles the one, and into whom the spirit of the other seems absolutely to have transmigrated: we mean Mary Howitt. She resembles Montgomery principally in the amiable light in which she presents the spirit of Christianity. Here the Moravian and the Friend are finely at one. Their religion is no dire fatalism, like Foster's; it is no gloomy reservoir of all morbid and unhappy feelings, disappointed hopes, baffled purposes, despairing prospects, turning toward

heaven, in their extremity, for comfort, as it is with a very numerous class of authors. It is a glad sunbeam from the womb of the morning, kindling all nature and life into smiles. It is a meek, womanlike presence in the chamber of earth, which meanwhile beautifies, and shall yet redeem and restore it by its very gentleness righting all its wrongs, curing all its evils, and wiping away all its tears. Had but this faith been shown more fully to the sick soul of Cowper! were it but shown more widely to the sick soul of earth,

"Soon

Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,

And the earth grow young again."

And how like is Mary Howitt to Bunyan! Like him, she is the most sublime of the simple, and the most simple of the sublime; the most literal and the most imaginative of writers. Hers and his are but a few quiet words: but they have the effect of "Open Sesame;" they conduct into deep caverns of feeling and of thought, to open which ten thousand mediocrists behind are bawling in vain. In "Marien's Pilgrimage" (thanks to the kind and gifted. young friend who lately introduced us to this beautiful poem), we have a minor "Pilgrim's Progress," where Christianity is represented as a child going forth on a mission to earth, mingling with and mitigating all its evils; and is left, at the close, still wandering on in this her high calling. The allegory is not, any more than in Bunyan, strictly preserved; for Marien is at once Christianity personified and a Christian person, who alludes to Scripture events, and talks in Scripture language; but the simplicity, the childlikeness, and the sweetness, are those of the gentle dreamer of Elstowe.

We return to James Montgomery only to bid him farewell. He is one of the few lingering stars in a very rich constellation of poets. Byron, Coleridge, Southey, Crabbe,

Campbell, Shelley, Keats, are gone: some burst to shivers by their own impetuous motion; others, in the course of nature, have simply ceased to shine. Three of that cluster yet remain, in Wordsworth, Moore, and Montgomery. Let us, without absurdly and malignantly denying merit to our rising luminaries, with peculiar tenderness cherish these, both for their own sakes, and as still linking us to a period in our literary history so splendid.

SIDNEY SMITH.

Ir is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, nay, almost simultaneously, our literary luminaries are disappearing from the sky. Every year another and another member of the bright clusters which arose about the close of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is fading from our view. Within nineteen years, what havoc, by the "insatiate archer," among the ruling spirits of the time! Since 1831, Robert Hall, Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier, Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge, Edward Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell, &c., have entered on the " silent land;" and latterly has dropped down one of the wittiest and shrewdest of them all-the projector of the "Edinburgh Review "—the author of "Peter Plymley's Letters "—the preacher the politician-the brilliant converser-the "mad wag"-Sidney Smith.

It was the praise of Dryden that he was the best reasoner in verse who ever wrote; let it be the encomium of our departed Sidney that he was one of the best rea