in January 1795, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in the Castle of York.  He was condemned to a second imprisonment of six months in the autumn of the same year, for inserting in his paper an account of a riot in the place, in which he was considered to have cast aspersions on a colonel of volunteers.  The calm mind of the poet did not sink under these persecutions, and some of his best lyrics were composed during the period of his latter confinement.  During his first detention he wrote a series of interesting essays for his newspaper.  His “Prison Amusements,” a series of beautiful pieces, appeared in 1797.  In 1805, he published his poem, “The Ocean;” in 1806, “The Wanderer in Switzerland;” in 1808, “The West Indies;” and in 1812, “The World before the Flood.”  In 1819 he published “Greenland, a Poem, in Five Cantos;” and in 1825 appeared “The Pelican Island, and other Poems.”  Of all those productions, “The Wanderer in Switzerland” attained the widest circulation; and, notwithstanding an unfavourable and injudicious criticism in the Edinburgh Review, at once procured an honourable place for the author among his contemporaries.  He became sole proprietor of the Iris in one year after his being connected with it, and he continued to conduct this paper till September 1825, when he retired from public duty.  He subsequently contributed articles for different periodicals; but he chiefly devoted himself to the moral and religious improvement of his fellow-townsmen.  A pension of L150 on the civil list was conferred upon him as an acknowledgment of his services in behalf of literature and of philanthropy; a well-merited public boon which for many years he was spared to enjoy.  He died at his residence, The Mount, Sheffield, on the 30th of April 1854, in the eighty-second year of his age.  He bequeathed handsome legacies to various public charities.  His Poetical Works, in a collected form, were published in 1850 by the Messrs Longman, in one octavo volume; and in 1853 he gave to the world his last work, being “Original Hymns, for Public, Private, and Social Devotion.”  Copious memoirs of his life are now in the course of publication.

As a poet, Montgomery is conspicuous for the smoothness of his versification, and for the fervent piety pervading all his compositions.  As a man, he was gentle and conciliatory, and was remarkable as a generous promoter of benevolent institutions.  The general tendency of his poems was thus indicated by himself, in the course of an address which he made at a public dinner, given him at Sheffield, in November 1825, immediately after the toast of his health being proposed by the chairman, Lord Viscount Milton, now Earl Fitzwilliam:—­