Meanwhile, Montgomery continued to write poetry. He achieved some fame with "The Wanderer of Switzerland" (1806), a poem in six parts written in seven-syllable cross-rhymed quatrains. The poem addressed the French annexation of Switzerland and quickly went through two editions. When it was denounced the following year in the conservative "Edinburgh Review" as a poem that would be speedily forgotten, Lord Byron came to its defence in the satire "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". Nevertheless, within 18 months a fourth impression of 1500 copies was issued from the very presses that had printed the criticism, and several more were to follow. This success brought Montgomery a commission from the printer Bowyer to write a poem on the abolition of the slave trade, to be published along with other poems on the subject by Elizabeth Benger and James Grahame, in a handsome illustrated volume. The subject appealed at once to the poet's philanthropic enthusiasm and to his own family associations with the West Indies. The four-part poem in heroic couplets appeared in 1809 as "The West Indies".