A victim on that mountain, whence the skies
Had first inhal'd the fumes of sacrifice:
In Adam's coat of skins 'array'd he stands,
Spreading to heaven his supplicating hands,
Ere from his robe the deadly steel he drew
To smite the victim, sporting in his view.
Behind him Seth, in majesty confest

The world's great elder, tower'd above the rest;
Serenely shone his sweet and solemn eye,
Like the sun reigning in the western sky:
Though nine slow centuries by stealth had shed
Grey hairs, the crown of glory, on his head,
In hardy health he rear'd his front sublime,
Like the green aloe in perennial prime.
Around him, in august succession, stood
The fathers of the world before the flood:
—Enós, who taught mankind, on solemn days
In sacred groves, to meet for prayer and praise,
And warn'd idolaters to lift their eye

From sun and stars to him who made the sky;
-Canaan and Malaliel; of whom alone,

Their age, of all that once they were, is known:
-Jared; who full of hope beyond the tomb
Hallow'd his offspring from the mother's womb,
(And heaven received the son the parent gave,
He walk'd with God, and overstept the grave :)
-A mighty pilgrim, in the vale of tears,
Born to the troubles of a thousand years,
Methuselah, whose feet unhalting ran
To the last circle of the life of man:
-Lamech; from infancy inured to toil,
To wring slow blessings from the accursed soil,
Ere yet to dress his vineyards, reap his corn,
And comfort him in care, was Noah born;
Who in a later age, by signal grace,
Surviv'd to renovate the human race;
Both worlds, by sad reversion, were his due,
The orphan of the old, the father of the new."

In the prophecy of Enoch, which is subsequently introduced, the after-communications of heavenly intelligence are anticipated with boldness, but with happy effect. The execution of the passage is worthy of the awful nature of its burden-it is highly energetic and dignified. In the sixth canto we return to Javan and Zillah, a transition not unnatural to the feelings of those who have loved with equal fervour and purity: but, perhaps, we should be risking our judgment with the reader by pronouncing upon this antediluvian courtship. No parts of the poem will

give rise to more difference of opinion, according to the feelings with which the reader sits down to the perusal. Love, in Mr. Montgomery's poetry, is a passion of far less popular interest, and far less congenial with general experience, than that gay triumphant sentiment of which the northern minstrel sings,

"Which rules the court, the camp, the grove,

And men below and saints above."

It is no wild and playful affection; no romantic dream of the heart; but an intellectual passion (if we may frame the expression) intensely occupying the soul; a deep and solemn feeling of tragic character, which demands a correspondent elevation in its object-which, in order to engage an adequate interest, must be understood, but can only be understood by those whose feelings are at the same altitude with those of the poet. But we pass on to the following passage descriptive of the power of Jubal's lyre. Mr. Montgomery will not, we think, be displeased if we give it as one of the finest in the volume.

"Here Jubal paus'd; for grim before him lay,
Couch'd like a lion, watching for his prey,
With blood-red eye of fascinating fire,
Fix'd, like the gazing serpent's, on the lyre,
An awful form, that thro' the gloom appear'd
Half brute, half human; whose terrific beard,
And hoary flakes of long dishevell❜d hair,
Like eagle's plumage, ruffled by the air,
Veil'd a sad wreck of grandeur and of grace,
Limbs worn and wounded, a majestic face,
Deep-plough'd by time, and ghastly pale with woes
That goaded till remorse to madness rose:
Haunted by phantoms, he had fled his home,
With savage beasts in solitude to roam;
Wild as the waves and wandering as the wind,
No art could tame him, and no chains could bind:
Already seven disastrous years had shed
Mildew and blast on his unshelter'd head;
His brain was smitten by the sun at noon,
His heart was wither'd by the cold night-moon.-
'Twas Cain, the sire of nations: Jubal knew
His kindred looks, and tremblingly withdrew:
He, darting like the blaze of sudden fire,

Leap'd o'er the space between, and grasp'd the lyre:
Sooner with life the struggling bard would part,
And ere the fiend could tear it from his heart,
He hurl'd his hand, with one tremendous stroke,

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O'er all the strings; whence in a whirlwind broke
Such tones of terror, dissonance, despair,
As till that hour had never jarr'd in air.
Astonished into marble at the shock,

Backward stood Cain, unconscious as a rock,
Cold, breathless, motionless, thro' all his frame;
But soon his visage quicken'd into flame;
When Jubal's hand the crashing jargon changed
To melting harmony, and nimbly ranged
From chord to chord, ascending sweet and clear,

Then rolling down in thunder on the ear;

With power the pulse of anguish to restrain,

And charm the evil spirit from the brain.
Slowly recovering from that trance profound,
Bewilder'd, touch'd, transported with the sound,
Cain view'd himself, the bard, the earth, the sky,
While wonder flash'd and faded in his eye;
And reason, by alternate frenzy crost,
Now seem'd restor'd, and now for ever lost.

So shines the moon, by glimpses, through her shrouds,
When windy darkness rides upon the clouds,
Till thro' the blue, serene, and silent night,
She reigns in full tranquillity of light.
Jubal, with eager hope, beheld the chace
Of strange emotions hurrying o'er his face,
And waked his noblest numbers, to control
The tide and tempest of the maniac's soul;
Thro' many a maze of melody they flew,
They rose like incense, they distill'd like dew,
Pour'd thro' the sufferer's breast delicious balm,
And soothed remembrance till remorse grew calm,
Till Cain forsook the solitary wild,

Led by the minstrel like a weaned child.
O! had you seen him to his home restor'd,
How young and old ran forth to meet their lord;
How friends and kindred on his neck did fall,
Weeping aloud, while Cain outwept them all:
But hush!-thenceforward when recoiling care
Lower'd on his brow, and saddened to despair,
The lyre of Jubal, with divinest art,
Repell❜d the demon, and revived his heart.
Thus long, the breath of heaven had power to bind
In chains of harmony the mightiest mind;
Thus music's empire in the soul began,

The first-born poet ruled the first-born man."

The four remaining cantos slowly conduct us to the catastrophe, of which we must content ourselves with giving the brief outline. The patriarchs and their families are carried away

:

captive by a detachment from the army of the invaders, and presented before the giant king, whose strange birth and wondrous adventures form the subject of the seventh book, and prepare us for the ferocity of his determination to sacrifice them to his demon-gods. The introduction of the sorcerer was a bold thought it adds much to the terrible interest of the scene. Perhaps in labouring his character, Mr. Montgomery is chargeable with his characteristic fault of excess; but for this he atones by some lines of uncommon vigour and beauty. Enoch reappears: he denounces the vengeance of heaven upon the sorcerer and the king; and his translation takes place in the presence of the whole camp.

"Yet where the captives stood, in holy awe
Rapt on the wings of cherubim, they saw
Their sainted sire ascending through the night;
He turn'd his face to bless them, in his flight,
Then vanish'd :—-Javan caught the prophet's eye,
And snatch'd his mantle falling from the sky;
O'er him the spirit of the prophet came,

Like rushing wind awakening hidden flame:
'Where is the God of Enoch now?' he cried,
Captives come forth!'-

The poem, in conclusion, describes the panic flight of the giant army, and the joyful return of the rescued patriarchs.

It has been our design to enable our readers, from this epitome of the poem, and the copious extracts which we have given, to form a fair opinion of its merits. If they expected from the title a tale of wild romance, the busy shifting scenery, enlivened with the pomp of Oriental luxuriance, and the fable accommodated to all the traditional prejudices which have descended to us from the Rabbis, respecting the antediluvian world-if they expected a black letter poem, erected on a massive foundation of Notes, or, if they expected a structure of severe and uniform dignity, perfectly homogeneous in its parts; an intellectual awe-inspiring cathedral, such an one as the combined judgment and imagination of Milton has raised-Mr. Montgomery's poem will disappoint them. It certainly has the effect of a fault that we are suffered to forget the remote antiquity in which the poem is laid. There is little exclusively characteristic of human nature, as existing under any of those modifications of time and circumstance, which the poem assumes. Mr. Montgomery tells us it is "an allegory," not a history. This is his best excuse; but still more attention was due to those proprieties of costume, and those peculiarities

of feature, which make allegory consistent, interesting, and imposing. There are, no doubt, some whose anger will partake of the indignation and contempt with which the lady in the Citizen of the World received her Chinese visitor in his English dress, and pointed to her jars to prove him an impostor. It is not to such readers that Mr. Montgomery has submitted his poem. But Mr. Montgomery appears to us in some places to have done unnecessary violence to this feeling, by the introduction of words and images which destroy the indefiniteness of the picture, and thus let down the sublimity of its interest. "The lark" and "the hare" startled, as in the first canto, and the cottage of Adam and Eve produce an incongruous impression. We forbear to cite other passages in which, had he been less definite, the poet would have succeeded much better in exciting the imagination of his readers. As we are on the subject of faults, we must also notice the injudicious prominence which is given to the love of Javan for Zillah. It forms a beautiful back ground figure, but does not consist with the sublimer action of the poem. Enoch should be the hero of the World before the Flood. allude principally to the interview before the giant king, which is too much in the style of Racine, and the French dramatists. We feel disposed to repeat Zillah's words to the poet: "For earthly love it is no season now."- -The reader is inevitably led to wonder what the king was about all the while. Our objection is not to the passage itself, which contains a great deal of pathos, but to the introduction of a scene, in such a connexion as to make it inconsistent with the dignity of the subject. On the same account we venture to recommend the omission of the six lines (p. 197) which particularize the happy issue of Javan's trials the reader, if brought by the antecedent events into that mood which the poet would wish to have produced, is not at leisure to think of him.

We

But these are immaterial defects, which detract little from the excellence of the work. After all, however differently the subject might, in the estimation of some, have been treated by superior learning or skill, we are persuaded that Mr. Montgomery would not have so well succeeded in a poem of a different character. He has taken a view of the subject, partial in respect to its poetical capabilities, but particularly adapted to the cast and faculties of his own mind. And he has succeeded in producing a poem very rich in moral beauty, and highly illustrative of all that is dignified and excellent in our nature. There breathes throughout a purity of feeling, and an elevation of sen