English Men of Letters: Crabbe

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from his very best to his very worst. Parts of it were evidently written when the theme stirred and moved the writer: others, again, when he was merely bent on reproducing scenes that lived in his singularly retentive memory, with needless minuteness of detail, and in any kind of couplet that might pass muster in respect of scansion and rhyme. In the preface to the poem, on its appearance in 1810, Crabbe displays an uneasy consciousness that his poem was open to objection in this respect. In his previous ventures he had had Edmund Burke, Johnson, and Fox, besides his friend Turner at Yarmouth, to restrain or to revise.

. It has, of course, like its prototype, a mayor and corporation, and frequent parliamentary elections. It supports many professors of the law; physicians of high repute, and medical quacks of very low. Social life and pleasure is abundant, with clubs, card-parties, and theatres. It boasts an almshouse, hospital, prisons, and schools for all classes. The poem is divided into twenty-four cantos or sections, written as "Letters" to an imaginary correspondent who had bidden the writer "describe the borough," each dealing with its separate topic-professions, trades, sects in religion, inns, strolling players, almshouse inhabitants, and so forth. These descriptions are relieved at intervals by elaborate

Robert Montgomery's borrowings, deserves the praise. It shows Crabbe's descriptive power at its best, and his rare power and insight into the workings of the heart and mind. He has to trace the sequence of thoughts and fee

ith him now, an

ospects and his

sister and his

w the sweetest

ield,-No! nev

h such pleasu

shrubby walks th

ooks and honour

charm beyond wh

ofter and more

crime and urge

rue and honest

calm delight,

n lane,-then lin

heath in all it

lossom where th

broomy bound wi

andy sheep-walk

lowers among the

browses by th

bounding brook t

ridge-'and there

iling to the

faintly fall

istance and th

walk upon the

umber, and wha

sinking in th

m, now parted

waters on the s

s, half dreadi

foot in the

imson weeds, whic

and below: With all those bri

ll waves so sof

lucid jellies

ce as they swim

d rubied star-f

nge above the

iss!-'Oh! ho

ises-save me,

as! the watch

in-truth, terro

n eye for beauty, which his critics are rarely disposed to allow to Crabbe. A narrative of equal pathos, and once equally celebrated, is that of the village-

re real mourn

, mild, sufferi

e sketches of character in quite a different vein, such as the vicar, evidently drawn from life. He is the good easy man, popular with

m was all the

ht: I've done i

answered in a

rong-it was o

ingness to disturb any existing habits

ock found noth

liked-he never

ed his yielding

assions sunk

has left this

being that h

the managers of the Literary Fund, an institution then of some twenty years' standing, and as yet without its charter, applied to Crabbe for a copy of verses that might be appropriate for recitation at the annual dinner of the Society, held at the Freemasons' Tavern. It was the custom of the society to admit such literary diver

ar? shall hoarse

couplets in a

aged. A paragraph prefixed to the lines also shows that Crabbe had a further object in view. "The Founder of this Society having intimated a hope that, on a plan which he has already communicated to his particular Friends, its Funds may be sufficiently ample to afford assi

were left standing when The Borough was published, with, an explanatory note. They are effective for their purpose, the pathos of the

se founts of

ink, but to b

uthor they are

ve the treasu

alth,-and thankl

e that from thes

ream, and equ

each us, whom t

fame and peri

ckons from th

Study; melan

say, but boun

its way to me? Yes! I ma

e meal that add

hose to whom

names whom yet

say, are those w

thus upon th

ose with thanks

ll-Oh! God! ho

ugh that James Smith based his imitation. We all remember the incident of Pat Jennings's adventure in the gallery of the theatre. The manner of the narrative is borrowed from

William Alex

ve is that he preceded Pat Jenn

ustinian Stub

in the de

ngs brought hi

n-cutter-a

be's habit of frequent verbal antithesis, and even of some

ullies who by

e, and tell the

rather than of Crabbe, as is the case with many parodies. Of course there are co

uth? Old Jacob

ls, and avarice

arodists themselves quot

happened wron

rawn with true

d it I was

firm of Clutt

at long intervals. Crabbe's couplets are

y, how do you do?" Again, writing to a friend who had expressed some indignation at the parody, Crabbe complained only of the preface. "There is a little ill-nature-and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature-in their prefatory address; bu

Letter praised the

, and if in the one on Amusements, I ha

r which the butcher

e case I had no inte

sign in the other to

e poor. The good-hu

sappointment, and the

r is vain. Most o

shall be sorry if b

vices of men, or tr

th derision or

ionally present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked." It might perhaps be inferred from such effusions as are here parodied that Crabbe was lacking in a sense of humour. This would certainly be too sweeping an inference, for in many of his sketches of human character he gives unmistakable proof to the contrary. But the talent in question-often so re

ing of Tennyson's, that if God made the country, and man made the city, then it was the devil who made the country-town. To travel through the borough from end to end is to pass through much ignoble scenery, human and other, and under a cloudy heaven, with only rare gleams of sunshine, and patches of blue sky.

Very noticeable are the sections devoted to the almshouse of the borough and its inhabitants. Its founder, an eccentric and philanthropic merchant of the place, as well as the tenants of the almshouse whose descriptions follow, are all avowedly, like most ot

te he had; to

duties, and

oy to sit al

widow and he

es would, spite

ther eyes has

try night fr

sorrows of a s

obbed him, and

but reformi

lked, and found

ushlight met hi

uished, and his

ope, he calmly

r old men and women of the borough, who had struggled in life and failed. Having built and endowed this harbour of refuge, and placed its gov

, a lavish donor to the town, but as vulgar and ostentatious as the founder had been humble and modest. This man defeats the intentions of the

de by various l

e glory once a

guinea in their

ell so low

pity he could

own, and therefore

mate in order, a woman also drawn from the living model, and disguised under the title of Clelia, is a study of character and career, drawn with consummate skill. Certain abortive attempts of Crabbe to write prose fiction have been already mentioned. But this narrative of the gradual degradation of a coquette of the lower middle class shows that Crabbe posses

e in Suffolk, and up to that time confined to that county. It differed from the workhouse of to-day apparently in this respect, that there was not even an attempt to separate the young and old, the sick and the healthy, the criminal and vicious from the respectable and honest. Yet Crabbe's powerful picture of the misery thus caused to the deserving class of inmate is not without its lesson even after nearly a century during which though

here, the socia

story current

ong-known in

learned, or feel

d, but who can

ions at their

ose whom they w

manhood grew; Who, with like

elves, the joy

d custom so

meaning in th

angers, words n

ements of the s

heart with tho

ews and hopes

evous fears the

rse no prosp

living in suc

readful, but w

g them joy, to

is, like the

notony has surely never bee

village," he told James Smith, "they think nothing of me." The three years following the publication of The Borough were specially lonely. He had, indeed, his two sons, George and John, with him. They had both passed through Cambridge-one at Trinity and the other at Caius, and were now in holy orders. Each held a curacy in the near neighbourhood, enabling them to live under the parental roof. But Mrs. Crabb

t objections to Crabbe's treatment of country life are well founded. "His chief fault," he says, "is his frequent lapse into disgusting representations." All powerful and pathetic poetry, Jeffrey admits, abounds in "images of distress," but these images must never excite "disgust," for that is fatal to the ends which poetry was meant to produce. A few months later the Quarterly followed in the same strain, but went on to preach a more questionable doct

wer in the second. Jeffrey had expressed a hope that Crabbe would in future concentrate his powers upon some interesting and connected story. "At present it is impossible not to regret that so much genius should be wasted in making us perfectly acquainted with individuals of whom we are to know nothing but their characters." Crabbe in reply makes what was really the best apology for not accepting this

n that the treatment is everything, and that Chaucer was endowed with many qualities denied to himself-the spirit of joyousness and the love of sunshine, and together with these, gifts of humour and pathos to which Crabbe could make no pretension. From Chaucer, Crabbe passes to the great but very different master, on whom he had first built his style. Was Pope, then, not a poet? seeing that he too has "no small portion of this actuality of relation, this nudity of description, and poetry without an atmosphere"? Here again, of course, Crabbe overlooks one essential difference between himself and his model. Both were keen-sighted students of character,

world its vet

olics, an old

and Pope has educed an eternally pat

he hard lots of the very poor. He had associated in his later years with a class above these-not indeed with the "upper ten," save when he dined at Belvoir Castle, but with classes lying between these two extremes. He had come to feel more and more the fascination of analysing human character and motives among his equals. He had a singularly retentive memory, and the habit of noting and brooding over incidents-specially of "life's little ironies"-wherever he encountered them. He does not seem to have possessed much originating power. When, a few years later, his friend Mrs. Leadbeater inquired of him