Days of my childhood, hail!"
When Montgomery removed from Fulneck, says a memoir, to which the poet has directed my attention as accurate in its facts, the views of his friends were so far changed, that we find him placed by them in a retail shop, at Mirfield, near Wakefield. Here, though he was treated with great kindness, and had only too little business, and too much leisure to attend to his favorite pursuit, he became exceedingly disconsolate, and after remaining in his new situation about a year and a half, he privately absconded, and with less than five shillings in his pocket, and the wide world before him, began his career in pursuit of fame and fortune. His ignorance of mankind, the result of his retired and religious education; the consequent simplicity of his manners, and his forlorn appearance, exposed him to the contempt of some, and to the compassion of others to whom he applied. The brilliant bubble of patronage, wealth, and celebrity, which floated before his imagination, soon burst, and on the fifth day of his travels, he found a situation similar to the one he had left, at the village of Wath, near Rotherham. A residence in London was the object of his ambition; but wanting the means to carry him thither, he resolved to remain in the country till he could procure them. Accordingly, he wrote to his friends among the Moravian Brethren, whom he had forsaken, requesting them to recommend him to his new master, conscious that they had nothing to allege against him, excepting the imprudent step of separating himself from them; and not being under articles at Mirfield, he besought them not to compel him to return. He received from them the most generous propositions of forgiveness, and an establishment more congenial to his wishes. This he declined, frankly explaining the causes of his late melancholy, but concealing the ambitious motives which had secretly prompted him to withdraw from their benevolent protection. Finding him unwilling to yield, they supplied his immediate necessities, and warmly recommended him to the kindness of the master he had chosen. It was this master, with whom he remained only twelve months, that, many years afterward, in the most calamitous period of Montgomery's life, sought him out amid his misfortunes, not for the purpose of offering consolation only, but of serving him substantially by every means in his power. The interview which took place between the old man and his former servant, the evening previous to his trial at Doncaster, will ever live in the remembrance of him who could forget an injury, but not a kindness. No father could have evinced a greater affection for a darling son; the tears he shed were honorable to his feelings, and were the best testimony to the conduct and integrity of James Montgomery.
From Wath he removed to London, having prepared his way by sending a volume of his manuscript poems to Mr. Harrison, then a bookseller in Paternoster-row. Mr. Harrison, who was a man of correct taste and liberal disposition, received him into his house, and gave him the greatest encouragement to cultivate his talents, but none to publish his poems; seeing, as he observed, no probability that the author would acquire either fame or fortune by appearing at that time before the public. The remark was just; but it conveyed the most unexpected and afflicting information to our youthful poet, who yet knew little of the world, except from books, and who had permitted his imagination to be dazzled with the accounts which he had read of the splendid success and magnificent patronage which poets had formerly experienced. He was so disheartened by this circumstance, that, on occasion of a misunderstanding with Mr. Harrison, he, at the end of eight months, quitted the metropolis, and returned to Wath, where he was received with a hearty welcome by his former employer. While in London, having been advised to turn his attention to prose, as more profitable than verse, he composed an Eastern story, which he took one evening to a publisher in the east end of the town. Being directed through the shop, to the private room of the great man, he presented his manuscript in form. The prudent bookseller read the title, marked the number of pages, counted the lines in a page, and made a calculation of the whole; then, turning to the author, who stood in astonishment at this summary mode of deciding on the merit of a work of imagination, he very civilly returned the copy, saying, "Sir, your manuscript is too small—it won't do for me—take it to K——, he publishes those kind of things." Montgomery retreated with so much confusion from the presence of the bookseller, that in passing through the shop, he dashed his unfortunate head against a patent lamp, broke the glass, spilled the oil, and making an awkward apology to the shopmen, who stood tittering behind the counter, to the no small mortification of the poor author, he rushed into the street, equally unable to restrain his vexation or his laughter, and retired to his home, filled with chagrin at this ludicrous and untoward misfortune.
From Wath, where Montgomery had sought only a temporary residence, he removed in 1792, and engaged himself with Mr. Gales of Sheffield, who then printed a newspaper, in which popular politics were advocated with great zeal and ability. To this paper he contributed essays and verses occasionally; but though politics sometimes engaged the service of his hand, the muses had his whole heart, and he sedulously cultivated their favor; though no longer with those false, yet animating hopes, which formerly stimulated his exertions. In 1794, when Mr. Gales left England, a gentleman, to whom Montgomery was an almost entire stranger, enabled him to undertake the publication of the paper on his own account: but it was a perilous situation on which he entered; the vengeance which was ready to burst upon his predecessor, soon fell upon him.
At the present day it would scarcely be believed, were it not to be found in the records of a court of justice, that in 1795, Montgomery was convicted of a libel on the war then carrying on between Great Britain and France, by publishing, at the request of a stranger whom he had never seen before, a song written by a clergyman of Belfast, nine months before the war began. This fact was admitted in the court; and though the name of this country did not occur in the libel, nor was there a single note or comment of any kind whatever affixed to the original words, which were composed at the time and in censure of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation and march to Paris, he was pronounced guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of £20. Mr. M. A. Taylor presided on this occasion. The first verdict delivered by the jury, after an hour's deliberation, was "Guilty of publishing." This verdict, tantamount to an acquittal, they were directed to reconsider, and to deduce the malicious intention, not from the circumstances attending the publication, but from the words of the song. Another hour's deliberation produced the general verdict of "Guilty." This transaction requires no comment.
Scarcely had Montgomery returned to his home, when he was again called upon to answer for another offense. A riot took place in the streets of Sheffield, in which, unfortunately, two men were shot by the military. In the warmth of his feelings he detailed the dreadful occurrence in his paper. The details were deemed a libel, and he was again sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and a fine of thirty pounds. The magistrate who prosecuted him on this occasion is now dead, and Montgomery would be the last man in the world who could permit any thing to be said here, in justification of himself, which might seem to cast a reflection on the memory of one, who afterward treated him with the most friendly attention, and promoted his interest by every means in his power.
The active imagination of Montgomery had induced him to suppose that the deprivation of liberty was the loss of every earthly good; in confinement he learned another lesson, and he bore it with fortitude and cheerfulness. In York Castle he had opportunities of amusement, as well as leisure for study; and he found kindness, consolation, and friendship within the walls of a prison. During confinement he wrote, and prepared for the press, a volume of poems, which he published, in 1797, under the title of Prison Amusements; but his spirits and hopes were now so broken that he made no exertion to recommend this work to the public.
I went in August, 1845, to visit York Castle, with the particular object of seeing the room which Montgomery occupied during his last imprisonment, and where he wrote the Prison Amusements, and by his own description of it corrected a curious mistake which the keepers had made. "The room which I occupied," said Mr. Montgomery to me, "is up stairs, and is distinguished by a round window between two Ionic pillars, at the end of the building nearest to the city and Clifford's Tower, and facing the courthouse." On requesting the turnkey to show me that as the room where Montgomery had been confined, he assured me that it was not the room, but the true place was the corresponding room at the opposite end of the building. It was not easy to persuade him. He went to the gatekeeper, who supported his view of the case, assuring me that his father was turnkey at the time, and that it was well known, and had been always shown as Montgomery's room. There could be no mistake. I asked them if they thought it possible that a man could be shut up six months in a prison, and after fifty years could give so exact a description of the spot as Montgomery had given me—showing the above identification in my note-book, as written down from Montgomery's statement at the moment—and be mistaken? But men in authority are not readily convinced. What! could all the clever turnkeys of York Castle, for fifty years almost to a day, have been showing a wrong room to thousands of visitors? Impossible! I was therefore obliged to bring another impossibility to render their impossibility more impossible, and that was the impossibility of seeing through, not merely a stone wall, but a stone house. I told them that Montgomery said that he could see the meadows along the Ouse from his window; and that such intense longings for liberty did the sight of people taking their walks there daily give him, that the moment he was liberated he hurried out of the court, descended to the Ouse, and perambulated its banks just where he had seen the people so often walking. This was a poser. It was only from the window described by Montgomery that any such view could be obtained. Facing it, was merely the court wall, over which the river could be seen; but facing the other window stood the court-house—that was a terribly stout impossibility; and so the lords of locks and bolts gave up the point, and said, "Well, it was very odd that every body should have been wrong for fifty years, and that the room should be wrong—how could it have got wrong?" That is an interesting question, which, perhaps, in the course of the next half-century their united wisdom may contrive to set right.
The castle is a spacious affair. It consists of buildings of different dates and styles, and an ample court. No part of it is old, except a large round tower, called Clifford's Tower, which stands on a mount just within the walls. The rest consists of four buildings. One is the court-house, in which the county assizes are held, parallel with the river Ouse, from which it is but a few hundred yards distant. Opposite to this is what was once the felons' and crown-prisoners' prison; a building with several Ionic columns in the center, and two at each end. This is now chiefly occupied by a turnkey's family, and the female prisoners. The large area between these buildings is closed at one end by the debtors' prison, and at the other by Clifford's Tower. Between the tower and the turnkey's house just mentioned, stands the new felons' prison. This, as well as the outer court walls and entrance-gate, is built of solid stone in castellated style. The room occupied by Montgomery is now in the turnkey's house, and is the bedroom of the servant.
The felons' prison is much in the shape of a fan, forming alternate ranges of cells and court-yards, where the prisoners walk in the daytime. The assizes being just over, there were scarcely any prisoners in the jail except those convicted and awaiting their punishments, of which none were capital, but most of them transportation. These men were all clothed in the convict's dress, a jacket and trowsers of coarse cloth, of broad green and yellow check. They were mostly basking in the sun in groups, on the pavement of their respective court-yards, and appeared any thing but sad. The whole prison seemed as if hewed out of solid stone; and everywhere were gates of iron, closing with a clang and a twank of the lock behind you, which must sound any thing but cheering to a prisoner just conducted in. The openings into the different court-yards were filled with massy iron railing; and the pavements, walls, every thing else, was one mass of solid stone. Many of the stones in the wall were nine feet long, and of proportionate quadrature. The chapel presented a range of partitions with strong bars, as for a wild beast's den, in front, and doors behind, so that the prisoners from separate cells are let in there, and can not get sight of each other. The partition for the women is boarded up in front, so that they are quite unseen, except to the preacher. The windows were everywhere, as it were, a complete network of knotted iron bars; and the dining-rooms of the prisoners were those long winding passages of massy stone, along which we went to their cells. In these, with the iron gates locked behind them, they stand at a long, narrow board fixed to the wall, about the width of a plate, and take their meals. No place surely was at once so clean, and so hopelessly ponderous and strong. The very idea of it seemed to weigh on one like a nightmare, and make one stretch ourself, as for a sense of freedom.