(April, 1808.)

Poems. By the Reverend GEORGE CRABBE. 8vo. pp. 260. London, 1807.*

WE receive the proofs of Mr. Crabbe's usurp the attention which he was sure of poetical existence, which are contained in commanding, and allowed himself to be this volume, with the same sort of feeling nearly forgotten by a public, which reckons that would be excited by tidings of an ancient upon being reminded of all the claims which friend, whom we no longer expected to hear the living have on its favour. His former of in this world. We rejoice in his resurrec-publications, though of distinguished merit, tion, both for his sake and for our own: But were perhaps too small in volume to remain we feel also a certain movement of self-con-long the objects of general attention, and demnation, for having been remiss in our in- seem, by some accident, to have been jostled quiries after him, and somewhat too negligent aside in the crowd of more clamorous comof the honours which ought, at any rate, to petitors. have been paid to his memory.

It is now, we are afraid, upwards of twenty years since we were first struck with the vigour, originality, and truth of description of "The Village" and since, we regretted that an author, who could write so well, should have written so little. From that time to the present, we have heard little of Mr. Crabbe; and fear that he has been in a great measure lost sight of by the public, as well as by us. With a singular, and scarcely pardonable indifference to fame, he has remained, during this long interval, in patient or indolent repose; and, without making a single movement to maintain or advance the reputation he had acquired, has permitted others to

Yet, though the name of Crabbe has not hitherto been very common in the mouths of our poetical critics, we believe there are few real lovers of poetry to whom some of his sentiments and descriptions are not secretly familiar. There is a truth and a force in many of his delineations of rustic life, which is cal culated to sink deep into the memory; and, being confirmed by daily observation, they are recalled upon innumerable occasions when the ideal pictures of more fanciful authors have lost all their interest. For ourselves at least, we profess to be indebted to Mr. Crabbe for many of these strong impres sions; and have known more than one of our unpoetical acquaintances, who declared they could never pass by a parish work house with* I have given a larger space to Crabbe in this out thinking of the description of it they had republication than to any of his contemporary poets; read at school in the Poetical Extracts. The not merely because I think more highly of him volume before us will renew, we trust, and than of most of them, but also because I fancy that he has had less justice done him. The nature of extend many such impressions. It contains his subjects was not such as to attract either imita- all the former productions of the author, with tors or admirers, from among the ambitious or fan- about double their bulk of new matter; most ciful lovers of poetry; or, consequently, to set him of it in the same taste and manner of comat the head of a School, or let him surround him-position with the former; and some of a kind, be admitted, that his claims to distinction depend of which we have had no previous example fully as much on his great powers of observation, in this author. The whole, however, is of no his skill in touching the deeper sympathies of our nature, and his power of inculcating, by their means, the most impressive lessons of humanity, as on any fine play of fancy, or grace and beauty in his delineations. I have great faith, however, in the intrinsic worth and ultimate success of those more substantial attributes; and have, accordingly, the strongest impression that the citations I have here given from Crabbe will strike more, and sink deeper into the minds of readers to whom they are new (or by whom they may have been partially forgotten), than any I have been able to present from other writers. It probably is idle enough (as well as a little presumptuous) to suppose that a publication like this will afford many opportunities of testing the truth of this prediction. But, as the experiment is to be made, there can be no harm in

self with the zealots of a Sect: And it must also

mentioning this as one of its objects.

It is but candid, however, after all, to add, that ny concern for Mr. Crabbe's reputation would scarcely have led me to devote near one hundred pages to the estimate of his poetical merits, had I not set some value on the speculations as to the elements of poetical excellence in general, and its moral bearings and affinities-for the introduction of which this estimate seemed to present an occasion, or apology.

ordinary merit, and will be found, we have little doubt, a sufficient warrant for Mr. Crabbe to take his place as one of the most original, nervous, and pathetic poets of the present century.

His characteristic, certainly, is force, and truth of description, joined for the most part to great selection and condensation of expres sion;-that kind of strength and originality which we meet with in Cowper, and that sort of diction and versification which we admire in "The Deserted Village" of Goldsmith, or "The Vanity of Human Wishes" of Johnson. If he can be said to have imitated the manner of any author, it is Goldsmith, indeed, who has been the object of his imitation; and yet his general train of thinking, and his views of society, are so extremely opposite, that, when "The Village" was first published, it was commonly considered as an antidote or an answer to the more captivating representa tions of "The Deserted Village." Compared with this celebrated author, he will be found,

we think, to have more vigour and less delicacy; and while he must be admitted to be inferior in the fine finish and uniform beauty of his composition, we cannot help considering him as superior, both in the variety and the truth of his pictures. Instead of that uniform tint of pensive tenderness which overspreads the whole poetry of Goldsmith, we find in Mr. Crabbe many gleams of gaiety and humour. Though his habitual views of life are more gloomy than those of his rival, his poetical temperament seems far more cheerful; and when the occasions of sorrow and rebuke are gone by, he can collect himself for sarcastic pleasantry, or unbend in innocent playfulness. His diction, though generally pure and powerful, is sometimes harsh, and sometimes quaint; and he has occasionally admitted a couplet or two in a state so unfinished, as to give a character of inelegance to the passages in which they occur. With a taste less disciplined and less fastidious than that of Goldsmith, he has, in our apprehension, a keener eye for observation, and a readier hand for the delineation of what he has observed. There is less poetical keeping in his whole performance; but the groups of which it consists are conceived, we think, with equal genius, and drawn with greater spirit as well as far greater fidelity.

men of the new school, on the other hand, scarcely ever condescend to take their sub jects from any description of persons at a known to the common inhabitants of the world; but invent for themselves certain whimsical and unheard-of beings, to whom they impute some fantastical combination of feelings, and then labour to excite our sympathy for them, either by placing them in incredible situations, or by some strained and exaggerated moralisation of a vague and tragical description. Mr. Crabbe, in short, shows us something which we have all seen, or may see, in real life; and draws from it such feelings and such reflections as every human being must acknowledge that it is calculated to excite. He delights us by the truth, and vivid and picturesque beauty of his representations, and by the force and pathos of the sensations with which we feel that they are connected. Mr. Wordsworth and his associates, on the other hand, introduce us to beings whose existence was not previously suspected by the acutest observers of nature; and excite an interest for them-where they do excite any interest-more by an eloquent and refined analysis of their own capricious feelings, than by any obvious or intelligible ground of sympathy in their situation.

Those who are acquainted with the Lyrical Ballads, or the more recent publications of Mr. Wordsworth, will scarcely deny the justice of this representation; but in order to vindicate it to such as do not enjoy that advantage, we must beg leave to make a few hasty references to the former, and by far the least exceptionable of those productions.

It is not quite fair, perhaps, thus to draw a detailed parallel between a living poet, and one whose reputation has been sealed by death, and by the immutable sentence of a surviving generation. Yet there are so few of his contemporaries to whom Mr. Crabbe bears any resemblance, that we can scarcely explain our opinion of his merit, without com- A village schoolmaster, for instance, is a paring him to some of his predecessors. pretty common poetical character. Goldsmith There is one set of writers, indeed, from has drawn him inimitably; so has Shenstone, whose works those of Mr. Crabbe might re- with the slight change of sex; and Mr. Crabbe, ceive all that elucidation which results from in two passages, has followed their footsteps. contrast, and from an entire opposition in all Now, Mr. Wordsworth has a village schoolpoints of taste and opinion. We allude now master also-a personage who makes no small to the Wordsworths, and the Southeys, and figure in three or four of his poems. But by Coleridges, and all that ambitious fraternity, what traits is this worthy old gentleman dethat, with good intentions and extraordinary lineated by the new poet? No pedantry-no talents, are labouring to bring back our poetry innocent vanity of learning-no mixture of to the fantastical oddity and puling childish-indulgence with the pride of power, and of ness of Withers, Quarles, or Marvel. These poverty with the consciousness of rare ac gentlemen write a great deal about rustic life, quirements. Every feature which belongs to as well as Mr. Crabbe; and they even agree the situation, or marks the character in comwith him in dwelling much on its discomforts; mon apprehension, is scornfully discarded by but nothing can be more opposite than the Mr. Wordsworth; who represents his greyviews they take of the subject, or the manner haired rustic pedagogue as a sort of half crazy, in which they execute their representations of sentimental person, overrun with fine feelthem. ings, constitutional merriment, and a most humorous melancholy. Here are the two stanzas in which this consistent and intelligible character is pourtrayed. The diction is at least as new as the conception. "The sighs which Matthew heav'd were sighs

Mr. Crabbe exhibits the common people of England pretty much as they are, and as they must appear to every one who will take the trouble of examining into their condition; at the same time that he renders his sketches in a very high degree interesting and beautiful -by selecting what is most fit for description-by grouping them into such forms as must catch the attention or awake the memory and by scattering over the whole such traits of moral sensibility, of sarcasm, and of deep reflection, as every one must feel to be natural, and own to be powerful. The gentle

Of one tir'd out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light-the oil of gladness.

Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round
He seem'd as if he drank it up,

He felt with spirit so profound.
Thou soul of God's best earthly mould," &c.

A pathetic tale of guilt or superstition may be told, we are apt to fancy, by the poet him self, in his general character of poet, with ful as much effect as by any other person. A old nurse, at any rate, or a monk or parist clerk, is always at hand to give grace to such a narration. None of these, however, would satisfy Mr. Wordsworth. He has written a

A frail damsel again is a character common | sary for his readers to keep in view, if they enough in all poems; and one upon which would wish to understand the beauty or pr many fine and pathetic lines have been ex-priety of his delineations. pended. Mr. Wordsworth has written more than three hundred on the subject: but, instead of new images of tenderness, or delicate representation of intelligible feelings, he has contrived to tell us nothing whatever of the unfortunate fair one, but that her name is Martha Ray; and that she goes up to the top of a hill, in a red cloak, and cries "O misery!" All the rest of the poem is filled with a de-long poem of this sort, in which he thinks it scription of an old thorn and a pond, and of the silly stories which the neighbouring old women told about them.

indispensably necessary to apprise the reader that he has endeavoured to represent the language and sentiments of a particular char acter-of which character, he adds, "the reader will have a general notion, if he has ever known a man, a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who being past the middle age of life, has retired upon an annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country, of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live!

The sports of childhood, and the untimely death of promising youth, is also a common topic of poetry. Mr. Wordsworth has made some blank verse about it; but, instead of the delightful and picturesque sketches with which so many authors of moderate talents have presented us on this inviting subject, all that he is pleased to communicate of his rustic child, is, that he used to amuse himself with Now, we must be permitted to doubt, shouting to the owls, and hearing them an- whether, among all the readers of Mr. Words swer. To make amends for this brevity, the worth (few or many), there is a single indi process of his mimicry is most accurately de-vidual who has had the happiness of knowing

scribed.

-"With fingers interwoven, both hands
Press'd closely palm to palm, and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him."-

This is all we hear of him; and for the sake of this one accomplishment, we are told, that the author has frequently stood mute, and gazed on his grave for half an hour together! Love, and the fantasies of lovers, have afforded an ample theme to poets of all ages. Mr. Wordsworth, however, has thought fit to compose a piece, illustrating this copious subject by one single thought. A lover trots away to see his mistress one fine evening, gazing all the way on the moon; when he comes to her door,

"O mercy! to myself I cried,
If Lucy should be dead!"

And there the poem ends!

Now, we leave it to any reader of common candour and discernment to say, whether these representations of character and sentiment are drawn from that eternal and universal standard of truth and nature, which every one is knowing enough to recognise, and no one great enough to depart from with impunity; or whether they are not formed, as we have ventured to allege, upon certain fantastic and affected peculiarities in the mind or fancy of the author, into which it is most improbable that many of his readers will enter, and which cannot, in some cases, be comprehended without much effort and explanation. Instead of multiplying instances of these wide and wilful aberrations from ordinary nature, it may be more satisfactory to produce the author's own admission of the narrowness of the plan upon which he writes, and of the very extraordinary circumstances which he himself sometimes thinks it neces

a person of this very peculiar description; or who is capable of forming any sort of conjecture of the particular disposition and tur of thinking which such a combination of attributes would be apt to produce. To us, we will confess, the annonce appears as ludicrous and absurd as it would be in the author of an ode or an epic to say, "Of this piece the reader will necessarily form a very erroneous judgment, unless he is apprised, that it was written by a pale man in a green coat-sitting cross-legged on an oaken stool-with a scratch on his nose, and a spelling dictionary on the table."

* Some of our readers may have a curiosity to know in what manner this old annuitant captain does actually express himself in the village of his adoption. For their gratification, we annex the two first stanzas of his story; in which, with all the attention we have been able to bestow, we have been utterly unable to detect any traits that can be sup posed to characterise either a seaman, an annuitant, or a stranger in a country town. It is a style, on the contrary, which we should ascribe, without hesitation, to a certain poetical fraternity in the West of England; and which, we verily believe, never was, and never will be, used by any offe out of that fraternity.

"There is a thorn-it looks so old,
In truth you'd find it hard to say,
How it could ever have been young!
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two-years' child,

It stands erect; this aged thorn!
No leaves it has, no thorny points;
It is a mass of knotted joints:

A wretched thing forlorn,
It stands erect; and like a stone,
With lichens it is overgrown.

"Like rock or stone, it is o'ergrown

With lichens;-to the very top;
And hung with heavy tufts of moss
A melancholy crop.

Up from the earth these mosses creep,
And this poor thorn, they clasp it round

From these childish and absurd affectations, we turn with pleasure to the manly sense and correct picturing of Mr. Crabbe; and, after being dazzled and made giddy with the elaborate raptures and obscure originalities of these new artists, it is refreshing to her meet again with the spirit and nature of our old masters, in the nervous pages of the author now before us.

ich be

fam

The poem that stands first in the volume,
is that to which we have already alluded as
having been first given to the public upwards
of twenty years ago. It is so old, and has of
Plate been so scarce, that it is probably new
to many of our readers. We shall venture,
heatherefore, to give a few extracts from it as a
specimen of Mr. Crabbe's original style of
composition. We have already hinted at the
description of the Parish Workhouse, and in-
sert it as an example of no common poetry :—
Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours flagging play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
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;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood-fears;
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they!
The moping idiot and the madman gay.

"Here, too, the sick their final doom receive,
Here brought amid the scenes of grief, to grieve;
Where the loud groans from some sad chamber
Mixt with the clamours of the crowd below. [flow,
Say ye, opprest by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,
To name the nameless ever-new disease;
How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
Despis'd, neglected, left alone to die?
How would ye bear to draw your latest breath,
Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?
"Such is that room which one rude beam divides,
And naked rafters form the sloping sides;
Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,
And lath and mud are all that lie between;
Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patch'd, gives
To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: [way
Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread,
The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;
For him no hand the cordial cup applies," &c.
pp. 12-14.
The consequential apothecary, who gives
an impatient attendance in these abodes of
misery, is admirably described; but we pass
to the last scene:-

"Now to the church behold the mourners come,
Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb;

The village children now their games suspend,
To see the bier that bears their ancient friend;
For he was one in all their idle sport,
And like a monarch rul'd their little court;
The pliant bow he form'd, the flying ball,
The bat, the wicket, were his labours all;
Him now they follow to his grave, and stand,

So close, you'd say that they were bent,
With plain and manifest intent!

To drag it to the ground;
And all had join'd in one endeavour,
To bury this poor thorn for ever."

While bending low, their eager eyes explore
Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand;
The mingled relics of the parish poor!
The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round,
Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound;
The busy priest, detain'd by weightier care,
Defers his duty till the day of prayer;
And waiting long, the crowd retire distrest,
To think a poor man's bones should lie unblest."

pp. 16, 17,

The scope of the poem is to show, that the
villagers of real life have no resemblance to
the villagers of poetry; that poverty, in sober
truth, is very uncomfortable; and vice by no
means confined to the opulent. The following
passage is powerfully, and finely written:-
"Or will you deem them amply paid in health,
Go then! and see them rising with the sun,
Labour's fair child, that languishes with wealth?
Through a long course of daily toil to run;
See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat,
When the knees tremble and the temples beat;
Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er
The labour past, and toils to come explore;
Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue,
When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew.

"There may you see the youth of slender frame
Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame;
Yet urg'd along, and proudly loath to yield,
He strives to join his fellows of the field;
Till long-contending nature droops at last;
Declining health rejects his poor repast!
His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees,
And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease.

"Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell,
Though the head droops not, that the heart is well;
Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare,
Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share?
Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel!
Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal;
Homely not wholesome-plain not plenteous-such
As you who praise would never deign to touch!
"Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease,
Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet
Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, [please ;
Go look within, and ask if peace be there:
If peace be his-that drooping, weary sire,
Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire!
Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand
Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand."
pp. 8-10.

We shall only give one other extract from this poem; and we select the following fine description of that peculiar sort of barrenness which prevails along the sandy and thinly. inhabited shores of the Channel:

"Lo! where the heath, with with'ring brake grown
[poor;
o'er,
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring
From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears;
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."
pp. 5, 6.

The next poem, and the longest in the volume, is now presented for the first time to

And this it seems, is Nature, and Pathos, and the public. It is dedicated, like the former,

Poetry !

to the delineation of rural life and characters,