d no superior. He was in the
very situation for which he was peculiarly fitted by nature; and during
some years his life was a series of triumphs.

Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially of Mulgrave and
of Sprat, it may be said that his fame has suffered from the folly of
those editors who, down to our own time, have persisted in reprinting
his rhymes among the works of the British poets. There is not a year in
which hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever wrote are not sent
in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal at
Cambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that
kind of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or odes; and
it is most unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle on
the Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comus
and Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpole,
Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But
fortunately for them, their metrical compositions were never thought
worthy to be admitted into any collection of our national classics.

It has long been usual to represent the imagination under the figure of
a wing, and to call the successful exertions of the imagination flights.
One poet is the eagle; another is the swan; a third modestly compares
himself to the bee. But none of these types would have suited Montague.
His genius may be compared to that pinion which, though it is too weak
to lift the ostrich into the air, enables her, while she remains on the
earth, to outrun hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possesses
this kind of genius attempts to ascend the heaven of invention, his
awkward and unsuccessful efforts expose him to derision. But if he will
be content to stay in the terrestrial region of business, he will find
that the faculties which would not enable him to soar into a higher
sphere will enable him to distance all his competitors in the lower. As
a poet Montague could never have risen above the crowd. But in the House
of Commons, now fast becoming supreme in the State, and extending
its control over one executive department after another, the young
adventurer soon obtained a place very different from the place which he
occupies among men of letters. At thirty, he would gladly have given all
his chances in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf.
At thirty-seven, he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the