part to memory. These verses would certainly never have cradled him into song, such as Mr. Murray would have thought worth publishing, or we should have taken the trouble to review. inspiration was to come from a different source.

66

His

After leaving the school of Mr. Richard Haddon, at Stow Market, the young poet seems to have devoted his time for many an idle year" to the enjoyment of solitary wanderings along the sea-shore. He has painted these amusements with great spirit in one of his poems.

"I to the ocean gave

My mind, and thoughts as restless as the wave;
Where crowds assembled I was sure to run,
Hear what was said and muse on what was done.
To me the wives of seamen loved to tell
What storms endangered men esteemed so well;
No ships were wreck'd upon that fatal beach
But I could give the luckless tale of each.-
I loved to walk where none had walked before
About the rocks that ran alone the shore;
Or far beyond the sight of men to stray,
And take my pleasure when I lost my way;
For then 'twas mine to trace the hilly heath,
And all the mossy moor that lies beneath.
Here I had favourite stations, where I stood
And heard the murmurs of the ocean flood,
With not a sound beside, except when flew
Aloft the lapwing or the grey curlew,-
When I no more my fancy could employ,
I left in haste what I could not enjoy,

And was my gentle mother's welcome boy."

"The Borough," although Crabbe, in his preface to that poem, discountenanced the belief, is known to have been a free picture of Aldborough, preserving all the striking features of the place and its inhabitants, heightened of course to increase the pictorial effect and to conceal the directness of the imitation. This will be seen from a reference to the eleventh letter, entitled Inns, and if any of our readers have ever visited the White Lion, "High in the street o'erlooking half the place," they will perhaps remember an old fashioned parlour, which the "lordly host" of the present day

"With pomp obsequious bending in his pride," points out, with consciousness of the honour reflected upon his house, as the scene of many gay evening meetings, in which "young Dr. Crabbe" was by no means the least distinguished for hilarity. In this work some of his happiest efforts are to be found; he had the original before him, and the life and broad

ness of his own copies no one will call in question. The scenery was exactly of that description which he delighted to pourtray, and we may add the only kind from which he appears to have derived any gratification. For, as his son has confessed, though in aftertimes he resided in some of the finest parts of the island, he never seems to have taken any pleasure in the grander features of inland scenery.

Crabbe seems to have been only susceptible of poetical impressions from particular objects, and which to others have always proved the least interesting. For nature he had little affection, and the occasional touches of rural beauty, scattered, at long intervals, through his poems, are apparently to be attributed to accident rather than design. For although extremely partial to natural history, and pursuing his researches in that study during his residence in Suffolk, we are informed by his son, that those branches usually considered the least inviting had the highest attractions for him. In botany, grasses the most useful, but the least ornamental, were his favourites; in minerals, the earths and sands; in entomology, the minuter insects. His devotion to these pursuits, observes his biographer, appeared to proceed purely from the love of science and the increase of knowledge-at all events he never seemed to be captivated with the mere beauty of natural objects, or even to catch any taste from the arrangement of his own specimens.

Of the style in which he shone so eminently, the following is one of the most remarkable specimens. It is the picture of an old warehouse in the Borough, which was let out in lodgings to beggars of every description.

"That window view! oil'd paper and old glass
Stain the strong rays which tho' impeded pass,
And give a dusty warmth to that huge room,
The conquer'd sunshine's melancholy gloom;
When all those western rays without so bright,
Within become a ghastly glimmering light,
As pale and faint upon the floor they fall
Or feebly gleam on the opposing wall :
That floor once oak, now pieced with fir unplaned,
Or where not pieced, in places bored and stained;
That wall once whiten'd, now an odious sight,
Stain'd with all hues except its ancient white;
The only door is fastened by a pin,

Or stubborn bar, that none may hurry in:
For this poor room, like rooms of greater pride,
At times contained what prudent men would hide.
Where'er the floor allows an even space,

Chalking and marks of various games have place;

Boys, without foresight, pleased, in halters swing;
On a fixed hook men cast a flying ring:

While gin and snuff their female neighbours share,
And the black beverage in the fractured ware.
On swinging shelf are things incongruous stored;
Scraps of thin food-the cards and cribbage board,
With pipes and pouches; while on peg below,
Hung a lost member's fiddle and its bow,
That still reminds them how he'd dance and play,
Ere sent untimely to the convict's bay.
Here by a curtain, by a blanket there,

Are various beds conceal'd, but none with care;
Where some by day, and some by night, as best
Suit their employments, seek uncertain rest;
The drowsy children at their pleasure creep,
To the known crib and there securely sleep.
Each end contains a grate, and these beside
Are hung utensils for their boil'd and fried,
All used at any hour, by night, by day,
As suit the purse, the person, or the
prey.
Above the fire the mantel-shelf contains
Of china-ware some poor unmatch'd remains;
There many a tea-cup's gaudy fragment stands,
All placed by vanity's unwearied hands;
For here she lives, e'en here she looks about
To find some small consoling objects out:
Nor heed those Spartan dames their house, nor sit
'Mid cares domestic,-they nor sew, nor knit ;
But of their fate discourse, their ways, their wars
With arm'd authorities, their scapes and scars:
These lead to present evils, and a cup,
If fortune grant it, winds description up.
High up at either end, and next the wall,
Two ancient mirrors show the forms of all,
In all their force ;-these aid them in their dress,
But with the good, the evils too express,

Doubling each look of care, each token of distress.'

As a specimen of Dutch painting this must be acknowledged to be admirable; to what poetical rank it is entitled is a question of more difficulty. It may be affirmed that all poetry, in a greater or less degree, depends upon the associations connected with it. The white cottage of a villager with the flaunting woodbine, and the blackbird piping under the thatch, and a group of rosy children sitting on the warm grass and throwing daisies at each other, form a very pleasing picture; but in the gloomy and sickening abode of dissolute vagabonds there is not only nothing to gratify the mind, but every thing to disgust it. This objection, in reference to Crabbe's poetry in general, has been strongly

urged by Mr. Gifford. "If," he says, "the checks of fancy and taste be removed from poetry, and admission be granted to images of whatever description, provided they have the passport of reality, it is not easy to tell at what point the line of exclusion should be drawn, or why it should be drawn at all. No image of depravity, so long as it answers to some archetype in nature or art, can be refused the benefit of the general rule.' If this principle be admitted, there is no haunt of iniquity, from Temple Bar to Hyde Park Corner, which may not have its impurities "hitched into a rhyme," until at length we should have a complete portrait gallery of monsters-an exhibition sacred to vice. The author of the Borough had certainly no intention to proceed to such an extent, but we are speaking of the theory not as it is in the hands of the founder, but as it may become in the hands of a more hardy disciple.

A comparison has been sometimes instituted between Wordsworth and Crabbe; they are indeed in one sense both poets of the poor, for the prints of their footsteps are commonly to be traced in the sequestered paths of humble life. But the peasantry of Wordsworth are not the peasantry of Crabbe; they are menpoor though they be in worldly treasure-into whose spirits the music of nature has penetrated; men, who, from their childhood, have been familiar with the charms of the creation; to whose feet every woody defile, every pastoral glen, every sunchequered path is familiar; whose eyes have ever been open to the sweet influences of the varying seasons-whether the solemnity of autumn, or the horror of winter, or the allurements of spring, or the ripe maturity of summer, when a hundred streams

"unto the sleeping woods all night"

warble their "quiet tunes." Thus the very atmosphere of life becomes to them purified, and nature is the nurse who leads them up to God.

What a different aspect do the peasantry of Crabbe present? The squalidness of their dwellings appears to have imparted a kindred degradation to their feelings. We discover nothing noble, nothing picturesque, nothing that chains our eyes to the portrait in love or delight; yet this instinctive sentiment of aversion is a most unimpeachable testimony that the artist has redeemed his promise in giving us the scene,

"As truth will paint it, and as bards will not."

He conducts us to the cottage door, and points to the melancholy group within; the "drooping weary sire," worn out with toiling for

the bread that perisheth; his miserable offspring crowding in hungry wretchedness round the "matron pale," who

With trembling hand

Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand.

The exquisite description of the village workhouse, which first introduced the poetry of Crabbe to the notice of Sir Walter Scott and Wordsworth, may even now be applied to many similar abodes in the district from which it was originally copied. Those "walls of mud," which scarcely bear" the broken door," still pain the passers by, although the " dull wheel" no longer "hums doleful through the day."

Severe, and even repulsive, as many of Crabbe's portraits are, it would be acting most unjustly to his genius to allow the reader to retain an impression which has become very general, that he is essentially a gloomy and sombre writer. No doubt, was the eloquent remark of Professor Wilson, to persons who read his poetry superficially and by snatches and glances, it may seem to give too dark a picture of life, but this is not the feeling which the study of the whole awakens: here and there he presents us with images of almost perfect beauty, innocence, and happiness; but as such things are seldom seen and soon disappear in real life, it seems to be his opinion that so likewise ought they to start out with sudden and transitory smiles among the darker or more solemn pictures of his poetry. Now we take this to be true, and that there are times when no poet in English literature gazes with a more holy gladness on the settled countenance of peace," or whose eyes are more often "charmed away from the troubles and wickedness of life to its repose and its virtue." closes up his captive in a narrow and miserable cell, but the blessed light of heaven streams through the grating; he gives him an iron pallet for his couch, but peace strews his hard pillow with flowers of sweet odour. The peasant of Wordsworth is ennobled by the feeling of poetry; the peasant of Crabbe is dignified by the mild and long-suffering spirit of the Gospel. Over his blackest portraitures of human crime and misery gleams of light are sometimes shed, and the evil spirit is often dispossessed by the music of early innocence and virtue.

66

He

There is a passage in the twenty-third letter of the Borough on Prisons, representing the dream of a condemned felon, so beautiful that we cannot resist the temptation of extracting a part of it. It may not be improper to observe that the tale itself originated in a visit which Crabbe paid to Newgate during his melancholy season of affliction in the metropolis. The criminal has been suddenly transported by the visions of the night to his