To paint Thy Presence, and to feel it too.”
The last two lines contain an excellent specimen of Mr. Robert Montgomery’s Turkey carpet style of writing. The majestic view of earth is the mirror of God’s presence; and on this mirror Mr. Robert Montgomery paints God’s presence. The use of a mirror, we submit, is not to be painted upon.
A few more lines, as bad as those which we have quoted, bring us to one of the most amusing instances of literary pilfering which we remember. It might be of use to plagiarists to know, as a general rule, that what they steal is, to employ a phrase common in advertisements, of no use to any but the right owner. We never fell in, however, with any plunderer who so little understood how to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea,
“Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.”
Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and reproduces the stolen goods in the following form:
“And thou vast Ocean, on whose awful face
Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace.”
So may such ill-got gains ever prosper!
The effect which the Ocean produces on Atheists is then described in the following lofty lines:
“Oh! never did the dark-soul’d ATHEIST stand,