Yet, as we have said, he was sent thence in his fifth year to Grace hill, a settlement still of the Moravian Brethren, near Ballymony, in the county of Antrim, in Ireland; and in which the poet, I believe, has at present a niece residing. In the following year he was again removed to the seminary of the Brethren at Fulneck, in Yorkshire. Soon after this his parents were sent out as missionaries to the West Indies, to preach to the poor slave the consoling doctrine of another and a better world, "where the wretched hear not the voice of the oppressor," and "where the servant is free from his master." There they both died. One lies in the island of Barbadoes, the other in Tobago.
"Beneath the lion-star they sleep,
Beyond the western deep,
And when the sun's noon-glory crests the waves,
He shines without a shadow on their graves."
In the Fulneck academy, among a people remarkable for their ardor in religion, and their industry in the pursuit of useful learning, James Montgomery received his education. He was intended for the ministry, and his preceptors were every way competent to the task of preparing him for the important office for which he was designed. His studies were various: the French, German, Latin, and Greek languages; history, geography, and music: but a desire to distinguish himself as a poet among his school-fellows, soon interfered with the plan laid out for him. When ten years old he began to write verses, and continued to do it with unabated ardor till the period when he quitted Fulneck in 1787; they were chiefly on religious subjects.
This early devotion to poetry, irresistible as it was, he was wont himself to regard as the source of many troubles. That it retarded his improvement at school, and finally altered his destination in life, seducing him to exchange an almost monastic seclusion from society, for the hurry and bustle of a world, which, for a time, seemed disposed to repay him but ill for the sacrifice. We can not think that his opinions of this change remain the same now. In whatever character James Montgomery had performed his allotted work in this world, I am persuaded that he would have performed it with the same conscientious steadfastness. In his heart, the spirit of his pious parents, and of that society in which he was educated, would have made him a faithful servant of that Master whom he has so sincerely served. Whether he had occupied a pulpit here, or had gone out to preach Christianity in some far-off and savage land, he would have been the same man, faithful and devout. But it may well be questioned whether in any other vocation he could have been a tenth part as successfully useful as he has been. There was need of him in the world, and he was sent thither, spite of parentage, education, and himself There was a talent committed to him that is not committed to all. He was to be a minister of God, but it was to be from the hallowed chair of poetry, and not from the pulpit. There was a voice to be raised against slavery and vice, and that voice was to perpetuate itself on the rhythmical page, and to kindle thousands of hearts with the fire of religion and liberty long after his own was cold. There was a niche reserved for him in the temple of poetry, which no other could occupy. It was that of a bard who, freeing his most religious lays from dogmas, should diffuse the love of religion by the religion of love. He himself has shown how well he knew his appointed business, and how sacredly he had resolved to discharge it, when, in A Theme for a Poet, he asks,—
"What monument of mind
Shall I bequeath to deathless fame,
That after-times may love my name?"