the regret of thousands who lost the spectacle. | truly, to Gales, who sought safety by flight. The current of the poet's life now took a turn Montgomery reigned in his stead. But his wich carried him into different scenes, and of own hour was at hand; and for an offence a higher and more lasting interest; for at the scarcely appreciable by judicial analysis-the beginning of April, 1792, he became the clerk printing of a patriotic song for a street hawker of Joseph Gales, a printer, bookseller, and he underwent an imprisonment of three auctioneer in Sheffield. This 'leash' of trades months in York Castle. He was then just was not uncommon 60 years ago. Sheffield twenty-three years old. From his window he was not a literary town, but there resided near could see the river Ouse, the trees, and a it a poet of considerable fame, whom Mont- windmill; these he never grew weary of congomery had a strong desire to see. We templating, and resolved that his first ramble allude to Mason, whose living of Aston was should be down by the river, under the trees, distant about six miles. 'I do not like your across the fields beyond, and away to the improvements at Aston,' Gray wrote to him in windmill; and he kept his vow. This incident 1760, it looks so like settling; if I come I will reminds us of a remark once made by a subtle set fire to it.' Mason was indeed settling, and. thinker, that since the remembrance of each upon a goodly heritage. He rebuilt the rec-person gives to a place a look and meaning tory-house, and gained a wide prospect, shut which he only can perceive, there must be an in by the Derbyshire hills. His garden, unknown number of pleasing, sad, or dreadful though not exceeding two acres, afforded suf- associations spread over the scenes inhabited ficient space for the exercise of his elegant taste. Very pleasantly his days flowed past in Aston's secret shade,' where, as he told Lord Holdernesse in a graceful sonnet, -Lettered ease, thy gift, endears the scene, But Mason's temper had not improved like his garden; it grew sharper with age, and he was at that time an elderly man, within an casy distance of seventy. The wish of Montgomery was not realized, and he never saw Mason, whom his modesty and true elegance of mind might have conciliated-winning, at least, a welcome not less cordial than was given to the song-writer Dibbin, whom, in 1789, Mason entertained at the rectory. or visited by men. The lane, the wood, the house, the old church, which produce no effect on our own feelings, may excite in our companions ideas of unutterable grief or agony. What was a primrose by the waterside to the prisoner set free? Montgomery was to be thrown a second time into the same furnace, and for a longer season. But the fire purified him. All life is a going to school, and prison life teaches the sternest lessons They lifted the poet into a higher class, and even the dark November weather imparted a sweeter tone to his harp. The Wanderer in Switzerland was the first work that drew attention to his name, and his withered hope, as he said, began to blossom. But the root of that delicate flower must have been deep, if it was not quite washed out of the soil by a storm that soon burst over it. Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the Wanderer in the Edinburgh, with every expression of insult and When Montgomery took up his abode in scorn, to which he added a prediction of its Sheffield the war of parties was at its height, total oblivion, together with its author, in three and Mr. Gales, as the publisher of a newspa- years. A false critic is, by his nature, a false per, the Register, was at the mercy of all the prophet; but a prophecy of Jeffrey had a bad passions of the town. It is not easy to tendency to fulfil itself. In three days after comprehend the madness of that period. It the appearance of his panegyric of Crabbe infected the youngest. A remarkable illustra- Mr. Hatchard had no copy of the Parish Regtion is furnished by Lord Eldon's anecdote-ister remaining on his shelves. The pen that book. A boy of thirteen had been brought loosened might bind. In the case of Southey before the Privy Council to be examined. He and Wordsworth we know that it did stop the quite raved with sedition, and was particular- sale. But a 'religious' poet has a less susceptly furious against Mr. Pitt, who was present, ible public. though, of course, unknown to the little incendiary. Pray, my boy,' he asked, did you ever see Mr. Pitt? See him! see him!' answered the lad, no, no, I would not have these eyes sullied by looking at such a fellow.' Montgomery's life was active and industrious, but it furnishes little matter for commentary or extract; and the persons with whom he was associated were not touched by a light sufficiently strong for biographical purposes. The Register had a large circulation, which The Eclectic Review, to which he became a was fatal to the proprietor by attracting the considerable contributor, numbered among its attention of the Government. A letter from a supporters two of the most distinguished Disprinter at Sheffield, found in the possession of senters,-Hall and Foster; with Hall MontCitizen Hardy,' was attributed, though un-gomery once spent an afternoon, but Foster 'Oh, that I could impart to you a portion of that animal cheerfulness, which I would not exchange for the richest carthly inheritance! For me, when those whom I love cause me no sad anxiety, the skylark in a summer morning is not more joyous than I am; and if I had wings on my shoulders I should be up with her in the sunshine caroling for pure joy. But you must see how far our mountains overtop the Derbyshire hills. The leaves are now beginning to fallcome to me, Montgomery, as soon as they reappear, in the sweetest season of the year, when opening flowers and lengthening days hold out to us every day the hope of a lovelier morrow. You will find none of the exhausting hurry of London, but quiet as well as congenial society within doors; and without, everything that can elevate the imagination and soothe the heart. seems to have been personally unknown to baneful influence of Gibbon; a Socinian, with him. He had some casual intercourse with a Coleridge; then a sort of embryo Quaker; more eccentric, if a less gifted critic; for he presently a Seeker; his life, all the while, was sitting in Basil Montagu's parlor one Sun- passing in mingled light and shadow; but day evening when Dr. Parr came sailing in, whether in sun, or in gloom, still drawing him arrayed in full canonicals, and wearing, we nearer to God. Most pleasing is the picture presume, the identical wig which the late Mr. which he paints of his own bright and lively Peter Plymley has petrified for all time in temper :its boundless convexity of frizz,' the wonder of barbers, and the terror of the whole literary world. Montgomery did not find the pedagogue a very delightful companion, for he stifled the guests with tobacco, lauded bull-baiting, and spread himself before the fire like a screen. About the same time he met the amiable and unfortunate Bloomfield, who had set up a manufactory of Æolian harps, which he found, we fear, hardly more salable than Parnassian. Southey thought of him kindly. He told Coleridge (in 1802):- Bloomfield I saw in London, and an interesting man he is, even more than you would expect.' And he reviewed his poems with the express object of serving him. But Montgomery, in his snatches of London life, saw more eminent poets than the Farmer's Boy. He heard Campbell and Coleridge 'lecture' at the Royal Institu- In conclusion, we offer an earnest warning tion, and has most happily exhibited their pe- to the responsible compiler of this biography. culiar characteristics. Whatever Campbell We say responsible, because, while the authorundertakes he finishes; Coleridge too often ship on the titlepage is twofold, the arrangeleaves splendid attempts incomplete. The for- ment of the materials has been made by Mr. mer, when I heard him, seemed like a race- Holland, the executor of the poet. We have horse starting, careering, and coming in with not a word to utter against the spirit of his admirable effect; the latter resembled one of book; it is manly, friendly, and not flattering. the King's heavy Dragoons-rearing, plung- Our warning applies to the scale of the meing, and prancing in a crowd, performing moir, which is out of all proportion to the digni grand evolutions, but making little or no pro- ty or the importance of the subject. These gress.' We consider this to be very just crit- two volumes only bring the poet to his 42nd icism. Southey's remark on the Friend' ap- year. How many are to come? We wanted plies to everything that Coleridge either wrote a marble bust, with the features delicately or spoke. There is a roundaboutness' in it chiselled and the expression preserved, and that excuses anger as well as perplexity. We we are threatened with a colossus in bronze. are greatly incredulous respecting the depth We say candidly that the history of our modof Coleridge, and regard his 'philosophy as ern poetry has no site for the statue. If it is the most enormous sham since Swedenborg. ever to be put up, it must be melted down The second volume of this biography is and recast. The book is already too long. But wisely and happily closed with several letters in this respect it only follows the fashion. of Southey. They are the most costly things Moore started it with Byron, then came Lockin the book, and, both as compositions and hart's seven volumes about Scott, the not alportraitures of his own mind, possess a strong ways reputable gossip of and on Moore, three interest and charm. By this letter,' he tells lumbering octavos describing Campbell, and his correspondent, you have more knowledge two still heavier and duller consecrated to of my inner man than half the world could ob- Wordsworth. Why, such taxes upon patience tain in their whole lives; for I am one who might ruffle Griselda. They must not be levshrinks in like a snail when I find no sympa-ied any longer. Let us have a plain story of a thy-but, when I do, opening myself like a plain life. Is there not the biography of flower to the morning sun.' In none of his Crabbe for a model? In the compass of 322 friends did he feel a more genial warmth. The small pages is a simple, touching, yet most inglowing and refined spirit of Montgomery won structive tale, which you may read from the his confidence and attachment, and he did first line to the last with unbroken entertainopen his heart to him with sincere affection. ment. A memoir of Montgomery within simVery mournful are some of the revelations; ilar limits might be made a charming book. we see him a sceptic at seventeen, under the He was a most amiable man, a true poet, though possessing few notes, a generous friend, punctuality and art. Many of his letters are a devout Christian, and, we believe, an honest long porticoes which never lead us into the lover of his country. Such a man deserves a house. Moreover, his prose style was vastly memorial; not a staring monument in the inferior to his poetical, and wanted precision, temple, but a tablet on the wall. Of these vigor, and rhythm. When the biography is volumes a considerable portion consists of the completed we shall endeavor to give a generpoet's letters. They are not a reed on which al view both of the personal and the literary a biographer may safely lean. Montgomery character of James Montgomery. was a bad correspondent, both with regard to THE SCHOOLBOY FORMULA.-I know not if your interest, or that of your readers, extends to the history and origin of a schoolby game, or other whimsical formulæ employed by him on -certain occasions in the preliminary arrangement of choosing either "sides," or the individual performer in cases where the main burden falls on one. I remember distinctly, but a few years ago, having repeatedly formed one of the ring around the spokesman or officer on such occasions, whose business it was, guided by this formula, to challenge alternately the individuals of the party who were ultimately to form the opposing forces in the game, or to challenge all in succession until, by this process of elimination, the one was left, upon whose activity or prowess the game should depend. Nursery rhymes, originating centuries ago, have before now occupied the attention of the learned-and hidden sarcasm levelled at church and state have been discovered, by those who are profound enough, wrapped up in their simplicity. What mystery may there not be involved in the odd succession of syllables employed from time immemorial in our playgrounds? What a field for the exercise of ingenuity and learning may it not afford to those who justly sec, in every olden custom, some light thrown upon the life and manners of our ancestors? The following is the formula:-Pointing, in succession, to one after another in the circle, passing, in the order of the watch-hand or the of those interested in the history of our juvenile [We suspect there are numerous versions of these "counting-out rhymes" to be found in our nursery traditional literature. Mr. Halliwell, in his Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 134., edit. 1849, has furnished the following: "One-ery, two-ery, Pen and ink; A study, a stive, A stove, and a sink!" "One-ery, two-ery, Must be gone; Twenty-one, O-U-T spells out!" Something similar to this, adds Mr. Halliwell, journey of the sun, one for every word or syl- is found in Swedish, Arwidsson, iii. 492:— lable pronounced, the speaker, facing with all of us the centre of the circle in which we stood, commenced with his neighbor on his left, and counting himself in as he proceeded round and round, weeded us one by one in the manner I have described, by the run of the following incantation: "Apala, mesala, Mesinka, meso, Sebedei, sebedo! Gack du din länge man veck, "Igdum, digdum, didum, dest, Twiddledum, twaddledum, twenty. one ! Hytum, skytum, A bonum D."]-Notes and Queries. SIR ISAAC NEWTON. From the Times. MEMOIRS OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON.* beheaded. He suddenly dashes forward 20 years, then back 30, forward again 10, back two or three, forward a century, and so to As a general rule, the biographies of men and fro, till the bewildered reader gives up in of science are not interesting to ordinary read- despair the task of following the author's ers. It is not that their lives are uneventful. chronology, and is almost content to believe We have memoirs of poets, novelists, histori- that Sir Isaac was knighted when a schoolboy, ans, divines,-all teeming with interest, al- and that in his last days he turned alchymist. though the incidents which the biographer This fault is fatal to a biographer, and all the has to relate are scarcely more important scientific attainments, all the lucid exposition, than those which worthy Dr. Primrose thought all the brilliant writing of Sir David Brewster it beneath him to chronicle, when his family cannot retrieve it. Besides which, he writes in the vicarage moved from the blue room to with a partiality that, while it wins our affecthe brown room, and back again from the tion for his goodness, destroys our respect for The life of his opinion. It is right to speak with reverbrown room to the blue room. ence of the dead; let the memory of Newton Samuel Johnson was uneventful, and yet his biography is the finest in the language. But be sacred; but so also should the memories of we have no memoir of a man of science that Huygens and Hooke, Leibnitz and Flamsteed, has proved of deep and lasting interest, unless at whose expense Sir David Brewster has exwe except the autobiography of Benjamin alted Newton. We are quite sure that the Franklin. The fact is that the more com-author is not aware how much he has been inpletely a man devotes himself to science he fluenced by partiality, and we shall therefore becomes the less a social being; the less, give a single example of his special pleading in favor of Sir Isaac. It was reported that therefore a man, and the more a philosophical instrument. And as we do not suppose that Newton had called Sir Hans Sloane, the secmemoirs of Babbage's calculating machine retary of the Royal Society, "a tricking felwould be very entertaining, so neither is the low" and "a villain." biography of a man whose life has passed into matter whether the report was true or false, an algebraical formula, and whose thoughts only Sir David imagines that there were no are ever intent upon x-that terrible unknown. such terms in Newton's vocabulary." When "Does Mr. Newton eat, drink, or sleep like he was irritated at the conduct of Flamsteed other men?" well might the Marquis de he could not command a harsher term than We turn to "I represent him to myself as that of puppy.-See p. 239." l'Hopital ask. page 239, and read Flamsteed's account of a celestial genius entirely disengaged from the affair. "He called me many hard names; Sir David Brewster has just published an puppy was the most innocent of them." And elaborate biography of Newton, to show that why should Sir David go thus out of his way he is entitled not only to the admiration which to show that Newton could not use a hard the whole world accords him, but also to the love of our hearts. He has done his best to place Sir Isaac in a good light. He has, in short, written two large volumes to illustrate one line written by Pope, matter." "God said, 'Let Newton be,' and all was light." After a careful perusal of this lengthened panegyric, we are forced to the conclusion that Sir David is a good Christian and a bad biographer; and that, if Sir Isaac in his intellect was almost a god, in his heart he was scarcely a man. It does not much word? We, indeed, doubt very much whe ther he ever called Sir Hans Sloane "a tricking fellow" and "a villain;" but we do not think that the man who when a schoolboy fought his companion in the churchyard, and rubbed his nose against the wall, who told Flamsteed to hold his tongue, and called him a puppy, and who addressed some Fellows of St. John's, when he saw them examining a haunted house, "Oh, ye fools!" was incapable, as Sir David supposes, of employing such terms. Of what avail is all this veneering? It only defeats its purpose. Excessive praise always results in excessive depreciation. This has happened once already in the case of Newton. His partisans in the Royal Soci and his claims over foreigners so unfairly, terials with a coherence greater than that of ety had lauded his intellect so vehemently, an almanac, where we learn that Sir Robert that, as a natural consequence, the foreigners Peel was born four days before Queen Victo- took advantage of a moment of weakness and ria was married, and Her Majesty was married pronounced him mad. The elaborate life of a couple of days before Lady Jane Grey was Newton contributed by M. Biot to the Bio*Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries graphie Universelle is written throughout on "Diamond" is said to have upof Sir Isaac Newton. By Sir David Brewster, K. H. the assumption that from his 45th year, when In two vols. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co. the little dog Sir David has been engaged on the life of Newton for twenty-five years, and in all that time he has not been able to arrange his ma DXCVII. LIVING AGE. 19 VOL. IX. i set the candle and burnt his papers, to the day of his death his mighty intellect was obscured. Sir David has satisfactorily disproved the insanity of Newton, but he need not wonder if the idolatry of which he sets the example should call forth imputations equally injurious. Why should not the truth be spoken about Newton? With all our veneration for his name we have no sympathy with those who think they honor him by denying his faults, and who seem to us to be guilty of the folly of those divines who explain away the falsehood of one Scripture saint, and out and out defend another for cheating his father and robbing his brother. Bishop Burnet says that Newton had the whitest soul he ever knew. We can well believe it so. Newton was utterly unworldly, and the unworldliness of the man who was content to pace about his chamber and his trim little garden from morning to night, save when he turned out for half an hour to see if anybody would listen to him as Lucasian Professor, must have rather astonished the bust ling, courtly Scotch Bishop. Then he was pure as a child; his niece tells us that he broke an acquaintance of the greatest intimacy with Vigani because the Italian chymist told him some loose story of a nun. Bishop Burnet's remark, however, is true in a much more The common idea of Newton is very vague. stringent sense than this-in a much more In writing to the earliest of his biographers, stringent sense than, perhaps, he ever contemPope expressed a desire to have some "me-plated. Newton had the whitest soul he ever moirs and character of him as a private man." knew, simply because his emotional nature The desire might still be expressed. We was the sheet of white paper which the metahave no intimacy with Newton. Few per-physicians of that period were continually talk sons, if asked to describe the character of the ing about. Sir David Brewster has done his man, could say more than this-that he was best to prove the contrary. He even fancies exceedingly absent, and that he was impertur- that he has discovered Sir Isaac in love. Sir bable, almost to insipidity, perhaps quoting as Isaac in love!-it is incredible, it is impossible. an illustration of the latter characteristic the Fancy the sedate Lucasian Professor address apocryphal story of the philosopher and his ing Lady Norris like one of those fops called little dog "Diamond." This is not saying "pretty fellows," whom Steele shortly after much, and yet the half of it is incorrect. The wards satirized in the Tatler. Can you contemporaries of Newton describe him as resolve to wear a widow's habit perpetually?" anything but imperturbable on certain occa- he writes. "Whether your ladyship should sions. Locke declared that he was "a nice go constantly in the melancholy dress of a man to deal with," but "a little too apt to widow or flourish once more among the ladies" raise in himself suspicions where there is no-that is the question, and that is the style of ground." Flamsteed always "found him in- courtship which Sir David, with his eyes sidious, ambitious, and excessively covetous of open, and all his brilliant optical reputation, praise and impatient of contradiction." Whis- attributes to a philosopher whose soul was ton describes him as equally impatient, and of fixed on one idea-the increase of gravity inthe most fearful, cautious, and suspicious tem- versely as the square of the distance. Sir per that ever he knew. D'Alembert gives Isaac, we make bold to say, never had a the French idea of him when he says " In thought of love. In comparison with Newton, England people were content with Newton's Uncle Toby's behavior to the Widow Wadman being the greatest genius of the age; in was the extreme of gallantry and licentious France one would have also wished him to be ness. It must be remembered that Newton amiable." If Newton was really unamiable, it was a god, and Alexander the Great used to was chiefly a negative unamiability. He was say that two-he might have said threeunsocial, he was reserved, he was absent, he things reminded him that he was a mortal, was silent; in the course of five years his and not a god-love, sleep, and food. These secretary, Humphrey Newton, never saw him three things proved the divinity of Sir Isaac, laugh but once, and that time it is impossible for he never spent a thought on love, took to comprehend why; worst of all to a French- very little sleep, and as for his dinner, he man, he had none of the graces-could not, never cared for it and often never ate like Fontenelle, begin a treatise on astronomy it. "He kept neither dog nor cat in his by saluting a lady and comparing the beauty chamber," says Humphrey Newton, "which of day to a blonde and the beauty of night to made well for the old woman, his bed-maker, a brunette. The only qualities in Newton she faring much the better for it, for in a that were positively unamiable were his sus- morning she has sometimes found both dinner picious temper and his impatience of contra- and supper scarcely tasted of, which the old diction. All else was negative. His goodness woman has very pleasantly and mumpingly even was negative, with the exception of his gone away with." piety and his veracity. He was good, because he was passionless; and he was not lovable, because he was void of emotion. While speaking of food, we may mention, in passing, as a set-off to the negations of Newton's animal and emotional nature, his |