As he is styled Captain, it is probable that he followed the profession of a soldier, and he seems to have been employed in some capacity or other by King James, who rewarded his services in 1583 by an annual pension of five hundred marks. In 1586 he received the royal license to travel for four years in France, Flanders, Spain, and other countries, and it appears was detained for some time in a foreign prison. He was known as a poet before the year 1568; but the "Cherrie and the Slae," on which his fame chiefly rests, was not published till sixteen years later. The time of the poet's death is uncertain, but it must have taken place before 1614. Montgomery's poetry displays a considerable amount of elegance and fancy. His versification is remarkably harmonious, and some of his descriptions are lively and vigorous. The allegory of the "Cherrie and the Slae" is harsh and obscure, but the poem contains many beautiful passages. Montgomery is the author of a considerable number of sonnets constructed on the Italian model. He has also written many devotional pieces, and has versified several of the psalms.—(Montgomery's Poems, with Life, by Dr. Irving.)—J. T.
MONTGOMERY, Gabriel de, Count of, a French warrior, who in 1545 was sent to Scotland in command of the troops that Francis I. sent to the aid of Marie of Lorraine, mother of the unfortunate Queen Mary of Scotland, and regent of the kingdom during Mary's minority. On his return to France he was employed by Henry II., but his place in history depends principally on the unfortunate accident that accompanied one of the royal tournaments. Henry II., having concluded the marriages of his sister and daughter, gave some grand festivals, at which the knights of France appeared to contest the honours of the lists. The king joined the combatants and carried his lance with honour. On the last day of the entertainment Henry perceived two lances that had not been used, and called upon Montgomery to meet him in the knightly strife. He attempted to escape the perilous invitation, but Henry was imperative; and the consequence was that, after Montgomery's lance was broken, the shaft pierced the eye of the monarch, and brought him to the ground. The death of the king was the result, and from that day the practice of the fierce sport was abandoned in France. The count retired to England, but afterwards took part in the wars of religion that desolated France. He became a Huguenot chief, but escaped the St. Bartholemew massacre in 1572. He was at the siege of Rochelle, was taken, tortured, degraded from the class of nobility, and on the 27th May, 1574, was publicly executed.—P. E. D.
MONTGOMERY, James, a Scottish poet of deservedly high reputation, was the son of a Moravian minister, and was born at Irvine in Ayrshire in 1771. He was educated at the Moravian school of Fulneck, near Leeds. After spending some time as an assistant in a chandler's shop, and then as a clerk to a bookseller in London, he obtained employment in 1792 as an assistant in a newspaper office in Sheffield. In a short time he became the editor and proprietor of the journal, changing its name from the Sheffield Register to the Iris. His political opinions were liberal, but moderate; his disposition most amiable and inoffensive; and the rule of his editorial conduct, he says, was "a plain determination—come wind or sun, come fire or water—to do what was right." But while the jacobins disowned him on account of his moderation, the friends of the government regarded him with suspicion and dislike on account of his liberal opinions, and in 1794 he was tried at the instigation of the government on a charge of having printed a ballad written by an Irish clergyman on the demolition of the Bastile in 1789. It turned out that this really harmless production had been put in type by one of his predecessor's apprentices without Mr. Montgomery's knowledge; but he was nevertheless found guilty and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £20. In the following year he was again tried, imprisoned, and fined for inserting in his paper a paragraph reflecting on the conduct of a magistrate in quelling a local riot. All the persons concerned in these prosecutions, however, ultimately manifested their esteem and regard for the amiable poet. Montgomery began at an early age to write occasional verses; but his first volume of poetry did not appear until 1806, and was entitled "The Wanderer of Switzerland, and other poems." It was reviewed in an insolent and offensive style by the Edinburgh Review, but was very favourably received by the public, and ran through thirteen editions before it was inserted in the poet's collected works. His next production was "The West Indies," written to accompany a series of engravings, published as a memorial of the abolition of the slave-trade. This was followed by his "Prison Amusements," composed during his confinement in York castle; "The World before the Flood," 1813; "Thoughts on Wheels," 1817, directed against state lotteries; "The Climbing Boy's Soliloquy," a description of the sufferings of chimney-sweepers' apprentices; "Greenland," 1819, a poem in five cantos, containing many beautiful polar descriptions; and "The Pelican Island," his last and perhaps best long poem. Besides the works enumerated, Mr. Montgomery wrote a number of short pieces remarkable for their beauty and devotional feeling, and the felicity of their diction, which have enjoyed vast popularity. In 1830 and 1831 he delivered a course of lectures at the Royal Institution on "Poetry and General Literature," which were published in 1833. His collected poetical works appeared in 4 vols. 12mo, in 1841; and, in 1 vol. 8vo, in 1851; his "Original Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Devotion" were published in 1853. Mr. Montgomery retired from the management of the Iris in 1825. For some years before his death he enjoyed a well-merited literary pension from government of £200 per annum. He died in 1854 in the eighty-third year of his age. Mr. Montgomery's poetry is characterized by depth of feeling, simplicity of taste, purity and felicity of diction, and picturesque beauty, as well as by sincere, simple, and unsectarian piety.—J. T.
MONTGOMERY, Robert, one of whose poems went through twenty-six editions, but who is now chiefly remembered as the subject of a scathing article by Macaulay, was born at Bath in 1807, and devoted himself at an early age to literary pursuits. In 1828 he published "The Omnipresence of the Deity," a poem which at once acquired a remarkable popularity amongst those whose suffrages on matters of poetical taste were least valuable. Rapidly producing several other poems, amongst them his "Satan," with which his name is still chiefly associated, he went to Cambridge in 1830, was ordained in 1835, and devoted himself zealously to his duties as a curate in Shropshire. Subsequently officiating in London, then at Glasgow, and then in London again, he drew large audiences by his peculiar eloquence, and received more than once from his congregations substantial tokens of their esteem. Besides various prose theological works, he published several other poems, most of which acquired a success similar in kind and value to that which had rewarded his earlier efforts. Amongst them may be mentioned "The Messiah;" "Woman, the Angel of Life;" "Luther, or the Spirit of the Reformation;" "Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes;" "The Christian Life;" "Lyra Christiana;" "Lines on Wellington," the "Hero's Funeral;" and "The Sanctuary." He died at Brighton on the 3rd of December, 1855. Of engaging and attractive manners, he acquired much personal esteem and regard; but his claims to rank as a poet are no longer regarded as worthy of serious discussion.—W. J. P.
* MONTI, Raffaelle, a celebrated Italian sculptor, was born at Milan in 1818. The son of Gaetano Monti, a sculptor of considerable ability, his training was commenced by his father and completed in the Milan academy, where he gained the gold medal for his group of "Alexander taming Bucephalus." In 1839 he went to Vienna, and found there ready employment in portrait sculpture; but he returned to Milan in 1842. In 1847 he visited England, bringing with him his statue of the "Veiled Vestal," a commission from the duke of Devonshire. Having taken part in the revolutionary movements of 1848 he was compelled to quit Milan, when he settled in London. At the Great Exhibition his "Veiled Vestal," "Circassian Slave," and "Boy with Grasshopper," were among the most popular works of sculpture in the building. For the Crystal palace at Sydenham, M. Monti designed the great fountains in the nave and several statues on the terraces and elsewhere. These and other commissions of a like character seem to have suggested to him the establishment of a sort of manufactory of decorative sculpture, but it proved unsuccessful, and he returned to the more customary employment of his chisel. His works are numerous; mostly picturesque in style, and display a dexterous management of the chisel, M. Monti has delivered some courses of lectures on sculpture in London, was for some time the London correspondent of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and has written several of the memoirs of artists in the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography.—J. T—e.
MONTI, Vincenzo, poet, born at a small house on the Fusignano road in the Ferrarese, 19th February, 1754; died 13th
