under the appellation of "Scriblerus," and accused him of assuming the name of "Alaric," in reference, as he was pleased to imagine, "to the similarity of his disposition with that of the Goth." Watts retaliated upon his assailant in the Literary Souvenir, for 1832, as—
"that thing of trick and flummery,
The maudlin, mawkish, mock Montgomery!"
—asserting in a note that the poet was "the son of Gomery, the well-known clown of Bath," and charging him, in turn, with having appropriated a name to which he had no just claim. However this may be, vulgarity of origin can only, now-a-days, be taken as conferring additional credit upon literary or social eminence; and as for mere name, one has surely a perfect right to alter one's own, to change it for another, or, as probably in this case, to supply a prefix which had been previously elided.
The career of Robert Montgomery is soon told. His first attempt in literature, so far as I know, was the metrical satire to which I have alluded. This is an imitation,—longo intervallo,—of Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and hardly repays reference, except here and there for forgotten literary gossip. Then came another satire of smaller size. The Puffiad (1828, 8vo) not now often met with. In the same year appeared The Omnipresence of the Deity, written, it is said, in the author's nineteenth year, and which has gone through something like thirty editions. Of this poem I will indulge in no further criticism than to record that it was wickedly said the book itself was a perfect refutation of the theory involved in its title:—
"'God's Omnipresence' I believed,
And yet was wondrously deceived;
For not long since I chanc'd to look
In young Montgomery's maudlin book,
And can with confidence declare
That not a trace of God is there!"
But, on the other hand, the poem had its admirers, even among men of talent, who possibly in admiration of its tone of piety, were blind to the bad taste which characterized it throughout. In this way, Sharon Turner manifested his approbation by transmitting to the poor and struggling poet a welcome present of ten guineas, gave him an introduction to his domestic circle, and thus by refining his taste and manners conduced in no slight degree to the prosperity and esteem which he afterwards attained. The poem was praised, too, by other competent judges, such as Professor Wilson, Crabbe, Southey, Bowles and Alison; it received in Blackwood (vol. xxiii. p. 751) a notice, on the whole, favourable; and it was eulogized by the minor papers, the Literary Gazette, the Athenæum, and the Literary Chronicle. There can be little doubt that Montgomery was a sincerely pious man, and an earnest minister of religion; and if this was the case, it matters little what the world thought of his poetry. This was doubtless turgid, bombastic, florid, and characterized by every existing variety of bad taste. But still it took. The subjects,—absurdly ambitious,—were awfully momentous, and had an interest for every one. Moreover, loudness and pretence are always pretty sure to attract attention; for, as Bishop Jewel has it, "vessels never give so great a sound as when they are empty." Still, in this case, there is little doubt that the calmer
