Immortal Memories

Celebration at Aldeburgh in Suffo

ession is primarily that of a journalist can make no claim. Moreover it has been well said that the judgment of foreigners is the judgment of posterity, and I fully believe that where a writer has secured the suffrages of men of another nation than his own, he has done more for his ultima

man, whose life was so full of affairs, taking the poor young stranger by the hand, reading through his abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting-as the poet was quite unable to select-The Library and The Village as the most suitable for publication, helping him to a publisher, introducing him to friends, and proving himself quite untiring on his behalf. There is a letter of Burke's printed in a little known book-The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker of the House of Commons-in which Burke takes the trouble to defend Crabbe's moral character and to press his claims for being admitted to holy orders. "Dudley North tells me," he continues, "that he has the best character possible among those with whom he has always lived, that he is now working hard to qualify, and has not only Latin, but some smattering of Greek." It had its gracious amenities, that eighteenth century, for I do not believe that there is a man in the ranks of the present Government, or of the present Opposition, who would take all this

ation which never faltered, and on his death-bed requested that the pathetic story of Ph?be Dawson in The Par

arty there is a statement by his nephew

tance, altered before publication. Mr. Fox repeated once or twice that it was a very pretty poem, that Crabbe's condition in the world had improved since he wrote The Village, and his view of life, likewise The Parish Register, bore marks of considera

musing thing-read me a bit of Crabbe." They read to him from The Borough, and we all remember his comment, "Capital-excellent-very good." Yet at this time-in 1832-any popularity that Crabbe had once enjoyed was already on the wane. Other idols had caught the popular taste, and from that day to this there was to be no real revival of appreciation for these poems. There were to be no lack of admirers, however, of

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ry with stealing. Lord Tennyson, again, at a much late

ty years, and the aged cardinal reread Crabbe to find that he was more delighted than ever with our poet. That great nineteenth century pagan, on the other hand, that prince of letter-writers and wonderful poet of whom Suffolk has also reason to be proud, Edward FitzGerald, was even more ardent. Praise of Crabbe is scattered freely throughout the many volumes of his correspondence, and he edited, as we all know, a book of Selections, which I want to see reprinted. It contains a pref

, treating of Crabbe's little weaknesses-and who of us has not his little weaknesses-in the most cheery possible manner. It is perhaps a small matter to tell us in one place of his father's want of "taste," his insensibility to the beauty of order in his composition-that had been done by the critics before him; but he even has something to say about the philandering which characterized the old gentleman in the last years of his life, his apparent anxiety to get married again. [106] The only thing that he all but ignores is Crabbe's opium habit-a habit that came to him as a sedative from a painful complaint and inspired, as was the case with Coleridge, his more melodious utterances. Taken altogether the picture is as pleasant as it is capable and exhaustive. We see his early boyhood at Aldeburgh, his schooldays: his first period of unhappiness at Slaughden Quay, his apprenticeship near Bury St. Edmunds, where we seem to hear his master's daughters, w

assed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door," clearly implying that if Chesterfield was not Johnson's patron it was not the great Doctor's fault? In any case the patron must always exist for the poor man of letters in every age. Now, he is frequently a collective personality rather than an individual. He is represented for the author who has tried and failed by the Royal Literary Fund, by such bounty as is awarded by the Society of Authors, or by the Civil List Grant. For the author in embryo he is assisted above all by the literary log-roller who flourishes so much in our day. If he is not this "collective personality," o

e says that he is possessed of 6?d. in the world. In another he relates that he has sold his surgical instruments in order to pay his bills. Nevertheless, we find him standing at a bookstall where he sees Dryden's works in three volumes, octavo, for five shillings, and of his few shillings he ventures to offer 3s. 6d.-and carries home the Dryden. What bibliophile but must love such a story as that, even though a day or two afterwards its hero writes, "My last shilling became 8d. yesterday." But what a good investment withal. Dryden made him a much better poet. Then comes the famous letter to B

aries, but nothing surely more edifying than the burning of piles of manuscripts so extensive that no fireplace would hold them. The son's ac

one particular spot in the way in which Crabbe can be identified with this beautiful watering-place in which we are now assembled. Shakspere was more of a Londoner than a Stratfordian; nearly all his best work was written in London, and many of the most receptive years of his life were spent in that city. Milton's honoured name is identified with many places, apart from London, the city of his birth. Shelley, Byron and Keats were essentially cosmopolitans in their writings as in their lives. Wordsworth was closely identified with Grasmere, although born in a neighbouring county; but he went to many and varied scenes, and to more than one country, for some of his most inspired verses. Then Cowper, the poet of whom one most often thinks when one is recalling the achievement of Crabbe, is a poet of some half-dozen places other than Olney, and perhaps his best verses were written at Weston-Underwood. Now George Crabbe in the years of his success was identified with many places other than Aldeburgh: with Belvoir Castle, with Muston, and with Trowbridge, where he died, and some of his admirers have even identified him with Bath. When all this is a

he "Wordsworth Country" does to those of the Midland or the North Western. It is true that once in the bitterness of his heart the poet referred to Aldeburgh as "a little venal borough in Suffolk" and that he more than once alluded to his unkind reception upon his reappearance as a curate, when he had previously failed at other callings. "In my own village they think nothing of me," he once said. But who does not know how the heart turns with the years to the places associated with childhood and youth, and Crabbe was a remarkable exemplification of this. A well-known literary journal stated only last week that "Crabbe's connexion with Aldeburgh was not very protracted." So far from this being true it would be no

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and marriage affords a pleasant contrast to the usual unhappy relations of poets with their wives. Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Byron, Shelley, and many another poet was less happy in this respect, and I am not sure

nd read them right through-a thing I have myself done twice, and many here also I doubt not. Rather would I plead for a reprint of Edmund FitzGerald's Selections, or failing that I would ask you to look at the volume of Selections made by Mr. Bernard Holland, or that other admirable selection by the Rev. Anthony Deane. "I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular," wrote FitzGerald to Archbishop Trench. Well, perhaps the "large still books" of the older writers are never destined to be popu

naturally kindly men to the hanging of Dr. Dodd for forgery. Even Samuel Johnson, who did what he could for Dodd, did not find, as he should have done, his whole soul revolted by such a punishment for a crime against property. Cowper has immense claim upon our regard. He is one of the truest of poets, and one of the most interesting figures in all English literature, although no small share of his one-time popularity was due to his identification with Evangelicalism in religion. Cowper had humour and other qualities which enabled him to make the universal appeal to all hearts which is the test of the greatest literature-the appeal of "John Gilpin," the "Lines" to his Mother's Portrait, and his verses on "The loss of the Royal George." Crabbe made no such appeal, and he has not the adventitious assistance that association with a religious sect affords. Hence the popularity he once enjoyed was more entirely on his merits than was that of Cowper. He was the first of the eighteenth century poets who was able to see things as they really are. The

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idea other than the production of splendid phrases. Each and all of them were brilliant men of letters. Crabbe was not a brilliant man of letters, but he was a fine and a genuine poet. You will look in vain in his truest work for the lyrical and musical gift that we associate with poets who came after:-Shelley, Keats, Tennyson-poets who made Crabbe

nnals of my

e poor, with a lesson for to-day as much as for a century ago. Villages are not now what they were then, we are told. But I fully believe that there are all the conditions of life to-day hidden beneath the surface as Crabbe's close observations pictured them. "The altered position of the poor," says Mr. Courthope, "has fortunately deprived his poems of much of the reality they once possessed.

own, though I

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hat the ultimate solution was a social one and not a mere question of political parties. Generations have passed away since he lived, and men are still shouting themselves hoarse to prove that in this Shibboleth or in that may be found the salvation of the country, yet we have still our thousands on the verge of starvation, we have still the very poor in our

be among the moderns, but in two much greater writers of quite different texture, Balzac and Dickens. Had Crabbe not been bounded and restrained by the conventions of his cloth, he might have become one of the most popular story-tellers in our literature-the English Balzac. At a hundred points Charles Dickens is an entire co

ing Crowd, and many another book that touches the very heart of things in nature and human life, will rejoice to hear that this great writer has admitted George Crabbe to be the most potent influence that has affected his work. I have heard him declare many times

old one from our shelves. Instead of the "un-idead" novels, that come out by the dozen and are so popular. I wish we could agree to read Crabbe's novels in verse. Unhappily their form is against them in the present age.

maintain they are intensely modern, alive with the spirit of our time. Any latter-day novelist might envy Crabbe his power of develo

hich the eighteenth century so imperfectly understood. Byron and Wordsworth, disliking each other cordially, did well to praise him, for he was their forerun

s essay on Crabbe in the Cornhill, he quoted the remark, which seemed to be new to FitzGerald, as to Crabbe being a "pope in worsted stockings"-a remark made by Horace Smith of Rejected Addresses, although I have seen it ascribed to Byron and others. "Pope in

rlasting Crabbe again; he naturally

lumes more lovingly, read his poems more sympathetically, and continue with more zeal than ever before to be proud of the man who, born in Aldeburgh a century and a half ago, is closely identified with this county of Suffolk as I believe