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diff --git a/old/11088.txt b/old/11088.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5e0003c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11088.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6832 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crabbe, (George), by Alfred Ainger + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Crabbe, (George) + English Men of Letters Series + +Author: Alfred Ainger + +Release Date: February 15, 2004 [EBook #11088] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRABBE, (GEORGE) *** + + + + +Produced by Garrett Alley and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS + +CRABBE + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS + +CRABBE + +BY + +ALFRED AINGER + + + +NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The chief, and almost sole, source of information concerning Crabbe is +the Memoir by his son prefixed to the collected edition of his poems in +1834. Comparatively few letters of Crabbe's have been preserved, but a +small and interesting series will be found in the "Leadbeater Papers" +(1862), consisting of letters addressed to Mary Leadbeater, the daughter +of Burke's friend, Richard Shackleton. + +I am indebted to Mr. John Murray for kindly lending me many manuscript +sermons and letters of Crabbe's and a set of commonplace books in which +the poet had entered fragments of cancelled poems, botanical memoranda, +and other miscellaneous matter. + +Of especial service to me has been a copy of Crabbe's _Memoir_ by his +son with abundant annotations by Edward FitzGerald, whose long intimacy +with Crabbe's son and grandson had enabled him to illustrate the text +with many anecdotes and comments of interest chiefly derived from those +relatives. This volume has been most kindly placed at my disposal by +Mr. W. Aldis Wright, FitzGerald's literary executor. + +Finally, I have once again to thank my old friend the Master of +Peterhouse for his careful reading of my proof sheets. + +A.A. + +_July 1903_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH + +CHAPTER II POVERTY IN LONDON + +CHAPTER III FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE + +CHAPTER IV LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE + +CHAPTER V IN SUFFOLK AGAIN + +CHAPTER VI "THE PARISH REGISTER" + +CHAPTER VII "THE BOROUGH" + +CHAPTER VIII "TALES" + +CHAPTER IX VISITING IN LONDON + +CHAPTER X "TALES OF THE HALL" + +CHAPTER XI LAST YEARS AT TROWBRIDGE + +INDEX + + + + +CRABBE + + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH + +(1754-1780) + +Two eminent English poets who must be reckoned moderns though each +produced characteristic verse before the end of the eighteenth century, +George Crabbe and William Wordsworth, have shared the common fate of +those writers who, possessing a very moderate power of self-criticism, +are apparently unable to discriminate between their good work and their +bad. Both have suffered, and still suffer, in public estimation from +this cause. The average reader of poetry does not care to have to search +and select for himself, and is prone summarily to dismiss a writer +(especially a poet) on the evidence of his inferior productions. +Wordsworth, by far the greater of the two poets, has survived the +effects of his first offence, and has grown in popularity and influence +for half a century past. Crabbe, for many other reasons that I shall +have to trace, has declined in public favour during a yet longer period, +and the combined bulk and inequality of his poetry have permanently +injured him, even as they injured his younger contemporary. + +Widely as these two poets differed in subjects and methods, they +achieved kindred results and played an equally important part in the +revival of the human and emotional virtues of poetry after their long +eclipse under the shadow of Pope and his school. Each was primarily made +a poet through compassion for what "man had made of man," and through a +concurrent and sympathetic influence of the scenery among which he was +brought up. Crabbe was by sixteen years Wordsworth's senior, and owed +nothing to his inspiration. In the form, and at times in the technique +of his verse, his controlling master was Pope. For its subjects he was +as clearly indebted to Goldsmith and Gray. But for _The Deserted +Village_ of the one, and _The Elegy_ of the other, it is conceivable +that Crabbe, though he might have survived as one of the "mob of +gentlemen" who imitated Pope "with ease," would never have learned where +his true strength lay, and thus have lived as one of the first and +profoundest students of _The Annals of the Poor_. For _The Village_, one +of the earliest and not least valuable of his poems, was written (in +part, at least) as early as 1781, while Wordsworth was yet a child, and +before Cowper had published a volume. In yet another respect Crabbe was +to work hand in hand with Wordsworth. He does not seem to have held +definite opinions as to necessary reforms in what Wordsworth called +"poetic diction." Indeed he was hampered, as Wordsworth was not, by a +lifelong adherence to a metre--the heroic couplet--with which this same +poetic diction was most closely bound up. He did not always escape the +effects of this contagion, but in the main he was delivered from it by +what I have called a first-hand association with man and nature. He was +ever describing what he had seen and studied with his own eyes, and the +vocabulary of the bards who had for generations borrowed it from one +another failed to supply him with the words he needed. The very +limitations of the first five-and-twenty years of his life passed in a +small and decaying seaport were more than compensated by the intimacy +of his acquaintance with its inhabitants. Like Wordsworth he had early +known love and sorrow "in huts where poor men lie." + +Wordsworth's fame and influence have grown steadily since his death in +1850. Crabbe's reputation was apparently at its height in 1819, for it +was then, on occasion of his publishing his _Tales of the Hall_, that +Mr. John Murray paid him three thousand pounds for the copyright of this +work, and its predecessors. But after that date Crabbe's popularity may +be said to have continuously declined. Other poets, with other and more +purely poetical gifts, arose to claim men's attention. Besides +Wordsworth, as already pointed out, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, +Shelley had found their various admirers, and drawn Crabbe's old public +from him. It is the purpose of this little volume to inquire into the +reasons why he is still justly counted a classic, and whether he has +not, as Tennyson said of him, "a world of his own," still rich in +interest and in profit for the explorer. + + * * * * * + +Aldeburgh--or as it came to be more commonly spelled in modern times, +Aldborough--is to-day a pleasant and quiet watering-place on the coast +of Suffolk, only a few miles from Saxmundham, with which it is connected +by a branch line of the Great Eastern Railway. It began to be known for +its fine air and sea-bathing about the middle of the last century, and +to-day possesses other attractions for the yachtsman and the golfer. But +a hundred years earlier, when Crabbe was born, the town possessed none +of these advantages and means of access, to amend the poverty and rough +manners of its boating and fishing inhabitants. In the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries Aldeburgh had been a flourishing port with a +population able to provide notable aid in the hour of national danger. +Successive Royal Charters had accorded to the town markets, with other +important rights and privileges. It had returned two members to +Parliament since early in the days of Elizabeth, and indeed continued to +do so until the Reform Bill of 1831. But, in common with Dunwich, and +other once flourishing ports on the same coast, Aldeburgh had for its +most fatal enemy, the sea. The gradual encroachments of that +irresistible power had in the course of two centuries buried a large +portion of the ancient Borough beneath the waves. Two existing maps of +the town, one of about 1590, the other about 1790, show how extensive +this devastation had been. This cause, and others arising from it, the +gradual decay of the shipping and fishing industries, had left the town +in the main a poor and squalid place, the scene of much smuggling and +other lawlessness. Time and the ocean wave had left only "two parallel +and unpaved streets, running between mean and scrambling houses." Nor +was there much relief, aesthetic or other, in the adjacent country, +which was flat, marshy, and treeless, continually swept by northern and +easterly gales. A river, the Ald, from which the place took its name, +approached the sea close to the town from the west, and then took a +turn, flowing south, till it finally entered the sea at the neighbouring +harbour of Orford. + +In Aldeburgh, on Christmas Eve 1754, George Crabbe was born. He came of +a family bearing a name widely diffused throughout Norfolk and Suffolk +for many generations. His father, after school-teaching in various +parishes in the neighbourhood, finally settled down in his native place +as collector of the salt duties, a post which his father had filled +before him. Here as a very young man he married an estimable and pious +widow, named Loddock, some years his senior, and had a family of six +children, of whom George was the eldest. + +Within the limits of a few miles round, including the towns and villages +of Slaughden, Orford, Parham, Beccles, Stowmarket, and Woodbridge, the +first five-and-twenty years of the poet's life were spent. He had but +slight interest in the pursuits of the inhabitants. His father, brought +up among its fishing and boating interests, was something nautical in +his ambitions, having a partnership in a fishing-boat, and keeping a +yacht on the river. His other sons shared their father's tastes, while +George showed no aptitude or liking for the sea, but from his earliest +years evinced a fondness for books, and a marked aptitude for learning. +He was sent early to the usual dame-school, and developed an insatiable +appetite for such stories and ballads as were current among the +neighbours. George Crabbe, the elder, possessed a few books, and used to +read aloud to his family passages from Milton, Young, and other didactic +poets of the eighteenth century. Furthermore he took in a country +magazine, which had a "Poet's Corner," always handed over to George for +his special benefit. The father, respecting these early signs of a +literary bent in the son, sent him to a small boarding-school at Bungay +in the same county, and a few years later to one of higher pretensions +at Stowmarket, kept by a Mr. Richard Haddon, a mathematical teacher of +some repute, where the boy also acquired some mastery of Latin and +acquaintance with the Latin classics. In his later years he was given +(perhaps a little ostentatiously) to prefixing quotations from Horace, +Juvenal, Martial, and oven more recondite authors, to the successive +sections of _The Borough_ But wherever he found books--especially +poetry--he read them and remembered them. He early showed considerable +acquaintance with the best English poets, and although Pope controlled +his metrical forms, and something more than the forms, to the end of his +life, he had somehow acquired a wide knowledge of Shakespeare, and even +of such then less known poets as Spenser, Raleigh, and Cowley. + +After some three years at Stowmarket--it now being settled that medicine +was to be his calling--George was taken from school, and the search +began in earnest for some country practitioner to whom he might be +apprenticed. An interval of a few months was spent at home, during which +he assisted his father at the office on Slaughden Quay, and in the year +1768, when he was still under fourteen years of age, a post was found +for him in the house of a surgeon at Wickham-Brook, near Bury St. +Edmunds. This practitioner combined the practise of agriculture on a +small scale with that of physic, and young Crabbe had to take his share +in the labours of the farm. The result was not satisfactory, and after +three years of this rough and uncongenial life, a more profitable +situation was found with a Mr. Page of Woodbridge--the memorable home of +Bernard Barton and Edward FitzGerald. Crabbe became Mr. Page's pupil in +1771, and remained with him until 1775. + +We have the authority of Crabbe's son and biographer for saying that he +never really cared for the profession he had adopted. What proficiency +he finally attained in it, before he forsook it for ever, is not quite +clear. But it is certain that his residence among the more civilised and +educated inhabitants of Woodbridge was of the greatest service to him. +He profited notably by joining a little club of young men who met on +certain evenings at an inn for discussion and mutual improvement. To +this little society Crabbe was to owe one chief happiness of his life. +One of its members, Mr. W.S. Levett, a surgeon (one wonders if a +relative of Samuel Johnson's protege), was at this time courting a Miss +Brereton, of Framlingham, ten miles away. Mr. Levett died young in 1774, +and did not live to marry, but during his brief friendship with Crabbe +was the means of introducing him to the lady who, after many years of +patient waiting, became his wife. In the village of Great Parham, not +far from Framlingham, lived a Mr. Tovell, of Parham Hall, a substantial +yeoman, farming his own estate. With Mr. and Mrs. Tovell and their only +child, a daughter, lived an orphan niece of Mr. Tovell's, a Miss Sarah +Elmy, Miss Brereton's bosom-friend, and constant companion. Mr. Levett +had in consequence become the friend of the Tovell family, and conceived +the desire that his young friend, Crabbe, should be as blessed as +himself. "George," he said, "you shall go with me to Parham; there is a +young lady there who would just suit you!" Crabbe accepted the +invitation, made Mr. Tovell's acquaintance, and promptly fell in love +with Mr. Tovell's niece. The poet, at that time, had not yet completed +his eighteenth year. + +How soon after this first meeting George Crabbe proposed and was +accepted, is not made clear, but he was at least welcomed to the house +as a friend and an admirer, and his further visits encouraged. His youth +and the extreme uncertainty of his prospects could not well have been +agreeable to Mr. and Mrs. Tovell, or to Miss Elmy's widowed mother who +lived not far away at Beccles, but the young lady herself returned her +lover's affection from the first, and never faltered. The three +following years, during which Crabbe remained at Woodbridge, gave him +the opportunity of occasional visits, and there can be no doubt that +apart from the fascinations of his "Mira," by which name he proceeded to +celebrate her in occasional verse, the experience of country life and +scenery, so different from that of his native Aldeburgh, was of great +service in enlarging his poetical outlook. Great Parham, distant about +five miles from Saxmundham, and about thirteen from Aldeburgh, is at +this day a village of great rural charm, although a single-lined branch +of the Great Eastern wanders boldly among its streams and cottage +gardens through the very heart of the place. The dwelling of the Tovells +has many years ago disappeared--an entirely new hall having risen on the +old site; but there stands in the parish, a few fields away, an older +Parham Hall;--to-day a farm-house, dear to artists, of singular +picturesqueness, surrounded and even washed by a deep moat, and shaded +by tall trees--a haunt, indeed, "of ancient peace." The neighbourhood of +this old Hall, and the luxuriant beauty of the inland village, so +refreshing a contrast to the barrenness and ugliness of the country +round his native town, enriched Crabbe's mind with many memories that +served him well in his later poetry. + +In the meantime he was practising verse, though as yet showing little +individuality. A Lady's Magazine of the day, bearing the name of its +publisher, Mr. Wheble, had offered a prize for the best poem on the +subject of _Hope_, which Crabbe was so fortunate as to win, and the same +magazine printed other short pieces in the same year, 1772. They were +signed "G.C., Woodbridge," and included divers lyrics addressed to Mira. +Other extant verses of the period of his residence at Woodbridge show +that he was making experiments in stanza-form on the model of earlier +English poets, though without showing more than a certain imitative +skill. But after he had been three years in the town, he made a more +notable experiment and had found a printer in Ipswich to take the risk +of publication. In 1775 was printed in that town a didactic satire of +some four hundred lines in the Popian couplet, entitled _Inebriety_. +Coleridge's friend, who had to write a prize poem on the subject of Dr. +Jenner, boldly opened with the invocation-- + + "Inoculation! Heavenly maid, descend." + +As the title of Crabbe's poem stands for the bane and not the antidote, +he could not adopt the same method, but he could not resist some other +precedents of the epic sort, and begins thus, in close imitation of _The +Dunciad_-- + + "The mighty spirit, and its power which stains + The bloodless cheek and vivifies the brains, + I sing" + +The apparent object of the satire was to describe the varied phases of +Intemperance, as observed by the writer in different classes of +society--the Villager, the Squire, the Farmer, the Parish Clergyman, and +even the Nobleman's Chaplain, an official whom Crabbe as yet knew only +by imagination. From childhood he had had ample experience of the vice +in the rough and reckless homes of the Aldeburgh poor. His subsequent +medical pursuits must have brought him into occasional contact with it +among the middle classes, and even in the manor-houses and parsonages +for which he made up the medicine in his master's surgery. But his +treatment of the subject was too palpably imitative of one poetic model, +already stale from repetition. Not only did he choose Pope's couplet, +with all its familiar antitheses and other mannerisms, but frankly +avowed it by parodying whole passages from the _Essay on Man_ and _The +Dunciad_, the original lines being duly printed at the foot of the page. +There is little of Crabbe's later accent of sympathy. Epigram is too +obviously pursued, and much of the suggested acquaintance with the +habits of the upper classes-- + + "Champagne the courtier drinks, the spleen to chase, + The colonel Burgundy, and Port his grace" + +is borrowed from books and not from life. Nor did the satire gain in +lucidity from any editorial care. There are hardly two consecutive lines +that do not suffer from a truly perverse theory of punctuation. A copy +of the rare original is in the writer's possession, at the head of which +the poet has inscribed his own maturer judgment of this youthful +effort--"Pray let not this be seen ... there is very little of it that +I'm not heartily ashamed of." The little quarto pamphlet--"Ipswich, +printed and sold by C. Punchard, Bookseller, in the Butter Market, 1775. +Price one shilling and sixpence"--seems to have attracted no attention. +And yet a critic of experience would have recognised in it a force as +well as a fluency remarkable in a young man of twenty-one, and pointing +to quite other possibilities when the age of imitation should have +passed away. + +In 1775 Crabbe's term of apprenticeship to Mr. Page expired, and he +returned to his home at Aldeburgh, hoping soon to repair to London and +there continue his medical studies. But he found the domestic situation +much changed for the worse. His mother (who, as we have seen, was +several years older than her husband) was an invalid, and his father's +habits and temper were not improving with time. He was by nature +imperious, and had always (it would seem) been liable to intemperance of +another kind. Moreover, a contested election for the Borough in 1774 had +brought with it its familiar temptations to protracted debauch--and it +is significant that in 1775 he vacated the office of churchwarden that +he had held for many years. George, to whom his father was not as a rule +unkind, did not shrink from once more assisting him among the +butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay. Poetry seems to have been for a while +laid aside, the failure of his first venture having perhaps discouraged +him. Some slight amount of practice in his profession fell to his share. +An entry in the Minute Book of the Aldeburgh Board of Guardians of +September 17, 1775, orders "that Mr. George Crabbe, Junr., shall be +employed to cure the boy Howard of the itch, and that whenever any of +the poor shall have occasion for a surgeon, the overseers shall apply to +him for that purpose." But these very opportunities perhaps only served +to show George Crabbe how poorly he was equipped for his calling as +surgeon, and after a period not specified means were found for sending +him to London, where he lodged with a family from Aldeburgh who were in +business in Whitechapel. How and where he then obtained instruction or +practice in his calling does not appear, though there is a gruesome +story, recorded by his son, how a baby-subject for dissection was one +day found in his cupboard by his landlady, who was hardly to be +persuaded that it was not a lately lost infant of her own. In any case, +within a year Crabbe's scanty means were exhausted, and he was once more +in Aldeburgh, and assistant to an apothecary of the name of Maskill. +This gentleman seems to have found Aldeburgh hopeless, for in a few +months he left the town, and Crabbe set up for himself as his successor. +But he was still poorly qualified for his profession, his skill in +surgery being notably deficient. He attracted only the poorest class of +patients--the fees ware small and uncertain and his prospects of an +early marriage, or even of earning his living as a single man, seemed as +far off as ever. Moreover, he was again cut off from congenial +companionship, with only such relief as was afforded by the occasional +presence in the town of various Militia regiments, the officers of which +gave him some of their patronage and society. + +He had still happily the assurance of the faithful devotion of Miss +Elmy. Her father had been a tanner in the Suffolk town of Beccles, where +her mother still resided, and where Miss Elmy paid her occasional +visits. The long journey from Aldeburgh to Beccles was often taken by +Crabbe, and the changing features of the scenery traversed were +reproduced, his son tells us, many years afterwards in the beautiful +tale of _The Lover's Journey_. The tie between Crabbe and Miss Elmy was +further strengthened by a dangerous fever from which Crabbe suffered in +1778-79, while Miss Elmy was a guest under his parents' roof. This was +succeeded by an illness of Miss Elmy, when Crabbe was in constant +attendance at Parham Hall. His intimacy with the Tovells was moreover to +be strengthened by a sad event in that family, the death of their only +child, an engaging girl of fourteen. The social position of the Tovells, +and in greater degree their fortune, was superior to that of the +Crabbes, and the engagement of their niece to one whose prospects were +so little brilliant had never been quite to their taste. But henceforth +this feeling was to disappear. This crowning sorrow in the family +wrought more cordial feelings. Crabbe was one of those who had known and +been kind to their child, and such were now, + + "Peculiar people--death had made them dear." + +And henceforth the engagement between the lovers was frankly accepted. +But though the course of this true love was to run more and more +smooth, the question of Crabbe's future means of living seemed as +hopeless of solution as ever. + +And yet the enforced idleness of these following years was far from +unprofitable. The less time occupied in the routine work of his +profession, the more leisure he had for his favourite study of natural +history, and especially of botany. This latter study had been taken up +during his stay at Woodbridge, the neighbourhood of which had a Flora +differing from that of the bleak coast country of Aldeburgh, and it was +now pursued with the same zeal at home. Herbs then played a larger part +than to-day among curative agents of the village doctor, and the fact +that Crabbe sought and obtained them so readily was even pleaded by his +poorer patients as reason why his fees need not be calculated on any +large scale. But this absorbing pursuit did far more than serve to +furnish Crabbe's outfit as a healer. It was undoubtedly to the observing +eye and retentive memory thus practised in the cottage gardens, and in +the lanes, and meadows, and marshes of Suffolk that his descriptions, +when once he found where his true strength lay, owed a charm for which +readers of poetry had long been hungering. The floral outfit of pastoral +poets, when Crabbe began to write, was a _hortus siccus_ indeed. +Distinctness in painting the common growth of field and hedgerow may be +said to have had its origin with Crabbe. Gray and Goldsmith had their +own rare and special gifts to which Crabbe could lay no claim. But +neither these poets nor even Thomson, whose avowed purpose was to depict +nature, are Crabbe's rivals in this respect. Byron in the most +hackneyed of all eulogies upon Crabbe defined him as "Nature's sternest +painter yet the best." The criticism would have been juster had he +written that Crabbe was the truest painter of Nature in her less lovely +phases. Crabbe was not stern in his attitude either to his fellow-men, +or to the varying aspects of Nature, although for the first years of his +life he was in habitual contact with the less alluring side of both. + +But it was not only through a closer intimacy with Nature that Crabbe +was being unconsciously prepared for high poetic service. Hope deferred +and disappointments, poverty and anxiety, were doing their beneficent +work. Notwithstanding certain early dissipations and escapades which his +fellow-townsmen did not fail to remember against him in the later days +of his success, Crabbe was of a genuinely religious temperament, and had +been trained by a devout mother. Moreover, through a nearer and more +sympathetic contact with the lives and sorrows of the poor suffering, he +was storing experience full of value for the future, though he was still +and for some time longer under the spell of the dominant poetic fashion, +and still hesitated to "look into his heart and write." + +But the time was bound to come when he must put his poetic quality to a +final test. In London only could he hope to prove whether the verse, of +which he was accumulating a store, was of a kind that men would care +for. He must discover, and speedily, whether he was to take a modest +place in the ranks of literature, or one even more humble in the shop of +an apothecary. After weighing his chances and his risks for many a weary +day he took the final resolution, and his son has told us the +circumstances:-- + +"One gloomy day towards the close of the year 1779, he had strolled to +a bleak and cheerless part of the cliff above Aldeburgh, called The +Marsh Hill, brooding as he went over the humiliating necessities of his +condition, and plucking every now and then, I have no doubt, the +hundredth specimen of some common weed. He stopped opposite a shallow, +muddy piece of water, as desolate and gloomy as his own mind, called the +Leech-pond, and 'it was while I gazed on it,' he said to my brother and +me, one happy morning, 'that I determined to go to London and venture +all'" + +About thirty years later, Crabbe contributed to a magazine (_The New +Monthly_) some particulars of his early life, and referring to this +critical moment added that he had not then heard of "another youthful +adventurer," whose fate, had he known of it, might perhaps have deterred +him from facing like calamities. Chatterton had "perished in his pride" +nearly ten years before. As Crabbe thus recalled the scene of his own +resolve, it may have struck him as a touching coincidence that it was by +the Leech-pool on "the lonely moor"--though there was no +"Leech-gatherer" at hand to lend him fortitude--that he resolved to +encounter "Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty." He was, +indeed, little better equipped than Chatterton had been for the +enterprise. His father was unable to assist him financially, and was +disposed to reproach him for forsaking a profession, in the cause of +which the family had already made sacrifices. The Crabbes and all their +connections were poor, and George scarcely knew any one whom he might +appeal to for even a loan. At length Mr. Dudley North, of Little Glemham +Hall, near Parham, whose brother had stood for Aldeburgh, was +approached, and sent the sum asked for--five pounds. George Crabbe, +after paying his debts, set sail for London on board a sloop at +Slaughden Quay--"master of a box of clothes, a small case of surgical +instruments, and three pounds in money." This was in April 1780. + + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +POVERTY IN LONDON + +(1780-1781) + +Crabbe had no acquaintances of his own in London, and the only +introduction he carried with him was to an old friend of Miss Elmy's, a +Mrs. Burcham, married to a linen-draper in Cornhill. In order to be near +these friendly persons he took lodgings, close to the Royal Exchange, in +the house of a hairdresser, a Mr. Vickery, at whose suggestion, no +doubt, he provided himself with "a fashionable tie-wig". Crabbe at once +began preparations for his literary campaign, by correcting such verse +as he had brought with him, completing "two dramas and a variety of +prose essays," and generally improving himself by a course of study and +practice in composition. As in the old Woodbridge days, he made some +congenial acquaintances at a little club that met at a neighbouring +coffee-house, which included a Mr. Bonnycastle and a Mr. Reuben Burrow, +both mathematicians of repute, who rose to fill important positions in +their day. These recreations he diversified with country excursions, +during which he read Horace and Ovid, or searched the woods around +London for plants and insects. + +From his first arrival in town Crabbe kept a diary or journal, +addressed to his "Mira" at Parham, and we owe to it a detailed account +of his earlier struggles, three months of the journal having survived +and fallen into his son's hands after the poet's death. Crabbe had +arrived in London in April, and by the end of the month we learn from +the journal that he was engaged upon a work in prose, "A Plan for the +Examination of our Moral and Religious Opinions," and also on a poetical +"Epistle to Prince William Henry," afterwards William IV., who had only +the year before entered the navy as midshipman, but had already seen +some service under Rodney. The next day's entry in the diary tells how +he was not neglecting other possible chances of an honest livelihood. He +had answered an advertisement in the _Daily Advertiser_ for "an +amanuensis, of grammatical education, and endued with a genius capable +of making improvements in the writings of a gentleman not well versed in +the English language." Two days later he called for a reply, only to +find that the gentleman was suited. The same day's entry also records +how he had sent his poem (probably the ode to the young Sailor-Prince) +to Mr. Dodsley. Only a day later he writes. "Judging it best to have two +strings to the bow, and fearing Mr. Dodsley's will snap, I have finished +another little work from that awkward-titled piece, 'The Foes of +Mankind': have run it on to three hundred and fifty lines, and given it +a still more odd name, 'An Epistle from the Devil.' To-morrow I hope to +transcribe it fair, and send it by Monday." + +"Mr. Dodsley's reply just received: 'Mr. Dodsley presents his +compliments to the gentleman who favoured him with the enclosed poem, +which he has returned, as he apprehends the sale of it would probably +not enable him to give any consideration. He does not mean to insinuate +a want of merit in the poem, but rather a want of attention in the +public.'" + +All this was sufficiently discouraging, and the next day's record is one +of even worse omen. The poet thanks Heaven that his spirits are not +affected by Mr. Dodsley's refusal, and that he is already preparing +another poem for another bookseller, Mr. Becket. He adds, however: "I +find myself under the disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some +of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as +cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly +lessened in their value. The conscientious pawnbroker allowed me--'he +_thought_ he _might'_--half a guinea for them. I took it very readily, +being determined to call for them very soon, and then, if I afterwards +wanted, carry them to some less voracious animal of the kind." + +The entries during the next six weeks continue of the same tenor. Mr. +Becket, for whose approval were sent "Poetical Epistles, with a preface +by the learned Martinus Scriblerus" (he was still harping on the string +of the Augustans), proved no more responsive than Dodsley, "'Twas a very +pretty thing, but, sir, these little pieces the town do not regard." By +May 16th he had "sold his wardrobe, pawned his watch, was in debt to his +landlord, and finally at some loss how to eat a week longer." Two days +later he had pawned his surgical instruments--redeemed and repawned his +watch on more favourable terms--and was rejoiced to find himself still +the possessor of ten shillings. He remained stout of heart--his faith in +Providence still his strong comfort--and the Vickery family, though he +must have been constantly in their debt, were unfailingly kind and +hospitable. He was also appealing to the possible patrons of literature +among the leading statesmen of the hour. On May 21 we learn that he was +preparing "a book" (which of his many ventures of the hour, is +uncertain), and with it a letter for the Prime Minister, Lord North, +whose relative, Dudley North, had started him on his journey to London. +When, after a fortnight's suspense, this request for assistance had been +refused, he writes yet more urgently to Lord Shelburne (at that time out +of office) complaining bitterly of North's hardness of heart, and +appealing on this occasion to his hoped-for patron both in prose and +verse-- + + "Ah! Shelburne, blest with all that's good or great, + T' adorn a rich or save a sinking state, + If public Ills engross not all thy care, + Let private Woe assail a patriot's ear, + Pity confined, but not less warm, impart, + And unresisted win thy noble heart"-- + +with much more in the same vein of innocent flattery. But once again +Crabbe was doomed to disappointment. He had already, it would seem, +appealed to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, with no better success. Crabbe felt +these successive repulses very keenly, but it is not necessary to tax +North, Shelburne, and Thurlow with exceptional hardness of heart. London +was as full of needy literary adventurers as it had been in the days of +_The Dunciad_, and men holding the position of these ministers and +ex-ministers were probably receiving similar applications every week of +their lives. + +During three days in June, Crabbe's attention is diverted from his own +distresses by the Lord George Gordon Riots, of which his journal from +June 8th contains some interesting particulars. He was himself an +eye-witness of some of the most disgraceful excesses of the mob, the +burning of the governor of Newgate's house, and the setting at liberty +of the prisoners. He also saw Lord George himself, "a lively-looking +young man in appearance," drawn in his coach by the mob towards the +residence of Alderman Bull, "bowing as he passed along." + +At this point the diary ends, or in any case the concluding portion was +never seen by the poet's son. And yet at the date when it closed, Crabbe +was nearer to at least the semblance of a success than he had yet +approached. He had at length found a publisher willing to print, and +apparently at his own risk, "_The Candidate_--a Poetical Epistle to the +Authors of the _Monthly Review,"_ that journal being the chief organ of +literary criticism at the time. The idea of this attempt to propitiate +the critics in advance, with a view to other poetic efforts in the +future, was not felicitous. The publisher, "H. Payne, opposite +Marlborough House, Pall Mall," had pledged himself that the author +should receive some share of the profits, however small; but even if he +had not become bankrupt immediately after its publication, it is +unlikely that Crabbe would have profited by a single penny. It was +indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as regards the reviewers +addressed. The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism, +would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted +it. Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader. Its +rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes +of the manner of Pope. It had no organic unity. The wearisome note of +plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant +episodes as compliments to the absent "Mira," and to Wolfe, who +"conquered as he fell"--twenty years or so before. The critics of the +_Monthly Review_, far from being mollified by the poet's appeal, +received the poem with the cruel but perfectly just remark that it had +"that material defect, the want of a proper subject." + +An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of +this effusion. The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how +unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with +counsel how best to hit the taste of the town:-- + + "Be not too eager in the arduous chase; + Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race: + Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth, + And let thy labours one by one go forth + Some happier scrap capricious wits may find + On a fair day, and be profusely kind; + Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng, + Had pleased as little as a new-year's song, + Or lover's verse, that cloyed with nauseous sweet, + Or birthday ode, that ran on ill-paired feet. + Merit not always--Fortune Feeds the bard, + And as the whim inclines bestows reward + None without wit, nor with it numbers gain; + To please is hard, but none shall please in vain + As a coy mistress is the humoured town, + Loth every lover with success to crown; + He who would win must every effort try, + Sail in the mode, and to the fashion fly; + Must gay or grave to every humour dress, + And watch the lucky Moment of Success; + That caught, no more his eager hopes are crost; + But vain are Wit and Love, when that is lost" + +Crabbe's son and biographer remarks with justice that the time of his +father's arrival in London was "not unfavourable for a new Candidate in +Poetry. The giants, Swift and Pope, had passed away, leaving each in his +department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been +so long imitated by inferior persons that the world was not unlikely to +welcome some one who should strike into a newer path. The strong and +powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable +Goldsmith had also departed; and more recently still, Chatterton had +paid the bitter penalty of his imprudence under circumstances which must +surely have rather disposed the patrons of talent to watch the next +opportunity that might offer itself of encouraging genius 'by poverty +depressed.' The stupendous Johnson, unrivalled in general literature, +had from an early period withdrawn himself from poetry. Cowper, destined +to fill so large a space in the public eye somewhat later, had not as +yet appeared as an author; and as for Burns, he was still unknown beyond +the obscure circle of his fellow-villagers." + +All this is quite true, but it was not for such facile cleverness as +_The Candidate_ that the lovers of poetry were impatient. Up to this +point Crabbe shows himself wholly unsuspicious of this fact. It had not +occurred to him that it was possible for him safely to trust his own +instincts. And yet there is a stray entry in his diary which seems to +show how (in obedience to his visionary instructor) he was trying +experiments in more hopeful directions. On the twelfth, of May he +intimates to his Mira that he has dreams of success in something +different, something more human than had yet engaged his thoughts. "For +the first time in my life that I recollect," he writes, "I have written +three or four stanzas that so far touched me in the reading them as to +take off the consideration that they were things of my own fancy." +Thus far there was nothing in what he had printed--in _Inebriety_ or +_The Candidate_--that could possibly have touched his heart or that of +his readers. And it may well have been that he was now turning for fresh +themes to those real sorrows, those genuine, if homely, human interests +of which he had already so intimate an experience. + +However that may have been, the combined coldness of his reviewers and +failure of his bookseller must have brought Crabbe within as near an +approach to despair as his healthy nature allowed. His distress was now +extreme; he was incurring debts with little hope of paying them, and +creditors wore pressing. Forty years later he told Walter Scott and +Lockhart how "during many months when he was toiling in early life in +London he hardly over tasted butcher-meat except on a Sunday, when he +dined usually with a tradesman's family, and thought their leg of +mutton, baked in the pan, the perfection of luxury." And it was only +after some more weary months, when at last "want stared him in the face, +and a gaol seemed the only immediate refuge for his head," that he +resolved, as a last resort, to lay his case once more before some public +man of eminence and character. "Impelled" (to use his own words) "by +some propitious influence, he fixed in some happy moment upon Edmund +Burke--one of the first of Englishmen, and in the capacity and energy of +his mind, one of the greatest of human beings." + +It was in one of the early months of 1781 (the exact date seems to be +undiscoverable) that Crabbe addressed his letter, with specimens of his +poetry, to Burke at his London residence. The letter has been preserved, +and runs as follows:-- + + "Sir,--I am sensible that I need even your talents to + apologise for the freedom I now take; but I have a plea + which, however simply urged, will, with, a mind like yours, + sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those outcasts on the + world who are without a friend, without employment, and + without bread. + + "Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who + gave me a better education than his broken fortune would + have allowed; and a better than was necessary, as he could + give me that only. I was designed for the profession of + physic, but not having wherewithal to complete the requisite + studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent's + affection, and the error it had occasioned. In April last I + came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this + would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries + of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I + had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to + my delusion. I knew little of the world, and had read books + only: I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; + when I wanted bread they promised me affluence, and soothed + me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance subjected + me to contempt. + + "Time, reflection, and want have shown me my mistake. + I see my trifles in that which I think the true light; and + whilst I deem them such, have yet the opinion that holds + them superior to the common run of poetical publications. + + "I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother + of Lord Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his Lordship's + permission to inscribe my little work to him. Knowing + it to be free from all political allusions and personal abuse, + it was no very material point to me to whom it was dedicated. + His Lordship thought it none to him, and obligingly consented + to my request. + + "I was told that a subscription would be the more profitable + method for me, and, therefore, endeavoured to circulate + copies of the enclosed Proposals. + + "I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very dull narration, + but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. + You will conclude that during this time I must have been at + more expense than I could afford. Indeed the most parsimonious + could not have avoided it. The printer deceived + me, and my little business has had every delay. The people + with whom I live perceive my situation, and find me to be + indigent and without friends. About ten days since I was + compelled to give a note for seven pounds, to avoid an arrest + for about double that sum which I owe. I wrote to every + friend I had, but my friends are poor likewise: the time of + payment approached, and I ventured to represent my case + to Lord Rochford. I begged to be credited for this sum till + I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be within + one month: but to this letter I had no reply, and I have + probably offended by my importunity. Having used every + honest means in vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and + obtained with much entreaty and as the greatest favour a + week's forbearance, when I am positively told that I must, + pay the money or prepare for a prison. + + "You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction. I + appeal to you, sir, as a good and, let me add, a great man. + I have no other pretensions to your favour than that I am + an unhappy one. It is not easy to support the thoughts of + confinement; and I am coward enough to dread such an end + to my suspense. Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with + propriety? Will you ask any demonstrations of my veracity? + I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no + other imposition Let me, if possible, interest your compassion. + I know those of rank and fortune are teased with + frequent petitions, and are compelled to refuse the requests + even of those whom they know to be in distress; it is, therefore, + with a distant hope I ventured to solicit such favour: + but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper + to relieve. It is impossible that sentiments like yours can + proceed from any but a humane and generous heart. + + "I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the + happiness to obtain credit with you, I must submit to my fate. + My existence is a pain to myself, and every one near and dear + to me are distressed in my distresses. My connections, once + the source of happiness, now embitter the reverse of my + fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so + unpromisingly begun: in which (though it ought not to be + boasted of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end + of it. I am, sir, with, the greatest respect, your obedient + and most humble servant, + GEORGE CRABBE." + +The letter is undated, but, as we shall see, must have been written in +February or March of 1781. Crabbe delivered it with his own hands at +Burke's house in Charles Street, St. James's, and (as he long after told +Walter Scott) paced up and down Westminster Bridge all night in an agony +of suspense. + +This suspense was not of long duration Crabbe made his threatened call, +and anxiety was speedily at an end. He had sent with his letter +specimens of his verse still in manuscript. Whether Burke had had time +to do more than glance at them--for they had been in his hands but a few +hours--is uncertain. But it may well have been that the tone as well as +the substance of Crabbe's letter struck the great statesman as something +apart from the usual strain of the literary pretender. During Burke's +first years in London, when he himself lived by literature and saw much +of the lives and ways of poets and pamphleteers, he must have gained +some experience that served him later in good stead. There was a flavour +of truthfulness in Crabbe's story that could hardly be delusive, and a +strain of modesty blended with courage that would at once appeal to +Burke's generous nature. Again, Burke was not a poet (save in the +glowing periods of his prose), but he had read widely in the poets, and +had himself been possessed at one stage of his youth "with the _furor +poeticus_." At this special juncture he had indeed little leisure for +such matters. He had lost his seat for Bristol in the preceding year, +but had speedily found another at Malton--a pocket-borough of Lord +Rockingham's,--and, at the moment of Crabbe's appeal, was again actively +opposing the policy of the King and Lord North. But he yet found time +for an act of kindness that was to have no inconsiderable influence on +English literature. The result of the interview was that Crabbe's +immediate necessities were relieved by a gift of money, and by the +assurance that Burke would do all in his power to further Crabbe's +literary aims. What particular poems or fragments of poetry had been +first sent to Burke is uncertain; but among those submitted to his +judgment were specimens of the poems to be henceforth known as the _The +Library_ and _The Village._ Crabbe afterwards learned that the lines +which first convinced Burke that a new and genuine poet had arisen were +the following from _The Village,_ in which the author told of his +resolution to leave the home of his birth and try his fortune in the +city of wits and scholars-- + + "As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand + And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; + While still for flight the ready wing is spread: + So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; + Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign, + And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain-- + Who still remain to hear the ocean roar; + Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; + Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, + Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; + When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, + And begs a poor protection from the poor!" + +Burke might well have been impressed by such a passage. In some other +specimens of Crabbe's verse, submitted at the same time to his judgment, +the note of a very different school was dominant. But here for the +moment appears a fresher key and a later model. In the lines just quoted +the feeling and the cadence of _The Traveller_ and _The Deserted +Village_ are unmistakable. But if they suggest comparison with the +exquisite passage in the latter beginning-- + + "And as the hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, + Pants to the place from which it first she flew," + +they also suggest a contrast. Burke's experienced eye would detect that +if there was something in Crabbe's more Pope-like couplets that was not +found in Pope, so there was something here more poignant than even in +Goldsmith. + +Crabbe's son reflected with just pride that there must have been +something in his father's manners and bearing that at the outset invited +Burke's confidence and made intimacy at once possible, although Crabbe's +previous associates had been so different from the educated gentry of +London. In telling of his now-found poet a few days afterwards to Sir +Joshua Reynolds, Burke said that he had "the mind and feelings of a +gentleman." And he acted boldly on this assurance by at once placing +Crabbe on the footing of a friend, and admitting him to his family +circle. "He was invited to Beaconsfield," Crabbe wrote in his short +autobiographical sketch, "the seat of his protector, and was there +placed in a convenient apartment, supplied with books for his +information and amusement, and made a member of a family whom it was +honour as well as pleasure to become in any degree associated with." The +time thus spent was profitable to Crabbe in other ways than by enlarging +his knowledge and ideas, and laying the foundation of many valued +friendships. He devoted himself in earnest to complete his unfinished +poems and revise others under Burke's judicious criticism. The poem he +first published, _The Library_, he himself tells us, was written partly +in his presence and submitted as a whole to his judgment. Crabbe +elsewhere indicates clearly what were the weak points of his art, and +what tendencies Burke found it most necessary he should counteract. +Writing his reminiscences in the third person years later, he naively +admitted that "Mr. Crabbe had sometimes the satisfaction of hearing, +when the verses were bad, that the thoughts deserved better; and that if +he had the common faults of inexperienced writers, he had frequently the +merit of thinking for himself." The first clause of this sentence might +be applied to Crabbe's poetry to the very end of his days. Of his later +and far maturer poems, when he had ceased to polish, it is too true that +the thoughts are often better than their treatment. His latest +publisher, John Murray, used to say that in conversation Crabbe often +"said uncommon things in so common a way" that they passed unnoticed. +The remark applies equally to much of Crabbe's poetry. But at least, if +this incongruity is to exist, it is on the more hopeful side. The +characteristic of so much poetry of our own day is that the manner is +uncommon, and the commonness resides in the matter. + +When Crabbe had completed his revisions to his own satisfaction and his +adviser's, Burke suggested the publication of _The Library_ and _The +Village_, and the former poem was laid before Mr. Dodsley, who only a +few months before had refused a poem from the same hand. But +circumstances were now changed, and Burke's recommendation and support +were all-sufficient. Dodsley was all politeness, and though he declined +to incur any risk--this was doubtless borne by Burke--he promised his +best endeavours to make the poem a success. _The Library_ was published, +anonymously, in June 1781. The _Monthly_ and the _Critical Reviews_ +awarded it a certain amount of faint praise, but the success with the +general public seems only to have been slight. + +When Burke selected this poem to lay before Dodsley, he had already read +portions of _The Village,_ and it seems strange that he should have +given _The Library_ precedence, for the other was in every respect the +more remarkable. But Burke, a conservative in this as in other matters, +probably thought that a new poet desiring to be heard would be wiser in +not at once quitting the old paths. The readers of poetry still had a +taste for didactic epigram varied by a certain amount of florid +rhetoric. And there was little beyond this in Crabbe's moralisings on +the respective functions of theology, history, poetry, and the rest, as +represented on the shelves of a library, and on the blessings of +literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of +life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had +caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as +fluent and copious--as skilful in spreading a truism over a dozen +well-sounding lines--as any of his predecessors. There is little new in +the way of ideas. Crabbe had as yet no wide insight into books and +authors, and he was forced to deal largely in generalities. But he +showed that he had already some idea of style; and if, when he had so +little to say, he could say it with so much semblance of power, it was +certain that when he had observed and thought for himself he would go +further and make a deeper mark. The heroic couplet controlled him to the +end of his life, and there is no doubt that it was not merely timidity +that made him confine himself to the old beaten track. Crabbe's thoughts +ran very much in antithesis, and the couplet suited this tendency. But +it had its serious limitations. Southey's touching stanzas-- + + "My days among the dead are passed," + +though the ideas embodied are no more novel than Crabbe's, are worth +scores of such lines as these-- + + "With awe, around these silent walks I tread; + These are the lasting mansions of the dead: + 'The dead!' methinks a thousand tongues reply; + 'These are the tombs of such as cannot die! + Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime, + And laugh at all the little strife of Time'" + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE + +(1781-1783) + +Thus far I have followed the guidance of Crabbe's son and biographer, +but there is much that is confused and incomplete in his narrative. The +story of Crabbe's life, as told by the son, leaves us in much doubt as +to the order of events in 1780-1781. The memorable letter to Burke was, +as we have seen, without a date. The omission is not strange, for the +letter was written by Crabbe in great anguish of mind, and was left by +his own hand at Burke's door. The son, though he evidently obtained from +his father most of the information he was afterwards to use, never +extracted this date from him. He tells us that up to the time of his +undertaking the Biography, he did not even know that the original of the +letter was in existence. He also tells us that until he and his brother +saw the letter they had little idea of the extreme poverty and anxiety +which their father had experienced during his time in London. Obviously +Crabbe himself had been reticent on the subject even with his own +family. From the midsummer of 1780, when the "Journal to Mira" comes to +an end, to the February or March of the following year, there is a blank +in the Biography which the son was unable to fill. At the time the +fragment of Diary closes, Crabbe was apparently at the very end of his +resources. He had pawned all his personal property, his books and his +surgical implements, and was still in debt. He had begged assistance +from many of the leading statesmen of the hour without success. How did +he contrive to exist between June 1780 and the early months of 1781? + +The problem might never have been solved for us had it not been for the +accidental publication, four years after the Biography appeared, of a +second letter from Crabbe to Burke. In 1838, Sir Henry Bunbury, in an +appendix to the _Memoir and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer_ +(Speaker of the House of Commons, and Shakspearian editor), printed a +collection of miscellaneous letters from distinguished men in the +possession of the Bunbury family. Among these is a letter of Crabbe to +Burke, undated save as to the month, which is given as June 26th. The +year, however, is obviously 1781, for the letter consists of further +details of Crabbe's early life, not supplied in the earlier effusion. At +the date of this second letter, Crabbe had been known to Burke three or +four months. During that time Crabbe had been constantly seeing Burke, +and with his help had been revising for the press the poem of _The +Library_, which was published by Dodsley in this very month, June 1781. +The first impression, accordingly, produced on us by the letter, is one +of surprise that after so long a period of intimate association with +Burke, Crabbe should still be writing in a tone of profound anxiety and +discouragement as to his future prospects. According to the son's +account of the situation, when Crabbe left Burke's house after their +first meeting, "he was, in the common phrase, 'a made man'--from that +hour." That short interview "entirely, and for ever, changed the nature +of his worldly fortunes." This, in a sense, was undoubtedly true, though +not perhaps as the writer meant. It is clear from the letter first +printed by Sir Henry Bunbury, that up to the end of June 1781, Crabbe's +future occupation in life was still unfixed, and that he was full of +misgivings as to the means of earning a livelihood. + +The letter is of great interest in many respects, but is too long to +print as a whole in the text[1]. It throws light upon the blank space in +Crabbe's history just now referred to. It tells the story of a period of +humiliation and distress, concerning which it is easy to understand that +even in the days of his fame and prosperity Crabbe may well have +refrained from speaking with his children. After relating in full his +early struggles as an imperfectly qualified country doctor, and his +subsequent fortunes in London up to the day of his appeal to Burke, +Crabbe proceeds--"It will perhaps be asked how I could live near twelve +months a stranger in London; and coming without money, it is not to be +supposed I was immediately credited. It is not; my support arose from +another source. In the very early part of my life I contracted some +acquaintance, which afterwards became a serious connection, with the +niece of a Suffolk gentleman of large fortune. Her mother lives with her +three daughters at Beccles; her income is but the interest of fifteen +hundred pounds, which at her decease is to be divided betwixt her +children. The brother makes her annual income about a hundred pounds; he +is a rigid economist, and though I have the pleasure of his approbation, +I have not the good fortune to obtain more, nor from a prudent man could +I perhaps expect so much. But from the family at Beccles I have every +mark of their attention, and every proof of their disinterested regard. +They have from time to time supplied me with such sums as they could +possibly spare, and that they have not done more arose from my +concealing the severity of my situation, for I would not involve in my +errors or misfortunes a very generous and very happy family by which I +am received with unaffected sincerity, and where I am treated as a son +by a mother who can have no prudential reason to rejoice that her +daughter has formed such a connection. It is this family I lately +visited, and by which I am pressed to return, for they know the +necessity there is for me to live with the utmost frugality, and +hopeless of my succeeding in town, they invite me to partake of their +little fortune, and as I cannot mend my prospects, to avoid making them +worse." The letter ends with an earnest appeal to Burke to help him to +any honest occupation that may enable him to live without being a burden +on the slender resources of Miss Elmy's family. Crabbe is full of +gratitude for all that Burke has thus far done for him. He has helped +him to complete and publish his poem, but Crabbe is evidently aware that +poetry does not mean a livelihood, and that his future is as dark as +ever. The letter is dated from Crabbe's old lodging with the Vickerys in +Bishopsgate Street, and he had been lately staying with the Elmys at +Beccles. He was not therefore as yet a visitor under Burke's roof. This +was yet to come, with all the happy results that were to follow. It may +still seem strange that all these details remained to be told to Burke +four months after their acquaintance had begun. An explanation of this +may be found in the autobiographical matter that Crabbe late in life +supplied to the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1816. He there intimates that +after Burke had generously assisted him in other ways, besides enabling +him to publish _The Library_, the question had been discussed of +Crabbe's future calling. "Mr. Crabbe was encouraged to lay open his +views, past and present; to display whatever reading and acquirements he +possessed, to explain the causes of his disappointments, and the +cloudiness of his prospects; in short he concealed nothing from a friend +so able to guide inexperience, and so willing to pardon inadvertency." +Obviously it was in answer to such invitations from Burke that the +letter of the 26th of June 1781 was written. + +It was probably soon after the publication of _The Library_ that Crabbe +paid his first visit to Beaconsfield, and was welcomed as a guest by +Burke's wife and her niece as cordially as by the statesman himself. +Here he first met Charles James Fox and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through +the latter soon became acquainted with Samuel Johnson, on whom he called +in Bolt Court. Later in the year, when in London, Crabbe had lodgings +hard by the Burkes in St. James's Place, and continued to be a frequent +guest at their table, where he met other of Burke's distinguished +friends, political and literary. Among these was Lord Chancellor Thurlow +to whom Crabbe had appealed, without success, in his less fortunate +days. On that occasion Thurlow had simply replied, in regard to the +poems which Crabbe had enclosed, "that his avocations did not leave him +leisure to read verses." To this Crabbe had been so unwise as to reply +that it was one of a Lord Chancellor's functions to relieve merit in +distress. But the good-natured Chancellor had not resented the +impertinence, and now hearing afresh from Burke of his old petitioner, +invited Crabbe to breakfast, and made him a generous apology. "The first +poem you sent me, Sir," he said, "I ought to have noticed,--and I +heartily forgive the second." At parting, Thurlow pressed a sealed +packet containing a hundred pounds into Crabbe's hand, and assured him +of further help when Crabbe should have taken Holy Orders. + +For already, as the result of Burke's unceasing interest in his new +friend, Crabbe's future calling had been decided. In the course of +conversations at Beaconsfield Burke had discovered that his tastes and +gifts pointed much more clearly towards divinity than to medicine. His +special training for the office of a clergyman was of course deficient. +He probably had no Greek, but he had mastered enough of Latin to read +and quote the Latin poets. Moreover, his chief passion from early youth +had been for botany, and the treatises on that subject were, in Crabbe's +day, written in the language adopted in all scientific works. "It is +most fortunate," said Burke, "that your father exerted himself to send +you to that second school; without a little Latin we should have made +nothing of you: now, I think we shall succeed." Moreover Crabbe had been +a wide and discursive reader. "Mr. Crabbe," Burke told Reynolds, +"appears to know something of every thing." As to his more serious +qualifications for the profession, his natural piety, as shown in the +diaries kept in his days of trial, was beyond doubt. He was well read in +the Scriptures, and the example of a religious and much-tried mother had +not been without its influence. There had been some dissipations of his +earlier manhood, as his son admits, to repent of and to put away; but +the growth of his character in all that was excellent was unimpeachable, +and Burke was amply justified in recommending Crabbe as a candidate for +orders to the Bishop of Norwich. He was ordained on the 21st of December +1781 to the curacy of his native town. + +On arriving in Aldeburgh Crabbe once more set up housekeeping with a +sister, as he had done in his less prosperous days as parish doctor. Sad +changes had occurred in his old home during the two years of his +absence. His mother had passed away after her many years of patient +suffering, and his father's temper and habits were not the better for +losing the wholesome restraints of her presence. But his attitude to his +clergyman son was at once changed. He was proud of his reputation and +his new-formed friends, and of the proofs he had given that the money +spent on his education had not been thrown away. But, apart from the +family pride in him, and that of Miss Elmy and other friends at Parham, +Crabbe's reception by his former friends and neighbours in Aldeburgh was +not of the kind he might have hoped to receive. He had left the place +less than three years before, a half-trained and unappreciated +practitioner in physic, to seek his fortune among strangers in London, +with the forlornest hopes of success. Jealousy of his elevated position +and improved fortunes set in with much severity. On the other hand, it +was more than many could tolerate that the hedge-apothecary of old +should be empowered to hold forth in a pulpit. Crabbe himself in later +life admitted to his children that his treatment at the hands of his +fellow-townsmen was markedly unkind. Even though he was happy in the +improved relations with his own family, and in the renewed opportunities +of frequent intercourse with Miss Elmy and the Tovells, Crabbe's +position during the few months at Aldeburgh was far from agreeable. The +religious influence, moreover, which he would naturally have wished to +exercise in his new sphere would obviously suffer in consequence. The +result was that in accordance with the assurances given him by Thurlow +at their last meeting, Crabbe again laid his difficulties before the +Chancellor. Thurlow quite reasonably replied that he could not form any +opinion as to Crabbe's present situation--"still less upon the +agreeableness of it"; and hinted that a somewhat longer period of +probation was advisable before he selected Crabbe for preferment in the +Church. + +Other relief was however at hand, and once more through the watchful +care of Burke. Crabbe received a letter from his faithful friend to the +effect that he had mentioned his case to the Duke of Rutland, and that +the Duke had offered him the post of domestic chaplain at Belvoir +Castle, when he might be free from his engagements at Aldeburgh. That +Burke should have ventured on this step is significant, both as regards +the Duke and Duchess, and Crabbe. Crabbe's son remarks with truth that +an appointment of the kind was unusual, "such situations in the mansions +of that rank being commonly filled either by relations of the family +itself, or by college acquaintances, or dependents recommended by +political service and local attachment." Now Burke would certainly not +have recommended Crabbe for the post if he had found in his _protege_ +any such defects of breeding or social tact as would have made his +society distasteful to the Duke and Duchess. Burke, as we have seen, +described him on their first acquaintance as having "the mind and +feelings of a gentleman." Thurlow, it is true, after one of Crabbe's +earlier interviews, had declared with an oath (_more suo_) that he was +"as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." But Thurlow was not merely +jesting. He knew that Fielding's immortal clergyman had also the "mind +and feelings of a gentleman," although his simplicity and ignorance of +the world put him at many social disadvantages. It was probably the same +obvious difference in Crabbe from the common type of nobleman's chaplain +of that day which made Crabbe's position at Belvoir, as his son admits, +full of difficulties. It is quite possible and even natural that the +guests and visitors at the Castle did not always accept Crabbe's talents +as making up for a certain want of polish--or even perhaps for a want of +deference to their opinions in conversation. The "pampered menials" +moreover would probably resent having "to say Amen" to a +newly-discovered literary adventurer from the great metropolis. + +In any case Crabbe's experience of a chaplain's life at Belvoir was +not, by his son's admission, a happy one. "The numberless allusions," he +writes, "to the nature of a literary dependent's existence in a great +lord's house, which occur in my father's writings, and especially in the +tale of _The Patron_, are, however, quite enough, to lead any one who +knew his character and feelings to the conclusion that notwithstanding +the kindness and condescension of the Duke and Duchess themselves--which +were, I believe, uniform, and of which he always spoke with +gratitude--the situation he filled at Belvoir was attended with many +painful circumstances, and productive in his mind of some of the acutest +sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." It +is not necessary to hold Crabbe himself entirely irresponsible for this +result. His son, with a frankness that marks the Biography throughout, +does not conceal that his father's temper, even in later life, was +intolerant of contradiction, and he probably expressed his opinions +before the guests at Belvoir with more vehemence than prudence. But if +the rebuffs he met with were long remembered, they taught him something +of value, and enlarged that stock of worldly wisdom so prominent in his +later writings. In the story of _The Patron_, the young student living +as the rich man's guest is advised by his father as to his behaviour +with a fulness of detail obviously derived from Crabbe's own +recollections of his early deficiencies:-- + + "Thou art Religion's advocate--take heed. + Hurt not the cause thy pleasure 'tis to plead; + With wine before thee, and with wits beside, + Do not in strength of reasoning powers confide; + What seems to thee convincing, certain, plain, + They will deny and dare thee to maintain; + And thus will triumph o'er thy eager youth, + While thou wilt grieve for so disgracing truth. + With pain I've seen, these wrangling wits among, + Faith's weak defenders, passionate and young; + Weak thou art not, yet not enough on guard + Where wit and humour keep their watch and ward. + Men gay and noisy will o'erwhelm thy sense, + Then loudly laugh at Truth's and thy expense: + While the kind ladies will do all they can + To check their mirth, and cry '_The good young man!_'" + +Meantime there were alleviations of the poet's lot. If the guests of the +house were not always convinced by his arguments and the servants did +not disguise their contempt, the Duke and Duchess were kind, and made +him their friend. Nor was the Duke without an intelligent interest in +Crabbe's own subjects. Moreover, among the visitors at Belvoir were many +who shared that interest to the full, such as the Duke of Queensberry, +Lord Lothian, Bishop Watson, and the eccentric Dr. Robert Glynn. Again, +it was during Crabbe's residence at Belvoir that the Duke's brother, +Lord Robert Manners, died of wounds received while leading his ship, +_Resolution_, against the French in the West Indies, in the April of +1782. Crabbe's sympathy with the family, shown in his tribute to the +sailor-brother appended to the poem he was then bringing to completion, +still further strengthened the tie between them. Crabbe accompanied the +Duke to London soon after, to assist him in arranging with Stothard for +a picture to be painted of the incident of Lord Robert's death. It was +during this visit that Crabbe received the following letter from Burke. +The letter is undated, but belongs to the month of May, for _The +Village_ was published in that month, and Burke clearly refers to that +poem as just received, but as yet unread. Crabbe seems to have been for +the time off duty, and to have proposed a short visit to the Burkes;-- + + "Dear Sir,--I do not know by what unlucky accident + you missed the note I left for you at my house. I wrote + besides to you at Belvoir. If you had received these two + short letters you could not want an invitation to a place + where every one considers himself as infinitely honoured and + pleased by your presence. Mrs. Burke desires her best + compliments, and trusts that you will not let the holidays + pass over without a visit from you I have got the poem; + but I have not yet opened it. I don't like the unhappy + language you use about these matters. You do not easily + please such a judgment as your own--that is natural; but + where you are difficult every one else will be charmed. I am, + my dear sir, ever most affectionately yours, + + EDMUND BURKE." + +The "unhappy language" seems to point to Crabbe having expressed some +diffidence or forebodings concerning his new venture. Yet Crabbe had +less to fear on this head than with most of his early poems. _The +Village_ had been schemed and composed in parts before Crabbe knew +Burke. One passage in it indeed, as we have seen, had first convinced +Burke that the writer was a poet. And in the interval that followed the +poem had been completed and matured with a care that Crabbe seldom +afterwards bestowed upon his productions. Burke himself had suggested +and criticised much during its progress, and the manuscript had further +been submitted through Sir Joshua Reynolds to Johnson, who not only +revised it in detail but re-wrote half a dozen of the opening lines. +Johnson's opinion of the poem was conveyed to Reynolds in the following +letter, and here at last we get a date:-- + + _March_ 4, 1783. + + "Sir,--I have sent you back Mr. Crabbe's poem, which I + read with great delight. It is original, vigorous, and elegant. + The alterations which I have made I do not require him to + adopt; for my lines are perhaps not often better than his + own: but he may take mine and his own together, and + perhaps between them produce something better than either. + He is not to think his copy wantonly defaced: a wet sponge + will wash all the red lines away and leave the pages clean. + His dedication will be least liked: it were better to contract + it into a short, sprightly address. I do not doubt of Mr. + Crabbe's success. I am, Sir, your most humble servant, + + SAMUEL JOHNSON." + + +Boswell's comment on this incident is as follows:--"The sentiments of +Mr. Crabbe's admirable poem as to the false notions of rustic happiness +and rustic virtue were quite congenial with Dr. Johnson's own: and he +took the trouble not only to suggest slight corrections and variations, +but to furnish some lines when he thought he could give the writer's +meaning better than in the words of the manuscript." Boswell went on to +observe that "the aid given by Johnson to the poem, as to _The +Traveller_ and _Deserted Village_ of Goldsmith, were so small as by no +means to impair the distinguished merit of the author." There were +unfriendly critics, however, in Crabbe's native county who professed to +think otherwise, and "whispered that the manuscript had been so +_cobbled_ by Burke and Johnson that its author did not know it again +when returned to him." On which Crabbe's son rejoins that "if these kind +persons survived to read _The Parish Register_ their amiable conjectures +must have received a sufficient rebuke." + +This confident retort is not wholly just. There can be no doubt that +some special mannerisms and defects of Crabbe's later style had been +kept in check by the wise revision of his friends. And again, when after +more than twenty years Crabbe produced _The Parish Register_, that poem, +as we shall see, had received from Charles James Fox something of the +same friendly revision and suggestion as _The Village_ had received from +Burke and Johnson. + +_The Village_, in quarto, published by J. Dodsley, Pall Mall, appeared +in May 1783, and at once attracted attention by novel qualities. Among +these was the bold realism of the village-life described, and the minute +painting of the scenery among which it was led. Cowper had published his +first volume a year before, but thus far it had failed to excite general +interest, and had met with no sale. Burns had as yet published nothing. +But two poetic masterpieces, dealing with the joys and sorrows of +village folk, were fresh in Englishmen's memory. One was _The Elegy in a +Country Churchyard_, the other was _The Deserted Village_. Both had left +a deep impression upon their readers--and with reason--for two poems, +more certain of immortality, because certain of giving a pleasure that +cannot grow old-fashioned, do not exist in our literature. Each indeed +marked an advance upon all that English descriptive or didactic poets +had thus far contributed towards making humble life and rural scenery +attractive--unless we except the _Allegro_ of Milton and some passages +in Thomson's _Seasons_. Nor was it merely the consummate workmanship of +Gray and Goldsmith that had made their popularity. The genuineness of +the pathos in the two poems was beyond suspicion, although with Gray it +was blended with a melancholy that was native to himself. Although +their authors had not been brought into close personal relations with +the joys and sorrows dealt with, there was nothing of sentiment, in any +unworthy sense, in either poet's treatment of his theme. But the result +of their studies of humble village life was to produce something quite +distinct from the treatment of the realist. What they saw and remembered +had passed through the transfiguring medium of a poet's imagination +before it reached the reader. The finished product, like the honey of +the bee, was due to the poet as well as to the flower from which he had +derived the raw material. + +It seems to have been generally assumed when Crabbe's _Village_ +appeared, that it was of the nature of a rejoinder to Goldsmith's poem, +and the fact that Crabbe quotes a line from _The Deserted Village_, +"Passing rich on forty pounds a year," in his own description of the +village parson, might seem to confirm that impression. But the opening +lines of _The Village_ point to a different origin. It was rather during +those early years when George's father read aloud to his family the +pastorals of the so-called Augustan age of English poetry, that the boy +was first struck with the unreality and consequent worthlessness of the +conventional pictures of rural life. And in the opening lines of _The +Village_ he boldly challenges the judgment of his readers on this head. +The "pleasant land" of the pastoral poets was one of which George +Crabbe, not unjustly, "thought scorn." + + "The village life, and every care that reigns + O'er youthful peasants and declining swains, + What labour yields, and what, that labour past, + Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; + What form the real picture of the poor, + Demand a song--the Muse can give no more. + Fled are those times when in harmonious strains + The rustic poet praised his native plains: + No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, + Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse; + Yet still for these we frame the tender strain, + Still in our lays fond Corydons complain, + And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal, + The only pains, alas! they never feel." + +At this point follow the six lines which Johnson had substituted for the +author's. Crabbe had written:-- + + "In fairer scenes, where peaceful pleasures spring, + Tityrus, the pride of Mantuan swains, might sing. + But charmed by him, or smitten with his views, + Shall modern poets court the Mantuan muse? + From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, + Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way?" + +Johnson substituted the following, and Crabbe accepted the revised +version:-- + + "On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, + If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, + Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, + Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? + From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, + Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?" + +The first four lines of Johnson are beyond question an improvement, and +it is worth remark in passing how in the fourth line he has anticipated +Cowper's "made poetry a mere mechanic art." + +But in the concluding couplet, Crabbe's meaning seems to lose in +clearness through the change. Crabbe intended to ask whether it was safe +to desert truth and nature for one's own self-pleasing fancies, even +though Virgil had set the example. Johnson's version seems to obscure +rather than to make clearer this interpretation. Crabbe, after this +protest against the conventional, which, if unreal at the outset, had +become a thousand times more wearisome by repetition, passes on to a +daring presentation of real life lived among all the squalor of actual +poverty, not unskilfully interspersed with descriptions equally faithful +of the barren coast-scenery among which he had been brought up. It has +been already remarked how Crabbe's eye for rural nature had been +quickened and made more exact by his studies in botany. There was little +in the poetry then popular that reproduced an actual scene as perfectly +as do the following lines:-- + + "Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, + Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; + From thence a length of burning sand appears, + Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; + Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, + Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye: + There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, + And to the ragged infant threaten war; + There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil; + There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; + Hardy and high above the slender sheaf + The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; + O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, + And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade; + With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, + And a sad splendour vainly shines around." + +Crabbe here perceives the value, as Goldsmith had done before him, of +village scenery as a background to his picture of village life. It +suited Goldsmith's purpose to describe the ideal rural community, happy, +prosperous, and innocent, as contrast with that depopulation of +villages and corruption of peasant life which he predicted from the +growing luxury and selfishness of the rich. But notwithstanding the +title of the poem, it is Auburn in its pristine condition that remains +in our memories. The dominant thought expressed is the virtue and the +happiness that belong by nature to village life. Crabbe saw that this +was no less idyllic and unreal, or at least incomplete, than the +pictures of shepherd life presented in the faded copies of Theocritus +and Virgil that had so long satisfied the English readers of poetry. +There was no unreality in Goldsmith's design. They were not fictitious +and "lucrative" tears that he shed. For his object was to portray an +English rural village in its ideality--rural loveliness--enshrining +rural innocence and joy--and to show how man's vices, invading it from +the outside, might bring all to ruin. Crabbe's purpose was different. He +aimed to awaken pity and sympathy for rural sins and sorrows with which +he had himself been in closest touch, and which sprang from causes +always in operation within the heart of the community itself, and not to +be attributed to the insidious attacks from without. Goldsmith, for +example, drew an immortal picture of the village pastor, closely +modelled upon Chaucer's "poor parson of a town," his piety, humility, +and never failing goodness to his flock.-- + + "Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, + And even his failings leaned to virtue's side; + But in his duty prompt at every call + He watched and wept; he prayed and felt for all. + And as a bird each fond endearment tries + To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, + He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, + Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way." + +Crabbe remembered a different type of parish priest in his boyhood, and +this is how he introduces him. He has been describing, with an +unmitigated realism, the village poorhouse, in all its squalor and +dilapidation:-- + + "There children dwell who know no parents' care: + Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there. + Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, + Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed" + +The dying pauper needs some spiritual consolation ere he passes into the +unseen world, + + "But ere his death some pious doubts arise, + Some simple fears which bold, bad men despise; + Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove + His title certain to the joys above: + For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls + The holy stranger to these dismal walls; + And doth not he, the pious man, appear, + He, 'passing rich with forty pounds a year'? + Ah! no: a shepherd of a different stock. + And far unlike him, feeds this little flock: + A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task + As much as God or man can fairly ask; + The rest he gives to loves and labours light, + To fields the morning, and to feasts the night; + None better skilled the noisy pack to guide, + To urge their chase, to cheer them, or to chide; + A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day, + And, skilled at whist, devotes the night to play: + Then, while such honours bloom around his head, + Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed, + To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal + To combat fears that e'en the pious feel?" + +Crabbe's son, after his father's death, cited in a note on +these lines what he hold to be a parallel passage from Cowper's +_Progress of Error_, beginning:-- + + "Oh, laugh or mourn with me the rueful jest, + A cassocked huntsman, and a fiddling priest." + +Cowper's first volume, containing _Table-Talk_ and its companion +satires, appeared some months before Crabbe's _Village_. The +shortcomings of the clergy are a favourite topic with him, and a varied +gallery of the existing types of clerical inefficiency may be formed +from his pages. Many of Cowper's strictures were amply justified by the +condition of the English Church. But Cowper's method is not Crabbe's. +The note of the satirist is seldom absent, blended at times with just a +suspicion of that of the Pharisee. The humorist and the Puritan contend +for predominance in the breast of this polished gentleman and scholar. +Cowper's friend, Newton, in the Preface he wrote for his first volume, +claimed for the poet that his satire was "benevolent." But it was not +always discriminating or just. The satirist's keen love of antithesis +often weakens the moral virtue of Cowper's strictures. In this earliest +volume anger was more conspicuous than sorrow, and contempt perhaps more +obvious than either. The callousness of public opinion on many subjects +needed other medicine than this. Hence was it perhaps that Cowper's +volume, which appeared in May 1782, failed to awaken interest. Crabbe's +_Village_ appeared just a year later (it had been completed a year or +two earlier), and at once made its mark. "It was praised," writes his +son, "in the leading journals; the sale was rapid and extensive; and my +father's reputation was by universal consent greatly raised, and +permanently established, by this poem," The number of anonymous letters +it brought the author, some of gratitude, and some of resentment (for it +had laid its finger on many sores in the body-politic), showed how +deeply his touch had been felt. Further publicity for the poem was +obtained by Burke, who inserted the description of the Parish Workhouse +and the Village Apothecary in _The Annual Register,_ which he +controlled. The same pieces were included a few years later by Vicesimus +Knox in that excellent Miscellany _Elegant Extracts_. And Crabbe was to +learn in later life from Walter Scott how, when a youth of eighteen, +spending a snowy winter in a lonely country-house, he fell in with the +volume of _The Annual Register_ containing the passages from _The +Village;_ how deeply they had sunk into his heart; and that (writing +then to Crabbe in the year 1809) he could repeat them still from memory. + +Edmund Burke's friend, Edward Shackleton, meeting Crabbe at Burke's +house soon after the publication of the poem, paid him an elegant +tribute. Goldsmith's, he said, would now be the "deserted" village. +Crabbe modestly disclaimed the compliment, and assuredly with reason +Goldsmith's delightful poem will never be deserted. For it is no loss +good and wise to dwell on village life as it might be, than to reflect +on what it has suffered from man's inhumanity to man. What made Crabbe a +now force in English poetry, was that in his verse Pity appears, after a +long oblivion, as the true antidote to Sentimentalism. The reader is not +put off with pretty imaginings, but is led up to the object which the +poet would show him, and made to feel its horror. If Crabbe is our first +great realist in verse, he uses his realism in the cause of a true +humanity. _Facit indignatio versum._ + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: I cannot deny myself the pleasure of here acknowledging my +indebtedness to a French scholar, M. Huchon of the University of Nancy. +M. Huchon is himself engaged upon a study of the Life and Poetry of +Crabbe, and in the course of a conversation with me in London, first +called my attention to the volume containing this letter. I agree with +him in thinking that no previous biographer of Crabbe has been aware of +its existence.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE AND AT MUSTON + +(1783-1792) + + +"The sudden popularity of _The Village_" writes Crabbe's son and +biographer, "must have produced, after the numberless slights and +disappointments already mentioned, and even after the tolerable success +of _The Library_, about as strong a revulsion in my father's mind as a +ducal chaplaincy in his circumstances; but there was no change in his +temper or manners. The successful author continued as modest as the +rejected candidate for publication had been patient and long-suffering." +The biographer might have remarked as no less strange that the success +of _The Village_ failed, for the moment at least, to convince Crabbe +where his true strength lay. When he again published a poem, two years +later, he reverted to the old Popian topics and methods in a by no means +successful didactic satire on newspapers. Meantime the occasional visits +of the Duke of Rutland and his family to London brought the chaplain +again in touch with the Burkes and the friends he had first made through +them, notably with Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was also able to visit the +theatre occasionally, and fell under the spell, not only of Mrs. +Siddons, but of Mrs. Jordan (in the character of Sir Harry Wildair). It +was now decided that as a nobleman's chaplain it would be well for him +to have a university degree, and to this end his name was entered on the +boards of Trinity College, Cambridge, through the good offices of Bishop +Watson of Llandaff, with a view to his obtaining a degree without +residence. This was in 1783, but almost immediately afterwards he +received an LL.B. degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This was +obtained for Crabbe in order that he might hold two small livings in +Dorsetshire, Frome St. Quintin and Evershot, to which he had just been +presented by Thurlow. It was on this occasion that the Chancellor made +his memorable comparison of Crabbe to Parson Adams, no doubt pointing to +a certain rusticity, and possibly provincial accent, from which Crabbe +seems never to have been wholly free. This promotion seems to have +interfered very little with Crabbe's residence at Belvoir or in London. +A curate was doubtless placed in one or other of the parsonage-houses in +Dorsetshire at such modest stipend as was then usual--often not more +than thirty pounds a year--and the rector would content himself with a +periodical flying visit to receive tithe, or inquire into any parish +grievances that may have reached his ear. As incidents of this kind will +be not infrequent during the twenty years that follow in Crabbe's +clerical career, it may be well to intimate at once that no peculiar +blame attaches to him in the matter. He but "partook of the frailty of +his times." During these latter years of the eighteenth century, as for +long before and after, pluralism in the Church was rather the rule than +the exception, and in consequence non-residence was recognised as +inevitable, and hardly matter for comment. The two Dorsetshire livings +were of small value, and as Crabbe was now looking forward to his +marriage with the faithful Miss Elmy, he could not have afforded to +reside. He may not, however, have thought it politic to decline the +first preferment offered by so important a dispenser of patronage as the +Lord Chancellor. + +Events, however, were at hand, which helped to determine Crabbe's +immediate future. Early in 1784 the Duke of Rutland became Lord +Lieutenant of Ireland. The appointment had been made some time before, +and it had been decided that Crabbe was not to be on the Castle staff. +His son expresses no surprise at this decision, and makes of it no +grievance. The duke and the chaplain parted excellent friends. Crabbe +and his wife were to remain at Belvoir as long as it suited their +convenience, and the duke undertook that he would not forget him as +regarded future preferment. On the strength of these offers, Crabbe and +Miss Elmy wore married in December 1783, in the parish church of +Beccles, where Miss Elmy's mother resided, and a few weeks later took up +their abode in the rooms assigned them at Belvoir Castle. + +As Miss Elmy had lived for many years with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and +Mrs. John Tovell, at Parham, and moreover as this rural inland village +played a considerable part in the development of Crabbe's poetical +faculty, it may be well to quote his son's graphic account of the +domestic circumstances of Miss Elmy's relatives. Mr. Tovell was, like +Mr. Hathaway, "a substantial yeoman," for he owned an estate of some +eight hundred a year, to some share of which, as the Tovells had lost +their only child, Miss Elmy would certainly in due course succeed. The +Tovells' house at Parham, which has been long ago pulled down, and +rebuilt as Paritam Lodge, on very different lines, was of ample size, +with its moat, so common a feature of the homestead in the eastern +counties, "rookery, dove-cot, and fish-ponds"; but the surroundings were +those of the ordinary farmhouse, for Mr. Tovell himself cultivated part +of his estate. + +"The drawing-room, a corresponding dining-parlour, and a handsome +sleeping apartment upstairs, were all _tabooed_ ground, and made use of +on great and solemn occasions only--such as rent-days, and an occasional +visit with which Mr. Tovell was honoured by a neighbouring peer. At all +other times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the +old-fashioned kitchen along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied +an armchair, or, in attacks of gout, a couch on one side of a large open +chimney.... At a very early hour in the morning the alarum called the +maids, and their mistress also; and if the former were tardy, a louder +alarum, and more formidable, was heard chiding their delay--not that +scolding was peculiar to any occasion; it regularly ran on through all +the day, like bells on harness, inspiriting the work, whether it were +done well or ill." In the annotated volume of the son's memoir which +belonged to Edward FitzGerald, the writer added the following detail as +to his great-aunt's temper and methods:--"A wench whom Mrs. Tovell had +pursued with something weightier than invective--a ladle, I +think--whimpered out 'If an angel from Hiv'n were to come mawther'" +(Suffolk for _girl_) "'to missus, she wouldn't give no satisfaction.'" + +George Crabbe the younger, who gives this graphic account of the +_menage_ at Parham, was naturally anxious to claim for his mother, who +so long formed one of this queer household, a degree of refinement +superior to that of her surroundings. After describing the daily +dinner-party in the kitchen--master, mistress, servants, with an +occasional "travelling rat-catcher or tinker"--he skilfully points out +that his mother's feelings must have resembled those of the +boarding-school miss in his father's "Widow's Tale" when subjected to a +like experience:-- + + "But when the men beside their station took, + The maidens with them, and with these the cook; + When one huge wooden bowl before them stood, + Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food; + With bacon, mass saline! where never lean + Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen: + When from a single horn the party drew + Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new; + When the coarse cloth she saw, with many a stain, + Soiled by rude hands who cut and came again-- + She could not breathe, but with a heavy sigh, + Reined the fair neck, and shut th' offended eye; + She minced the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, + And wondered much to see the creatures dine!" + +The home of the Tovells has long disappeared, and it must not therefore +be confused with the more remarkable "moated grange" in Parham, +originally the mansion of the Willoughbys, though now a farmhouse, +boasting a fine Tudor gateway and other fragments of fifteenth and +sixteenth century work. An engraving of the Hall and moat, after +Stanfield, forms an illustration to the third volume of the 1834 edition +of Crabbe. + +When Crabbe began _The Village_, it was clearly intended to be, like +_The Borough_ later, a picture of Aldeburgh and its inhabitants. Yet not +only Parham, but the country about Belvoir crept in before the poem was +completed. If the passage in Book I. beginning:-- + + "Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er," + +describes pure Aldeburgh, the opening lines of Book II., taking a more +roseate view of rural happiness:-- + + "I, too, must yield, that oft amid those woes + Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose, + Such as you find on yonder sportive Green, + The squire's tall gate, and churchway-walk between, + Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends + On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends," + +are drawn from the pleasant villages in the Midlands (perhaps Allington, +where he was afterwards to minister), whither he rambled on his +botanising excursions from Belvoir Castle. + +George Crabbe and his bride settled down in their apartments at Belvoir +Castle, but difficulties soon arose. Crabbe was without definite +clerical occupation, unless he read prayers to the few servants left in +charge; and was simply waiting for whatever might turn up in the way of +preferment from the Manners family, or from the Lord Chancellor. The +young couple soon found the position intolerable, and after less than +eighteen months Crabbe wisely accepted a vacant curacy in the +neighbourhood, that of Stathern in Leicestershire, to the humble +parsonage of which parish Crabbe and his wife removed in 1785. A child +had been born to them at Belvoir, who survived its birth only a few +hours. During the following four years at Stathern were born three +other children--the two sons, George and John, in 1785 and 1787, and a +daughter in 1789, who died in infancy. + +Stathern is a village about four miles from Belvoir Castle, and the +drive or walk from one to the other lies through the far-spreading woods +and gardens surrounding the ducal mansion. Crabbe entered these woods +almost at his very door, and found there ample opportunity for his +botanical studies, which were still his hobby. As usual his post was +that of _locum tenens_, the rector, Dr. Thomas Parke, then residing at +his other living at Stamford. My friend, the Rev. J.W. Taylor, the +present rector of Stathern, who entered on his duties in 1866, tells me +of one or two of the village traditions concerning Crabbe. One of these +is to the effect that he spoke "through his nose," which I take to have +been the local explanation of a marked Suffolk accent which accompanied +the poet through life. Another, that he was peppery of temper, and that +an exceedingly youthful couple having presented themselves for holy +matrimony, Crabbe drove them with scorn from the altar, with the remark +that he had come there to marry "men and women, and not lads and +wenches!" + +Crabbe used to tell his children that the four years at Stathern were, +on the whole, the happiest in his life. He and his wife were in humble +quarters, but they were their own masters, and they were quit of "the +pampered menial" for ever. "My mother and he," the son writes, "could +now ramble together at their ease amidst the rich woods of Belvoir +without any of the painful feelings which had before chequered his +enjoyment of the place: at home a garden afforded him healthful +exercise and unfailing amusement; and his situation as a curate +prevented him from being drawn into any sort of unpleasant disputes with +the villagers about him"--an ambiguous statement which probably, +however, means that the absent rector had to settle difficulties as to +tithe, and other parochial grievances. Crabbe now again brought his old +medical attainments, such as they were, to the aid of his poor +parishioners, "and had often great difficulty in confining his practice +strictly within the limits of the poor, for the farmers would willingly +have been attended _gratis_ also." His literary labours subsequent to +_The Village_ seem to have been slight, with the exception of a brief +memoir of Lord Robert Manners contributed to _The Annual Register_ in +1784, for the poem of _The Newspaper,_ published in 1785, was probably +"old stock." It is unlikely that Crabbe, after the success of _The +Village,_ should have willingly turned again to the old and unprofitable +vein of didactic satire. But, the poem being in his desk, he perhaps +thought that it might bring in a few pounds to a household which +certainly needed them. "_The Newspaper_, a Poem, by the Rev. George +Crabbe, Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Rutland, printed for J. +Dodsley, in Pall Mall," appeared as a quarto pamphlet (price 2s.) in +1785, with a felicitous motto from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ on the +title-page, and a politic dedication to Lord Thurlow, evincing a +gratitude for past favours, and (unexpressed) a lively sense of favours +to come. + +_The Newspaper_ is, to say truth, of little value, either as throwing +light on the journalism of Crabbe's day, or as a step in his poetic +career. The topics are commonplace, such as the strange admixture of +news, the interference of the newspaper with more useful reading, and +the development of the advertiser's art. It is written in the fluent and +copious vein of mild satire and milder moralising which Crabbe from +earliest youth had so assiduously practised. If a few lines are needed +as a sample, the following will show that the methods of literary +puffing are not so original to-day as might be supposed. After +indicating the tradesman's ingenuity in this respect, the poet adds.-- + + "These are the arts by which a thousand live, + Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive. + But when, amid this rabble-rout, we find + A puffing poet, to his honour blind: + Who slily drops quotations all about + Packet or Post, and points their merit out; + Who advertises what reviewers say, + With sham editions every second day; + Who dares not trust his praises out of sight, + But hurries into fame with all his might; + Although the verse some transient praise obtains, + Contempt is all the anxious poet gains" + +_The Newspaper_ seems to have been coldly received by the critics, who +had perhaps been led by _The Village_ to expect something very +different, and Crabbe never returned to the satirical-didactic line. +Indeed, for twenty-two years he published nothing more, although he +wrote continuously, and as regularly committed the bulk of his +manuscript to the domestic fire-place. Meantime he lived a happy country +life at Stathern, studying botany, reading aloud to his wife, and by no +means forgetting the wants of his poor parishioners. He visited +periodically his Dorsetshire livings, introducing his wife on one such +occasion, as he passed through London, to the Burkes. And one day, +seized with an acute attack of the _mal du pays_, he rode sixty miles +to the coast of Lincolnshire that he might once more "dip," as his son +expresses it, "in the waves that washed the beach of Aldeburgh." + +In October 1787, Crabbe's household were startled by the news of the +death of his friend and patron the Duke of Rutland, who died at the +Vice-regal Lodge at Dublin, after a short illness, at the early age of +thirty-three. The duke, an open-handed man and renowned for his +extravagant hospitalities, had lived "not wisely but too well." Crabbe +assisted at the funeral at Belvoir, and duly published his discourse +then delivered in handsome quarto. Shortly after, the duchess, anxious +to retain their former chaplain in the neighbourhood, gave Crabbe a +letter to Thurlow, asking him to exchange the two livings in Dorsetshire +for two other, of more value, in the Vale of Belvoir. Crabbe waited on +the Chancellor with the letter, but Thurlow was, or affected to be, +annoyed by the request. It was a thing, he exclaimed with an oath, that +he would not do "for any man in England." However, when the young and +beautiful duchess later appealed to him in person, he relented, and +presented Crabbe to the two livings of Muston in Leicestershire, and +Allington in Lincolnshire, both, within sight of Belvoir Castle, and (as +the crow flies) not much more than a mile apart. To the rectory house of +Muston, Crabbe brought his family in February 1789. His connection with +the two livings was to extend over five and twenty years, but during +thirteen of those years, as will be seen, he was a non-resident. For the +present he remained three years at the small and very retired village of +Muston, about five miles from Grantham. "The house in which Crabbe +lived at Muston," writes Mr. Hutton,[2] "is now pulled down. It is +replaced by one built higher up a slight hill, in a position intended, +says scandal, to prevent any view of Belvoir. Crabbe with all his +ironies had no such resentful feelings; indeed more modern successors of +his have opened what he would have called a 'vista,' and the castle +again crowns the distance as you look southward from the pretty garden." + +Crabbe's first three years of residence at Muston were marked by few +incidents. Another son, Edmund, was horn in the autumn of 1790, and a +few weeks later a series of visits were paid by Crabbe, his wife and +elder boy, to their relations at Aldeburgh, Parham, and Beccles, from +which latter town, according to Crabbe's son, they visited Lowestoft, +and were so fortunate as to hear the aged John Wesley preach, on a +memorable occasion when he quoted Anacreon:-- + + "Oft am I by women told, + Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old + . . . . . + . . . . . + But this I need not to be told, + 'Tis time to _live_, if I grow old." + +In 1792 Crabbe preached at the bishop's visitation at Grantham, and his +sermon was so much admired that he was invited to receive into his house +as pupils the sons of the Earl of Bute. This task, however, Crabbe +rightly declined, being diffident as to his scholarship. + +In October of this year Crabbe was again working hard at his +botany--for like the Friar in _Romeo and Juliet_ his time was always +much divided between the counselling of young couples and the "culling +of simples"--when his household received the tidings of the death of +John Tovell of Parham, after a brief illness. It was momentous news to +Crabbe's family, for it involved "good gifts," and many "possibilities." +Crabbe was left executor, and as Mr. Tovell had died without children, +the estate fell to his two sisters, Mrs. Elmy and an elderly spinster +sister residing in Parham. As Mrs. Elmy's share of the estate would come +to her children, and as the unmarried sister died not long after, +leaving her portion in the same direction, Crabbe's anxiety for the +pecuniary future of his family was at an end. He visited Parham on +executor's business, and on his return found that he had made up his +mind "to place a curate at Muston, and to go and reside at Parham, +taking the charge of some church in that neighbourhood." + +Crabbe's son, with the admirable frankness that marks his memoir +throughout, does not conceal that this step in his father's life was a +mistake, and that he recognised and regretted it as such on cooler +reflection. The comfortable home of the Tovells at Parham fell somehow, +whether by the will, or by arrangement with Mrs. Elmy, to the disposal +of Crabbe, and he was obviously tempted by its ampler room and pleasant +surroundings. He would be once more among relatives and acquaintances, +and a social circle congenial to himself and his wife. Muston must have +been very dull and lonely, except for those on visiting terms with the +duke and other county magnates. Moreover it is likely that the +relations of Crabbe with his village flock were already--as we know they +were at a later date--somewhat strained. Let it be said once for all +that judged by the standards of clerical obligation current in 1792, +Crabbe was then, and remained all his life, in many important respects, +a diligent parish-priest. Mr. Hutton justly remarks that "the intimate +knowledge of the life of the poor which his poems show proves how +constantly he must have visited, no less than how closely he must have +observed." But the fact remains that though he was kind and helpful to +his flock while among them in sickness and in trouble--their physician +as well as their spiritual adviser--his ideas as to clerical absenteeism +were those of his age, and moreover his preaching to the end of his life +was not of a kind to arouse much interest or zeal. I have had access to +a large packet of his manuscript sermons, preached during his residence +in Suffolk and later, as proved by the endorsements on the cover, at his +various incumbencies in Leicestershire and Wiltshire. They consist of +plain and formal explanations of his text, reinforced by other texts, +entirely orthodox but unrelieved by any resource in the way of +illustration, or by any of those poetic touches which his published +verse shows he had at his command. A sermon lies before me, preached +first at Great Glemham in 1801, and afterwards at Little Glemham, +Sweffling, Muston, and Allington; at Trowbridge in 1820, and again at +Trowbridge in 1830. The preacher probably held his discourses quite as +profitable at one stage in the Church's development as at another. In +this estimate of clerical responsibilities Crabbe seems to have remained +stationary. But meantime the laity had been aroused to expect better +things. The ferment of the Wesley and Whitefield Revival was spreading +slowly but surely even among the remote villages of England. What Crabbe +and the bulk of the parochial clergy called "a sober and rational +conversion" seemed to those who had fallen under the fervid influence of +the great Methodist a savourless and ineffectual formality. The +extravagances of the Movement had indeed travelled everywhere in company +with its worthier fruits. Enthusiasm,--"an excellent good word until it +was ill-sorted,"--found vent in various shapes that were justly feared +and suspected by many of the clergy, even by those to whom "a reasonable +religion" was far from being "so very reasonable as to have nothing to +do with the heart and affections." It was not only the Moderates who saw +its danger. Wesley himself had found it necessary to caution his more +impetuous followers against its eccentricities. And Joseph Butler +preaching at the Rolls Chapel on "the Love of God" thought it well to +explain that in his use of the phrase there was nothing +"enthusiastical." But as one mischievous extreme generates another, the +influence of the prejudice against enthusiasm became disastrous, and the +word came too often to be confounded with any and every form of +religious fervency and earnestness. To the end of his days Crabbe, like +many another, regarded sobriety and moderation in the expression of +religious feeling as not only its chief safeguard but its chief +ornament. It may seem strange that the poetic temperament which Crabbe +certainly possessed never seemed to affect his views of life and human +nature outside the fields of poetic composition. He was notably +indifferent, his son tells us, "to almost all the proper objects of +taste. He had no real love for painting, or music, or architecture, or +for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of landscape. But he +had a passion for science--the science of the human mind, first; then, +that of nature in general; and lastly that of abstract qualities." + +If the defects here indicated help to explain some of those in his +poetry, they may also throw light on a certain lack of imagination in +Crabbe's dealings with his fellow-men in general and with his +parishioners in particular. His temperament was somewhat tactless and +masterful, and he could never easily place himself at the stand-point of +those who differed from him. The use of his imagination was mainly +confined to the hours in his study; and while there, if he had his +"_beaux moments_," he had also his "_mauvais quarts d'heure_." + +Perhaps if he had brought a little imagination to bear upon his +relations with Muston and Allington, Crabbe would not have deserted his +people so soon after coming among them. The stop made him many enemies. +For here was no case of a poor curate accepting, for his family's sake, +a more lucrative post. Crabbe was leaving the Vale of Belvoir because an +accession of fortune had befallen the family, and it was pleasanter to +live in his native county and in a better house. So, at least, his +action was interpreted at the time, and Crabbe's son takes no very +different view. "Though tastes and affections, as well as worldly +interests, prompted this return to native scenes and early +acquaintances, it was a step reluctantly taken, and I believe, sincerely +repented of. The beginning was ominous. As we were slowly quitting the +place preceded by our furniture, a stranger, though one who knew my +father's circumstances, called out in an impressive tone, 'You are +wrong, you are wrong!'" The sound, he afterwards admitted, found an echo +in his own conscience, and during the whole journey seemed to ring in +his ears "like a supernatural voice." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 2: See a pleasant paper on Crabbe at Muston and Allington by +the Rev. W.H. Hutton of St John's College, Oxford, in the _Cornhill +Magazine_ for June 1901.] + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +IN SUFFOLK AGAIN + +(1792-1805) + +On the arrival of the family at Parham, poor Crabbe discovered that even +an accession of fortune had its attendant drawbacks. His son, George, +records his own recollections (he was then a child of seven years) of +the scene that met their view on their alighting at Parham Lodge. "As I +got out of the chaise, I remember jumping for very joy, and exclaiming, +'Here we are, here we are--little Willy and all!'"--(his parents' +seventh and youngest child, then only a few weeks old)--"but my spirits +sunk into dismay when, on entering the well-known kitchen, all there +seemed desolate, dreary, and silent. Mrs. Tovell and her sister-in-law, +sitting by the fireside weeping, did not even rise up to welcome my +parents, but uttered a few chilling words and wept again. All this +appeared to me as inexplicable as forbidding. How little do children +dream of the alterations that older people's feelings towards each other +undergo, when death has caused a transfer of property! Our arrival in +Suffolk was by no means palatable to all my mother's relations." + +Mr. Tovell's widow had doubtless her suitable jointure, and probably a +modest dower-residence to retire to; but Parham Hall had to be vacated, +and Crabbe, having purchased its furniture, at once entered on +possession. The mere re-arrangement of the contents caused many +heartburnings to the spinster-sister, who had known them under the old +_regime_, and the alteration of the hanging of a picture would have made +"Jacky," she averred, to turn in his grave. Crabbe seems, however, to +have shown so much good-feeling and forbearance in the matter that the +old lady, after grimly boasting that she could "screw Crabbe up and down +like a fiddle," was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother's +estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife. Moreover, the change +of tenancy at the Hall was anything but satisfactory to the village +generally. Mr. Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that of a +convivial sort. Such of the neighbours as were of kindred tastes had +been in the habit of "dropping in" of an evening two or three times a +week, when, if a _quorum_ was present, a bowl of punch would be brewed, +and sometimes a second and a third. The substitution for all this of the +quiet and decorous family life of the Crabbes was naturally a hoary blow +and grave discouragement to the village reveller, and contributed to +make Crabbe's life at starting far from happy. His pursuits and +inclinations, literary as well as clerical, made such company +distasteful; and his wife, who had borne him seven children in nine +years, and of these had lost four in infancy, had little strength or +heart for miscellaneous company. But there was compensation for her +husband among the county gentry of the neighbourhood, and notably in the +constant kindness of Dudley North, of Little Glemham Hall, the same +friend who had helped him with money when twelve years before he had +left Aldeburgh, an almost penniless adventurer, to try his fortune in +London. At Mr. North's table Crabbe had once more the opportunity of +meeting members of the Whig party, whom he had known through Burke. On +one such occasion Fox expressed his regret that Crabbe had ceased to +write, and offered his help in revising any future poem that he might +produce. The promise was not forgotten when ten years later _The Parish +Register_ was in preparation. + +During his first year at Parham, Crabbe does not appear to have +undertaken any fixed clerical duties, and this interval of leisure +allowed him to pay a long visit to his sister at Aldeburgh, and here he +placed his two elder boys, George and John, at a dame school. On +returning to Parham, he accepted the office of curate-in-charge at +Sweffling, the rector, Rev. Richard Turner, being resident at his other +living of Great Yarmouth. The curacy of Great Glemham, also within easy +reach, was shortly added. Crabbe was still residing at Parham Lodge, but +the incidents of such residence remained far from pleasant, and, after +four years there, Crabbe joyfully accepted the offer of a good house at +Great Glemham, placed at his disposal by his friend Dudley North. Here +the family remained for a further period of four or five years. + +A fresh bereavement in his family had made Crabbe additionally anxious +for change of scene and associations for his wife. In 1796, another +child died--their third son, Edmund--in his sixth year. Two children, +out of a family of seven, alone remained; and this final blow proved +more than the poor mother could bear uninjured. From this time dated "a +nervous disorder," which indeed meant a gradual decay of mental power, +from which she never recovered; and Crabbe, an ever-devoted husband, +tended her with exemplary care till her death in 1813. Southey, writing +about Crabbe to his friend, Neville White, in 1808, adds: "It was not +long before his wife became deranged, and when all this was told me by +one who knew him well, five years ago, he was still almost confined in +his own house, anxiously waiting upon this wife in her long and hopeless +malady. A sad history! It is no wonder that he gives so melancholy a +picture of human life." + +Save for Mrs. Crabbe's broken health and increasing melancholy, the four +years at Glemham were among the most peaceful and happiest of Crabbe's +life. His son grows eloquent over the elegance of the house and the +natural beauties of its situation. "A small well-wooded park occupied +the whole mouth of the glen, whence, doubtless, the name of the village +was derived. In the lowest ground stood the commodious mansion; the +approach wound down through a plantation on the eminence in front. The +opposite hill rose at the back of it, rich and varied with trees and +shrubs scattered irregularly; under this southern hill ran a brook, and +on the banks above it were spots of great natural beauty, crowned by +whitethorn and oak. Here the purple scented violet perfumed the air, and +in one place coloured the ground. On the left of the front in the +narrower portion of the glen was the village; on the right, a confined +view of richly wooded fields. In fact, the whole parish and +neighbourhood resemble a combination of groves, interspersed with fields +cultivated like gardens, and intersected with those green dry lanes +which tempt the walker in all weathers, especially in the evenings, when +in the short grass of the dry sandy banks lies every few yards a +glowworm, and the nightingales are pouring forth their melody in every +direction." + +It was not, therefore, for lack of acquaintance with the more idyllic +side of English country-life that Crabbe, when he once more addressed +the public in verse, turned to the less sunny memories of his youth for +inspiration. It was not till some years after the appearance of _The +Parish Register_ and _The Borough_ that the pleasant paths of inland +Suffolk and of the Vale of Belvoir formed the background to his studies +in human character. + +Meantime Crabbe was perpetually writing, and as constantly destroying +what he wrote. His small flock at Great and Little Glemham employed part +of his time; the education of his two sons, who were now withdrawn from +school, occupied some more; and a wife in failing health was certainly +not neglected. But the busy husband and father found time to teach +himself something of French and Italian, and read aloud to his family of +an evening as many books of travel and of fiction as his friends would +keep him supplied with. He was preparing at the same time a treatise on +botany, which was never to see the light; and during "one or two of his +winters in Suffolk," his son relates, "he gave most of his evening hours +to the writing of novels, and he brought not less than three such works +to a conclusion. The first was entitled 'The Widow Grey,' but I +recollect nothing of it except that the principal character was a +benevolent humorist, a Dr. Allison. The next was called 'Reginald +Glanshaw, or the Man who commanded Success,' a portrait of an assuming, +over-bearing, ambitious mind, rendered interesting by some generous +virtues, and gradually wearing down into idiotism. I cannot help +thinking that this Glanshaw was drawn with very extraordinary power; but +the story was not well managed in the details I forget the title of his +third novel; but I clearly remember that it opened with a description of +a wretched room, similar to some that are presented in his poetry, and +that on my mother's telling him frankly that she thought the effect very +inferior to that of the corresponding pieces in verse, he paused in his +reading, and after some reflection, said, 'Your remark is just.'" + +Mrs. Crabbe's remark was probably very just. Although her husband had +many qualifications for writing prose fiction--insight into and +appreciation of character, combined with much tragic force and a real +gift for description--there is reason to think that he would have been +stilted and artificial in dialogue, and altogether wanting in lightness +of hand. Crabbe acquiesced in his wife's decision, and the novels were +cremated without a murmur. A somewhat similar fate attended a set of +Tales in Verse which, in the year 1799, Crabbe was about to offer to Mr. +Hatchard, the publisher, when he wisely took the opinion of his rector +at Sweffling, then resident at Yarmouth, the Rev. Richard Turner[3]. +This gentleman, whose opinion Crabbe greatly valued, advised _revision_, +and Crabbe accepted the verdict as the reverse of encouraging. The Tales +were never published, and Crabbe again deferred his reappearance in +print for a period of eight years. Meantime he applied himself to the +leisurely composition of the _Parish Register_, which extended, together +with that of some shorter poems, over the period just named. + +In the last years of the eighteenth century there was a sudden awakening +among the bishops to the growing abuse of non-residence and pluralities +on the part of the clergy. One prelate of distinction devoted his +triennial charge to the subject, and a general "stiffening" of episcopal +good nature set in all round. The Bishop of Lincoln addressed Crabbe, +with others of his delinquent clergy, and intimated to him very +distinctly the duty of returning to those few sheep in the wilderness at +Muston and Allington. Crabbe, in much distress, applied to his friend +Dudley North to use influence on his behalf to obtain extension of +leave. But the bishop, Dr. Pretyman (Pitt's tutor and friend--better +known by the name he afterwards adopted of Tomlins) would not yield, and +it was probably owing to pressure from some different quarter that +Crabbe succeeded in obtaining leave of absence for four years longer. +Dudley North would fain have solved the problem by giving Crabbe one or +more of the livings in his own gift in Suffolk, but none of adequate +value was vacant at the time. Meanwhile, the house rented by Crabbe, +Great Glemham Hall, was sold over Crabbe's head, by family arrangements +in the North family, and he made his last move while in Suffolk, by +taking a house in the neighbouring village of Rendham, where he remained +during his last four years. Crabbe was looking forward to his elder +son's going up to Cambridge in 1803, and this formed an additional +reason for wishing to remain as long as might be in the eastern +counties. + +The writing of poetry seems to have gone on apace. _The Parish Register_ +was all but completed while at Rendham, and _The Borough_ was also +begun. After so long an abstinence from the glory of print, Crabbe at +last found the required stimulus to ambition in the need of some further +income for his two sons' education. But during the last winter of his +residence at Rendham (1804-1805), Crabbe produced a poem, in stanzas, of +very different character and calibre from anything he had yet written, +and as to the origin of which one must go back to some previous +incidents in Crabbe's history. His son is always lax as to dates, and +often just at those periods when they would be the most welcome. It may +be inferred, however, that at some date between 1790 and 1792 Crabbe +suffered from serious derangements of his digestion, attended by sudden +and acute attacks of vertigo. The passage in the memoir as to the exact +period is more than usually vague. The writer is dealing with the year +1800, and he proceeds: + + "My father, now about his forty-sixth year, was much + more stout and healthy than when I first remember him. + Soon after that early period he became subject to vertigoes, + which he thought indicative of a tendency to apoplexy; and + was occasionally bled rather profusely, which only increased + the symptoms. When he preached his first sermon at Muston + in the year 1789 my mother foreboded, as she afterwards told + us, that he would preach very few more: but it was on one + of his early journeys into Suffolk, in passing through Ipswich, + that he had the most alarming attack." + +This account of matters is rather mixed. The "early period" pointed to +by young Crabbe is that at which he himself first had distinct +recollection of his father, and his doings. Putting that age at six +years old, the year would be 1791; and it may be inferred that as the +whole family paid a visit of many months to Suffolk in the year 1790, it +was during that visit that he had the decisive attack in the streets of +Ipswich. The account may be continued in the son's own words:-- + + "Having left my mother at the inn, he walked into the + town alone, and suddenly staggered in the street, and fell. + He was lifted up by the passengers" (probably from the stagecoach + from which they had just alighted), "and overheard + some one say significantly, 'Let the gentleman alone, he will + be better by and by'; for his fall was attributed to the + bottle. He was assisted to his room, and the late Dr. Clubbe + was sent for, who, after a little examination, saw through the + case with great judgment. 'There is nothing the matter with + your head,' he observed, 'nor any apoplectic tendency; let + the digestive organs bear the whole blame: you must take + opiates.' From that time his health began to amend rapidly, + and his constitution was renovated; a rare effect of opium, + for that drug almost always inflicts some partial injury, even + when it is necessary; but to him it was only salutary--and + to a constant but slightly increasing dose of it may be attributed + his long and generally healthy life." + +The son makes no reference to any possible effects of this "slightly +increasing dose" upon his father's intellect or imagination. And the +ordinary reader who knows the poet mainly through his sober couplets may +well be surprised to hear that their author was ever addicted to the +opium-habit; still more, that his imagination ever owed anything to its +stimulus. But in FitzGerald's copy there is a MS. note, not signed +"G.C.," and therefore FitzGerald's own. It runs thus: "It" (the opium) +"probably influenced his dreams, for better or worse" To this FitzGerald +significantly adds, "see also the _World of Dreams_, and _Sir Eustace +Grey_." + +As Crabbe is practically unknown to the readers of the present day, _Sir +Eustace Grey_ will be hardly even a name to them. For it lies, with two +or three other noticeable poems, quite out of the familiar track of his +narrative verse. In the first place it is in stanzas, and what Browning +would have classed as a "Dramatic Lyric." The subject is as follows: The +scene "a Madhouse," and the persons a Visitor, a Physician, and a +Patient. The visitor has been shown over the establishment, and is on +the point of departing weary and depressed at the sight of so much +misery, when the physician begs him to stay as they come in sight of the +"cell" of a specially interesting patient, Sir Eustace Grey, late of +Greyling Hall. Sir Eustace greets them as they approach, plunges at once +into monologue, and relates (with occasional warnings from the doctor +against over-excitement) the sad story of his misfortunes and consequent +loss of reason. He begins with a description of his happier days:-- + + "Some twenty years, I think, are gone + (Time flies, I know not how, away), + The sun upon no happier shone + Nor prouder man, than Eustace Grey. + Ask where you would, and all would say, + The man admired and praised of all, + By rich and poor, by grave and gay, + Was the young lord of Greyling Hall. + + "Yes! I had youth and rosy health, + Was nobly formed, as man might be; + For sickness, then, of all my wealth, + I never gave a single fee: + The ladies fair, the maidens free. + Were all accustomed then to say, + Who would a handsome figure see, + Should look upon Sir Eustace Grey. + + "My lady I--She was all we love; + All praise, to speak her worth, is faint; + Her manners show'd the yielding dove, + Her morals, the seraphic saint: + She never breathed nor looked complaint; + No equal upon earth had she: + Now, what is this fair thing I paint? + Alas! as all that live shall be. + + "There were two cherub-things beside, + A gracious girl, a glorious boy; + Yet more to swell my fall-blown pride, + To varnish higher my fading joy, + Pleasures were ours without alloy, + Nay, Paradise,--till my frail Eve + Our bliss was tempted to destroy-- + Deceived, and fated to deceive. + + "But I deserved;--for all that time + When I was loved, admired, caressed, + There was within each secret crime, + Unfelt, uncancelled, unconfessed: + I never then my God addressed, + In grateful praise or humble prayer; + And if His Word was not my jest-- + (Dread thought!) it never was my care." + +The misfortunes of the unhappy man proceed apace, and blow follows blow. +He is unthankful for his blessings, and Heaven's vengeance descends on +him. His wife proves faithless, and he kills her betrayer, once his +trusted friend. The wretched woman pines and dies, and the two children +take some infectious disease and quickly follow. The sufferer turns to +his wealth and his ambitions to drug his memory. But "walking in pride," +he is to be still further "abased." The "Watcher and the Holy One" that +visited Nebuchadnezzar come to Sir Eustace in vision and pronounce his +fate: + + "Full be his cup, with evil fraught-- + Demons his guides, and death his doom." + +Two fiends of darkness are told off to tempt him. One, presumably the +Spirit of Gambling, robs him of his wealth, while the Spirit of Mania +takes from him his reason, and drags him through a hell of horriblest +imaginings. And it is at this point that what has been called the +"dream-scenery" of the opium-eater is reproduced in a series of very +remarkable stanzas: + + Upon that boundless plain, below, + The setting sun's last rays were shed, + And gave a mild and sober glow, + Where all were still, asleep, or dead; + Vast ruins in the midst were spread, + Pillars and pediments sublime, + Where the grey moss had form'd a bed, + And clothed the crumbling spoils of time. + + "There was I fix'd, I know not how, + Condemn'd for untold years to stay: + Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_ + Endured no change of night or day; + The same mild evening's sleepy ray + Shone softly-solemn and serene, + And all that time I gazed away, + The setting sun's sad rays were seen. + + "At length a moment's sleep stole on,-- + Again came my commission'd foes; + Again through sea and land we're gone, + No peace, no respite, no repose: + Above the dark broad sea we rose, + We ran through bleak and frozen land; + I had no strength their strength t' oppose, + An infant in a giant's hand. + + "They placed me where those streamers play, + Those nimble beams of brilliant light; + It would the stoutest heart dismay, + To see, to feel, that dreadful sight: + So swift, so pure, so cold, so bright, + They pierced my frame with icy wound; + And all that half-year's polar night, + Those dancing streamers wrapp'd me round + + "Slowly that darkness pass'd away, + When down, upon the earth I fell,-- + Some hurried sleep was mine by day; + But, soon as toll'd the evening bell, + They forced me on, where ever dwell + Far-distant men in cities fair, + Cities of whom no travellers tell, + Nor feet but mine were wanderers there + + "Their watchmen stare, and stand aghast, + As on we hurry through the dark; + The watch-light blinks as we go past, + The watch-dog shrinks and fears to bark; + The watch-tower's bell sounds shrill; and, hark! + The free wind blows--we've left the town-- + A wide sepulchral ground I mark, + And on a tombstone place me down. + + "What monuments of mighty dead! + What tombs of various kind are found! + And stones erect their shadows shed + On humble graves, with wickers bound; + Some risen fresh, above the ground, + Some level with the native clay: + What sleeping millions wait the sound, + 'Arise, ye dead, and come away!' + + Alas! they stay not for that call; + Spare me this woe! ye demons, spare!-- + They come! the shrouded shadows all,-- + 'Tis more than mortal brain can bear; + Rustling they rise, they sternly glare + At man upheld by vital breath; + Who, led by wicked fiends, should dare + To join the shadowy troops of death!" + +For about fifteen stanzas this power of wild imaginings is sustained, +and, it must be admitted, at a high level as regards diction. The reader +will note first how the impetuous flow of those visionary recollections +generates a style in the main so lofty and so strong. The poetic diction +of the eighteenth century, against which Wordsworth made his famous +protest, is entirely absent. Then again, the eight-line stanza is +something quite different from a mere aggregate of quatrains arranged in +pairs. The lines are knit together; sonnet-fashion, by the device of +interlacing the rhymes, the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh lines +rhyming. And it is singularly effective for its purpose, that of +avoiding the suggestion of a mere ballad-measure, and carrying on the +descriptive action with as little interruption as might be. + +The similarity of the illusions, here attributed to insanity, to those +described by De Quincey as the result of opium, is too marked to be +accidental. In the concluding pages of his _Confessions_, De Quincey +writes: "The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were +both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in +proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive ... This +disturbed me very much less than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I +seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night." + +Compare Crabbe's sufferer:-- + + "There was I fix'd, I know not how, + Condemn'd for untold years to stay + Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_ + Endured no change of night or day." + +Again, the rapid transition from one distant land to another, from the +Pole to the Tropics, is common to both experiences. The "ill-favoured +ones" who are charged with Sir Eustace's expiation fix him at one moment + + "--on the trembling ball + That crowns the steeple's quiv'ring spire" + +just as the Opium-Fiend fixes De Quincey for centuries at the summit of +Pagodas. Sir Eustace is accused of sins he had never committed:-- + + "Harmless I was: yet hunted down + For treasons to my soul unfit; + I've been pursued through many a town + For crimes that petty knaves commit." + +Even so the opium-eater imagines himself flying from the wrath of +Oriental Deities. "I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a +deed, they said, which the Ibis and the Crocodile trembled at." The +morbid inspiration is clearly the same in both cases, and there can be +little doubt that Crabbe's poem owes its inception to opium, and that +the frame work was devised by him for the utilisation of his dreams. + + +But a curious and unexpected _denouement_ awaits the reader. When Sir +Eustace's condition, as he describes it, seems most hopeless, its +alleviation arrives through a religious conversion. There has been +throughout present to him the conscience of "a soul defiled with every +stain." And at the same moment, under circumstances unexplained, his +spiritual ear is purged to hear a "Heavenly Teacher." The voice takes +the form of the touching and effective hymn, which has doubtless found a +place since in many an evangelical hymn-book, beginning + + "Pilgrim, burthen'd with thy sin, + Come the way to Zion's gate; + There, till Mercy let thee in, + Knock and weep, and watch and wait. + Knock!--He knows the sinner's cry. + Weep!--He loves the mourner's tears. + Watch!--for saving grace is nigh + Wait,--till heavenly light appears." + +And the hymn is followed by the pathetic confession on the sufferer's +part that this blessed experience, though it has brought him the +assurance of heavenly forgiveness, still leaves him, "though elect," +looking sadly back on his old prosperity, and bearing, but unresigned, +the prospect of an old ago spent amid his present gloomy surroundings. +And yet Crabbe, with a touch of real imaginative insight, represents him +in his final utterance as relapsing into a vague hope of some day being +restored to his old prosperity: + + "Must you, my friends, no longer stay? + Thus quickly all my pleasures end; + But I'll remember, when I pray, + My kind physician and his friend: + + And those sad hours you deign to spend + With me, I shall requite them all. + Sir Eustace for his friends shall send, + And thank their love at Greyling Hall."[4] + + + +The kind physician and his friend then proceed to diagnose the patient's +condition--which they agree is that of "a frenzied child of grace," and +so the poem ends. To one of its last stanzas Crabbe attached an +apologetic note, one of the most remarkable ever penned. It exhibits the +struggle that at that period must have been proceeding in many a +thoughtful breast as to how the new wine of religion could be somehow +accommodated to the old bottles:-- + +"It has been suggested to me that this change from restlessness to +repose in the mind of Sir Eustace is wrought by a methodistic call; and +it is admitted to be such: a sober and rational conversion could not +have happened while the disorder of the brain continued; yet the verses +which follow, in a different measure," (Crabbe refers to the hymn) "are +not intended to make any religious persuasion appear ridiculous; they +are to be supposed as the effect of memory in the disordered mind of the +speaker, and though evidently enthusiastic in respect to language, are +not meant to convey any impropriety of sentiment." + +The implied suggestion (for it comes to this) that the sentiments of +this devotional hymn, written by Crabbe himself, could only have brought +comfort to the soul of a lunatic, is surely as good a proof as the +period could produce of the bewilderment in the Anglican mind caused by +the revival of personal religion under Wesley and his followers. + +According to Crabbe's son _Sir Eustace Grey_ was written at Muston in +the winter of 1804-1805. This is scarcely possible, for Crabbe did not +return to his Leicestershire living until the autumn of the latter year. +Probably the poem was begun in Suffolk, and the final touches were added +later. Crabbe seems to have told his family that it was written during a +severe snow-storm, and at one sitting. As the poem consists of +fifty-five eight-lined stanzas, of somewhat complex construction, the +accuracy of Crabbe's account is doubtful. If its inspiration was in some +degree due to opium, we know from the example of S.T. Coleridge that the +opium-habit is not favourable to certainty of memory or the accurate +presentation of facts. After Crabbe's death, there was found in one of +his many manuscript note-books a copy of verses, undated, entitled _The +World of Dreams_, which his son printed in subsequent editions of the +poems. The verses are in the same metre and rhyme-system as _Sir +Eustace_, and treat of precisely the same class of visions as recorded +by the inmate of the asylum. The rapid and continuous transition from +scene to scene, and period to period, is the same in both. Foreign kings +and other potentates reappear, as with De Quincey, in ghostly and +repellent forms:-- + + "I know not how, but I am brought + Into a large and Gothic hall, + Seated with those I never sought-- + Kings, Caliphs, Kaisers--silent all; + Pale as the dead; enrobed and tall, + Majestic, frozen, solemn, still; + They make my fears, my wits appal, + And with both scorn and terror fill." + +This, again, may be compared, or rather contrasted, with Coleridge's +_Pains of Sleep_, and it can hardly be doubted that the two poems had a +common origin. + +The year 1805 was the last of Crabbe's sojourn in Suffolk, and it was +made memorable in the annals of literature by the appearance of the _Lay +of the Last Minstrel_. Crabbe first met with it in a bookseller's shop +in Ipswich, read it nearly through while standing at the counter, and +pronounced that a new and great poet had appeared. + +This was Crabbe's first introduction to one who was before long to prove +himself one of his warmest admirers and friends. It was one of Crabbe's +virtues that he was quick to recognise the worth of his poetical +contemporaries. He had been repelled, with many others, by the weak side +of the _Lyrical Ballads_, but he lived to revere Wordsworth's genius. +His admiration for Burns was unstinted. But amid all the signs of a +poetical _renaissance_ in progress, and under a natural temptation to +tread the fresh woods and pictures new that were opening before him, it +showed a true judgment in Crabbe that he never faltered in the +conviction that his own opportunity and his own strength lay elsewhere. +Not in the romantic or the mystical--not in perfection of form or melody +of lyric verse, were his own humbler triumphs to be won. Like +Wordsworth, he was to find a sufficiency in the "common growth of +mother-earth," though indeed less in her "mirth" than in her "tears," +Notwithstanding his _Eustace Grey_, and _World of Dreams_, and the +really powerful story of Aaron the Gipsy (afterwards to appear as the +_The Hall of Justice_), Crabbe was returning to the themes and the +methods of _The Village_. He had already completed _The Parish +Register_, and had _The Borough_ in contemplation, when he returned to +his Leicestershire parish. The woods of Belvoir, and the rural charms of +Parham and Glemham, had not dimmed the memory of the sordid little +fishing-town, where the spirit of poetry had first met him, and thrown +her mantle round him. + +And now the day had come when the mandate of the bishop could no longer +be ignored. In October 1805, Crabbe with his wife and two sons returned +to the Parsonage at Muston. He had been absent from his joint livings +about thirteen years, of which four had been spent at Parham, five at +Great Glemham, and four at Rendham, all three places lying within a +small area, and within reach of the same old friends and relations. No +wonder that he left the neighbourhood with a reluctance that was +probably too well guessed by his parishioners in the Vale of Belvoir. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 3: Richard Turner of Yarmouth was a man of considerable +culture, and belonged to a family of scholars. His eldest brother was +Master of Pembroke, Cambridge, and Dean of Norwich: his youngest son was +Sir Charles Turner, a Lord Justice of Appeal; and Dawson Turner was his +nephew. Richard Turner was the intimate friend of Dr. Parr, Paley, and +Canning.] + +[Footnote 4: Readers of Lockhart's Biography will remember that in one +of Scott's latest letters to his son-in-law, before he left England for +Naples, he quoted and applied to himself this stanza of _Sir Eustace +Grey_. The incident is the more pathetic that Scott, as he wrote the +words, was quite aware that his own mind was failing.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE PARISH REGISTER + +(1805-1809) + +"When in October, 1805, Mr. Crabbe resumed the charge of his own parish +of Muston, he found some changes to vex him, and not the less because he +had too much reason to suspect that his long absence from his incumbency +had been, partly at least, the cause of them. His cure had been served +by respectable and diligent clergymen, but they had been often changed, +and some of them had never resided within the parish; and he felt that +the binding influence of a settled and permanent minister had not been +withdrawn for twelve years with impunity. A Wesleyan missionary had +formed a thriving establishment in Muston, and the congregations at the +parish church were no longer such as they had been of old. This much +annoyed my father; and the warmth with which he began to preach against +dissent only irritated himself and others, without bringing back +disciples to the fold." + +So writes Crabbe's son with his wonted frankness and good judgment. +Moreover, besides the Wesleyan secession, the mischievous extravagances +of William Huntington (S.S.) had found their way into the parish. To +make matters worse, a former gardener of Crabbe's had set up as a +preacher of the doctrines of this fanatic, who was still attracting +crowds in London. Then, too, as another fruit of the rector's long +absence, strange stories of his political opinions had become current. +Owing, doubtless, to his renewed acquaintance with Dudley North at +Glemham, and occasional association with the Whig leaders at his house, +he had exposed himself to the terrible charge that he was a Jacobin! + +Altogether Crabbe's clerical position in Leicestershire, during the next +nine years, could not have been very comfortable. But he was evidently +still, as always, the devout and kindly pastor of his flock, and happily +for himself, he was now to receive new and unexpected tributes to his +popularity in other fields. His younger son, John, now eighteen years of +age, was shortly to go up to Cambridge, and this fresh expense had to be +provided for. To this end, a volume of poems, partly old and partly new, +had been for some time in preparation, and in September 1807, it +appeared from the publishing house of John Hatchard in Piccadilly. In it +were included _The Library_, _The Newspaper_, and _The Village_. The +principal new poem was _The Parish Register_, to which were added _Sir +Eustace Grey_ and _The Hall of Justice_. The volume was prefaced by a +Dedication to Henry Richard Fox, third Lord Holland, nephew and sometime +ward of Charles James Fox, and the reason for such dedication is told at +greater length in the long autobiographical introduction that follows. + +Twenty-two years had elapsed since Crabbe's last appearance as an +author, and he seems to have thought it due to his readers to give some +reason for his long abstention from the poet's 'idle trade.' He pleads a +higher 'calling,' that of his professional duties, as sufficient +excuse. Moreover, he offers the same excuse for his 'progress in the art +of versification' being less marked than his readers might otherwise +expect. He then proceeds to tell the story of the kindness he had +received from Burke (who had died in 1797); the introduction by him to +Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through him again to Samuel Johnson. He gives +in full Johnson's note approving _The Village_, and after a further +laborious apology for the shortcomings of his present literary venture, +goes on to tell the one really relevant incident of its appearance. +Crabbe had determined, he says, now that his old valued advisers had +passed away, not to publish anything more-- + + "unless I could first obtain the sanction of such an opinion + as I might with some confidence rely upon. I looked for a + friend who, having the discerning taste of Mr. Burke and the + critical sagacity of Doctor Johnson, would bestow upon my + MS. the attention requisite to form his opinion, and would + then favour me with the result of his observations; and it + was my singular good fortune to obtain such assistance--the + opinion of a critic so qualified, and a friend so disposed to + favour me. I had been honoured by an introduction to the + Right Hon. Charles James Fox, some years before, at the + seat of Mr. Burke; and being again with him, I received a + promise that he would peruse any work I might send to him + previous to its publication, and would give me his opinion. + At that time I did not think myself sufficiently prepared; + and when afterwards I had collected some poems for his inspection, + I found my right honourable friend engaged by the + affairs of a great empire, and struggling with the inveteracy + of a fatal disease. At such time, upon such mind, ever disposed + to oblige as that mind was, I could not obtrude the + petty business of criticising verses; but he remembered the + promise he had kindly given, and repeated an offer which + though I had not presumed to expect, I was happy to receive. + A copy of the poems, now first published, was sent to him, + and (as I have the information from Lord Holland, and his + Lordship's permission to inform my readers) the poem which + I have named _The Parish Register_ was heard by Mr. Fox, + and it excited interest enough by some of its parts to gain for + me the benefit of his judgment upon the whole. Whatever he + approved, the reader will readily believe, I have carefully + retained: the parts he disliked are totally expunged, and + others are substituted, which I hope resemble those more + conformable to the taste of so admirable a judge. Nor can I + deny myself the melancholy satisfaction of adding that this + poem (and more especially the history of Phoebe Dawson, + with some parts of the second book) were the last compositions + of their kind that engaged and amused the capacious, the + candid, the benevolent mind of this great man." + +It was, as we have seen, at Dudley North's residence in Suffolk that +Crabbe had renewed his acquaintance with Fox, and received from him +fresh offers of criticism and advice. And now the great statesman had +passed beyond reach of Crabbe's gratitude. He had died in the autumn of +1806, at the Duke of Devonshire's, at Chiswick. His last months wore of +great suffering, and the tedium of his latter days was relieved by being +read aloud to--the Latin poets taking their turn with Crabbe's pathetic +stories of humble life. In the same preface, Crabbe further expresses +similar obligations to his friend, Richard Turner of Yarmouth. The +result of this double criticism is the more discernible when we compare +_The Parish Register_ with, its successor, _The Borough_, in the +composition of which Crabbe admits, in the preface to that poem, that he +had trusted more entirely to his own judgment. + +In _The Parish Register_, Crabbe returns to the theme which he had +treated twenty years before in _The Village,_ but on a larger and more +elaborate scale. The scheme is simple and not ineffective. A village +clergyman is the narrator, and with his registers of baptisms, +marriages, and burials open before him, looks through the various +entries for the year just completed. As name after name recalls +interesting particulars of character and incident in their history, he +relates them as if to an imaginary friend at his side. The precedent of +_The Deserted Village_ is still obviously near to the writer's mind, and +he is alternately attracted and repelled by Goldsmith's ideals. For +instance, the poem opens with an introduction of some length in which +the general aspects of village life are described. Crabbe begins by +repudiating any idea of such life as had been described by his +predecessor:-- + + "Is there a place, save one the poet sees, + A land of love, of liberty, and ease; + Where labour wearies not, nor cares suppress + Th' eternal flow of rustic happiness: + Where no proud mansion frowns in awful state, + Or keeps the sunshine from the cottage-gate; + Where young and old, intent on pleasure, throng, + And half man's life is holiday and song? + Vain search for scenes like these! no view appears, + By sighs unruffled, or unstain'd by tears; + Since vice the world subdued and waters drown'd, + Auburn and Eden can no more be found." + +And yet the poet at once proceeds to describe his village in much the +same tone, and with much of the same detail as Goldsmith had done:-- + + "Behold the Cot! where thrives th' industrious swain, + Source of his pride, his pleasure, and his gain, + Screen'd from the winter's-wind, the sun's last ray + Smiles on the window and prolongs the day; + Projecting thatch the woodbine's branches stop, + And turn their blossoms to the casement's top; + All need requires is in that cot contain'd, + And much that taste untaught and unrestrain'd + Surveys delighted: there she loves to trace, + In one gay picture, all the royal race; + Around the walls are heroes, lovers, kings; + The print that shows them and the verse that sings." + +Then follow, as in _The Deserted Village_, the coloured prints, and +ballads, and even _The Twelve Good Rules_, that decorate the walls: the +humble library that fills the deal shelf "beside the cuckoo clock"; the +few devotional works, including the illustrated Bible, bought in parts +with the weekly sixpence; the choice notes by learned editors that raise +more doubts than they close. "Rather," exclaims Crabbe: + + "Oh! rather give me commentators plain + Who with no deep researches vex the brain; + Who from the dark and doubtful love to run, + And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun." + +The last line of which he conveyed, no doubt unconsciously, from Young. +Nothing can be more winning than the picture of the village home thus +presented. And outside it, the plot of carefully-tended ground, with not +only fruits and herbs but space reserved for a few choice flowers, the +rich carnation and the "pounced auricula":-- + + "Here, on a Sunday eve, when service ends, + Meet and rejoice a family of friends: + All speak aloud, are happy and are free, + And glad they seem, and gaily they agree. + What, though fastidious ears may shun the speech, + Where all are talkers, and where none can teach; + Where still the welcome and the words are old, + And the same stories are for ever told; + Yet theirs is joy that, bursting from the heart, + Prompts the glad tongue these nothings to impart; + That forms these tones of gladness we despise, + That lifts their steps, that sparkles in their eyes; + That talks or laughs or runs or shouts or plays, + And speaks in all there looks and all their ways." + +This charming passage is thoroughly in Goldsmith's vein, and even shows +markedly the influence of his manner, and yet it is no mere echo of +another poet. The scenes described are those which had become dear and +familiar to Crabbe during years of residence in Leicestershire and +inland Suffolk. And yet at this very juncture, Crabbe's poetic +conscience smites him. It is not for him, he remembers, to deal only +with the sweeter aspects, though he knows them to exist, of village +life. He must return to its sterner side:-- + + "Fair scenes of peace! ye might detain us long, + But vice and misery now demand the song; + And turn our view from dwellings simply neat, + To this infected Row we term our Street." + +For even the village of trim gardens and cherished Bibles has its +"slums," and on these slums Crabbe proceeds to enlarge with almost +ferocious realism:-- + + "Here, in cabal, a disputatious crew + Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; + Riots are nightly heard:--the curse, the cries + Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, + While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, + And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand; + Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin; + And girls, who heed not dress, are skill'd in gin." + +It is obvious, I think, that Crabbe's representations of country life +here, as in _The Village_ and _The Borough_, are often eclectic, and +that for the sake of telling contrast, he was at times content to blend +scenes that he had witnessed under very opposite conditions. + +The section entitled "Baptisms" deals accordingly with many sad +instances of "base-born" children, and the section on "Marriages" also +has its full share of kindred instances in which the union in Church has +only been brought about by pressure from the parish authorities. The +marriage of one such "compelled bridegroom" is related with a force and +minuteness of detail throughout which not a word is thrown away:-- + + "Next at our altar stood a luckless pair, + Brought by strong passions and a warrant there; + By long rent cloak, hung loosely, strove the bride + From every eye, what all perceived, to hide. + While the boy-bridegroom, shuffling in his pace, + Now hid awhile, and then exposed his face; + As shame alternately with anger strove + The brain, confused with muddy ale, to move, + In haste and stammering he perform'd his part, + And look'd the rage that rankled in his heart: + (So will each lover inly curse his fate, + Too soon made happy, and made wise too late:) + I saw his features take a savage gloom, + And deeply threaten for the days to come. + Low spake the lass, and lisp'd and minced the while, + Look'd on the lad, and faintly tried to smile; + With soften'd speech and humbled tone she strove + To stir the embers of departed love: + While he, a tyrant, frowning walk'd before, + Felt the poor purse, and sought the public door, + She sadly following in submission went + And saw the final shilling foully spent; + Then to her father's hut the pair withdrew, + And bade to love and comfort long adieu! + Ah! fly temptation, youth, refrain! refrain! + I preach for ever; but I preach in vain!" + +There is no "mealy-mouthed philanthropy" here. No one can doubt the +earnestness and truth of the poet's mingled anger and sorrow. The misery +of irregular unions had never been "bitten in" with more convincing +force. The verse, moreover, in the passage is freer than usual from many +of Crabbe's eccentricities. It is marked here and there by his fondness +for verbal antithesis, almost amounting to the pun, which his parodists +have not overlooked. The second line indeed is hardly more allowable in +serious verse than Dickens's mention of the lady who went home "in a +flood of tears and a sedan-chair." But Crabbe's indulgence in this habit +is never a mere concession to the reader's flippant taste. His epigrams +often strike deeply home, as in this instance or in the line:-- + + "Too soon made happy, and made wise too late." + +The story that follows of Phoebe Dawson, which helped to soothe Fox in +the last stage of his long disease, is no less powerful. The gradual +steps by which the village beauty is led to her ruin are told in a +hundred lines with a fidelity not surpassed in the case of the story of +Hetty Sorrel. The verse, alternately recalling Pope and Goldsmith, is +yet impelled by a moral intention, which gives it absolute +individuality. The picture presented is as poignantly pathetic as +Frederick Walker's _Lost Path_, or Langhorne's "Child of misery, +baptized in tears." That it will ever again be ranked with such may be +doubtful, for _technique_ is the first quality demanded of an artist in +our day, and Crabbe's _technique_ is too often defective in the extreme. + +These more tragic incidents of village life are, however, relieved at +proper intervals by some of lighter complexion. There is the gentleman's +gardener who has his successive children christened by the Latin names +of his plants,--Lonicera, Hyacinthus and Senecio. Then we have the +gallant, gay Lothario, who not only fails to lead astray the lovely +Fanny Price, but is converted by her to worthier aims, and ends by +becoming the best friend and benefactor of her and her rustic suitor. +There is an impressive sketch of the elderly prude:-- + + "--wise, austere, and nice, + Who showed her virtue by her scorn of vice"; + +and another of the selfish and worldly life of the Lady at the Great +House who prefers to spend her fortune in London, and leaves her tenants +to the tender mercies of her steward. Her forsaken mansion is described +in lines curiously anticipating Hood's _Haunted House_:-- + + "--forsaken stood the Hall: + Worms ate the floors, the tap'stry fled the wall: + No fire the kitchen's cheerless grate display'd; + No cheerful light the long-closed sash convey'd; + The crawling worm that turns a summer fly, + Here spun his shroud, and laid him up to die + The winter-death:--upon the bed of state, + The bat shrill shrieking woo'd his flickering mate." + +In the end her splendid funeral is solemnised:-- + + "Dark but not awful, dismal but yet mean, + With anxious bustle moves the cumbrous scene; + Presents no objects tender or profound + But spreads its cold unmeaning gloom around." + +And the sarcastic village-father, after hearing "some scholar" read the +list of her titles and her virtues, "looked disdain and said":-- + + "Away, my friends! why take such pains to know + What some brave marble soon in Church shall show? + Where not alone her gracious name shall stand, + But how she lived--the blessing of the land; + How much we all deplored the noble dead, + What groans we uttered and what tears we shed; + Tears, true as those which in the sleepy eyes + Of weeping cherubs on the stone shall rise; + Tears, true as those which, ere she found her grave, + The noble Lady to our sorrows gave!" + +These portraits of the ignoble rich are balanced by one of the "noble +peasant" Isaac Ashford, drawn, as Crabbe's son tells us, from a former +parish-clerk of his father's at North Glemham. Coming to be past work +through infirmities of age, the old man has to face the probability of +the parish poorhouse, and reconciling himself to his lot is happily +spared the sore trial:-- + + "Daily he placed the Workhouse in his view! + But came not there, for sudden was his fate, + He dropp'd, expiring, at his cottage-gate. + I feel his absence in the hours of prayer, + And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there: + I see no more those white locks thinly spread + Round the bald polish of that honour'd head; + No more that awful glance on playful wight, + Compell'd to kneel and tremble at the sight, + To fold his fingers, all in dread the while, + Till Mister Ashford soften'd to a smile; + No more that meek and suppliant look in prayer, + Nor the pure faith (to give it force), are there:-- + But he is blest, and I lament no more + A wise, good man, contented to be poor." + +Where Crabbe is represented, not unfairly, as dwelling mainly on the +seamy side of peasant and village life, such passages as the above are +not to be overlooked. + +This final section ("Burials") is brought to a close by an ingenious +incident which changes the current of the vicar's thoughts. He is in the +midst of the recollections of his departed flock when the tones of the +passing-bell fall upon his ear. On sending to inquire he finds that they +tell of a new death, that of his own aged parish-sexton, "old Dibble" +(the name, it may be presumed, an imperfect reminiscence of Justice +Shallow's friend). The speaker's thoughts are now directed to his old +parish servant, and to the old man's favourite stories of previous +vicars under whom he has served. Thus the poem ends with sketches of +Parson Addle, Parson Peele, Dr. Grandspear and others--among them the +"Author-Rector," intended (the younger Crabbe thought) as a portrait of +the poet himself. Finally Crabbe could not resist the temptation to +include a young parson, "a youth from Cambridge," who has imbibed some +extreme notions of the school of Simeon, and who is shown as fearful on +his death-bed lest he should have been guilty of too many good works. He +appeals to his old clerk on the subject:-- + + "'My alms-deeds all, and every deed I've done, + My moral-rags defile me every one; + It should not be:--what say'st thou! Tell me, Ralph.' + 'Quoth I, your Reverence, I believe you're safe; + Your faith's your prop, nor have you pass'd such time + In life's good works as swell them to a crime. + If I of pardon for my sins were sure, + About my goodness I would rest secure.'" + +The volume containing _The Parish Register, The Village_, and others, +appeared in the autumn of 1807; and Crabbe's general acceptance as a +poet of mark dates from that year. Four editions were issued by Mr. +Hatchard during the following year and a half--the fourth appearing in +March 1809. The reviews were unanimous in approval, headed by Jeffrey in +the _Edinburgh_, and within two days of the appearance of this article, +according to Crabbe's son, the whole of the first edition was sold off. + +At this date, there was room for Crabbe as a poet, and there was still +more room for him as an innovator in the art of fiction. Macaulay, in +his essay on Addison, has pointed out how the Roger de Coverley papers +gave the public of his day the first taste of a new and exquisite +pleasure. At the time "when Fielding was birds-nesting, and Smollett was +unborn," he was laying the foundations of the English novel of real +life. After nearly a hundred years, Crabbe was conferring a similar +benefit. The novel had in the interim risen to its full height, and then +sunk. When Crabbe published his _Parish Register_, the novels of the day +were largely the vapid productions of the Minerva Press, without +atmosphere, colour, or truth. Miss Edgeworth alone had already struck +the note of a new development in her _Castle Rackrent_, not to mention +the delightful stories in _The Parents' Assistant, Simple Susan, Lazy +Lawrence_, or _The Basket-Woman_. Galt's masterpiece, _The Annals of the +Parish_, was not yet even lying unfinished in his desk. The +Mucklebackits and the Headriggs were still further distant. Miss +Mitford's sketches in _Our Village_--the nearest in form to Crabbe's +pictures of country life--were to come later still. Crabbe, though he +adhered, with a wise knowledge of his own powers, to the heroic couplet, +is really a chief founder of the rural novel--the _Silas Marner_ and the +_Adam Bede_ of fifty years later. Of course (for no man is original) he +had developed his methods out of that of his predecessors. Pope was his +earliest master in his art. And what Pope had done in his telling +couplets for the man and woman of fashion--the Chloes and Narcissas of +his day--Crabbe hoped that he might do for the poor and squalid +inhabitants of the Suffolk seaport. Then, too, Thomson's "lovely young +Lavinia," and Goldsmith's village-parson and poor widow gathering her +cresses from the brook, had been before him and contributed their share +of influence. But Crabbe's achievement was practically a new thing. The +success of _The Parish Register_ was largely that of a new adventure in +the world of fiction. Whatever defects the critic of pure poetry might +discover in its workmanship, the poem was read for its stories--for a +truth of realism that could not be doubted, and for a pity that could +not be unshared. + +In 1809 Crabbe forwarded a copy of his poems (now reduced by the +publisher to the form of two small volumes, and in their fourth edition) +to Walter Scott, who acknowledged them and Crabbe's accompanying letter +in a friendly reply, to which reference has already been made. After +mentioning how for more than twenty years he had desired the pleasure of +a personal introduction to Crabbe, and how, as a lad of eighteen, he had +met with selections from _The Village_ and _The Library_ in _The Annual +Register_, he continues:-- + + "You may therefore guess my sincere delight when I saw + your poems at a late period assume the rank in the public + consideration which they so well deserve. It was a triumph + to my own immature taste to find I had anticipated the + applause of the learned and the critical, and I became very + desirous to offer my _gratulor_ among the more important + plaudits which you have had from every quarter. I should + certainly have availed myself of the freemasonry of authorship + (for our trade may claim to be a mystery as well as Abhorson's) + to address to you a copy of a new poetical attempt, which I + have now upon the anvil, and I esteem myself particularly obliged + to Mr. Hatchard, and to your goodness acting upon his + information, for giving me the opportunity of paving the way + for such a freedom. I am too proud of the compliments + you honour me with to affect to decline them; and with + respect to the comparative view I have of my own labours + and yours, I can only assure you that none of my little folks, + about the formation of whose tastes and principles I may be + supposed naturally solicitous, have ever read any of my own + poems--while yours have been our regular evening's amusement + My eldest girl begins to read well, and enters as well + into the humour as into the sentiment of your admirable + descriptions of human life. As for rivalry, I think it has + seldom existed among those who know by experience that + there are much better things in the world than literary + reputation, and that one of the best of those good things is + the regard and friendship of those deservedly and generally + esteemed for their worth or their talents. I believe many + dilettante authors do cocker themselves up into a great + jealousy of anything that interferes with what they are + pleased to call their fame: but I should as soon think of + nursing one of my own fingers into a whitlow for my private + amusement as encouraging such a feeling. I am truly sorry + to observe you mention bad health: those who contribute so + much to the improvement as well as the delight of society + should escape this evil. I hope, however, that one day your + state of health may permit you to view this country." + +This interchange of letters was the beginning of a friendship that was +to endure and strengthen through the lives of both poets, for they died +in the self-same year. The "new poetical attempt" that was +"on the anvil" must have been _The Lady of the Lake_, completed and +published in the following year. But already Scott had uneasy misgivings +that the style would not bear unlimited repetition. Even before Byron +burst upon the world with the two first cantos of _Childe Harold_, and +drew on him the eyes of all readers of poetry, Scott had made the +unwelcome discovery that his own matter and manner was imitable, and +that others were borrowing it. Many could now "grow the flower" (or +something like it), for "all had got the seed." It was this persuasion +that set him thinking whether he might not change his topics and his +metre, and still retain his public. To this end he threw up a few tiny +_ballons d'essai_--experiments in the manner of some of his popular +contemporaries, and printed them in the columns of the _Edinburgh Annual +Register_. One of these was a grim story of village crime called _The +Poacher_, and written in avowed imitation of Crabbe. Scott was earnest +in assuring Lockhart that he had written in no spirit of travesty, but +only to test whether he would be likely to succeed in narrative verse of +the same pattern. He had adopted Crabbe's metre, and as far as he could +compass it, his spirit also. The result is noteworthy, and shows once +again how a really original imagination cannot pour itself into +another's mould. A few lines may suffice, in evidence. The couplet about +the vicar's sermons makes one sure that for the moment Scott was +good-humouredly copying one foible at least of his original:-- + + "Approach and through the unlatticed window peep. + Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep; + Sunk 'mid yon sordid blankets, till the sun + Stoop to the west, the plunderer's toils are done. + Loaded and primed, and prompt for desperate hand, + Rifle and fowling-piece beside him stand, + While round the hut are in disorder laid + The tools and booty of his lawless trade; + For force or fraud, resistance or escape + The crow, the saw, the bludgeon, and the crape; + His pilfered powder in yon nook he hoards, + And the filched lead the church's roof affords-- + (Hence shall the rector's congregation fret, + That while his sermon's dry, his walls are wet.) + The fish-spear barbed, the sweeping net are there, + Dog-hides, and pheasant plumes, and skins of hare, + Cordage for toils, and wiring for the snare. + Bartered for game from chase or warren won, + Yon cask holds moonlight,[5] seen when moon was none; + And late-snatched spoils lie stowed in hutch apart, + To wait the associate higgler's evening cart." + +Happily for Scott's fame, and for the world's delight, he did not long +pursue the unprofitable task of copying other men. _Rokeby_ appeared, +was coldly received, and then Scott turned his thoughts to fiction in +prose, came upon his long-lost fragment of _Waverley_ and the need of +conciliating the poetic taste of the day was at an end for ever. But his +affection for Crabbe never waned. In his earlier novels there was no +contemporary poet he more often quoted as headings for his chapters--and +it was Crabbe's _Borough_ to which he listened with unfailing delight +twenty years later, in the last sad hours of his decay. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 5: A cant term for smuggled spirits.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +_THE BOROUGH_ + +(1809-1812) + +The immediate success of _The Parish Register_ in 1807 encouraged Crabbe +to proceed at once with a far longer poem, which had been some years in +hand. _The Borough_ was begun at Rendham in Suffolk in 1801, continued +at Muston after the return thither in 1805, and finally completed during +a long visit to Aldeburgh in the autumn of 1809. That the Poem should +have been "in the making" during at least eight years is quite what +might be inferred from the finished work. It proved, on appearance, to +be of portentous length--at least ten thousand lines. Its versification +included every degree of finish of which Crabbe was capable, 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. On the +present occasion, the three first-named friends had passed away, and +Crabbe took his MS. with him to Yarmouth, on the occasion of his visit +to the Eastern Counties, for Mr. Richard Turner's opinion. The scholarly +rector of Great Yarmouth may well have shrunk from advising on a poem of +ten thousand lines in which, as the result was to show, the +pruning-knife and other trenchant remedies would have seemed to him +urgently needed. As it proved, Mr. Turner's opinion was on the whole +"highly favourable; but he intimated that there were portions of the new +work which might be liable to rough treatment from the critics." + +_The Borough_ is an extension--a very elaborate extension--of the topics +already treated in _The Village_ and _The Parish Register_. The place +indicated is undisguisedly Aldeburgh; but as Crabbe had now chosen a far +larger canvas for his picture, he ventured to enlarge the scope of his +observation, and while retaining the scenery and general character of +the little seaport of his youth, to introduce any incidents of town life +and experiences of human character that he had met with subsequently. +_The Borough_ is Aldeburgh extended and magnified. Besides church +officials it exhibits every shade of nonconformist creed and practice, +notably those of which the writer was now having unpleasant experience +at Muston. 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 sketches of character, as in _The Parish +Register_--the vicar, the curate, the parish clerk, or by some notably +pathetic incident in the life of a tenant of the almshouse, or a +prisoner in the gaol. Some of these reach the highest level of Crabbe's +previous studies in the same kind, and it was to these that the new work +was mainly to owe its success. Despite of frequent defects of +workmanship, they cling to the memory through their truth and intensity, +though to many a reader to-day such, episodes may be chiefly known to +exist through a parenthesis in one of Macaulay's _Essays_, where he +speaks of "that pathetic passage in Crabbe's _Borough_ which has made +many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child." + +The passage referred to is the once-famous description of the condemned +Felon in the "Letter" on _Prisons_. Macaulay had, as we know, his +"heightened way of putting things," but the narrative which he cites, as +foil to one of 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 feelings in the condemned criminal during the +days between his sentence and its execution; the dreams of happier days +that haunt his pillow--days when he wandered with his sweetheart or his +sister through their village meadows:-- + + "Yes! all are with him now, and all the while + Life's early prospects and his Fanny's smile. + Then come his sister and his village friend, + And he will now the sweetest moments spend + Life has to yield,--No! never will he find + Again on earth such pleasure in his mind + He goes through shrubby walks these friends among, + Love in their looks and honour on the tongue. + Nay, there's a charm beyond what nature shows, + The bloom is softer and more sweetly glows; + Pierced by no crime and urged by no desire + For more than true and honest hearts require, + They feel the calm delight, and thus proceed + Through the green lane,--then linger in the mead,-- + Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom,-- + And pluck the blossom where the wild bees hum; + Then through the broomy bound with ease they pass, + And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, + Whore dwarfish flowers among the grass are spread, + And the lamb browses by the linnet's bed; + Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their way + O'er its rough bridge--'and there behold the bay!-- + The ocean smiling to the fervid sun-- + The waves that faintly fall and slowly run-- + The ships at distance and the boats at hand, + And now they walk upon the sea-side sand, + Counting the number, and what kind they be, + Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea: + Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold + The glittering waters on the shingles rolled; + The timid girls, half dreading their design, + Dip the small foot in the retarded brine, + And search for crimson weeds, which spreading flow, + Or lie like pictures on the sand below: + With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun, + Through the small waves so softly shines upon; + And those live lucid jellies which the eye + Delights to trace as they swim glittering by: + Pearl-shells and rubied star-fish they admire, + And will arrange above the parlour fire,-- + Tokens of bliss!--'Oh! horrible! a wave + Roars as it rises--save me, Edward! save!' + She cries:--Alas! the watchman on his way + Calls and lets in--truth, terror, and the day!" + +Allowing for a certain melodramatic climax here led up to, we cannot +deny the impressiveness of this picture--the first-hand quality of its +observation, and an 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-girl who receives back her +sailor-lover from his last voyage, only to watch over his dying hours. +It is in an earlier section (No. ii. _The Church_), beginning: + + "Yes! there are real mourners--I have seen + A fair sad girl, mild, suffering, and serene," + +too long to quote in full, and, as with Crabbe's method generally, not +admitting of being fairly represented by extracts. Then there are +sketches of character in quite a different vein, such as the vicar, +evidently drawn from life. He is the good easy man, popular with the +ladies for a kind of _fade_ complimentary style in which he excels; the +man of "mild benevolence," strongly opposed to every thing new: + + "Habit with him was all the test of truth: + 'It must be right: I've done it from my youth,' + Questions he answered in as brief a way: + 'It must be wrong--it was of yesterday.'" + +Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to disturb any existing +habits or conventions, make up his character: + + "In him his flock found nothing to condemn; + Him sectaries liked--he never troubled them: + No trifles failed his yielding mind to please, + And all his passions sunk in early ease; + Nor one so old has left this world of sin, + More like the being that he entered in." + +An excellent companion sketch to that of the dilettante vicar is +provided in that of the poor curate--the scholar, gentleman, and devout +Christian, struggling against abject poverty to support his large +family. The picture drawn by Crabbe has a separate and interesting +origin. A year before the appearance of _The Borough_, one of 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 diversions as part of the entertainment. +The notorious William Thomas Fitzgerald had been for many years the +regular contributor of the poem, and his efforts on the occasion are +remembered, if only through the opening couplet of Byron's _English +Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, where Fitzgerald is gibbeted as the +_Codrus_ of Juvenal's satire: + + "Still must I hear? shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl + His creaking couplets in a Tavern-Hall?" + +His poem for this year, 1809, is printed at length in the _Gentleman's +Magazine_ for April--and also Crabbe's, recited at the same dinner. +Crabbe seems to have composed it for the occasion, but with the +intention of ultimately weaving it into the poem on which he was then +engaged. 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 assistance and +relief to learned officiating Clergymen in distress, though they may not +have actually commenced Authors--the Author, in allusion to this hope, +has introduced into a Poem which he is preparing for the Press the +following character of a learned Divine in distress." + +Crabbe's lines bearing on the proposed scheme (which seems for a time at +least to have been adopted by the administrators of the Fund) were left +standing when _The Borough_ was published, with, an explanatory note. +They are effective for their purpose, the pathos of them is genuine, and +worthy of attention even in these latter days of the "Queen Victoria +Clergy Fund." The speaker is the curate himself: + + "Long may these founts of Charity remain, + And never shrink, but to be filled again; + True! to the Author they are now confined, + To him who gave the treasure of his mind, + His time, his health,--and thankless found mankind: + But there is hope that from these founts may flow + A side-way stream, and equal good bestow; + Good that may reach us, whom the day's distress + Keeps from the fame and perils of the Press; + Whom Study beckons from the Ills of Life, + And they from Study; melancholy strife! + Who then can say, but bounty now so free, + And so diffused, may find its way to me? + Yes! I may see my decent table yet + Cheered with the meal that adds not to my debt; + May talk of those to whom so much we owe, + And guess their names whom yet we may not know; + Blest, we shall say, are those who thus can give, + And next, who thus upon the bounty live; + Then shall I close with thanks my humble meal, + And feel so well--Oh! God! how shall I feel!" + +Crabbe is known to most readers to-day by the delightful parody of his +style in the _Rejected Addresses,_ which appeared in the autumn of 1812, +and it was certainly on _The Borough_ 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 +Crabbe's lighter and more colloquial style. Every little foible of the +poet, when in this vein, is copied with great skill. The superfluity of +information, as in the case of-- + + "John Richard William Alexander Dwyer," + +whose only place in the narrative is that he preceded Pat Jennings's +father in the situation as + + "Footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire"; + +or again in the detail that, + + "Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy + Up as a corn-cutter--a safe employ" + +(a perfect Crabbian couplet), is imitated throughout, Crabbe's habit of +frequent verbal antithesis, and even of something like punning, is +exactly caught in such a couplet as: + + "Big-worded bullies who by quarrels live-- + Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give." + +Much of the parody, no doubt, exhibits the fanciful humour of the +brothers Smith, rather than of Crabbe, as is the case with many +parodies. Of course there are couplets here and there in Crabbe's +narratives which justify the burlesque. We have: + + "What is the truth? Old Jacob married thrice; + He dealt in coals, and avarice was his vice," + +or the lines which the parodists themselves quote in their +justification, + + "Something had happened wrong about a Bill + Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill, + So to amend it I was told to go, + And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co." + +But lines such as these in fact occur only at long intervals. Crabbe's +couplets are more often pedestrian rather than grotesque. + +The poet himself, as the witty brothers relate with some pride, was by +no means displeased or offended by the liberty taken. When they met in +later years at William Spencer's, Crabbe hurried to meet James Smith +with outstretched hand, "Ah! my old enemy, 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; but in their versification they have done me +admirably." Here Crabbe shows a slight lack of self-knowledge. For when +to the Letter on _Trades_ the following extenuating postscript is found +necessary, there would seem to be hardly any room for the parodist: + + "If I have in this Letter praised the good-humour of a man + confessedly too inattentive to business, and if in the one on + _Amusements_, I have written somewhat sarcastically of 'the + brick-floored parlour which the butcher lets,' be credit given + to me that in the one case I had no intention to apologise for + idleness, nor any design in the other to treat with contempt + the resources of the poor. The good-humour is considered as + the consolation of disappointment, and the room is so mentioned + because the lodger is vain. Most of my readers will + perceive this; but I shall be sorry if by any I am supposed to + make pleas for the vices of men, or treat their wants and + infirmities with derision or with disdain." + +After this, Crabbe himself might have admitted that the descent is not +very far to the parodist's delightful apology for the change from "one +hautboy" to "one fiddle" in the description of the band. The subsequent +explanation, how the poet had purposely intertwined the various +handkerchiefs which rescued Pat Jennings's hat from the pit, lest the +real owner should be detected, and the reason for it, is a not less +exquisite piece of fooling:--"For, in the statistical view of life and +manners which I occasionally 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 recklessly awarded or denied to us +by our fellow-creatures--is very variable in the spheres of its +operation. The sense of humour is in its essence, as we have often been +told, largely a sense of proportion, and in this sense Crabbe was +certainly deficient. The want of it accounts for much more in his +writings than for his prose notes and prefaces. It explains much of the +diffuseness and formlessness of his poetry, and his inability to grasp +the great truth how much the half may be greater than the whole. + +In spite, however, of these defects, and of the inequalities of the +workmanship, _The Borough_ was from the first a success. The poem +appeared in February 1810, and went through six editions in the next six +years. It does not indeed present an alluring picture of life in the +provinces. It even reminds us of a saying 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. +These, when they occur, are proportionally welcome. They include some +exquisite descriptions of nature, though with Crabbe it will be noticed +that it is always the nature close about his feet, the hedge-row, the +meadow, the cottage-garden: as his son has noted, his outlook never +extends to the landscape beyond. + +In the respects just mentioned, the qualities exhibited in the new poem +have been noticed before in _The Village_ and _The Parish Register_. In +_The Borough_, however, appear some maturer specimens of this power, +showing how Crabbe's art was perfecting by practice. 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 other characters in Crabbe, drawn +from life. The pious founder, being left without wife or children, lives +in apparent penury, but while driving all beggars from his door, devotes +his wealth to secret acts of helpfulness to all his poorer neighbours in +distress:-- + + "A twofold taste he had; to give and spare, + Both were his duties, and had equal care; + It was his joy to sit alone and fast, + Then send a widow and her boys repast: + Tears in his eyes would, spite of him, appear, + But he from other eyes has kept the tear: + All in a wintry night from far he came + To soothe the sorrows of a suffering dame, + Whose husband robbed him, and to whom he meant + A lingering, but reforming punishment: + Home then he walked, and found his anger rise + When fire and rushlight met his troubled eyes; + But these extinguished, and his prayer addressed + To Heaven in hope, he calmly sank to rest." + +The good man lived on, until, when his seventieth year was past, a +building was seen rising on the green north of the village--an almshouse +for 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 +government in the hands of six trustees, the modest donor and the pious +lady-relative who had shared in his good works passed quietly out of +life. + +This prelude is followed by an account of the trustees who succeeded to +the management after the founder's death, among them a Sir Denys Brand, +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 founder by admitting to the almshouses persons of the shadiest +antecedents, on the ground that they at least had been conspicuous in +their day: + + "Not men in trade by various loss brought down, + But those whose glory once amazed the town; + Who their last guinea in their pleasure spent, + Yet never fell so low as to repent: + To these his pity he could largely deal, + Wealth they had known, and therefore want could feel." + +From this unfit class of pensioner Crabbe selects three for his minute +analysis of character. They are, as usual, of a very sordid type. The +first, a man named "Blaney," had his prototype in a half-pay major known +to Crabbe in his Aldeburgh days, and even the tolerant Jeffrey held that +the character was rather too shameless for poetical treatment. The next +inmate 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 possessed at least some of the best qualities of a great +novelist. Clelia is, in fact, a kind of country-town Becky Sharp, whose +wiles and schemes are not destined to end in a white-washed reputation +at a fashionable watering-place. On the contrary she falls from one +ignominy to another until, by a gross abuse of a public charity, she +ends her days in the almshouse! + +One further instance may be cited of Crabbe's persistent effort to +awaken attention to the problem of poor-law relief. In his day the +question, both as to policy and humanity, between indoor and outdoor +relief, was still unsettled. In _The Borough_, as described, many of the +helpless poor were relieved at their own homes. But a new scheme, "The +maintenance of the poor in a common mansion erected by the Hundred," +seems to have been in force 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 thought and humanity have been +continually at work upon such problems. The loneliness and weariness of +workhouse existence passed by the aged poor, separated from kinsfolk and +friends, in "the day-room of a London workhouse," have been lately set +forth by Miss Edith Sellers, in the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_, +with a pathetic incisiveness not less striking than that of the +following passage from the Eighteenth Letter of Crabbe's _Borough_:-- + + "Who can, when here, the social neighbour meet? + Who learn the story current in the street? + Who to the long-known intimate impart + Facts they have learned, or feelings of the heart? + They talk indeed, but who can choose a friend, + Or seek companions at their journey's end? + Here are not those whom they when infants knew; + Who, with like fortune, up to manhood grew; + Who, with like troubles, at old age arrived; + Who, like themselves, the joy of life survived; + Whom time and custom so familiar made, + That looks the meaning in the mind conveyed: + But here to strangers, words nor looks impart + The various movements of the suffering heart; + Nor will that heart with those alliance own, + To whom its views and hopes are all unknown + What, if no grievous fears their lives annoy, + Is it not worse no prospects to enjoy? + 'Tis cheerless living in such bounded view, + With nothing dreadful, but with nothing new; + Nothing to bring them joy, to make them weep; + The day itself is, like the night, asleep." + +The essence of workhouse monotony has surely never been better indicated +than here. + +_The Borough_ did much to spread Crabbe's reputation while he remained, +doing his duty to the best of his ability and knowledge, in the quiet +loneliness of the Vale of Belvoir, but his growing fame lay far outside +the boundaries of his parish. When, a few years later, he visited London +and was received with general welcome by the distinguished world of +literature and the arts, he was much surprised. "In my own 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. Crabbe's condition was now +increasingly sad, her mind being almost gone. There was no daughter, and +we hear of no other female relative at hand to assist Crabbe in the +constant watching of the patient. This circumstance alone limited his +opportunities of accepting the hospitalities of the neighbourhood, +though with the Welbys and other county families, as well as with the +surrounding clergy, he was a welcome guest. + +_The Borough_ appeared in February 1810, and the reviewers were prompt +in their attention. The _Edinburgh_ reviewed the poem in April of the +same year, and the _Quarterly_ followed in October. Jeffrey had already +noticed _The Parish Register_ in 1808. The critic's admiration of Crabbe +had been, and remained to the end, cordial and sincere. But now, in +reviewing the new volume, a note of warning appears. The critic finds +himself obliged to admit that the current 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 doctrine. The critic in fact lays down the extraordinary +canon that the function of Poetry is not to present any truth, if it +happens to be unpleasant, but to substitute an agreeable illusion in its +place. "We turn to poetry," he says, "not that we may see and feel what +we see and feel in our daily experience, but that we may be refreshed by +other emotions, and fairer prospects, that we may take shelter from the +realities of life in the paradise of Fancy." + +The appearance of these two prominent reviews to a certain extent +influenced the direction of Crabbe's genius for the remainder of his +life. He evidently had given them earnest consideration, and in the +preface to the _Tales_, his next production, he attempted something like +an answer to each. Without mentioning any names he replies to Jeffrey in +the first part of his preface, and to the _Quarterly_ reviewer 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 advice. He intimates that +he had already made the experiment, but without success. His peculiar +gifts did not fit him for it. As he wrote the words, he doubtless had in +mind the many prose romances that he had written, and then consigned to +the flames. The short story, or rather the exhibition of a single +character developed through a few incidents, he felt to be the method +that fitted his talent best. + +Crabbe then proceeds to deal with the question, evidently implied by the +_Quarterly_ reviewer, how far many passages in _The Borough_, when +concerned with low life, were really poetry at all. Crabbe pleads in +reply the example of other English poets, whose claim to the title had +never been disputed. He cites Chaucer, who had depicted very low life +indeed, and in the same rhymed metre. "If all that kind of satire +wherein character is skilfully delineated, must no longer be esteemed as +genuine poetry," then what becomes of the author of _The Canterbury +Tales_? Crabbe could not supply, or be expected to supply, the answer to +this question. He could not discern 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, and both +described sordid and worldly ambitions. But Pope was strongest exactly +where Crabbe was weak. He had achieved absolute mastery of form, and +could condense into a couplet some truth which Crabbe expanded, often +excellently, in a hundred lines of very unequal workmanship. The +_Quarterly_ reviewer quotes, as admirable of its kind, the description +in _The Borough_ of the card-club, with the bickerings and ill-nature of +the old ladies and gentlemen who frequented it. It is in truth very +graphic, and no doubt absolutely faithful to life; but it is rather +metrical fiction than poetry. There is more of the essence of poetry in +a single couplet of Pope's: + + "See how the world its veterans rewards-- + A youth of frolics, an old age of cards." + +For here the expression is faultless, and Pope has educed +an eternally pathetic truth, of universal application. + +Even had the gentle remonstrances of the two reviewers never been +expressed, it would seem as if Crabbe had already arrived at somewhat +similar conclusions on his own account. At the time the reviews +appeared, the whole of the twenty-one _Tales_ to be published in August +1812 were already written. Crabbe had perceived that if he was to retain +the admiring public he had won, he must break fresh ground. Aldeburgh +was played out. It had provided abundant material and been an excellent +training-ground for Crabbe's powers. But he had discovered that there +were other fields worth cultivating besides that of the 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 whether the characters in his various +poems were drawn from life, he replied:--"Yes, I will tell you readily +about my ventures, whom I endeavour to paint as nearly as I could, and +_dare_--for in some cases I dared not.... Thus far you are correct: +there is not one of whom I had not in my mind the original, but I was +obliged in most cases to take them from their real situations, and in +one or two instances even to change their sex, and in many, the +circumstances.... Indeed I do not know that I could paint merely from my +own fancy, and there is no cause why I should. Is there not diversity +enough in society?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +_TALES_ + +(1812) + +Crabbe's new volume--"Tales. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL.B."--was +published by Mr. Hatchard of Piccadilly in the summer of 1812. It +received a warm welcome from the poet's admirers, and was reviewed, most +appreciatively, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_ for November. The _Tales_ +were twenty-one in number, and to each was prefixed a series, often four +or five, of quotations from Shakespeare, illustrating the incidents in +the Tales, or the character there depicted. Crabbe's knowledge of +Shakespeare must have been in those days, when concordances were not, +very remarkable, for he quotes by no means always from the best known +plays, and he was not a frequenter of the theatre. Crabbe had of late +studied human nature in books as well as in life. + +As already remarked, the Tales are often built upon events in his own +family, or else occurring within their knowledge. The second in order of +publication, _The Parting Hour_, arose out of an incident in the life of +the poet's own brother, which is thus related in the notes to the +edition of 1834: + + "Mr. Crabbe's fourth brother, William, taking to a sea-faring + life, was made prisoner by the Spaniards. He was + carried to Mexico, where he became a silversmith, married, + and prospered, until his increasing riches attracted a charge + of Protestantism; the consequence of which was much persecution. + He at last was obliged to abandon Mexico, his + property, and his family; and was discovered in the year + 1803 by an Aldeburgh sailor on the coast of Honduras, + where again he seems to have found some success in business. + This sailor was the only person he had seen for many a year + who could tell him anything about Aldeburgh and his family, + and great was his perplexity when he was informed that his + eldest brother, George, was a clergyman. 'This cannot be + _our_ George,' said the wanderer, 'he was a _Doctor_! This was + the first, and it was also the last, tidings that ever reached + Mr. Crabbe of his brother William; and upon the Aldeburgh + sailor's story of his casual interview, it is obvious that + he built this tale." + +The story as developed by Crabbe is pathetic and picturesque, reminding +us in its central interest of _Enoch Arden_. Allen Booth, the youngest +son of his parents dwelling in a small seaport, falls early in love with +a child schoolfellow, for whom his affection never falters. When grown +up the young man accepts an offer from a prosperous kinsman in the West +Indies to join him in his business. His beloved sees him depart with +many misgivings, though their mutual devotion was never to fade. She +does not see him again for forty years, when he returns, like Arden, to +his "native bay," + + "A worn-out man with wither'd limbs and lame, + His mind oppress'd with woes, and bent with age his frame." + +He finds his old love, who had been faithful to her engagement for ten +years, and then (believing Allen to be dead) had married. She is now a +widow, with grown-up children scattered through the world, and is +alone. Allen then tells his sad story. The ship in which he sailed from +England had been taken by the Spaniards, and he had been carried a slave +to the West Indies, where he worked in a silver mine, improved his +position under a kind master, and finally married a Spanish girl, +hopeless of ever returning to England though still unforgetful of his +old love. He accumulates money, and, like Crabbe's brother, incurs the +envy of his Roman Catholic neighbours. He is denounced as a heretic, who +would doubtless bring up his children in the accursed English faith. On +his refusal to become a Catholic he is expelled the country, as the +condition of his life being spared: + + "His wife, his children, weeping in his sight, + All urging him to flee, he fled, and cursed his flight." + +After many adventures he falls in with a ship bound for England, but +again his return is delayed. He is impressed (it was war-time), and +fights for his country; loses a limb, is again left upon a foreign shore +where his education finds him occupation as a clerk; and finally, broken +with age and toil, finds his way back to England, where the faithful +friend of his youth takes care of him and nurses him to the end. The +situation at the close is very touching--for the joy of re-union is +clouded by the real love he feels for the Spanish wife and children from +whom he had been torn, and who are continually present to him in his +dreams. + +Nor is the treatment inadequate. It is at once discernible how much +Crabbe had already gained by the necessity for concentration upon the +development of a story instead of on the mere analysis of character. The +style, moreover, has clarified and gained in dignity: there are few, if +any, relapses into the homelier style on which the parodist could try +his hand. Had the author of _Enoch Arden_ treated the same theme in +blank-verse, the workmanship would have been finer, but he could hardly +have sounded a truer note of unexaggerated pathos. + +The same may be said of the beautiful tale of _The Lover's Journey_. +Here again is the product of an experience belonging to Crabbe's +personal history. In his early Aldeburgh days, when he was engaged to +Sarah Elmy with but faint hope of ever being able to marry, it was one +of the rare alleviations of his distressed condition to walk over from +Aldeburgh to Beccles (some twenty miles distant), where his betrothed +was occasionally a visitor to her mother and sisters. "It was in his +walks," writes the son, "between Aldeburgh and Beccles that Mr. Crabbe +passed through the very scenery described in the first part of _The +Lover's Journey_; while near Beccles, in another direction, he found the +contrast of rich vegetation introduced in the latter part of that tale; +nor have I any doubt that the _disappointment_ of the story figures out +something that, on one of these visits, befell himself, and the feelings +with which he received it. + + "Gone to a friend, she tells me;--I commend + Her purpose: means she to a female friend?" + +"For truth compels me to say, that he was by no means free from the less +amiable sign of a strong attachment--jealousy." The story is of the +slightest--an incident rather than a story. The lover, joyous and +buoyant, traverses the dreary coast scenery of Suffolk, and because he +is happy, finds beauty and charm in the commonest and most familiar +sights and sounds of nature: every single hedge-row blossom, every group +of children at their play. The poem is indeed an illustration of +Coleridge's lines in his ode _Dejection_: + + "O Lady, we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does Nature live,-- + Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud." + +All along the road to his beloved's house, nature wears this +"wedding-garment." On his arrival, however, the sun fades suddenly from +the landscape. The lady is from home: gone to visit a friend a few miles +distant, not so far but that her lover can follow,--but the slight, real +or imaginary, probably the latter, comes as such a rebuff, that during +the "little more--how far away!" that he travels, the country, though +now richer and lovelier, seems to him (as once to Hamlet) a mere +"pestilent congregation of vapours." But in the end he finds his +mistress and learns that she had gone on duty, not for pleasure,--and +they return happy again, and so happy indeed, that he has neither eyes +nor thoughts for any of nature's fertilities or barrennesses--only for +the dear one at his side. + +I have already had occasion to quote a few lines from this beautiful +poem, to show Crabbe's minute observation--in his time so rare--of +flowers and birds and all that makes the charm of rural scenery--but I +must quote some more: + + "'Various as beauteous, Nature, is thy face,' + Exclaim'd Orlando: 'all that grows has grace: + All are appropriate--bog, and marsh, and fen, + Are only poor to undiscerning men; + Here may the nice and curious eye explore + How Nature's hand adorns the rushy moor, + Here the rare moss in secret shade is found, + Here the sweet myrtle of the shaking ground; + Beauties are these that from the view retire, + But well repay th' attention they require; + For these my Laura will her home forsake, + And all the pleasures they afford, partake.'" + +And then follows a masterly description of a gipsy encampment on which +the lover suddenly comes in his travels. Crabbe's treatment of peasant +life has often been compared to that of divers painters--the Dutch +school, Hogarth, Wilkie, and others--and the following curiously +suggests Frederick Walker's fine drawing, _The Vagrants_: + + "Again, the country was enclosed, a wide + And sandy road has banks on either side; + Where, lo! a hollow on the left appear'd, + And there a gipsy tribe their tent had rear'd; + 'Twas open spread, to catch the morning sun, + And they had now their early meal begun, + When two brown boys just left their grassy seat, + The early Trav'ller with their prayers to greet: + While yet Orlando held his pence in hand, + He saw their sister on her duty stand; + Some twelve years old, demure, affected, sly, + Prepared the force of early powers to try; + Sudden a look of languor he descries, + And well-feigned apprehension in her eyes; + Train'd but yet savage in her speaking face, + He mark'd the features of her vagrant race; + When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd + The vice implanted in her youthful breast: + Forth from the tent her elder brother came, + Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame + The young designer, but could only trace + The looks of pity in the Trav'ller's face: + Within, the Father, who from fences nigh + Had brought the fuel for the fire's supply, + Watch'd now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected by. + On ragged rug, just borrowed from the bed, + And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed, + In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd, + Reclined the Wife, an infant at her breast; + In her wild face some touch of grace remain'd, + Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain'd; + Her bloodshot eyes on her unheeding mate + Were wrathful turn'd, and seem'd her wants to state, + Cursing his tardy aid--her Mother there + With gipsy-state engross'd the only chair; + Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands, + And reads the milk-maid's fortune in her hands, + Tracing the lines of life; assumed through years, + Each feature now the steady falsehood wears. + With hard and savage eye she views the food, + And grudging pinches their intruding brood; + Last in the group, the worn-out Grandsire sits + Neglected, lost, and living but by fits: + Useless, despised, his worthless labours done, + And half protected by the vicious Son, + Who half supports him; he with heavy glance + Views the young ruffians who around him dance; + And, by the sadness in his face, appears + To trace the progress of their future years: + Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit, + Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat! + What shame and grief, what punishment and pain, + Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain-- + Ere they like him approach their latter end, + Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend! + + But this Orlando felt not; 'Rogues,' said he, + 'Doubtless they are, but merry rogues they be; + They wander round the land, and be it true + They break the laws--then let the laws pursue + The wanton idlers; for the life they live, + Acquit I cannot, but I can forgive.' + This said, a portion from his purse was thrown, + And every heart seem'd happy like his own." + +_The Patron_, one of the most carefully elaborated of the Tales, is on +an old and familiar theme. The scorn that "patient merit of the unworthy +takes"; the misery of the courtier doomed "in suing long to bide";--the +ills that assail the scholar's life, + + "Toil, envy, want, the Patron and the jail," + +are standing subjects for the moralist and the satirist. In Crabbe's +poem we have the story of a young man, the son of a "Borough-burgess," +who, showing some real promise as a poet, and having been able to render +the local Squire some service by his verses at election time, is invited +in return to pay a visit of some weeks at the Squire's country-seat. The +Squire has vaguely undertaken to find some congenial post for the young +scholar, whose ideas and ambitions are much in advance of those +entertained for him in his home. The young man has a most agreeable time +with his new friends. He lives for the while with every refinement about +him, and the Squire's daughter, a young lady of the type of Lady Clara +Vere de Vere, evidently enjoys the opportunity of breaking a country +heart for pastime, "ere she goes to town." For after a while the family +leave for their mansion in London, the Squire at parting once more +impressing on his young guest that he will not forget him. After waiting +a reasonable time, the young poet repairs to London and seeks to obtain +an interview with his Patron. After many unsuccessful trials, and +rebuffs at the door from the servants, a letter is at last sent out to +him from their master, coolly advising him to abjure all dreams of a +literary life and offering him a humble post in the Custom House. The +young man, in bitterness of heart, tries the work for a short time; and +then, his health and spirits having utterly failed, he returns to his +parents' home to die, the father thanking God, as he moves away from his +son's grave, that no other of his children has tastes and talents above +his position: + + "'There lies my Boy,' he cried, 'of care bereft, + And, Heaven be praised, I've not a genius left: + No one among ye, sons! is doomed to live + On high-raised hopes of what the Great may give.'" + +Crabbe, who is nothing if not incisive in the drawing of his moral, and +lays on his colours with no sparing hand, represents the heartless +Patron and his family as hearing the sad tidings with quite amazing +_sang-froid_: + + "Meantime the news through various channels spread, + The youth, once favour'd with such praise, was dead: + 'Emma,' the Lady cried, 'my words attend, + Your siren-smiles have kill'd your humble friend; + The hope you raised can now delude no more, + Nor charms, that once inspired, can now restore' + + Faint was the flush of anger and of shame, + That o'er the cheek of conscious beauty came: + 'You censure not,' said she, 'the sun's bright rays, + When fools imprudent dare the dangerous gaze; + And should a stripling look till he were blind, + You would not justly call the light unkind; + But is he dead? and am I to suppose + The power of poison in such looks as those?' + She spoke, and pointing to the mirror, cast + A pleased gay glance, and curtsied as she pass'd. + + My Lord, to whom the poet's fate was told, + Was much affected, for a man so cold: + 'Dead!' said his lordship, 'run distracted, mad! + Upon my soul I'm sorry for the lad; + And now, no doubt, th' obliging world will say + That my harsh usage help'd him on his way: + What! I suppose, I should have nursed his muse, + And with champagne have brighten'd up his views, + Then had he made me famed my whole life long, + And stunn'd my ears with gratitude and song. + Still should the father hear that I regret + Our joint misfortune--Yes! I'll not forget.'" + +The story, though it has no precise prototype in Crabbe's own history, +is clearly the fruit of his experience of life at Belvoir Castle, +combined with the sad recollection of his sufferings when only a few +years before he, a young man with the consciousness of talent, was +rolling butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay. + +Much of the Tale is admirably and forcibly written, but again it may be +said that it is powerful fiction rather than poetry--and indeed into +such matters poetry can hardly enter. It displays the fine observation +of Miss Austen, clothed in effective couplets of the school of Johnson +and Churchill. Yet every now and then the true poet comes to the +surface. The essence of a dank and misty day in late autumn has never +been seized with more perfect truth than in these lines: + + "Cold grew the foggy morn, the day was brief, + Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf; + The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods + Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods: + All green was vanish'd, save of pine and yew, + That still displayed their melancholy hue; + Save the green holly with its berries red, + And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread." + +The scheme of these detached Tales had served to develop one special +side of Crabbe's talent. The analysis of human character, with its +strength and weakness (but specially the latter), finds fuller exercise +as the poet has to trace its effects upon the earthly fortunes of the +persons portrayed. The Tale entitled _The Gentleman Farmer_ is a +striking illustration in point. Jeffrey in his review of the _Tales_ in +the _Edinburgh_ supplies, as usual, a short abstract of the story, not +without due insight into its moral. But a profounder student of human +nature than Jeffrey has, in our own day, cited the Tale as worthy even +to illustrate a memorable teaching of St. Paul. The Bishop of Worcester, +better known as Canon Gore to the thousands who listened to the +discourse in Westminster Abbey, finds in this story a perfect +illustration of what moral freedom is, and what it is often erroneously +supposed to be: + + "It is of great practical importance that we should get a + just idea of what our freedom consists in. There are men + who, under the impulse of a purely materialist science, declare + the sense of moral freedom to be an illusion. This is of course + a gross error. But what has largely played into the hands of + this error is the exaggerated idea of human freedom which is + ordinarily current, an idea which can only be held by ignoring + our true and necessary dependence and limitation. It is this + that we need to have brought home to us. There is an admirable + story among George Crabbe's _Tales_ called 'The Gentleman + Farmer.' The hero starts in life resolved that he will + not put up with any bondage. The orthodox clergyman, + the orthodox physician, and orthodox matrimony--all these + alike represent social bondage in different forms, and he will + have none of them So he starts on a career of 'unchartered + freedom' + + 'To prove that _he alone was king of him,_' + + and the last scene of all represents him the weak slave of + his mistress, a quack doctor, and a revivalist--'which things + are an allegory.'" + +The quotation shows that Crabbe, neglected by the readers of poetry +to-day, is still cherished by the psychologist and divine. It is to the +"graver mind" rather than to the "lighter heart" that he oftenest +appeals. Newman, to mention no small names, found Crabbe's pathos and +fidelity to Human Nature even more attractive to him in advanced years +than in youth. There is indeed much in common between Crabbe's treatment +of life and its problems, and Newman's. Both may be called "stern" +portrayers of human nature, not only as intended in Byron's famous line, +but in Wordsworth's use of the epithet when he invoked Duty as the +"stern Daughter of the voice of God." A kindred lesson to that drawn by +Canon Gore from _The Gentleman Farmer_ is taught in the yet grimmer Tale +of _Edward Shore_. The story, as summarised by Jeffrey, is as follows: + + "The hero is a young man of aspiring genius and enthusiastic + temper with an ardent love of virtue, but no settled + principles either of conduct or opinion. He first conceives an + attachment for an amiable girl, who is captivated with his + conversation; but, being too poor to marry, soon comes to + spend more of his time in the family of an elderly sceptic of + his acquaintance, who had recently married a young wife, and + placed unbounded confidence in her virtue, and the honour of + his friend. In a moment of temptation they abuse this + confidence. The husband renounces him with dignified composure; + and he falls at once from the romantic pride of his + virtue. He then seeks the company of the dissipated and + gay, and ruins his health and fortune without regaining his + tranquillity. When in gaol and miserable, he is relieved by + an unknown hand, and traces the benefaction to the friend + whose former kindness he had so ill repaid. This humiliation + falls upon his proud spirit and shattered nerves with an + overwhelming force, and his reason fails beneath it. He is + for some time a raving maniac, and then falls into a state of + gay and compassionable imbecility, which is described with + inimitable beauty in the close of this story." + +Jeffrey's abstract is fairly accurate, save in one particular. Edward +Shore can hardly be said to feel an "ardent love of virtue." Rather is +he perfectly confident of his respectability, and bitterly contemptuous +of those who maintain the necessity of religion to control men's unruly +passions. His own lofty conceptions of the dignity of human nature are +sufficient for himself: + + "'While reason guides me, I shall walk aright, + Nor need a steadier hand, or stronger light; + Nor this in dread of awful threats, design'd + For the weak spirit and the grov'ling mind; + But that, engaged by thoughts and views sublime, + I wage free war with grossness and with crime.' + Thus looked he proudly on the vulgar crew, + Whom statutes govern, and whom fears subdue." + +As motto for this story Crabbe quotes the fine speech of Henry V. on +discovering the treachery of Lord Scrope, whose character had hitherto +seemed so immaculate. The comparison thus suggested is not as felicitous +as in many of Crabbe's citations. Had _In_ _Memoriam_ been then +written, a more exact parallel might have been found in Tennyson's +warning to the young enthusiast: + + "See thou, that countest reason ripe + In holding by the law within, + Thou fail not in a world of sin, + And ev'n for want of such a type." + +The story is for the most part admirably told. The unhappy man, reduced +to idiocy of a harmless kind, and the common playmate of the village +children, is encountered now and then by the once loved maid, who might +have made him happy: + + "Kindly she chides his boyish flights, while he + Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be; + And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes + Explore her looks; he listens to her sighs; + Charm'd by her voice, th' harmonious sounds invade + His clouded mind, and for a time persuade: + Like a pleased infant, who has newly caught + From the maternal glance a gleam of thought, + He stands enrapt, the half-known voice to hear, + And starts, half conscious, at the falling tear. + + Rarely from town, nor then unwatch'd, he goes, + In darker mood, as if to hide his woes; + Returning soon, he with impatience seeks + His youthful friends, and shouts, and sings, and speaks; + Speaks a wild speech with action all as wild-- + The children's leader, and himself a child; + He spins their top, or at their bidding bends + His back, while o'er it leap his laughing friends; + Simple and weak, he acts the boy once more, + And heedless children call him _Silly Shore_." + +In striking contrast to the prevailing tone of the other Tales is the +charming story, conceived in a vein of purest comedy, called _The Frank +Courtship_. This Tale alone should be a decisive answer to those who +have doubted Crabbe's possession of the gift of humour, and on this +occasion he has refrained from letting one dark shadow fall across his +picture. It tells of one Jonas Kindred, a wealthy puritanic Dissenter of +narrowest creed and masterful temper. He has an only daughter, the pride +of her parents, and brought up by them in the strictest tenets of the +sect. Her father has a widowed and childless sister, with a comfortable +fortune, living in some distant town; and in pity of her solitary +condition he allows his naturally vivacious daughter to spend the +greater part of the year with her aunt. The aunt does not share the +prejudices of her brother's household. She likes her game of cards and +other social joys, and is quite a leader of fashion in her little town. +To this life and its enjoyments the beautiful and clever Sybil takes +very kindly, and unfolds many attractive graces. Once a year the aunt +and niece by arrangement spend a few weeks in Sybil's old home. The +aunt, with much serpentine wisdom, arranges that she and her niece shall +adapt themselves to this very different atmosphere--eschew cards, attend +regularly at chapel, and comply with the tone and habits of the family. +The niece, however, is really as good as she is pretty, and her +conscience smites her for deceiving her father, of whom she is genuinely +fond. She stands before him "pure, pensive, simple, sad,"--yet + + "the damsel's heart, + When Jonas praised, reproved her for the part; + For Sybil, fond of pleasure, gay and light, + Had still a secret bias to the right; + Vain as she was--and flattery made her vain-- + Her simulation gave her bosom pain." + +As time wears on, however, this state of things must come to a close. +Jonas is anxious that his daughter shall marry suitably, and he finds +among his neighbours an admirable young man, a staunch member of the +"persuasion," and well furnished in this world's goods. He calls his +daughter home, that she may be at once introduced to her future husband, +for the father is as certain as Sir Anthony Absolute himself that +daughters should accept what is offered them and ask no questions. Sybil +is by no means unwilling to enter the holy state, if the right man can +be found. Indeed, she is wearying of the aimless life she lives with her +worldly aunt, and the gradual change in her thoughts and hopes is +indicated in a passage of much delicacy and insight: + + "Jonas now ask'd his daughter--and the Aunt, + Though loth to lose her, was obliged to grant.-- + But would not Sybil to the matron cling, + And fear to leave the shelter of her wing? + No! in the young there lives a love of change, + And to the easy they prefer the strange! + Then, too, the joys she once pursued with zeal, + From whist and visits sprung, she ceased to feel: + When with, the matrons Sybil first sat down, + To cut for partners and to stake her crown, + This to the youthful maid preferment seem'd, + Who thought what woman she was then esteem'd; + But in few years, when she perceived indeed + The real woman to the girl succeed, + No longer tricks and honours fill'd her mind, + But other feelings, not so well defined; + She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard + To sit and ponder o'er an ugly card; + Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr'd, + Pleased with the pensive gloom and evening bird; + Thither, from company retired, she took + The silent walk, or read the fav'rite book." + +The interview between Sybil and the young man is conceived with real +skill and humour. The young lady receives her lover, prepared to treat +him with gentle mockery and to keep him at a convenient distance. The +young lover is not daunted, and plainly warns her against the +consequences of such levity. But as the little duel proceeds, each +gradually detects the real good that underlies the surface qualities of +the other. In spite of his formalism, Sybil discerns that her lover is +full of good sense and feeling; and he makes the same discovery with +regard to the young lady's _badinage._ And then, after a conflict of +wits that seems to terminate without any actual result, the anxious +father approaches his child with a final appeal to her sense of filial +duty: + + "With anger fraught, but willing to persuade, + The wrathful father met the smiling maid: + 'Sybil,' said he, 'I long, and yet I dread + To know thy conduct--hath Josiah fled? + And, grieved and fretted by thy scornful air, + For his lost peace, betaken him to prayer? + Couldst then his pure and modest mind distress + By vile remarks upon his speech, address, + Attire, and voice?'--'All this I must confess.' + 'Unhappy child! what labour will it cost + To win him back!'--'I do not think him lost.' + 'Courts he then (trifler!) insult and disdain?'-- + 'No; but from these he courts me to refrain.' + 'Then hear me, Sybil: should Josiah leave + Thy father's house?'--'My father's child would grieve.' + 'That is of grace, and if he come again + To speak of love?'--'I might from grief refrain.' + 'Then wilt thou, daughter, our design embrace?'-- + Can I resist it, if it be of grace?' + 'Dear child! in three plain words thy mind express: + Wilt thou have this good youth?'--'Dear father! yes.'" + +All the characters in the story--the martinet father and his poor +crushed wife, as well as the pair of lovers--are indicated with an +appreciation of the value of dramatic contrast that might make the +little story effective on the stage. One of the Tales in this +collection, _The Confidant_, was actually turned into a little drama in +blank verse by Charles Lamb, under the changed title of _The Wife's +Trial: or the Intruding Widow_. The story of Crabbe's _Confidant_ is not +pleasant; and Lamb thought well to modify it, so as to diminish the +gravity of the secret of which the malicious friend was possessed. There +is nothing but what is sweet and attractive in the little comedy of _The +Frank Courtship_, and it might well be commended to the dexterous and +sympathetic hand of Mr. J.M. Barrie. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +VISITING IN LONDON + +(1812-1819) + +In the margin of FitzGerald's copy of the _Memoir_ an extract is quoted +from Crabbe's Diary: "1810, Nov. 7.--Finish Tales. Not happy hour." The +poet's comment may have meant something more than that so many of his +Tales dealt with sad instances of human frailty. At that moment, and for +three years longer, there hung over Crabbe's family life a cloud that +never lifted--the hopeless illness of his wife. Two years before, +Southey, in answer to a friend who had made some reference to Crabbe and +his poetry, writes: + + "With Crabbe's poems I have been acquainted for about + twenty years, having read them when a schoolboy on their + first publication, and, by the help of _Elegant Extracts_, + remembered from that time what was best worth remembering. + You rightly compare him to Goldsmith. He is an imitator, + or rather an _antithesizer_ of Goldsmith, if such a word may be + coined for the occasion. His merit is precisely the same as + Goldsmith's--that of describing things clearly and strikingly; + but there is a wide difference between the colouring of the + two poets. Goldsmith threw a sunshine over all his pictures, + like that of one of our water-colour artists when he paints + for ladies--a light and a beauty not to be found in Nature, + though not more brilliant or beautiful than what Nature + really affords; Crabbe's have a gloom which is also not in + Nature--not the shade of a heavy day, of mist, or of clouds, + but the dark and overcharged shadows of one who paints by + lamplight--whose very lights have a gloominess. In part + this is explained by his history." + +Southey's letter was written in September 1808, before either _The +Borough_ or the _Tales_ was published, which may account for the +inadequacy of his criticism on Crabbe's poetry. But the above passage +throws light upon a period in Crabbe's history to which his son +naturally does little more than refer in general and guarded terms. In a +subsequent passage of the letter already quoted, we are reminded that as +early as the year 1803 Mrs. Crabbe's mental derangement was familiarly +known to her friends. + +But now, when his latest book was at last in print, and attracting +general attention, the end of Crabbe's long watching was not far off. In +the summer of 1813 Mrs. Crabbe had rallied so far as to express a wish +to see London again, and the father and mother and two sons spent nearly +three months in rooms in a hotel. Crabbe was able to visit Dudley North, +and other of his old friends, and to enter to some extent into the +gaieties of the town, but also, as always, taking advantage of the +return to London to visit and help the poor and distressed, not +unmindful of his own want and misery in the great city thirty years +before. The family returned to Muston in September, and towards the +close of the month Mrs. Crabbe was released from her long disease. On +the north wall of the chancel of Muston Church, close to the altar, is a +plain marble slab recording that not far away lie the remains of "Sarah, +wife of the Rev. George Crabbe, late Rector of this Parish." + +Within _two_ days of the wife's death Crabbe fell ill of a serious +malady, worn out as he was with long anxiety and grief. He was for a few +days in danger of his life, and so well aware of his condition that he +desired that his wife's grave "might not be closed till it was seen +whether he should recover." He rallied, however, and returned to the +duties of his parish, and to a life of still deeper loneliness. But his +old friends at Belvoir Castle once more came to his deliverance. Within +a short time the Duke offered him the living of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, +a small manufacturing town, on the line (as we should describe it today) +between Bath and Salisbury. The value of the preferment was not as great +as that of the joint livings of Muston and Allington, so that poor +Crabbe was once more doomed to be a pluralist, and to accept, also at +the Duke's hands, the vicarage of Croxton Kerrial, near Belvoir Castle, +where, however, he never resided. + +And now the time came for Crabbe's final move, and rector of Trowbridge +he was to remain for the rest of his life. He was glad to leave Muston, +which now had for him the saddest of associations. He had never been +happy there, for reasons we have seen. What Crabbe's son calls +"diversity of religious sentiment" had produced "a coolness in some of +his parishioners, which he felt the more painfully because, whatever +might be their difference of opinion, he was ever ready to help and +oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his +power." So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving +many to lament his departure. Indeed, malignity was so active in one +quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome +Crabbe's successor before Crabbe and his sons had quitted the house! + +For other reasons, perhaps, Crabbe prepared to leave his two livings +with a sense of relief. His wife's death had cast a permanent shadow +over the landscape. The neighbouring gentry were kindly disposed, but +probably not wholly sympathetic. It is clear that there was a certain +rusticity about Crabbe; and his politics, such as they were, had been +formed in a different school from that of the county families. A busy +country town was likely to furnish interests and distractions of a +different kind. But before finally quitting the neighbourhood he visited +a sister at Aldeburgh, and, his son writes, 'one day was given to a +solitary ramble among the scenery of bygone years--Parham and the woods +of Glemham, then in the first blossom of May. He did not return until +night; and in his note-book I find the following brief record of this +mournful visit: + + "Yes, I behold again the place, + The seat of joy, the source of pain; + It brings in view the form and face + That I must never see again. + + The night-bird's song that sweetly floats + On this soft gloom--this balmy air-- + Brings to the mind her sweeter notes + That I again must never hear. + + Lo! yonder shines that window's light, + My guide, my token, heretofore; + And now again it shines as bright, + When those dear eyes can shine no more. + + Then hurry from this place away! + It gives not now the bliss it gave; + For Death has made its charm his prey, + And joy is buried in her grave." + +In family relationships, and indeed all others, Crabbe's tenderness was +never wanting, and the verse that follows was found long afterwards +written on a paper in which his wife's wedding-ring, nearly worn through +before she died, was wrapped: + + "The ring so worn, as you behold, + So thin, so pale, is yet of gold: + The passion such it was to prove; + Worn with life's cares, love yet was love." + +Crabbe was inducted to the living of Trowbridge on the 3rd of June 1814, +and preached his first sermon two days later. His two sons followed him, +as soon as their existing engagements allowed them to leave +Leicestershire. The younger, John, who married in 1816, became his +father's curate, and the elder, who married a year later, became curate +at Pucklechurch, not many miles distant. As Crabbe's old cheerfulness +gradually returned he found much congenial society in the better +educated classes about him. His reputation as a poet was daily +spreading. The _Tales_ passed from edition to edition, and brought him +many admirers and sympathisers. The "busy, populous clothing town," as +he described Trowbridge to a friend, provided him with intelligent +neighbours of a class different from any he had yet been thrown with. +And yet once more, as his son has to admit, he failed to secure the +allegiance of the church-going parishioners. His immediate predecessor, +a curate in charge, had been one of those in whom a more passionate +missionary zeal had been stirred by the Methodist movement--"endeared to +the more serious inhabitants by warm zeal and a powerful talent for +preaching extempore." The parishioners had made urgent appeal to the +noble patron to appoint this man to the benefice, and the Duke's +disregard of their petition had produced much bitterness in the parish. +Then, again, in Crabbe there was a "lay" element, which had probably not +been found in his predecessor, and he might occasionally be seen "at a +concert, a ball, or even a play." And finally, not long after his +arrival, he took the unpopular side in an election for the +representation of the county. The candidate he supported was strongly +opposed by the "manufacturing interest," and Crabbe became the object of +intense dislike at the time of the election, so much so that a violent +mob attempted to prevent his leaving his house to go to the poll. +However, Crabbe showed the utmost courage during the excitement, and his +other fine qualities of sterling worth and kindness of heart ultimately +made their way; and in the sixteen years that followed, Crabbe took +still firmer hold of the affection of the worthier part of his +parishioners. + +Crabbe's son thought good to devote several pages of his _Memoir_ to the +question why his father, having now no unmarried son to be his +companion, should not have taken such a sensible step as to marry again. +For the old man, if he deserved to be so called at the age of sixty-two, +was still very susceptible to the charms of female society, and indeed +not wholly free from the habit of philandering--a habit which +occasionally "inspired feelings of no ordinary warmth" in the fair +objects of "his vain devotion." One such incident all but ended in a +permanent engagement. A MS. quotation from the poet's Diary, copied in +the margin of FitzGerald's volume, may possibly refer to this occasion. +Under date of September 22 occurs this entry: "Sidmouth. Miss Ridout. +Declaration. Acceptance." But under October 5 is written the ominous +word, "Mr. Ridout." And later: "Dec. 12. Charlotte's picture returned." +A tragedy (or was it a comedy?) seems written in these few words. Edward +FitzGerald adds to this his own note: "Miss Ridout I remember--an +elegant spinster; friend of my mother's. About 1825 she had been at +Sidmouth, and known Crabbe." The son quotes some very ardent verses +belonging to this period, but not assignable to any particular charmer, +such as one set beginning: + + "And wilt thou never smile again; + Thy cruel purpose never shaken? + Hast thou no feeling for my pain, + Refused, disdain'd, despised, forsaken?" + +The son indicates these amiable foibles in a filial tone and in +apologetic terms, but the "liberal shepherds" sometimes spoke more +frankly. An old squire remarked to a friend in reference to this +subject, "D--mme, sir! the very first time Crabbe dined at my house he +made love to my sister!" And a lady is known to have complained that on +a similar occasion Crabbe had exhibited so much warmth of manner that +she "felt quite frightened." His son entirely supports the same view as +to his father's almost demonstratively affectionate manner towards +ladies who interested him, and who, perhaps owing to his rising repute +as an author, showed a corresponding interest in the elderly poet. +Crabbe himself admits "the soft impeachment." In a letter to his newly +found correspondent, Mrs. Leadbeater (granddaughter of +Burke's old schoolmaster, Richard Shackleton), he confesses that women +were more to him than men: + + "I'm alone now; and since my removing into a busy town + among the multitude, the loneliness is but more apparent and + more melancholy. But this is only at certain times; and then + I have, though at considerable distances, six female friends, + unknown to each other, but all dear, very dear, to me. With + them I do not much associate; not as deserting, and much less + disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it; + not hardy nor grave, not knowing enough, nor sufficiently + acquainted with the everyday concerns of men. But my + beloved creatures have minds with which I can better assimilate. + Think of you, I must; and of me, I must entreat that + you would not be unmindful." + +Nothing, however, was destined to come of these various flirtations or +_tendresses_. The new duties at Trowbridge, with their multiplying calls +upon his attention and sympathies, must soon have filled his time and +attention when at work in his market town, with its flourishing woollen +manufactures. And Crabbe was now to have opened to him new sources of +interest in the neighbourhood. His growing reputation soon made him a +welcome guest in many houses to which his mere position as vicar of +Trowbridge might not have admitted him. Trowbridge was only a score or +so of miles from Bath, and there were many noblemen's and gentlemen's +seats in the country round. In this same county of Wilts, and not very +far away, at his vicarage of Bremhill, was William Lisle Bowles, the +graceful poet whose sonnets five-and-twenty years before had first +roused to poetic utterance the young Coleridge and Charles Lamb when at +Christ's Hospital. Through Bowles, Crabbe was introduced to the noble +family at Bowood, where the third Marquis of Lansdowne delighted to +welcome those distinguished in literature and the arts. Within these +splendid walls Crabbe first made the acquaintance of Rogers, which soon +ripened into an intimacy not without effect, I think, upon the remaining +efforts of Crabbe as a poet. One immediate result was that Crabbe +yielded to Rogers's strong advice to him to visit London, and take his +place among the literary society of the day. This visit was paid in the +summer of 1817, when Crabbe stayed in London from the middle of June to +the end of July. + +Crabbe's son rightly included in his _Memoir_ several extracts from his +father's Diary kept during this visit. They are little more than +briefest entries of engagements, but serve to show the new and brilliant +life to which the poet was suddenly introduced. He constantly dined and +breakfasted with Rogers, where he met and was welcomed by Rogers's +friends. His old acquaintance with Fox gave him the _entree_ of Holland +House. Thomas Campbell was specially polite to him, and really attracted +by him. Crabbe visited the theatres, and was present at the farewell +banquet given to John Kemble. Through Rogers and Campbell he was +introduced to John Murray of Albemarle Street, who later became his +publisher. He sat for his portrait to Pickersgill and Phillips, and saw +the painting by the latter hanging on the Academy walls when dining at +their annual banquet. Again, through an introduction at Bath to Samuel +Hoare of Hampstead, Crabbe formed a friendship with him and his family +of the most affectionate nature. During the first and all later visits +to London Crabbe was most often their guest at the mansion on the summit +of the famous "Northern Height," with which, after Crabbe's death, +Wordsworth so touchingly associated his name, in the lines written on +the death of the Ettrick Shepherd and his brother-poets: + + "Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, + Like London with its own black wreath, + On which with thee, O Crabbe, forth looking, + I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath." + +Between Samuel Hoare's hospitable roof and the _Hummums_ in Covent +Garden Crabbe seems to have alternated, according as his engagements in +town required. + +But although living, as the Diary shows, in daily intercourse with the +literary and artistic world, tasting delights which were absolutely new +to him, Crabbe never forgot either his humble friends in Wiltshire, or +the claims of his own art. He kept in touch with Trowbridge, where his +son John was in charge, and sends instructions from time to time as to +poor pensioners and others who were not to be neglected in the weekly +ministrations. At the same time, he seems rarely to have omitted the +self-imposed task of adding daily to the pile of manuscript on which he +was at work--the collection of stories to be subsequently issued as +_Tales of the Hall_. Crabbe had resolved, in the face of whatever +distractions, to write if possible a fixed amount every day. More than +once in the Diary occur such entries as: "My thirty lines done; but not +well, I fear." "Thirty lines to-day, but not yesterday--must work up." +This anticipation of a method made famous later in the century by +Anthony Trollope may account (as also in Trollope's case) for certain +marked inequalities in the merit of the work thus turned out. At odd +times and in odd places were these verses sometimes composed. On a +certain Sunday morning in July 1817, after going to church at St. +James's, Piccadilly (or was it the Chapel Royal?), Crabbe wandered +eastward and found inspiration in the most unexpected quarter: "Write +some lines in the solitude of Somerset House, not fifty yards from the +Thames on one side, and the Strand on the other; but as quiet as the +sands of Arabia. I am not quite in good humour with this day; but, +happily, I cannot say why." + +The last mysterious sentence is one of many scattered through, the +Diary, which, aided by dashes and omission-marks by the editorial son, +point to certain sentimentalisms in which Crabbe was still indulging, +even in the vortex of fashionable gaieties. We gather throughout that +the ladies he met interested him quite as much, or even more, than the +distinguished men of letters, and there are allusions besides to other +charmers at a distance. The following entry immediately precedes that of +the Sunday just quoted:-- + + "14th.--Some more intimate conversation this morning with + Mr. and Mrs. Moore. They mean to go to Trowbridge. He + is going to Paris, but will not stay long. Mrs. Spencer's + album. Agree to dine at Curzon Street. A welcome letter + from ----. This makes the day more cheerful. Suppose it + were so. Well, 'tis not! Go to Mr. Rogers, and take a farewell + visit to Highbury. Miss Rogers. Promise to go when ----. + Return early. Dine there, and purpose to see Mr. + Moore and Mr. Rogers in the morning when they set out for + Calais." + +On the whole, however, Crabbe may have found, when these fascinating +experiences were over, that there had been safety in a multitude. For he +seems to have been equally charmed with Rogers's sister, and William +Spencer's daughter, and the Countess of Bessborough, and a certain Mrs. +Wilson,--and, like Miss Snevellicci's papa, to have "loved them every +one." + +Meanwhile Crabbe was working steadily, while in London, at his new +poems. Though his minimum output was thirty lines a day, he often +produced more, and on one occasion he records eighty lines as the fruit +of a day's labour. During the year 1818 he was still at work, and in +September of that year he writes to Mary Leadbeater that his verses "are +not yet entirely ready, but do not want much that he can give them." He +was evidently correcting and perfecting to the best of his ability, and +(as I believe) profiting by the intellectual stimulus of his visit to +London, as well as by the higher standards of versification that he had +met with, even in writers inferior to himself. The six weeks in London +had given him advantages he had never enjoyed before. In his early days +under Burke's roof he had learned much from Burke himself, and from +Johnson and Fox, but he was then only a promising beginner. Now, +thirty-five years later, he met Rogers, Wordsworth, Campbell, Moore, as +social equals, and having, like them, won a public for himself. When his +next volumes appeared, the workmanship proved, as of old, unequal, but +here and there Crabbe showed a musical ear, and an individuality of +touch of a different order from anything he had achieved before. Mr. +Courthope and other critics hold that there are passages in Crabbe's +earliest poems, such as _The Village_, which have a metrical charm he +never afterwards attained. But I strongly suspect that in such passages +Crabbe had owed much to the revising hand of Burke, Johnson, and Fox. + +In the spring of 1819 Crabbe was again in town, visiting at Holland +House, and dining at the Thatched House with the "Literary Society," of +which he had been elected a member, and which to-day still dines and +prospers. He was then preparing for the publication of his new Tales, +from the famous house in Albemarle Street. Two years before, in 1817, on +the strength doubtless of Rogers's strong recommendation, Murray had +made a very liberal offer for the new poems, and the copyright of all +Crabbe's previous works. For these, together, Murray had offered three +thousand pounds. Strangely enough, Rogers was at first dissatisfied with +the offer, holding that the sum should be paid for the new volumes +alone. He and a friend (possibly Campbell), who had conducted the +negotiation, accordingly went off to the house of Longman to see if they +could not get better terms. To their great discomfiture the Longmans +only offered L1000 for the privilege that Murray had valued at three +times the amount; and Crabbe and his friends were placed in a difficult +position. A letter of Moore to John Murray many years afterwards, when +Crabbe's _Memoir_ was in preparation, tells the sequel of the story, and +it may well be given in his words: + + "In this crisis it was that Mr. Rogers and myself, anxious + to relieve our poor friend from his suspense, called upon + you, as you must well remember, in Albemarle Street; and + seldom have I watched a countenance with more solicitude, + or heard words that gave me much more pleasure than + when, on the subject being mentioned, you said 'Oh! yes. + I have heard from Mr. Crabbe, and look upon the matter as + all settled.' I was rather pressed, I remember, for time that + morning, having an appointment on some business of my + own, but Mr. Rogers insisted that I should accompany him + to Crabbe's lodgings, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing him + relieved from his suspense. We found him sitting in his + room, alone, and expecting the worst; but soon dissipated + all his fears by the agreeable intelligence which we brought. + + "When he received the bills for L3000, we earnestly advised + that he should, without delay, deposit them in some safe hands; + but no--he must take them with him to Trowbridge, and show + them to his son John. They would hardly believe in his + good luck, at home, if they did not see the bills. On his + way down to Trowbridge, a friend at Salisbury, at whose + house he rested (Mr. Everett, the banker), seeing that he + carried these bills loosely in his waistcoat pocket, requested + to be allowed to take charge of them for him: but with + equal ill success. 'There was no fear,' he said, 'of his losing + them, and he must show them to his son John.'" + +It was matter of common knowledge in the literary world of Crabbe's day +that John Murray did not on this occasion make a very prudent bargain, +and that in fact he lost heavily by his venture. No doubt his offer was +based upon the remarkable success of Crabbe's two preceding poems. _The +Borough_ had passed through six editions in the same number of years, +and the _Tales_ reached a fifth edition within two years of publication. +But for changes in progress in the poetic taste of the time, Murray +might safely have anticipated a continuance of Crabbe's popularity. But +seven years had elapsed since the appearance of the _Tales_, and in +these seven years much had happened. Byron had given to the world one by +one the four cantos of _Childe Harold_, as well as other poems rich in +splendid rhetoric and a lyric versatility far beyond Crabbe's reach. +Wordsworth's two volumes in 1815 contained by far the most important and +representative of his poems, and these were slowly but surely winning +him a public of his own, intellectual and thoughtful if not as yet +numerous. John Keats had made two appearances, in 1817 and 1818, and the +year following the publication of Crabbe's _Tales of the Hall_ was to +add to them the Odes and other poems constituting the priceless volume +of 1820--_Lamia and other Poems_. Again, for the lovers of +fiction--whom, as I have said, Crabbe had attracted quite as strongly as +the lovers of verse--Walter Scott had produced five or six of his finest +novels, and was adding to the circle of his admirers daily. By the side +of this fascinating prose, and still more fascinating metrical +versatility, Crabbe's resolute and plodding couplets might often seem +tame and wearisome. Indeed, at this juncture, the rhymed heroic couplet, +as a vehicle for the poetry of imagination, was tottering to its fall, +though it lingered for many years as the orthodox form for university +prize poems, and for occasional didactic or satirical effusions. Crabbe, +very wisely, remained faithful to the metre. For his purpose, and with +his subjects and special gifts, none probably would have served him +better. For narrative largely blended with the analytical and the +epigrammatic method neither the stanza nor blank-verse (had he ever +mastered it) would have sufficed. But in Crabbe's last published volumes +it was not only the metre that was to seem flat and monotonous in the +presence of new proofs of the boundless capabilities of verse. The +reader would not make much progress in these volumes without +discovering that the depressing incidents of life, its disasters and +distresses, were still Crabbe's prevailing theme. John Murray in the +same season published Rogers's _Human Life_ and Crabbe's _Tales of the +Hall_. The publisher sent Crabbe a copy of the former, and he +acknowledged it in a few lines as follows: + + "I am anxious that Mr. Rogers should have all the + success he can desire. I am more indebted to him than I + could bear to think of, if I had not the highest esteem. It + will give me great satisfaction to find him cordially admired. + His is a favourable picture, and such he loves so do I, but + men's vices and follies come into my mind, and spoil my + drawing." + +Assuredly no more striking antithesis to Crabbe's habitual impressions +of human life can be found than in the touching and often beautiful +couplets of Rogers, a poet as neglected today as Crabbe. Rogers's +picture of wedded happiness finds no parallel, I think, anywhere in the +pages of his brother-poet:-- + + "Across the threshold led, + And every tear kissed off as soon as shed, + His house she enters, there to be a light + Shining within, when all without is night; + A guardian angel o'er his life presiding, + Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing! + How oft her eyes read his; her gentle mind + To all his wishes, all his thoughts, inclined; + Still subject--ever on the watch to borrow + Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow. + The soul of music slumbers in the shell, + Till waked to rapture by the master's spell; + And feeling hearts--touch them but rightly--pour + A thousand melodies unheard before." + +It may be urged that Rogers exceeds in one direction as unjustifiably +as Crabbe in the opposite. But there is room in poetry for both points +of view, though the absolute--the Shakespearian--grasp of Human Life may +be truer and more eternally convincing than either. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +THE TALES OF THE HALL + +(1819) + +The _Tales of the Hall_ were published by John Murray in June 1819, in +two handsome octavo volumes, with every advantage of type, paper, and +margin. In a letter of Crabbe to Mrs. Leadbeater, in October 1817, he +makes reference to these Tales, already in preparation. He tells his +correspondent that "Remembrances" was the title for them proposed by his +friends. We learn from another source that a second title had been +suggested, "Forty Days--a Series of Tales told at Binning Hall." Finally +Mr. Murray recommended _Tales of the Hall_, and this was adopted. + +In the same letter to Mrs. Leadbeater, Crabbe writes: "I know not how to +describe the new, and probably (most probably) the last work I shall +publish. Though a village is the scene of meeting between my two +principal characters, and gives occasion to other characters and +relations in general, yet I no more describe the manners of village +inhabitants. My people are of superior classes, though not the most +elevated; and, with a few exceptions, are of educated and cultivated +minds and habits." In making this change Crabbe was also aware that some +kind of unity must be given to those new studies of human life. And he +found at least a semblance of this unity in ties of family or friendship +uniting the tellers of them. Moreover Crabbe, who had a wide and even +intimate knowledge of English, poetry, was well acquainted with the +_Canterbury Tales_, and he bethought him that he would devise a +framework. And the plan he worked out was as follows: + +"The Hall" under whose roof the stories and conversations arise is a +gentleman's house, apparently in the eastern counties, inhabited by the +elder of two brothers, George and Richard. George, an elderly bachelor, +who had made a sufficient fortune in business, has retired to this +country seat, which stands upon the site of a humbler dwelling where +George had been born and spent his earliest years. The old home of his +youth had subsequently passed into the hands of a man of means, who had +added to it, improved the surroundings, and turned it into a modern and +elegant villa. It was again in the market when George was seeking a +retreat for his old age, and he purchased it--glad, even under the +altered conditions, to live again among the loved surroundings of his +childhood. + +George has a half-brother, Richard, much younger than himself. They are +the children of the same mother who, some years after her first +widowhood, had married an Irish gentleman, of mercurial habit, by whom +she had this second child. George had already left home to earn his +living, with the consequence that the two brothers had scarcely ever met +until the occasion upon which the story opens. Richard, after first +trying the sea as a profession, had entered the army during the war with +Napoleon; distinguished himself in the Peninsula; and finally returned +to his native country, covered with glory and enjoying a modest +pension. He woos and wins the daughter of a country clergyman, marries, +and finds a young family growing up around him. He is filled with a +desire to resume friendly relations with his half-brother George, but is +deterred from making the first advances. George, hearing of this through +a common friend, cordially responds, and Richard is invited to spend a +few weeks at Binning Hall. The two brothers, whose bringing up had been +so different, and whose ideas and politics were far removed, +nevertheless find their mutual companionship very pleasant, and every +evening over their port wine relate their respective adventures and +experiences, while George has also much to tell of his friends and +neighbours around him. The clergyman of the parish, a former fellow of +his college, often makes a third at these meetings; and thus a +sufficient variety of topic is insured. The tales that these three tell, +with the conversations arising out of them, form the subject matter of +these _Tales of the Hall_. Crabbe devised a very pleasant means of +bringing the brother's visit to a close. When the time originally +proposed for the younger brother's stay is nearing its end, the brothers +prepare to part. At first, the younger is somewhat disconcerted that his +elder brother seemed to take his departure so little to heart. But this +display of indifference proves to be only an amiable _ruse_ on the part +of George. On occasion of a final ride together through the neighbouring +country, George asks for his brother's opinion about a purchase he has +recently made, of a pleasant house and garden adjoining his own +property. It then turns out that the generous George has bought the +place as a home for his brother, who will in future act as George's +agent or steward. On approaching and entering the house, Richard finds +his wife and children, who have been privately informed of the +arrangement, already installed, and eagerly waiting to welcome husband +and father to this new and delightful home. + +Throughout the development of this story with its incidental narratives, +Crabbe has managed, as in previous poems, to make large use of his own +personal experience. The Hall proves to be a modern gentleman's +residence constructed out of a humbler farmhouse by additions and +alterations in the building and its surroundings, which was precisely +the fate which had befallen Mr. Tovell's old house which had come to the +Crabbe family, and had been parted with by them to one of the Suffolk +county families. "Moated Granges" were common in Norfolk and Suffolk. +Mr. Tovel's house had had a moat, and this too had been a feature of +George's paternal home: + + "It was an ancient, venerable Hall, + And once surrounded by a moat and wall; + A part was added by a squire of taste + Who, while unvalued acres ran to waste, + Made spacious rooms, whence he could look about, + And mark improvements as they rose without; + He fill'd the moat, he took the wall away, + He thinn'd the park and bade the view be gay." + +In this instance, the squire who had thus altered the property had been +forced to sell it, and George was thus able to return to the old +surroundings of his boyhood. In the third book, _Boys at School_, George +relates some of his recollections, which include the story of a +school-fellow, who having some liking for art but not much talent, +finds his ambitions defeated, and dies of chagrin in consequence. This +was in fact the true story of a brother of Crabbe's wife, Mr. James +Elmy. Later, again, in the work the rector of the parish is described, +and the portrait drawn is obviously that of Crabbe himself, as he +appeared to his Dissenting parishioners at Muston: + + "'A moral teacher!' some, contemptuous, cried; + He smiled, but nothing of the fact denied, + Nor, save by his fair life, to charge so strong replied. + Still, though he bade them not on aught rely + That was their own, but all their worth deny, + They called his pure advice his cold morality. + + * * * * * + + He either did not, or he would not see, + That if he meant a favourite priest to be, + He must not show, but learn of them, the way + To truth--he must not dictate, but obey; + They wish'd him not to bring them further light, + But to convince them that they now were right + And to assert that justice will condemn + All who presumed to disagree with them: + In this he fail'd, and his the greater blame, + For he persisted, void of fear or shame." + +There is a touch of bitterness in these lines that is unmistakably that +of a personal grievance, even if the poet's son had not confirmed the +inference in a foot-note. + +Book IV. is devoted to the _Adventures of Richard_, which begin with his +residence with his mother near a small sea-port (evidently Aldeburgh); +and here we once more read of the boy, George Crabbe, watching and +remembering every aspect of the storms, and making friends with the +wives and children of the sailors and the smugglers: + + "I loved to walk where none had walk'd before, + About the rocks that ran along the shore; + Or far beyond the sight of men to stray, + And take my pleasure when I lost my way; + For then 'twas mine to trace the hilly heath, + And all the mossy moor that lies beneath: + Here had I favourite stations, where I stood + And heard the murmurs of the ocean-flood, + With not a sound beside except when flew + Aloft the lapwing, or the grey curlew, + Who with wild notes my fancied power defied, + And mock'd the dreams of solitary pride." + +And as Crabbe evidently resorts gladly to personal experiences to make +out the material for his work, the same also holds with regard to the +incidental Tales. Crabbe refers in his Preface to two of these as not of +his own invention, and his son, in the Notes, admits the same of others. +One, as we have seen, happened in the Elmy family; another was sent him +by a friend in Wiltshire, to which county the story belonged; while the +last in the series, and perhaps the most painful of all, _Smugglers, and +Poachers_ was told to Crabbe by Sir Samuel Romilly, whom he had met at +Hampstead, only a few weeks before Romilly's own tragic death. Probably +other tales, not referred to by Crabbe or his son, were also encountered +by the poet in his intercourse with his parishioners, or submitted to +him by his friends. We might infer this from the singular inequality, in +interest and poetical opportunity, of the various plots of these +stories. Some of them are assuredly not such as any poet would have sat +down and elaborated for himself, and it is strange how little sense +Crabbe seems to have possessed as to which were worth treating, or could +even admit of artistic treatment at all. A striking instance is afforded +by the strange and most unpleasing history, entitled _Lady Barbara: or, +The Ghost_. + +The story is as follows: A young and beautiful lady marries early a +gentleman of good family who dies within a year of their marriage. In +spite of many proposals she resolves to remain a widow; and for the sake +of congenial society and occupation, she finds a home in the family of a +pious clergyman, where she devotes herself to his young children, and +makes herself useful in the parish. Her favourite among the children is +a boy, George, still in the schoolroom. The boy grows apace; goes to +boarding-school and college; and is on the point of entering the army, +when he discovers that he is madly in love with the lady, still an +inmate of the house, who had "mothered him" when a child. No ages are +mentioned, but we may infer that the young man is then about two and +twenty, and the lady something short of forty. The position is not +unimaginable, though it may be uncommon. The idea of marrying one who +had been to her as a favourite child, seems to the widow in the first +instance repulsive and almost criminal. But it turns out that there is +another reason in the background for her not re-entering the marriage +state, which she discloses to the ardent youth. It appears that the +widow had once had a beloved brother who had died early. Those two had +been brought up by an infidel father, who had impressed on his children +the absurdity of all such ideas as immortality. The children had often +discussed and pondered over this subject together, and had made a +compact that whichever of them died first should, if possible, appear to +the survivor, and thus solve the awful problem of a future life. The +brother not long after died in foreign parts. Immediately after his +death, before the sister heard the news, the brother's ghost appeared in +a dream, or vision, to the sister, and warned her in solemn tones +against ever marrying a second time. The spirit does not appear to have +given any reasons, but his manner was so impressive and so unmistakable +that the lady had thus far regarded it as an injunction never to be +disobeyed. On hearing this remarkable story, the young man, George, +argues impatiently against the trustworthiness of dreams, and is hardly +silenced by the widow showing him on her wrist the mark still remaining +where the spirit had seized and pressed her hand. In fine, the +impassioned suitor prevails over these superstitious terrors, as he +reckons them, of the lady--and they become man and wife. + +The reader is here placed in a condition of great perplexity, and his +curiosity becomes breathless. The sequel is melancholy indeed. After a +few months' union, the young man, whose plausible eloquence had so moved +the widow, tires of his wife, ill-treats her, and breaks her heart. The +Psychical Society is avenged, and the ghost's word was worth at least "a +thousand pounds." It is difficult for us to take such a story seriously, +but it must have interested Crabbe deeply, for he has expended upon it +much of his finest power of analysis, and his most careful writing. As +we have seen, the subject of dreams had always had a fascination for +him, of a kind not unconnected perhaps with the opium-habit. The story, +however it was to be treated, was unpromising; but as the _denouement_ +was what it proved to be, the astonishing thing is that Crabbe should +not have felt the dramatic impropriety of putting into the young man's +mouth passages of an impressive, and almost Shakespearian, beauty such +as are rare indeed in his poetry. The following lines are not indeed +placed within inverted commas, but the pronoun "I" is retained, and they +are apparently intended for something passing in the young suitor's +mind: + + "O! tell me not of years,--can she be old? + Those eyes, those lips, can man unmoved behold? + Has time that bosom chill'd? are cheeks so rosy cold? + No, she is young, or I her love t'engage + Will grow discreet, and that will seem like age: + But speak it not; Death's equalising age + Levels not surer than Love's stronger charm, + That bids all inequalities be gone, + That laughs at rank, that mocks comparison. + There is not young or old, if Love decrees; + He levels orders, he confounds degrees: + There is not fair, or dark, or short, or tall, + Or grave, or sprightly--Love reduces all; + He makes unite the pensive and the gay, + Gives something here, takes something there away; + From each abundant good a portion takes, + And for each want a compensation makes; + Then tell me not of years--Love, power divine, + Takes, as he wills, from hers, and gives to mine." + +In those fine lines it is no doubt Crabbe himself that speaks, and not +the young lover, who was to turn out in the sequel an unparalleled +"cad." But then, what becomes of dramatic consistency, and the +imperative claims of art? + +In the letter to Mrs. Leadbeater already cited Crabbe +writes as to his forthcoming collection of Tales: "I do not know, on a +general view, whether my tragic or lighter Tales, etc., are most in +number. Of those equally well executed the tragic will, I suppose, make +the greater impression." Crabbe was right in this forecast. Whether more +or less in number, the "tragic" Tales far surpass the "lighter" in their +effect on the reader, in the intensity of their gloom. Such stories as +that of _Lady Barbara, Delay has Danger, The Sisters, Ellen, Smugglers +and Poachers_, Richard's story of _Ruth_, and the elder brother's +account of his own early attachment, with its miserable sequel--all +these are of a poignant painfulness. Human crime, error, or selfishness +working life-long misery to others--this is the theme to which Crabbe +turns again and again, and on which he bestows a really marvellous power +of analysis. There is never wanting, side by side with these, what +Crabbe doubtless believed to be the compensating presence of much that +is lovable in human character, patience, resignation, forgiveness. But +the resultant effect, it must be confessed, is often the reverse of +cheering. The fine lines of Wordsworth as to + + "Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight; + And miserable love, that is not pain + To hear of, for the glory that redounds + Therefrom to human kind, and what we are," + +fail to console us as we read these later stories of Crabbe. We part +from too many of them not, on the whole, with a livelier faith in human +nature. We are crushed by the exhibition of so much that is abnormally +base and sordid. + +The _Tales of the Hall_ are full of surprises even to +those familiar with Crabbe's earlier poems. He can still allow couplets +to stand which are perilously near to doggerel; and, on the other hand, +when his deepest interest in the fortunes of his characters is aroused, +he rises at times to real eloquence, if never to poetry's supremest +heights. Moreover, the poems contain passages of description which, for +truth to Nature, touched by real imagination, are finer than anything he +had yet achieved. The story entitled _Delay has Danger_ contains the +fine picture of an autumn landscape seen through the eyes of the +miserable lover--the picture which dwelt so firmly in the memory of +Tennyson: + + "That evening all in fond discourse was spent, + When the sad lover to his chamber went, + To think on what had pass'd, to grieve, and to repent: + Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh + On the red light that fill'd the eastern sky: + Oft had he stood before, alert and gay, + To hail the glories of the new-born day; + But now dejected, languid, listless, low, + He saw the wind upon the water blow, + And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale + From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale; + On the right side the youth a wood survey'd, + With all its dark intensity of shade; + Where the rough wind alone was heard to move, + In this, the pause of nature and of love, + When now the young are rear'd, and when the old, + Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold-- + Far to the left he saw the huts of men, + Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; + Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, + Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; + And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, + And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; + All these were sad in nature, or they took + Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, + And of his mind--he ponder'd for a while, + Then met his Fanny with a borrow'd smile." + +The entire story, from which this is an extract, is finely told, and the +fitness of the passage is beyond dispute. At other times the description +is either so much above the level of the narrative, or below it, as to +be almost startling. In the very first pages of _Tales of the Hall_, in +the account of the elder brother's early retirement from business, occur +the following musical lines: + + "He chose his native village, and the hill + He climb'd a boy had its attraction still; + With that small brook beneath, where he would stand + And stooping fill the hollow of his hand + To quench th' impatient thirst--then stop awhile + To see the sun upon the waters smile, + In that sweet weariness, when, long denied, + We drink and view the fountain that supplied + The sparkling bliss--and feel, if not express, + Our perfect ease in that sweet weariness." + +Yet it is only a hundred lines further on that, to indicate the elder +brother's increasing interest in the graver concerns of human thought, +Crabbe can write: + + "He then proceeded, not so much intent, + But still in earnest, and to church he went + Although they found some difference in their creed, + He and his pastor cordially agreed; + Convinced that they who would the truth obtain + By disputation, find their efforts vain; + The church he view'd as liberal minds will view, + And there he fix'd his principles and pew." + +Among those surprises to which I have referred is the apparently recent +development in the poet of a lyrical gift, the like of which he had not +exhibited before. Crabbe had already written two notable poems in +stanzas, _Sir Eustace Grey_ and that other painful but exceedingly +powerful drama in monologue, _The Hall of Justice_. But since the +appearance of his last volumes, Crabbe had formed some quite novel +poetical friendships, and it would seem likely that association with +Rogers, though he saw and felt that elegant poet's deficiencies as a +painter of human life, had encouraged him to try an experiment in his +friend's special vein. One of the most depressing stories in the series +is that of the elder brother's ill-fated passion for a beautiful girl, +to whom he had been the accidental means of rendering a vital service in +rescuing her and a companion from the "rude uncivil kine" in a meadow. +To the image of this girl, though he never set eyes on her again for +many years, he had remained faithful. The next meeting, when at last it +came, brought the most terrible of disillusions. Sent by his chief to +transact certain business with a wealthy banker ("Clutterbuck & Co."), +the young merchant calls at a villa where the banker at times resided, +and finds that the object of his old love and his fondest dreams is +there installed as the banker's mistress. She is greatly moved at the +sight of the youthful lover of old days, who, with more chivalry than +prudence, offers forgiveness if she will break off this degrading +alliance. She cannot resolve to take the step. She has become used to +luxury and continuous amusement, and she cannot face the return to a +duller domesticity. Finally, however, she dies penitent, and it is the +contemplation of her life and death that works a life-long change in the +ambitions and aims of the old lover. He wearies of money-making, and +retires to lead a country life, where he may be of some good to his +neighbours, and turn to some worthy use the time that may be still +allowed him. The story is told with real pathos and impressive force. +But the picture is spoiled by the tasteless interpolation of a song +which the unhappy girl sings to her lover, at the very moment apparently +when she has resolved that she can never be his: + + "My Damon was the first to wake + The gentle flame that cannot die; + My Damon is the last to take + The faithful bosom's softest sigh; + The life between is nothing worth, + O! cast it from thy thought away; + Think of the day that gave it birth, + And this its sweet returning day. + + "Buried be all that has been done, + Or say that nought is done amiss; + For who the dangerous path can shun + In such bewildering world as this? + But love can every fault forgive, + Or with a tender look reprove; + And now let nought in memory live, + But that we meet, and that we love." + +The lines are pretty enough, and may be described as a blend of Tom +Moore and Rogers. A similar lyric, in the story called _The Sisters_, +might have come straight from the pen which has given us "Mine be a cot +beside a hill," and is not so wholly irrelevant to its context as the +one just cited. + +Since Crabbe's death in 1832, though he has never been without a small +and loyal band of admirers, no single influence has probably had so much +effect in reviving interest in his poetry as that of Edward FitzGerald, +the translator of Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald was born and lived the +greater part of his life in Suffolk, and Crabbe was a native of +Aldeburgh, and lived in the neighbourhood till he was grown to manhood. +This circumstance alone might not have specially interested FitzGerald +in the poet, but for the fact that the temperament of the two men was +somewhat the same, and that both dwelt naturally on the depressing sides +of human life. But there were other coincidences to create a strong tie +between FitzGerald and the poet's family. When FitzGerald's father went +to live at Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge, in 1835, Crabbe's son George +had recently been presented to the vicarage of the adjoining parish of +Bredfield (FitzGerald's native village), which he continued to hold +until his death in 1857. During these two and twenty years, FitzGerald +and George Crabbe remained on the closest terms of friendship, which was +continued with George Crabbe's son (a third George), who became +ultimately rector of Merton in Norfolk. It was at his house, it will be +remembered, that FitzGerald died suddenly in the summer of 1883. Through +this long association with the family FitzGerald was gradually acquiring +information concerning the poet, which even the son's _Biography_ had +not supplied. Readers of FitzGerald's delightful _Letters_ will remember +that there is no name more constantly referred to than that of Crabbe. +Whether writing to Fanny Kemble, or Frederick Tennyson, or Lowell, he is +constantly quoting him, and recommending him. During the thirty years +that followed Crabbe's death his fame had been on the decline, and poets +of different and greater gifts had taken his place. FitzGerald had +noted this fact with ever-increasing regret, and longed to revive the +taste for a poet of whose merits he had himself no doubt. He discerned +moreover that even those who had read in their youth _The Village_ and +_The Borough_ had been repelled by the length, and perhaps by the +monotonous sadness, of the _Tales of the Hall_. It was for this reason +apparently (and not because he assigned a higher place to the later +poetry than to the earlier) that he was led, after some years of +misgiving, to prepare a volume of selections from this latest work of +Crabbe's which might have the effect of tempting the reader to master it +as a whole. Owing to the length and uniformity of Crabbe's verse, what +was ordinarily called an "anthology" was out of the question. FitzGerald +was restricted to a single method. He found that readers were impatient +of Crabbe's _longueurs_. It occurred to him that while making large +omissions he might preserve the story in each case, by substituting +brief prose abstracts of the portions omitted. This process he applied +to the Tales that pleased him most, leaving what he considered Crabbe's +best passages untouched. As early as 1876 he refers to the selection as +already made, and he printed it for private circulation in 1879. +Finally, in 1882, he added a preface of his own, and published it with +Quaritch in Piccadilly. + +In his preface FitzGerald claims for Crabbe's latest work that the net +impression left by it upon the reader is less sombre and painful than +that left by his earlier poems. "It contains," he urges, "scarce +anything of that brutal or sordid villainy of which one has more than +enough in the poet's earlier work." Perhaps there is not so much of the +"brutal or sordid," but then in _The_ _Parish Register_ or _The +Borough_, the reader is in a way prepared for that ingredient, because +the personages are the lawless and neglected poor of a lonely seaport. +It is because, when he moves no longer among these, he yet finds vice +and misery quite as abundant in "a village with its tidy homestead, and +well-to-do tenants, within easy reach of a thriving country-town," that +a certain shock is given to the reader. He discovers that all the evil +passions intrude (like pale Death) into the comfortable villa as +impartially as into the hovels at Aldeburgh. But FitzGerald had found a +sufficient alleviation of the gloom in the framework of the Tales. The +growing affection of the two brothers, as they come to know and +understand each other better, is one of the consistently pleasant +passages in Crabbe's writings. The concluding words of FitzGerald's +preface, as the little volume is out of print and very scarce, I may be +allowed to quote:-- + + "Is Crabbe then, whatever shape he may take, worth + making room for in our over-crowded heads and libraries? + If the verdict of such critics as Jeffrey and Wilson be set + down to contemporary partiality or inferior 'culture,' there is + Miss Austen, who is now so great an authority in the representation + of genteel humanity, so unaccountably smitten with + Crabbe in his worsted hose that she is said to have pleasantly + declared he was the only man whom she would care to marry. + If Sir Walter Scott and Byron are but unaesthetic judges of the + poet, there is Wordsworth who was sufficiently exclusive in + admitting any to the sacred brotherhood in which he still + reigns, and far too honest to make any exception out of + compliment to any one on any occasion--he did nevertheless + thus write to the poet's son and biographer in 1834: 'Any + testimony to the merit of your revered father's works would, + I feel, be superfluous, if not impertinent. They will last + from their combined merits as poetry and truth, full as long + as anything that has been expressed in verse since they first + made their appearance'--a period which, be it noted, includes + all Wordsworth's own volumes except _Yarrow Revisited_, _The + Prelude_, and _The Borderers_. And Wordsworth's living successor + to the laurel no less participates with him in his + appreciation of their forgotten brother. Almost the last time + I met him he was quoting from memory that fine passage in + _Delay has Danger_, where the late autumn landscape seems to + borrow from the conscience-stricken lover who gazes on it the + gloom which it reflects upon him; and in the course of further + conversation on the subject Mr. Tennyson added, 'Crabbe has + a world of his own'; by virtue of that original genius, I + suppose, which is said to entitle and carry the possessor to + what we call immortality." + +Besides the stories selected for abridgment in the volume there were +passages, from Tales not there included, which FitzGerald was never +weary of citing in his letters, to show his friends how true a poet was +lying neglected of men. One he specially loved is the description of an +autumn day in _The Maid's Story_:-- + + "There was a day, ere yet the autumn closed, + When, ere her wintry wars, the earth reposed; + When from the yellow weed the feathery crown, + Light as the curling smoke, fell slowly down; + When the winged insect settled in our sight, + And waited wind to recommence her flight; + When the wide river was a silver sheet, + And on the ocean slept th' unanchor'd fleet, + When from our garden, as we looked above, + There was no cloud, and nothing seemed to move." + +Another passage, also in Crabbe's sweeter vein, forms the conclusion of +the whole poem. It is where the elder brother hands over to the younger +the country house that is to form the future home of his +wife and children:-- + + "It is thy wife's, and will thy children's be, + Earth, wood, and water! all for thine and thee. + * * * * * + There wilt thou soon thy own Matilda view, + She knows our deed, and she approves it too; + Before her all our views and plans were laid, + And Jacques was there to explain and to persuade. + Here on this lawn thy boys and girls shall run, + And play their gambols when their tasks are done, + There, from that window shall their mother view + The happy tribe, and smile at all they do; + While thou, more gravely, hiding thy delight + Shalt cry, 'O! childish!' and enjoy the sight." + +FitzGerald's selections are made with the skill and judgment we should +expect from a critic of so fine a taste, but it may be doubted whether +any degree of skill could have quite atoned for one radical flaw in his +method. He seems to have had his own misgivings as to whether he was +not, by that method, giving up one real secret of Crabbe's power. After +quoting Sir Leslie Stephen's most true remark that "with all its +short-and long-comings Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the +reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can, while so many a +more splendid vision of the fancy slips away, leaving scarce a mark +behind." FitzGerald adds: "If this abiding impression result (as perhaps +in the case of Richardson or Wordsworth) from being, as it were, soaked +in through the longer process by which the man's peculiar genius works, +any abridgement, whether of omission or epitome, will diminish from the +effect of the whole." FitzGerald is unquestionably in sight of a truth +here. The parallel with Wordsworth is indeed not exact, for the best of +Wordsworth's poetry neither requires nor admits of condensation. _The +Excursion_ might benefit by omission and compression, but not _The +Solitary Reaper_, nor _The Daffodils_. But the example of Richardson is +fairly in point. Abridgments of _Clarissa Harlowe_ have been attempted, +but probably without any effect on the number of its readers. The power +of Richardson's method does actually lie in the "soaking process" to +which FitzGerald refers. Nor is it otherwise with Crabbe. The +fascination which his readers find in him--readers not perhaps found in +the ranks of those who prefer their poetry on "hand-made paper"--is +really the result of the slow and patient dissection of motive and +temptation, the workings of conscience, the gradual development of +character. These processes are slow, and Crabbe's method of presenting +them is slow, but he attains his end. A distinction has lately been +drawn between "literary Poetry," and "Poetry which is Literature." +Crabbe's is rarely indeed that of the former class. It cannot be denied +that it has taken its place in the latter. + +The apology for Crabbe's lengthiness might almost be extended to the +singular inequalities of his verse. FitzGerald joins all other critics +in regretting his carelessness, and indeed the charge can hardly be +called harsh. A poet who habitually insists on producing thirty lines a +day, whether or no the muse is willing, can hardly escape temptations to +carelessness. Crabbe's friends and other contemporaries noted it, and +expressed surprise at the absence in Crabbe of the artistic conscience. +Wordsworth spoke to him on the subject, and ventured to express regret +that he did not take more pains with the workmanship of his verse, and +reports that Crabbe's only answer was "it does not matter." Samuel +Rogers had related to Wordsworth a similar experience. "Mr. Rogers once +told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his +later works so much less correctly than in his earlier. 'Yes,' replied +he, 'but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.'" +This is of course very sad, and, as has already been urged, Crabbe's +earlier works had the advantage of much criticism, and even correction +from his friends. But however this may be, it may fairly be urged that +in a "downright" painter of human life, with that passion for realism +which Crabbe was one of the first to bring back into our literature, +mere "polish" would have hindered, not helped, the effects he was bent +on producing. It is difficult in polishing the heroic couplet not to +produce the impression of seeking epigrammatic point. In Crabbe's +strenuous and merciless analyses of human character his power would have +been often weakened, had attention been diverted from the whole to the +parts, and from the matter to the manner. The "finish" of Gray, +Goldsmith, and Rogers suited exquisitely with their pensive musings on +Human Life. It was otherwise with the stern presentment of such stories +of human sin and misery as _Edward Shore_ or _Delay has Danger._ + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +LAST YEARS AT TROWBRIDGE + +(1819-1832) + +The last thirteen years of Crabbe's life were spent at Trowbridge, +varied by occasional absences among hiss friends at Bath, and in the +neighbourhood, and by annual visits of greater length to the family of +Samuel Hoare at Hampstead. Meantime his son John was resident with him +at Trowbridge, and the parish and parishioners were not neglected. From +Mrs. Hoare's house on Hampstead Heath it was not difficult to visit his +literary friends in London; and Wordsworth, Southey, and others, +occasionally stayed with the family. But as early as 1820, Crabbe became +subject to frequent severe attacks of neuralgia (then called _tic +douloureux_), and this malady, together with the gradual approach of old +age, made him less and less able to face the fatigue of London +hospitalities. + +Notwithstanding his failing health, and not infrequent absence from his +parish--for he occasionally visited the Isle of Wight, Hastings, and +other watering-places with his Hampstead friends--Crabbe was living down +at Trowbridge much of the unpopularity with which he had started. The +people were beginning to discover what sterling qualities of heart +existed side by side with defects of tact and temper, and the lack of +sympathy with certain sides of evangelical teaching. His son tells us, +and may be trusted, that his father's personal piety deepened in his +declining years, an influence which could not be ineffectual. Children, +moreover, were growing up in the family, and proved a new source of +interest and happiness. Pucklechurch. was not far away, and his son +George's eldest girl, Caroline, as she approached her fourth birthday, +began to receive from him the tenderest of letters. + +The most important incident in Crabbe's life during this period was his +visit to Walter Scott in Edinburgh in the early autumn of 1822. In the +spring of that year, Crabbe had for the first time met Scott in London, +and Scott had obtained from him a promise that he would visit him in +Scotland in the autumn. It so fell out that George the Fourth, who had +been crowned in the previous year, and was paying a series of Coronation +progresses through his dominions, had arranged to visit Edinburgh in the +August of this year. Whether Crabbe deliberately chose the same period +for his own visit, or stumbled on it accidentally, and Scott did not +care to disappoint his proposed guest, is not made quite clear by +Crabbe's biographer. Scott had to move with all his family to his house +in Edinburgh for the great occasion, and he would no doubt have much +preferred to receive Crabbe at Abbotsford. Moreover, it fell to Scott, +as the most distinguished man of letters and archaeologist in Edinburgh, +to organise all the ceremonies and the festivities necessary for the +King's reception. In Lockhart's phrase, Scott stage-managed the whole +business. And it was on Scott's return from receiving the King on board +the Royal yacht on the 14th of August that he found awaiting him in +Castle Street one who must have been an inconvenient guest. The +incidents of this first meeting are so charmingly related by Lockhart +that I cannot resist repeating them in his words, well known though they +may be:-- + + "On receiving the poet on the quarter-deck, his Majesty + called for a bottle of Highland whisky, and having drunk his + health in this national liquor, desired a glass to be filled for + him. Sir Walter, after draining his own bumper, made a + request that the king would condescend to bestow on him the + glass out of which his Majesty had just drunk his health: and + this being granted, the precious vessel was immediately + wrapped up and carefully deposited in what he conceived to + be the safest part of his dress. So he returned with it to + Castle Street; but--to say nothing at this moment of graver + distractions--on reading his house he found a guest established + there of a sort rather different from the usual visitors + of the time. The Poet Crabbe, to whom he had been introduced + when last in London by Mr. Murray of Albemarle + Street, after repeatedly promising to follow up the acquaintance + by an excursion to the North, had at last arrived in the + midst of these tumultuous preparations for the royal advent. + Notwithstanding all such impediments, he found his quarters + ready for him, and Scott entering, wet and hurried, embraced + the venerable man with brotherly affection. The royal gift + was forgotten--the ample skirt of the coat within which it had + been packed, and which he had hitherto held cautiously in + front of his person, slipped back to its more usual position--he + sat down beside Crabbe, and the glass was crushed to + atoms. His scream and gesture made his wife conclude that + he had sat down on a pair of scissors, or the like: but very + little harm had been done except the breaking of the glass, of + which alone he had been thinking. This was a damage not to + be repaired: as for the scratch that accompanied it, its scar + was of no great consequence, as even when mounting the + 'cat-dath, or battle-garment' of the Celtic Club, he adhered, + like his hero, Waverley, to _the trews_." + +What follows in Lockhart's pages is also too interesting, as regards +Scott's visitor himself, to be omitted. The Highland clans, or what +remained of them, were represented on the occasion, and added greatly to +the picturesqueness of the procession and other pageantry. And this is +what occurred on the morning after the meeting of Scott and his guest:-- + + "By six o'clock next morning Sir Walter, arrayed in the + 'Garb of old Gaul,' (which he had of the Campbell tartan, in + memory of one of his great-grandmothers) was attending a + muster of these gallant Celts in the Queen Street Gardens, + where he had the honour of presenting them with it set of + colours, and delivered a suitable exhortation, crowned with + their rapturous applause. Some members of the Club, all of + course in their full costume, were invited to breakfast with + him. He had previously retired for a little to his library, and + when he entered the parlour, Mr. Crabbe, dressed in the + highest style of professional neatness and decorum, with + buckles in his shoes, and whatever was then befitting an + English clergyman of his years and station, was standing in + the midst of half-a-dozen stalwart Highlanders, exchanging + elaborate civilities with them in what was at least meant to + be French. He had come into the room shortly before, without + having been warned about such company, and hearing the + party conversing together in an unknown tongue, the polite + old man had adopted, in his first salutation, what he considered + as the universal language. Some of the Celts, on their + part, took him for some foreign Abbe or Bishop, and were + doing their best to explain to him that they were not the + wild savages for which, from the startled glance he had thrown + on their hirsute proportions, there seemed but too much reason + to suspect he had taken them; others, more perspicacious, + gave in to the thing for the joke's sake; and there was high + fun when Scott dissolved the charm of their stammering, by + grasping Crabbe with one hand, and the nearest of these + figures with the other, and greeted the whole group with the + same hearty _good-morning_." + +In spite, however, of banquets (at one of which Crabbe was present) and +other constant calls upon his host's time and labour, the southern poet +contrived to enjoy himself. He wandered into the oldest parts of +Edinburgh, and Scott obtained for him the services of a friendly caddie +to accompany him on some of these occasions lest the old parson should +come to any harm. Lockhart, who was of the party in Castle Street, was +very attentive to Scott's visitor, Crabbe had but few opportunities of +seeing Scott alone. "They had," writes Lockhart, "but one quiet walk +together, and it was to the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel and Mushat's +Cairn, which the deep impression made on Crabbe by _The Heart of +Midlothian_ had given him an earnest wish to see. I accompanied them; +and the hour so spent--in the course of which the fine old man gave us +some most touching anecdotes of his early struggles--was a truly +delightful contrast to the bustle and worry of miscellaneous society +which consumed so many of his few hours in Scotland. Scott's family were +more fortunate than himself in this respect. They had from infancy been +taught to reverence Crabbe's genius, and they now saw enough of him to +make them think of him ever afterwards with tender affection." + +Yet one more trait of Scott's interest in his guest should not be +omitted. The strain upon Scott's strength of the King's visit was made +more severe by the death during that fortnight of Scott's old and dear +friend, William Erskine, only a few months before elevated to the bench, +with the title of Lord Kinedder. Erskine had been irrecoverably wounded +by the circulation of a cruel and unfounded slander upon his moral +character. It so preyed on his mind that its effect was, in Scott's +words, to "torture to death one of the most soft-hearted and sensitive +of God's creatures." On the very day of the King's arrival he died, +after high fever and delirium had set in, and his funeral, which Scott +attended, followed in due course. "I am not aware," says Lockhart, "that +I ever saw Scott in such a state of dejection as he was when I +accompanied him and his friend Mr. Thomas Thomson from Edinburgh to +Queensferry in attendance upon Lord Kinedder's funeral. Yet that was one +of the noisiest days of the royal festival, and he had to plunge into +some scene of high gaiety the moment after we returned. As we halted in +Castle Street, Mr. Crabbe's mild, thoughtful face appeared at the +window, and Scott said, on leaving me, 'Now for what our old friend +there puts down as the crowning curse of his poor player in _The +Borough_:-- + + "To hide in rant the heart-ache of the night."'" + +There is pathos in the recollection that just ten years later when Scott +lay in his study at Abbotsford--the strength of that noble mind slowly +ebbing away--the very passage in _The Borough_ just quoted was one of +those he asked to have read to him. It is the graphic and touching +account in Letter XII. of the "Strolling Players," and as the +description of their struggles and their squalor fell afresh upon his +ear, his own excursions into matters theatrical recurred to him, and he +murmured smiling, "Ah! Terry won't like that! Terry won't like that!!" + +The same year Crabbe was invited to spend Christmas at his old home, +Belvoir Castle, but felt unable to face the fatigue in wintry weather. +Meantime, among other occupations at home, he was finding time to write +verse copiously. Twenty-one manuscript volumes were left behind him at +his death. He seems to have said little about it at home, for his son +tells us that in the last year of his father's life he learned for the +first time that another volume of Tales was all but ready for the press. +"There are in my recess at home," he writes to George, "where they have +been long undisturbed, another series of such stories, in number and +quantity sufficient for another octavo volume; and as I suppose they are +much like the former in execution, and sufficiently different in events +and characters, they may hereafter, in peaceable times, be worth +something to you." A selection from those formed the _Posthumous Poems_, +first given to the world in the edition of 1834. The _Tales of the +Hall_, it may be supposed, had not quite justified the publisher's +expectations. John Murray had sought to revive interest in the whole +bulk of Crabbe's poetry, of which he now possessed the copyright, by +commissioning Richard Westall, R.A., to produce a series of +illustrations of the poems, thirty-one in number, engravings of which +were sold in sets at two guineas. The original drawings, in delicate +water-colour, in the present Mr. John Murray's possession, are +sufficiently grim. The engravings, lacking the relief of colour, are +even more so, and a rapid survey of the entire series amply shows how +largely in Crabbe's subjects bulks the element of human misery. Crabbe +was much flattered by this new tribute to his reputation, and dwells on +it in one of his letters to Mrs. Leadbeater. + +A letter written from Mrs. Hoare's house at Hampstead in June 1825 +presents an agreeable picture of his holiday enjoyments:-- + + "My time passes I cannot tell how pleasantly when the + pain leaves me. To-day I read one of my long stories to my + friends and Mrs. Joanna Baillie and her sister. It was a task; + but they encouraged me, and were, or seemed, gratified. I + rhyme at Hampstead with a great deal of facility, for nothing + interrupts me but kind calls to something pleasant; and + though all this makes parting painful, it will, I hope, make + me resolute to enter upon my duties diligently when I return. + I am too much indulged. Except a return of pain, and that + not severe, I have good health; and if my walks are not so + long, they are more frequent. I have seen many things and + many people; have seen Mr. Southey and Mr. Wordsworth; + have been some days with Mr. Rogers, and at last have been + at the Athenaeum, and purpose to visit the Royal Institution. + I have been to Richmond in a steamboat; seen also the + picture-galleries and some other exhibitions; but I passed one + Sunday in London with discontent, doing no duty myself, nor + listening to another; and I hope my uneasiness proceeded not + merely from breaking a habit. We had a dinner social and + pleasant, if the hours before it had been rightly spent; but I + would not willingly pass another Sunday in the same manner. + I have my home with my friends here (Mrs. Hoare's), and + exchange it with reluctance for the Hummums occasionally. + Such is the state of the garden here, in which I walk and read, + that, in a morning like this, the smell of the flowers is + fragrant beyond anything I ever perceived before. It is + what I can suppose may be in Persia or other oriental + countries--a Paradisiacal sweetness. I am told that I or my + verses, or perhaps both, have abuse in a boot of Mr. Colburn's + publishing, called _The Spirit of the Times_. I believe I felt + something indignant; but my engraved seal dropped out of + the socket and was lost, and I perceived this moved me much + more than the _Spirit_ of Mr. Hazlitt." + +The reference is, of course, to Hazlitt's _Spirit of the Age_, then +lately published In reviewing the poetry of his day Hazlitt has a +chapter devoted to Campbell and Crabbe. The criticism on the latter is +little more than a greatly over-drawn picture of Crabbe's choice of +vice and misery for his subjects, and ignores entirely any other side of +his genius, ending with the remark that he would long be "a thorn in the +side of English poetry." Crabbe was wise in not attaching too much +importance to Hazlitt's attack. + +Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, mentioned in the letter just cited, +saw much of Crabbe during his visits to Hampstead. A letter from Joanna +to the younger George speaks, as do all his friends, of his growing +kindliness and courtesy, but notes how often, in the matter of judging +his fellow-creatures, his head and his heart were in antagonism. While +at times Joanna was surprised and provoked by the charitable allowances +the old parson made for the unworthy, at other times she noted also that +she would hear him, when acts of others were the subject of praise, +suggesting, "in a low voice as to himself," the possible mixture of less +generous motives. The analytical method was clearly dominant in Crabbe +always, and not merely when he wrote his poetry, and is itself the clue +to much in his treatment of human nature. + +Of Crabbe's simplicity and unworldliness in other matters Miss Baillie +furnishes an amusing instance. She writes:-- + + "While he was staying with Mrs. Hoare a few years since + I sent him one day the present of a blackcock, and a message + with it that Mr. Crabbe should look at the bird before it was + delivered to the cook, or something to that purpose. He + looked at the bird as desired, and then went to Mrs. Hoare in + some perplexity to ask whether he ought not to have it + stuffed, instead of eating it. She could not, in her own house, + tell him that it was simply intended for the larder, and he + was at the trouble and expense of having it stuffed, lest I + should think proper respect had not been put upon my + present." + +Altogether the picture presented in these last years of Crabbe's +personality is that of a pious and benevolent old man, endearing himself +to old and new friends, and with manners somewhat formal and overdone, +representing perhaps what in his humbler Aldeburgh days he had imagined +to be those of the upper circles, rather than what he had found them to +be in his prosperous later days in London. + +In the autumn of 1831 he was visiting his faithful and devoted friends, +the Samuel Hoares, at their residence in Clifton. The house was +apparently in Princes Buildings, or in the Paragon, for the poet +describes accurately the scene that meets the eye from the back-windows +of those pleasant streets:-- + + "I have to thank my friends for one of the most beautiful + as well as comfortable rooms you could desire. I look from + my window upon the Avon and its wooded and rocky bounds--the + trees yet green. A vessel is sailing down, and here comes + a steamer (Irish, I suppose). I have in view the end of the Cliff + to the right, and on my left a wide and varied prospect over + Bristol, as far as the eye can reach, and at present the novelty + makes it very interesting. Clifton was always a favourite + place with me. I have more strength and more spirits since + my arrival at this place, and do not despair of giving a good + account of my excursion on my return." + +It is noteworthy that Crabbe, who as a young man witnessed the Lord +George Gordon Riots of 1780, should, fifty years later, have been in +Bristol during the disgraceful Reform Bill Rising of 1831, which, +through the cowardice or connivance of the government of the day, went +on unchecked to work such disastrous results to life and property. On +October the 26th he writes to his son:-- + + "I have been with Mrs. Hoare at Bristol, where all appears + still. Should anything arise to alarm, you may rely upon our + care to avoid danger. Sir Charles Wetherell, to be sure, is + not popular, nor is the Bishop, but I trust that both will be + safe from violence--abuse they will not mind. The Bishop + seems a good-humoured man, and, except by the populace, is + greatly admired." + +A few days later, however, he has to record that his views of the +situation were not to be fulfilled. He writes:-- + + "Bristol, I suppose, never in the most turbulent times of + old, witnessed such outrage. Queen's Square is but half + standing; half is a smoking ruin. As you may be apprehensive + for my safety, it is right to let you know that my friends + and I are undisturbed, except by our fears for the progress of + this mob-government, which is already somewhat broken into + parties, who wander stupidly about, or sleep wherever they + fall wearied with their work and their indulgence. The + military are now in considerable force, and many men are + sworn in as constables; many volunteers are met in Clifton + Churchyard, with white round one arm to distinguish them, + some with guns and the rest with bludgeons. The Mayor's + house has been destroyed; the Bishop's palace plundered, + but whether burned or not I do not know. This morning a + party of soldiers attacked the crowd in the Square; some lives + were lost, and the mob dispersed, whether to meet again is + doubtful. It has been a dreadful time, but we may reasonably + hope it is now over. People are frightened certainly, and no + wonder, for it is evident these poor wretches would plunder + to the extent of their power. Attempts were made to burn + the Cathedral, but failed. Many lives were lost. To attempt + any other subject now would be fruitless. We can think, + speak, and write only of our fears, hopes, or troubles. I + would have gone to Bristol to-day, but Mrs. Hoare was + unwilling that I should. She thought, and perhaps rightly, + that clergymen were marked objects. I therefore only went + half-way, and of course could learn but little. All now is + quiet and well." + +In the former of these last quoted letters Crabbe refers sadly to the +pain of parting from his old Hampstead friends,--a parting which he felt +might well be the last. His anticipation was to be fulfilled. He left +Clifton in November, and went direct to his son George, at Pucklechurch. +He was able to preach twice for his son, who congratulated the old man +on the power of his voice, and other encouraging signs of vigour. "I +will venture a good sum, sir," he said "that you will be assisting me +ten years hence." "Ten weeks" was Crabbe's answer, and the implied +prediction was fulfilled almost to the day. After a fortnight at +Pucklechurch, Crabbe returned to his own home at Trowbridge. Early in +January he reported himself as more and more subject to drowsiness, +which he accepted as sign of increasing weakness. Later in the month he +was prostrated by a severe cold. Other complications supervened, and it +soon became apparent that he could not rally. After a few days of much +suffering, and pious resignation, he passed away on the third of +February 1832, with his two sons and his faithful nurse by his side. The +death of the rector was followed by every token of general affection and +esteem. The past asperities of religious and political controversy had +long ceased, and it was felt that the whole parish had lost a devout +teacher and a generous friend. All he had written in _The Borough_ and +elsewhere as to the eccentricities of certain forms of dissent was +forgotten, and all the Nonconformist ministers of the place and +neighbourhood followed him to the grave. A committee was speedily formed +to erect a monument over his grave in the chancel. The sculptor chosen +produced a group of a type then common. "A figure representing the dying +poet, casting his eyes on the sacred volume; two celestial beings, one +looking on as if awaiting his departure." Underneath was inscribed, +after the usual words telling his age, and period of his work at +Trowbridge, the following not exaggerated tribute:-- + + "Born in humble life, he made himself what he was. + By the force of his genius, + He broke through the obscurity of his birth + Yet never ceased to feel for the + Less fortunate; + Entering (as his work can testify) into + The sorrows and deprivations + Of the poorest of his parishioners; + And so discharging the duties of his station as a + Minister and a magistrate, + As to acquire the respect and esteem + Of all his neighbours. + As a writer, he is well described by a great + Contemporary, as + 'Nature's sternest painter yet her best.'" + +A fresh edition of Crabbe's complete works was at once arranged for by +John Murray, to be edited by George Crabbe, the son, who was also to +furnish the prefatory memoir. The edition appeared in 1834, in eight +volumes. An engraving by Finden from Phillips's portrait of the poet was +prefixed to the last volume, and each volume contained frontispieces and +vignettes from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield of scenery or buildings +connected with Crabbe's various residences in Suffolk and the Yale of +Belvoir. The volumes were ably edited; the editor's notes, together +with, quotations from Crabbe's earliest critics in the _Edinburgh_ and +_Quarterly Reviews_, were interesting and informing, and the +illustrations happily chosen. But it is not so easy to acquiesce in an +editorial decision on a more important matter. The eighth volume is +occupied by a selection from the Tales left in manuscript by Crabbe, to +which reference has already been made. The son, whose criticisms of his +father are generally sound, evidently had misgivings concerning these +from the first. In a prefatory note to this volume, the brothers +(writing as executors) confess these misgivings. They were startled on +reading the new poems in print at the manifest need of revision and +correction before they could be given to the world. They delicately hint +that the meaning is often obscure, and the "images left imperfect." This +criticism is absolutely just, but unfortunately some less well-judging +persons though "of the highest eminence in literature" had advised the +contrary. So "second thoughts prevailed," instead of those "third +thoughts which are a riper first," and the Tales, or a selection from +them, were printed. They have certainly not added to Crabbe's +reputation. There are occasional touches of his old and best pathos, as +in the story of Rachel; and in _The Ancient Mansion_ there are brief +descriptions of rural nature under the varying aspects of the seasons, +which exhibit all Crabbe's old and close observation of detail, such +as:-- + + "And then the wintry winds begin to blow, + Then fall the flaky stars of gathering snow, + When on the thorn the ripening sloe, yet blue, + Takes the bright varnish of the morning dew; + The aged moss grows brittle on the pale, + The dry boughs splinter in the windy gale." + +But there is much in these last Tales that is trivial and tedious, and +it must be said that their publication has chiefly served to deter many +readers from the pursuit of what is best and most rewardful in the study +of Crabbe. To what extent the new edition served to revive any flagging +interest in the poet cannot perhaps be estimated. The edition must have +been large, for during many years past no book of the kind has been more +prominent in second-hand catalogues. As we have seen, the popularity of +Crabbe was already on the wane, and the appearance of the two volumes of +Tennyson, in 1842, must farther have served to divert attention from +poetry so widely different. Workmanship so casual and imperfect as +Crabbe's had now to contend with such consummate art and diction as that +of _The Miller's Daughter_ and _Dora_. + +As has been more than once remarked, these stories belong to the +category of fiction as well as of poetry, and the duration of their +power to attract was affected not only by the appearance of greater +poets, but of prose story-tellers with equal knowledge of the human +heart, and with other gifts to which Crabbe could make no claim. His +knowledge and observation of human nature were not perhaps inferior to +Jane Austen's, but he could never have matched her in prose fiction. He +certainly was not deficient in humour, but it was not his dominant gift, +as it was hers. Again, his knowledge of the life and social ways of the +class to which he nominally belonged, does not seem to have been +intimate. Crabbe could not have written prose fiction with any +approximation to the manners of real life. His characters would have +certainly _thou'ed_ and _thee'ed_ one another as they do in his verse, +and a clergyman would always have been addressed as "Reverend Sir!" + +Surely, it will be argued, all this is sufficient to account for the +entire disappearance of Crabbe from the list of poets whom every +educated lover of poetry is expected to appreciate. Yet the fact +remains, as FitzGerald quotes from Sir Leslie Stephen, that "with all +its short-and long-comings, Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the +reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can," and almost all +English poets and critics of mark, during his time and after it, have +agreed in recognising the same fact. We know what was thought of him by +Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson. Critics differing as +widely in other matters as Macaulay, John Henry Newman, Mr. Swinburne, +and Dr. Gore, have found in Crabbe an insight into the springs of +character, and a tragic power of dealing with them, of a rare kind. No +doubt Crabbe demands something of his readers. He asks from them a +corresponding interest in human nature. He asks for a kindred habit of +observation, and a kindred patience. The present generation of +poetry-readers cares mainly for style. While this remains the habit of +the town, Crabbe will have to wait for any popular revival. But he is +not so dead as the world thinks. He has his constant readers still, but +they talk little of their poet. "They give Heaven thanks, and make no +boast of it." These are they to whom the "unruly wills and affections" +of their kind are eternally interesting, even when studied through the +medium of a uniform and monotonous metre. + +A Trowbridge friend wrote to Crabbe's son, after his father's death, +"When I called on him, soon after his arrival, I remarked that his house +and garden were pleasant and secluded: he replied that he preferred +walking in the streets, and observing the faces of the passers-by, to +the finest natural scenes." There is a poignant line in _Maud_, where +the distracted lover dwells on "the faces that one meets." It was not by +the "sweet records, promises as sweet," that these two observers of life +were impressed, but rather by vicious records and hopeless outlooks. It +was such countenances that Crabbe looked for, and speculated on, for in +such, he found food for that pity and terror he most loved to awaken. +The starting-point of Crabbe's desire to portray village-life truly was +a certain indignation he felt at the then still-surviving conventions of +the Pastoral Poets. We have lately watched, in the literature of our own +day, a somewhat similar reaction against sentimental pictures of +country-life. The feebler members of a family of novelists, which some +one wittily labelled as the "kail-yard school," so irritated a young +Scottish journalist, the late Mr. George Douglas, that he resolved to +provide what he conceived might be a useful corrective for the public +mind. To counteract the half-truths of the opposite school, he wrote a +tale of singular power and promise, _The House with the Green +Shutters_. Like all reactions, it erred in the violence of its +colouring. If intended as a true picture of the normal state of a small +Scottish provincial town and its society, it may have been as false in +its own direction as the kail-yarders had been in theirs. But for Mr. +Douglas's untimely death--a real loss to literature--he would doubtless +have shown in future fictions that the pendulum had ceased to swing, and +would have given us more artistic, because completer, pictures of human +life. With Crabbe the force of his primal bias never ceased to act until +his life's end. The leaven of protest against the sentimentalists never +quite worked itself out in him, although, no doubt, in some of the later +tales and portrayals of character, the sun was oftener allowed to shine +out from behind the clouds + +We must not forget this when we are inclined to accept without question +Byron's famous eulogium. A poet is not the "best" painter of Nature, +merely because he chooses one aspect of human character and human +fortunes rather than another. If he must not conceal the sterner side, +equally is he bound to remember the sunnier and more serene. If a poet +is to deal justly with the life of the rich or poor, he must take into +fullest account, and give equal prominence to, the homes where happiness +abides. He must remember that though there is a skeleton in every +cupboard, it must not be dragged out for a purpose, nor treated as if it +were the sole inhabitant. He must deal with the happinesses of life and +not only with its miseries; with its harmonies and not only its +dislocations. He must remember the thousand homes in which is to be +found the quiet and faithful discharge of duty, inspired at once and +illumined by the family affections, and not forget that in such as these +the strength of a country lies. Crabbe is often spoken of as our first +great realist in the poetry and fiction of the last century, and the +word is often used as if it meant chiefly plain-speaking as to the +sordid aspects of life. But he is the truest realist who does not +suppress any side of that which may be seen, if looked for. Although +Murillo threw into fullest relief the grimy feet of his beggar-boys +which so offended Mr. Ruskin, still what eternally attracts us to his +canvas is not the soiled feet but the "sweet boy-faces" that "laugh amid +the Seville grapes." It was because Crabbe too often laid greater stress +on the ugliness than on the beauty of things, that he fails to that +extent to be the full and adequate painter and poet of humble life. + +He was a dispeller of many illusions. He could not give us the joy that +Goldsmith, Cowper, and William Barnes have given, but he discharged a +function no less valuable than theirs, and with an individuality that +has given him a high and enduring place in the poetry of the nineteenth +century. + +There can be no question that within the last twenty or thirty years +there has been a marked revival of interest in the poetry of Crabbe. To +the influence of Edward FitzGerald's fascinating personality this +revival may be partly, but is not wholly, due. It may be of the nature +of a reaction against certain canons of taste too long blindly followed. +It may be that, like the Queen in _Hamlet_, we are beginning to crave +for "more matter and less art"; or that, like the Lady of Shalott, we +are growing "half-sick of shadows," and long for a closer touch with +the real joys and sorrows of common people. Whatever be the cause, there +can be no reason to regret the fact, or to doubt that in these days of +"art for art's sake," the influence of Crabbe's verse is at once of a +bracing and a sobering kind. + + + + +INDEX + + + A + + _Aaron the Gipsy_ + Addison + _Adventures of Richard, The_ + Aldeburgh + _Allegro_ (Milton) + Allington (Lincolnshire) + _Ancient Mansion, The_ + _Annals of the Parish, The_ (Galt) + _Annual Register, The_ + Austen, Jane + Autobiography, Crabbe's + + + B + + Baillie, Agnes + --Joanna + Barnes, William + Barrie, J.M. + Barton, Bernard, + _Basket-Woman, The_ (Edgeworth) + Bath + Beccles + Belvoir Castle + Biography, Crabbe's + "Blaney" + _Borough, The_ + Boswell + Bowles, William Lisle + _Boys at School_ + Bristol + Bunbury, Sir Henry + Burke + Burns + Butler, Joseph + Byron + + + C + + Campbell, Thomas + _Candidate, The_ + _Canterbury Tales, The_ (Chaucer) + _Castle Rackrent_ (Edgeworth) + Celtic Club + Chatterton + Chaucer + _Childe Harold_ (Byron) + Church, English + Churchill (poet) + _Clarissa Harlowe_ (Richardson) + "Clelia" + Clergy, non-residence of + sketches of + Clifton + Coleridge + _Confessions of an Opium Eater_, (De Quincey) + _Confidant, The_ + Courthope, Mr. + Cowley + Cowper + Crabbe, George, birth and family + history of; + early literary bent; + school days; + apprenticed to a surgeon; + life at Woodbridge; + falls in love; + first efforts in verse; + practises as a surgeon; + dangerous illness; + engagement to Miss Elmy; + seeks his fortune in London; + poverty in London; + keeps a diary; + unsuccessful attempts to sell his poems; + appeals to Edmund Burke; + Burke's help and patronage; + invited to Burke's country seat; + publishes _The Library_; + friendship with Burke; + second letter to Burke; + meetings with prominent men; + takes Holy Orders; + returns to Aldeburgh as curate; + coldly received by his fellow-townsmen; + becomes domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland; + life at Belvoir Castle; + _The Village_; + receives LL.B. degree; + presented to two livings; + marriage; + curate of Stathern; + his children; + village traditions concerning him; + _The Newspaper_; + life at Stathern; + moves to Muston; + revisits his native place; + goes to Parham; + lives at Great Glemham Hall; + moves to Rendham; + ill-health; + use of opium; + returns to Muston; + publishes a new volume of poems; + _The Parish Register_; + his great popularity; + friendship with Sir Walter Scott; + _The Borough_; + _Tales_; + visit to London; + returns to Muston; + death of his wife; + serious illness; + rector of Trowbridge; + departure from Muston; + intercourse with literary men in London; + a member of the "Literary Society"; + receives L3000 from John Murray; + returns to Trowbridge; + _Tales of the Hall_; + visits Scott in Edinburgh; + _Posthumous Poems_; + last years at Trowbridge; + illness and death; + his religious temperament; + rusticity and lack of polish; + indifference to art; + want of tact; + love of female society; + acquaintance and sympathy with the poor; + his preaching; + inequality of his work; + influence of preceding poets; + his reputation at its height; + knowledge of botany; + his descriptions of nature; + first great realist in verse; + fondness for verbal antithesis; + his epigrams; + defective _technique_; + his influence on subsequent novelists; + parodies of his style; + his sense of humour; + defects of his poetry; + his retentive memory; + his characters drawn from life; + his treatment of peasant life; + power of analysing character; + choice of sordid and gloomy subjects; + his lyric verses; + Edward FitzGerald's great admiration of his poetry; + contemporary and other estimates of his work; + revival of interest in him; + Crabbe, George (father of the poet) + --Mrs. (mother) + --George (son) + --Mrs. (wife) + --John + --Edmund + --William + --(brother) + --George (grandson) + --Caroline + _Critical Review_ + + + D + + _Daffodils, The_ (Wordsworth) + _Dejection, Ode to_ (Coleridge) + _Delay has Danger_ + De Quincey + _Deserted Village, The_ (Goldsmith) + Diary, Crabbe's + Dickens + Dodsley (publisher) + _Dora_ (Tennyson) + Douglas, George + _Dunciad_ (Pope) + Dunwich + + + E + + Edgeworth, Miss + Edinburgh + _Edinburgh Annual Register_ + _Edinburgh Review_ + _Edward Shore_ + _Elegant Extracts_ (Vicesimus Knox) + _Elegy in a Country Churchyard,_ (Gray) + _Ellen_ + Elmy, Miss Sarah. _See_ Crabbe, Mrs. (wife) + _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (Byron) + _Enoch Arden_ (Tennyson) + Erskine, William + _Essay on Man_ (Pope) + _Excursion, The_ (Wordsworth) + + + F + + Felon, the condemned, Description of + Fielding + Finden (artist) + FitzGerald, Edward + --William Thomas + Fox, Charles James + --Henry Richard. _See_ Holland, Lord + _Frank Courtship, The_ + Fund, The Literary + + + G + + _Gentleman Farmer, The_ + _Gentleman's Magazine_ + George IV + Glemham + Glynn, Dr. Robert + Goldsmith + Gordon, Lord George + Gore, Dr. (Bishop of Worcester) + Grantham + Gray + + + H + + _Hall of Justice, The_ + Hampstead + _Hanmer, Sir Thomas Memoir and Correspondence of_ + Hatchard, John (publisher) + _Haunted House, The_ (Hood) + Hazlitt + _Heart of Midlothian, The_ (Scott) + _Henry V_ (Shakespeare) + "Hetty Sorrel" + Highlanders + Hoare family + Hogarth + Holland, Lord + _House with the Green Shutters, The_ (George Douglas) + Huchon, M. (University of Nancy) + _Human Life_ (Rogers) + Huntingdon, William + Hutton, Rev. W.H. + + + I + + _Inebriety_ + _In Memoriam_ (Tennyson) + "Isaac Ashford" + + + J + + Jeffrey _(Edinburgh Review)_ + Johnson, Samuel + Jordan, Mrs. (actress) + + + K + + "Kailyard school" + Keats + Kemble, Fanny + --John + + + L + + _Lady Barbara_ + _Lady of the Lake, The_ (Scott) + Lamb, Charles + _Lamia and other Poems_ (Keats) + Lansdowne, Third Marquis of + Langborne (painter) + _Lay of the Last Minstrel, The_ (Scott) + _Lazy Lawrence_ (Edgeworth) + Leadbeater, Mrs. + _Library, The_ + Literary Society, The + Lockhart + Longmans (publisher) + Lothian, Lord + Lowell + _Lover's Journey, The_ + _Lyrical Ballads_ (Wordsworth) + + + M + + Macaulay + _Maid's Story, The_ + Manners, Lord Robert + _Maud_ (Tennyson) + Memoir of Crabbe. _See_ Biography + Methodism + _Miller's daughter The_ (Tennyson) + Minerva Press, The + "Mira" + Mitford, Miss + Montgomery, Robert + _Monthly Review_ + Moore, Thomas + Murillo + Murray, John (publisher) + Muston (Leicestershire) + + + N + + _New Monthly_ + Newman, Cardinal + _Newspaper, The_ + _Nineteenth Century_ + North, Mr. Dudley + --Lord + Novels in Crabbe's day + + + O + + Omar Khayyam + Opium eating + _Our Village_ (Miss Mitford) + + + P + + _Pains of Sleep_ (Coleridge) + _Parents' Assistant, The_ (Edgeworth) + Parham + _Parish Register, The_ + _Parting Hour, The_ + _Patron, The_ + Phillips (artist) + "Phoebe Dawson" + Pluralities + _Poacher, The_ (Scott) + Poor, State relief of + Pope + _Posthumous Poems_ + Pretyman, Bishop + Priest, Description of Parish + _Progress of Error_ (Cowper) + Pucklechurch + + + Q + + _Quarterly Review_ + Queensberry, Duke of + + + R + + Raleigh + Reform Bill Riots + _Rejected Addresses_ (Smith) + Rendham + Reynolds, Sir Joshua + Richardson (novelist) + Ridout, Miss Charlotte + Riots, Gordon; Bristol + Rogers, Samuel + _Rokeby_ (Scott) + Romilly, Sir Samuel + Ruskin + _Ruth_ + Rutland, Duke of + + + S + + Scott, Sir Walter + _Seasons, The_ (Thomson) + Sellers, Miss Edith + Shackleton, Edward + Shakespeare + Shelburne, Lord, lines to + Shelley + Siddons, Mrs. + _Simple Susan_ (Edgeworth) + _Sir Eustace Grey_ + _Sisters The_ + Smith, James (_Rejected, Addresses_) + Smollett + _Smugglers and Poachers_ + _Solitary Reaper, The_ (Wordsworth) + Southey + Spenser + _Spirit of the Age_. (Hazlitt) + Stanfield, Clark on + Stathern (Leictershire) + Stephen, Sir Leslie + Stothard (painter) + Sweffling (Suffolk) + Swift + Swinburne + + + T + + _Table Talk_ (Cowper) + _Tales_ + _Tales of the Hall_ + Tennyson + --Frederick + Thomson + Thurlow, Lord + Tomlins, Dr. _See_ Pretyman + Tovell family + _Traveller, The_ (Goldsmith) + Trollope, Anthony + Trowbridge + Turner, Rev. Richard + + + V + + _Village, The_ + + + W + + Walker, Frederick (artist) + Watson, Bishop + _Waverley_ (Scott) + Wesley + Wesleyan Movement + Westall, Richard (artist) + Whitefield Revival + _Widow's Tale, The_ + _Wife's Trial, The_ (Lamb) + Wilkie + Wolfe + Woodbridge + Wordsworth + _World of Dreams, The_ + + + Y + + Young + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crabbe, (George), by Alfred Ainger + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRABBE, (GEORGE) *** + +***** This file should be named 11088.txt or 11088.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/0/8/11088/ + +Produced by Garrett Alley and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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