1. in_ernet_dli_2015_164337_2015_164337_English-New-Of-Letters-Crabbe

The

Life

of

Charles

Lamb

by

Alfred

Ainger

New York

ALFRED AINGER

BY

CRABBE

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS

Copyright, 1903,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published September, 1903.

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 "Leader 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

vi

PREFACE

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 Aldershot . . . . 1

CHAPTER II

Poverty in London . . . . 18

CHAPTER III

Friendship with Burke . . . . 34

CHAPTER IV

Life at Bevoir Castle . . . . 50

CHAPTER V

In Sickness again . . . . 71

CHAPTER VI

The Parish Register . . . . 91

CHAPTER VII

The Borough . . . . 108

viii

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

Visiting in London . . . . . . 146

CHAPTER X

The Tales of the Hall . . . . . 163

CHAPTER XI

Last Years at Trowbridge . . . . . 184

Index . . . . . . . . 205

CRABBE

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

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

"inan 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 Words-

worth'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 ad-

herence 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

I.

EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH

studied with his own eyes, and the vocabulary of

bards who had for generations borrowed it from

another failed to supply him with the words he

The very limitations of the first five and twenty

of his life passed in a small and decaying

were more than compensated by the intimacy of

acquaintance with its inhabitants. Like Wordswor

he had early known love and sorrow "in hut wi'

poor men lie"

Wordsworth's fame and influence have

steadily since his death in 1850. Crabbe's

was apparently at its height in 1810, for it was

on occasion of his publishing his

Mr. John Murray paid him three thousand pounds

the copyright of this work, and its

after that date Crabbe's popularity may be said

continously declined. Other poets, with other

more purely poetical gifts, arose to claim atten

tion. Besides Wordsworth, an already painted

Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley had

their various admirers, and drawn

from him. It is the purpose of this little

inquire into the reasons why he is still greatly

a classic, and whether he has not, as

him, "a world of his own," still rich in interest and

profit for the explorer.

Aldeburgh, or as it came to be more

spelled in modern times, Aldborough, is

pleasant and quiet watering place on the

Suffolk, only a few miles from

which it is connected by a branch line

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 seven-

teenth 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 im-

portant 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 devasta-

tion 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

quaint place, the scene of much smuggling and other

awlessness. 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,

1.]

EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH

5

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, Parkham,

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 learn-

ing. 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.

6

CRABBE

[chap.

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 mathe-

matical 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 even 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 con-

siderable 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 prac-

I.]

EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH

7

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 biog-

rapher 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 protégé),

was at this time courting a Miss Brereton, of Fram-

lingham, 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

CRABBE

[CHAP.

abbe,

should

be

as

blessed

as

himself.

"George,"

said,

"you

shall

go

with

me

to

Parham;

there

is

a

ung

lady

there

who

would

just

suit

you!"

Crabbe

cepted

the

invitation,

made

Mr.

Tovell's

acquaint-

ance,

and

promptly

fell

in

love

with

Mr.

Tovell's

niece.

e

poet,

at

that

time,

had

not

yet

completed

his

hteenth

year.

How

soon

after

this

first

meeting

George

Crabbe

proposed

and

was

accepted,

is

not

made

clear,

but

he

as

at

least

welcomed

to

the

house

as

a

friend

and

admirer,

and

his

further

visits

encouraged.

His

uth

and

the

extreme

uncertainty

of

his

prospects

uld

not

well

have

been

agreeable

to

Mr.

and

Mrs.

vell,

or

to

Miss

Elmy's

widowed

mother

who

red

not

far

away

at

Beccles,

but

the

young

lady

herself

returned

her

lover's

affection

from

the

first,

d

never

faltered.

The

three

following

years,

during

ich

Crabbe

remained

at

Woodbridge,

gave

him

the

portunity

of

occasional

visits,

and

there

can

be

no

ubt

that

apart

from

the

fascinations

of

his

"Mira,"

which

name

he

proceeded

to

celebrate

her

in

casional

verse,

the

experience

of

country

life

and

nery,

so

different

from

that

of

his

native

Aldeburgh,

s

of

great

service

in

enlarging

his

poetical

outlook.

eat

Parham,

distant

about

five

miles

from

Sax-

ndham,

and

about

thirteen

from

Aldeburgh,

is

at

s

day

a

village

of

great

rural

charm,

although

a

gle-lined

branch

of

the

Great

Eastern

wanders

dly

among

its

streams

and

cottage

gardens

through

very

heart

of

the

place.

The

dwelling

of

the

wells

has

many

years

ago

disappeared

—

an

entirely

I.] EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGH 9

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 Wood-

bridge 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 ---

" t.................... t ..........

10

CRABBE

[chap.

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

sub-

sequent

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

—

r.]

EARLY LIFE IN ALDEBURGII

11

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 inseribed 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, Book-

seller, 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 possi

bilities 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 Alde

burgh, 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 17

had brought with it its familiar temptations to prac

tacted debauch—and it is significant that in 1775

vacated the office of churchwarden that he had he

12

CRABBE

[chap.

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

cup-board

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

were

small

and

uncertain

—

and

his

prospects

of

an

early

marriage,

or

even

of

earning

his

living

as

a

simple

——

——

——

——

——

a

——

genial 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 Aldburgh 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 Walk. 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 suc-

ceeded by an illness of Miss Elmy, when Crabbe was

in constant attendance at Parham Hall. His intimacy

with the Lovells 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 Lovells, 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."

CRABBE

[CHAP.

ue love was to run more and more smooth, the

uestion of Crabbe's future means of living seemed as

hopeless of solution as ever.

And yet the enforced idleness of these following

ears was far from unprofitable. The less time

ccupied in the routine work of his profession, the

ore leisure he had for his favourite study of natural

istory, and especially of botany. This latter study

ad been taken up during his stay at Woodbridge,

e neighbourhood of which had a Flora differing

om that of the bleak coast country of Aldeburgh,

nd it was now pursued with the same zeal at home.

erbs then played a larger part than to-day among

urative agents of the village doctor, and the fact

at Crabbe sought and obtained them so readily was

en pleaded by his poorer patients as reason why his

es need not be calculated on any large scale. But

is absorbing pursuit did far more than serve to

urnish Crabbe's outfit as a healer. It was un-

ubtedly to the observing eye and retentive memory

us practised in the cottage gardens, and in the

nes, and meadows, and marshes of Suffolk that his

escriptions, when once he found where his true

ength lay, owed a charm for which readers of poetry

ad long been hungering. The floral outfit of pastoral

ets, when Crabbe began to write, was a hortus siccus

deed. Distinctness in painting the common growth

f field and hedgerow may be said to have had its

igin with Crabbe. Gray and Goldsmith had their

wn rare and special gifts to which Crabbe could lay

o claim. But neither these poets nor even Thomson

I.]

EARLY

LIFE

IN

ALDEBURGII

15

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

dis-sipations

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

16

CRABBE

[chap.

"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

I.]

EARLY

LIFE

IN

ALDEBURGH

17

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

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

n old friend of Miss Elmy's, a Mrs. Burcham, married

o a linen-draper in Cornhill. In order to be near

hese 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

imself with "a fashionable tie-wig." Crabbe at

nce began preparations for his literary campaign, by

orrecting such verse as he had brought with him,

ompleting "two dramas and a variety of prose

ssays," and generally improving himself by a course

f study and practice in composition. As in the old

Woodbridge days, he made some congenial acquaint-

ances at a little club that met at a neighbouring coffee-

ouse, which included a Mr. Bonnycastle and a Mr.

Reuben Burrow, both mathematicians of repute, who

ose to fill important positions in their day. These

ecreations he diversified with country excursions,

uring which he read Horace and Ovid, or searched

he woods around London for plants and insects.

From his first arrival in town Crabbe kept a diary

[chap. ii.]

POVERTY IN LONDON

19

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

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 disagree-

able 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 re-

pawned 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 -

II.]

POVERTY IN LONDON

21

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 dis-

appointment. 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 posi-

tion of these ministers and ex-ministers were probably

receiving similar applications every week of their lives.

During three days in June ......

CRABBE

[CHAP.

ntains some interesting particulars. He was him-

f an eye-witness of some of the most disgraceful

cesses of the mob, the burning of the governor of

ewgate's house, and the setting at liberty of the

isoners. He also saw Lord George himself, "a lively-

oking young man in appearance," drawn in his coach

r the mob towards the residence of Alderman Bull,

owing as he passed along."

At this point the diary ends, or in any case the

ncluding portion was never seen by the poet's son.

d yet at the date when it closed, Crabbe was nearer

t at least the semblance of a success than he had

t approached. He had at length found a publisher

lling to print, and apparently at his own risk, "The

ndidate - a Poetical Epistle to the Authors of the

nterly Review," that journal being the chief organ

literary criticism at the time. The idea of this

tempt to propitiate the critics in advance, with a

w to other poetic efforts in the future, was not

icitous. The publisher, "H. Payne, opposite Marl-

rough House, Pall Mall," had pledged himself that

e author should receive some share of the profits,

wever small; but even if he had not become bank-

pt immediately after its publication, it is unlikely

at Crabbe would have profited by a single penny.

was indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as

ards the reviewers addressed. The very tone

opted, that of deprecation of criticism, would be

their view a proof of weakness, and as such they

epted it. Nor had the poem any better chance

th the general reader. Its rhetoric and versifica-

II.] POVERTY IN LONDON 23

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 hard,

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 humour'd 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,

24

CRABBE

[chap.

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

him-

self

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

II.]

POVERTY IN LONDON

25

"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 In Memoriam or The Cumulatate... 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 Grub Street 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 were 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 ever 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

24

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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.

II.] POVERTY IN LONDON 25

"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 Independency 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 Crath 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 were 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 ever tasted butcher's 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 weary months, when at last "want stared him in the face, and a gaol seemed the only immediate refuge for his head," that his resolve, to lay his case once more before some public man of eminence and character, "Impell'd" (to use his own words) "by some prosperous influences, 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."

26

CRABBE

[chap.

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.

II.] POVERTY IN LONDON 27

"I was told that a subseription would be the more profit-

able method for me, and, therefore, endeavoured to circulate

copies of the enclosed Proposals.

"I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very dull narra-

tion, 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 parsi-

monious could not have avoided it. The printer derived

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 Northford. 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 yesterdar 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 purport 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

continement; and I am coward enough to dread such an end

to my supplication. 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 com-

passion. 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, there-

fore, 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.

28

CRABBE

[chap.

"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 states-

man 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 truthful-

ness 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.

II.] POVERTY IN LONDON 29

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 hereafter known as 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 fortunes in the city of wits and scholars

"As on their neighb'ring beach you swallow 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 at 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 new-

found poet a few days afterwards to Sir Joshua

Reynolds, Burke said that he had "the mind and feel-

ings 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

II.] POVERTY IN LONDON 31

autobiographical sketch, "the seat of his protector,

and was there placed in a convenient apartment,

supplied with books for his information and amuse-

ment, 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 know-

ledge 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 counter-

act. Writing his reminiscences in the third person

years later, he naïvely 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 bet-

ter 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

32

CRABBE

[chap.

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.' "

D

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

34

[chap. iii.]

FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

35

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 Shakespearian 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 con-

sists 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

36

CRABBE

[chap.

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 mis-

givings 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

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 conver-

sation 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.

iii.]

FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

37

daughters at Beeccles; 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 Beeccles 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 unaffectioned 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

38

CRABBE

[chap.

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

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

encour-

aged

to

lay

open

his

views,

past

and

present;

to

dis-

play

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 suc-

cess, 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 succeeded." Moreover Crabbe had been

40

CRABBE

[chap.

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 Aldborough 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 Aldborough 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

111.] FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE 41

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 opportuni-

ties 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 accord-

ance 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 agree-

ableness 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 re-

gards 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 protégé 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 com-

mon 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

III.] FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE 43

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 BeIvoir 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 BeIvoir 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 zeal before thee, and with zeal beside,

Do not in strength of reasoning powers confide ;

What seems to thee convincing, certain, plain,

'T will deny and dare thee to maintain ;

And thus will triumph o'er thy eager youth,

While thou wilt grieve for so disgracing truth.

44

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 in-

telligent 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 Queens-

berry, 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 lead-

ing 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 let-

ter 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

III.] FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE 45

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 con-

cerning 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:—

46

CRABBE

[chap.

“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,

“Sam. 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 dis-

tinguished merit of the author.” There were un-

friendly criticies, however, in Crabbe's native county

who professed to think otherwise, and “whispered

that the manuscript had been so corrected 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

xii.]

FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

47

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 at-

tracted 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 ad-

vance upon all that English descriptive or didactic

poetry 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 work-

manship 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

48

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 re-

membered 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 impres-

sion. 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 Cæsar'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

E

50

CRABBE

[CHAP.

Virgil had set the example. Johnson's version seems

to obscure rather than to make clearer this interpreta-

tion. Crabbe, after this protest against the conven-

tional, 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 inter-

spersed 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 pur-

pose to describe the ideal rural community, happy,

prosperous, and innocent, as contrast with that de-

III.]

FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

51

population 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, in vading 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 im-

mortal 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."

52

CRABBE

[chap.

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 dilapida-

tion :—

“ 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

III.] FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE 53

on these lines what he held 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 tidling 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 stricture 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 predomi-

nance 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

disceriminating 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

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

III.] FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE 53

on these lines what he held 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 fidling 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 stricture 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 predomi-

nance 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

disceriminating 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

54

CRABBE

[CHAP. III.]

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 less 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 new 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.

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 suc-

cess of The Library, about as strong a revulsion in my

father's mind as a dual chaplaincy in his circum-

stances; 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,

55

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 inci-

dents 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

iv.]

LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE

57

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 sur-

prise 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 pre-

ferment. On the strength of these offers, Crabbe and

Miss Elmy were 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 con-

siderable 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

58

CRABBE

[CHAP.

rebuilt as Parham 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 neigh-

bouring 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 alarm called the maids, and their

mistress also ; and if the former were tardy, a louder

alarm, 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

Heav'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 ménage at Parham, was naturally

anxious to claim for his mother, who so long formed

iv.]

LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE

59

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, mis-

tress, 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 same unine flesh in frustums tine,

And wondered much to see the creatures dine!"

The home of the Tovelds 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 farm-

house, 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

60

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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.

iv.]

LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE

61

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 sur-

rounding 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 pre-

sented 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

62

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 News-

paper, 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.

iv.] LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE 63

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

64

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 ex-

change 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 Lincoln-

shire, 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 these 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

iv.]

AT MUSTON

65

which Crabbe lived at Muston,

writes Mr. Hutton,1

"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 born 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, accord-

ing 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.

1 See a pleasant paper on Crabbe at Muston and Allington by

the Rev. W. H. Hutton of St. John's College, Oxford, in the Corn-

hill Magazine for June 1901.

F

66

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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

iv.]

AT MUSTON

67

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

68

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 con-

founded 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

IV.]

AT MUSTON

69

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

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 step 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 re-

luctantly taken, and I believe, sincerely repented of.

70

CRABBE

[chap. iv.]

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.'

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 elder 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,

71

72

CRABBE

[chap.

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 régime, and the

alteration of the hanging of a picture would have

made "Jacky," she averred, to turn in his grave.

It 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

treatment at the Hall was anything but satis-

factory to the village generally. Mr. Tovell had been

given to hospitality, and that of a convivial sort.

Those of kindred tastes had been in the habit of "dropping in" of an evening two

or three times a week, when, if aquorum was present, a

jovial punch would be brewed, and sometimes a second

was not unusual. The substitution for all this of the quiet

and dismal family life of the Crabbes was naturally

a great blow and grave discomfiture to the village

gossips, and contributed to make Crabbe's life at

Parsonage not too happy. His pursuits and inclinations,

moreover, were not ideal, made such company dis-

agreeable, and his wife, who had borne him seven

children, four of these had lost four in

infancy, and had the sorrow of the heart for miscellaneous

causes. It follows was compensation for her husband

and children, gently of the neighbourhood, and

especially to the kindliness of Dudley North, of

whom, the friend who had helped him twelve years before he had

v.] IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

73

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 unin-

jured. From this time dated "a nervous disorder,"

which indeed meant a gradual decay of mental power,

74

CRABBE

[chap.

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 hope-

less malady. A sad history! Its 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 Glenham were among

the most peaceful and happiest of Crabbe's life. His

sour rows 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 continued view of richly wooded fields.

In fact, the whole parish and neighbourhood resemble

a combination of groves, interspersed with fields culti-

vated like gardens, and intersected with those green

and lanes which tempt the walker in all weathers,

especially in the evenings, when in the short grass of

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

75

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 Glan-shaw, or the Man who commanded Success,' a portrait of an assuming, over-bearing, ambitious mind, rendered

76

CRABBE

[CHAP.

interesting by some generous virtues, and gradually

wearing down into idiotism. I cannot help thinking

that this Glanshaw was drawn with very extraordi-

nary 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. Al-

though her husband had many qualifications for writ-

ing prose fiction — insight into and appreciation of char-

acter, 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 alto-

gether 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. Hatclard, the publisher,

when he wisely took the opinion of his rector at

Swefling, then resident at Yarmouth, the Rev. Richard

Turner.1 This gentleman, whose opinion Crabbe greatly

valued, advised revision, and Crabbe accepted the verdict

as the reverse of encouraging. The Tales were never

1 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. Rich-

ard Turner was the intimate friend of Dr. Parr, Paley, and

Canning.

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

77

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 “stiffen-

ing” 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 dis-

tinctly 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 Tomline) would not yield, and it was prob-

ably 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

78

CRABBE

[chap.

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.

Some 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

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

79

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 stage-

coach 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 at-

tributed 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

80

CRABBE

[CHAP.

runs thus: "It" (the opium) "probably influenced his

dreams, for better or worse." To this FitzGerald sig-

nificantly 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 Mad-

house," and the persons a Visitor, a Physician, and a

Patient. The visitor has been shown over the estab-

lishment, 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 mis-

fortunes 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 shore

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

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

81

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 ! — 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 full-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 —

Decided, and fated to deceive.

" But I deserved ; — for all that time

When I was loved, admired, caressed,

There was within each secret crime,

Unfelt, uncounselled, 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,

G

82

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 Nebu-

chadnezzar come to Sir Eustace in vision and pro-

nounce 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.

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

83

"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;

84

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 imagin-

ings is sustained, and, it must be admitted, at a high

level as regards diction. The reader will note first

how the impetuous flow of these visionary rec-

ollections 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 sug-

gestion 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

v.] IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

85

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 calmly

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 impetus

to opium, and that the framework was devised by

him for the utilisation of his dreams.

86

CRABBE

[CHAP.

But a curious and unexpected dénouement 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 age 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 :

v.] IN SUFFOLK AGAIN 87

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." 1

The kind physician and his friend then proceeded 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

1 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.

88

CRABBE

[chap.

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 re-

corded by the inmate of the asylum. The rapid and

continous 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 ;

v.]

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

89

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 stand-

ing 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 ad-

mirers and friends. It was one of Crabbe's virtues

that he was quick to recognise the worth of his poeti-

cal 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 pastures new

that were opening before him, it showed a true judg-

ment in Crabbe that he never faltered in the con-

viction 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

CRABBE

[chap. v.]

his

Furniture

Grey,

and

World

of

Dreams,

and

the

really

powerful

story

of

Aaron

the

Gipsy

(afterwards

to

appear

as

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

native

parish.

The

woods

of

Belvoir,

and

the

rural

charms

of

Parham

and

Glenham,

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

1807,

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

Glenham,

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

grounded

by

his

parishioners

in

the

Vale

of

Belvoir.

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

91

92

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 associations 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 elasped 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

vi.]

THE PARISH REGISTER

93

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 de-

termined, 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 in-

spection, 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 dis-

posed 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 Phœbe Dawson,

with some parts of the second book) were the last composi-

tions 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 were 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 suc-

cessor, 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

vi.] THE PARISH REGISTER 95

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 com-

pleted. 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 at-

tracted 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,

96

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 uncon-

sciously, 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;

VI.] THE PARISH REGISTER 97

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 their 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 pro-

ceeds 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.''

H

98

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 con-

trast, 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 through-

out 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;

vi.]

THE PARISH REGISTER

99

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 eccen-

tricities. 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 indul-

gence 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 dis-

ease, is no less powerful. The gradual steps by which

the village beauty is led to her ruin are told in a hun-

dred 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

100

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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, how-

ever, 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 con-

verted 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.”

vi.]

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101

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."

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CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 over-looked.

This final section ("Burials") is brought to a close by an ingenious incident which changes the cur-

rent 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 Jus-

tice 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 him-

self. 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.'"

vi.] THE PARISH REGISTER 103

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 those 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 Chloe's 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 defeats 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

vi.]

THE PARISH REGISTER

105

consideration which they so well deserve. It was a triumph

to my own immature taste to find I had anticipated the ap-

plause of the learned and the critical, and I became very de-

sirous to offer my gratutor 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 descrip-

tions 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 these 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 es-

cape 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

106

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 copy-

ing one foible at least of his original : —

"Approach and through the unlatticed window peep,

Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep;

vi.] THE PARISH REGISTER 107

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,

Whilè 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,1 seen when moon was none ;

And late-snatchèd 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 copy-

ing 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 contem-

porary 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.

1 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

108

[chap. vii.]

THE BOROUGH

109

Fox, besides his friend Turner at Yarmouth, to re-strain 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 ex-tension — 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

110

CRABBE

[chap.

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, inus, stroll-

ing players, almshouse inhabitants, and so forth.

These descriptions are relieved at intervals by elabo-

rate 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 descrip-

tion 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 borrow-

ings, deserves the praise. It shows Crabbe's descrip-

tive 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

viI.]

THE BOROUGH

111

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,

Where 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 :

112

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 its 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 everything 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.'"

viI.]

THE BOROUGH

113

Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to dis-turb 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 dilet-tante 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 enter-tainment. The notorious William Thomas Fitzgerald

had been for many years the regular contributor of the poem, and his efforts on the occasion are remem-bered, 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

I

CARNEGIE INSTITUTE

114

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 communi-

cated 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 follow-

ing 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 ?

vir.]

THE BOROUGH

115

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

116

CRABBE

[chap.

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

viI.]

THE BOROUGH

117

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

118

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 sun-

shine, and patches of blue sky. These, when they occur, are proportionably 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

vir.]

THE BOROUGH

119

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 helpful-

ness 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

CRABBE

[CHAP.

founder had been humble and modest. This man

did not hide 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 :

"Tis true his pity he could largely deal,

Wraith 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

facetious Jeffrey held that the character was rather too

flattering to merit poetical treatment. The next inmate,

a woman also drawn from the living model,

and disguised under the title of Clelia, is a study of

zenith and nadir, drawn with consummate skill.

Certain abortive attempts of Crabbe to write prose

have been already mentioned. But this narrative

of the gradual degradation of a coquette of the lower

orders 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 stratagems 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 great abuse of a public charity, she ends her days

in the almshouse!

vir.] THE BOROUGH 121

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 inmates 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;

122

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 wel-

come 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

vir.]

THE BOROUGH

123

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 accept-

ing 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 Edin-

burgh 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 objec-

tions 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 "dis-

gust," 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 experi-

ence, 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

124

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 mention-

ing 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 indi-

viduals 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 be-

viI.]

THE BOROUGH

125

comes 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 treat-

ment 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 be-

tween 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

126

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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

vir.]

THE BOROUGH

127

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 seafaring life, was made prisoner by the Spaniards: he was

128

[CHAP. VIII.]

TALES

129

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 per-

secution. 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 Alde-

burgh sailor's story of his casual interview, it is obvious that

he built this tale.1

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

K

130

CRABBE

[chap.

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

reunion

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

viII.]

TALES

131

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

132

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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, how-

ever, 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 ;

VIII.]

TALES

133

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-feign'd 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

134

CRABBE

[CHAP.

The young designer, but could only trace

The looks of pity in the Trav'ler'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 borrow'd 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;

VIII.]

TALES

135

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 'Brough-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 refine-

ment 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

136

CRABBE

[chap.

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 hear-

ing 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 ? '

viII.]

TALES

137

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 matter's

poetry can hardly enter. It displays the fine obser-

vation 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 :

138

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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 for-

tunes 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 thou-

sands 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 admi-

rable story among George Crabbe's Tales called 'The Gentle-

man Farmer.' The hero starts in life resolved that he will

not put up with any bondage. The orthodox clergyman,

VIII.]

TALES

139

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 oftener ap-

peals. 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 in-

voked 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 sum-

marised by Jeffrey, is as follows : —

"The hero is a young man of aspiring genius and enthusi-

astic 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

140

CRABBE

[CHAP.

his friend. In a moment of temptation they abuse this

confidence. The husband renounces him with dignified com-

posure; 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 humilia-

tion 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 compassionate 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 contemp-

tuous 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 look'd 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 im-

maculate. The comparison thus suggested is not as

felicitous as in many of Crabbe's citations. Had In

viII.]

TALES

141

Memoriam been then written, a more exact parallel might have been found in Tennyson's warning to the

young enthusiast :—

" See thou, that contestest 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

142

CRABBÉ

[CHAP.

other tales is the charming story, conceived in a vein

of purest comedy, called The Frankl 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 Dis-

senter 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 natu-

rally 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;

VIII.]

TALES

143

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 neigh-

bours 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 ;

144

CRABBE

[CHAP.

She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard

To sit and ponder o'er an ugly eard;

Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr'd,

Pleas'd 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 budinage. 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 thou 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.'

VIII.]

TALES

145

'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 com-

mended 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 com-

ment 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, remem-

bered 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,

146

[chap. ix.] LAST YEARS AT MUSTON 147

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 advan-

tage 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 length ("at last" 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 to-day)

between Bath and Salisbury. The value of the prefer-

ment was not as great as that of the joint livings of

Muston and Allington, so that poor Crabbe was once

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 leav-

ing 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!

ix.]

LAST YEARS AT MUSTON

149

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 prob-

ably 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.' "

150

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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—

"endearcd

to

the

more

serious

inhabitants

by

warm

zeal

and

a

powerful

talent

for

preaching

extempore."

The

ix.]

AT TROWBRIDGE

151

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 mar-

gin of FitzGerald's volume, may possibly refer to

CRABBE

[CHAP.

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

suppose was an elegant spinster; friend of my mother's.

About 1825 she had been at Sidmouth, and known

Charlotte." 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,

Requited, disdain'd, despised, forsaken?"

The son indicates these amiable foibles in a filial

tone, and in apologetic terms, but the "liberal shep-

herd" sometimes spoke more frankly. An old squire

is said to have written to a friend in reference to this subject,

"Oh dear sir! the very first time Crabbe dined at

my house he made love to my sister!" And a lady

is said to have complained that on a similar occa-

sion Charlotte had exhibited so much warmth of manner

that she "felt quite frightened." His son entirely

corroborates the same view as to his father's almost

objectionably affectionate manner towards ladies

he has represented him, and who, perhaps owing to his

duties as a reporter as an author, showed a corresponding

and fastidiousness in the elderly poet. Crabbe himself admits

"a flow of imprudiment." In a letter to his newly

formed correspondent, Mrs. Leadbeater (granddaughter

ix.] AT TROWBRIDGE 153

of Burke's old schoolmaster, Richard Shackleton),

he confesses that women were more to him than

men:—

"I am 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

men 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 assimi-

late. 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.

164

CRABBE

[CHAP.

Through Bowles, Crabbe was introduced to the noble

family at Bowwood, where the third Marquis of Lans-

downe 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.

The 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

was paid in the summer of 1817, when Crabbe

arrived in London from the middle of June to the end

of July.

Crabbe is not rightly included in his Memoir several

extracts from his father's Diary kept during this visit.

They are little more than briefest entries of engage-

ments, but serve to show the new and brilliant life to

which the poet was suddenly introduced. He con-

stantly dined and breakfasted with Rogers, where he

was welcomed by Rogers's friends. His old

acquaintance with Fox gave him the entrée 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,

his later publisher. He sat for his portrait

to Hoppner and Phillips, and saw the painting by

Reynolds hanging on the Academy walls when dining

at the annual banquet. Again, through an introduc-

tion to both to Samuel Hoare of Hampstead, Crabbe

established a friendship with him and his family of the

most delicate and intimate nature. During the first and all later

ix.]

VISITING IN LONDON

155

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,

nor 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 pen-

sioners 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

156

CRABBE

[chap.

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, Picedilly (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 omissions

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."

ix.]

VISITING IN LONDON

157

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

CRABBE

[CHAP.

are passages in Crabbe's earliest poems,

The Village, which have a metrical charm he

has since attained. But I strongly suspect that

Crabbe had owed much to the revis-

ing Burke, Johnson, and Fox.

In the spring of 1819 Crabbe was again in town,

at Holland House, and dining at the Thatched

House Literary Society, of which he had

been a member, and which to-day still dines

He was then preparing for the publica-

tion Tales, from the famous house in Albe-

Two years before, in 1817, on the

strong recommendation,

of Rogers's

a very liberal offer for the new

copyright of all Crabbe's previous works.

Murray had offered three thou-

sand pounds, much, Rogers was at first

disinclined, holding that the sum should

have been three volumes alone. He and a friend

of Longman

to

conducted the negotia-

great

and got better terms. To their

Longmans only offered £1000 for the

Murray had valued at three times the

sum; and his friends were placed in a

A letter of Moore to John Murray

survives, when Crabbe's Memoir was in

the course of the story, and it may

be seen that Mr. Rogers and myself, anxious

to be freed from his suspense, called upon

Mr. Murray

in Albemarle Street; and

I waited on him with more solicitude,

IX.]

VISITING IN LONDON

159

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