except seeing him, I could carry away but little remembrance of him; for he scarcely took any part in the general conversation during the whole evening.

And this reminds me of an anecdote respecting the late Mr. Canning, who, besides his great reputation as a statesman and parliamentary orator of the highest class, was one of the most agreeable companions, remarkable for his brilliant powers of conversation, and full of lively playful wit at all times; and it will serve to show, how it will chance at times that people do suffer such great disappointments, when invited to meet those, whose conversation may reasonably have been expected to be most instructive and entertaining: A gentleman under an engagement to dine with a friend in London, called on him to say that he hoped he would let him off, as for that very day he had since received an invitation to dine at the India House, where he should meet Mr. Canning, who was then President of the Board of Controul. His friend readily admitted the force of his plea, and agreed to let him off, but on one condition, viz., that he should call on him the next morning, and relate to him some of the brilliant and witty sayings which Mr. Canning had given utterance to during the evening. Accordingly he went to the dinner, and in due time came to his friend to fulfil his promise. "Well," said his friend, "I am delighted to see you. What a fortunate man you have been! But come now, sit down, and tell me all about it. What did Mr. Canning say?" "Well," said he, "to the best of my recollection, the only observation I heard him make, that I can retail to you, was to this effect:-Speaking to the gentleman who was sitting next him, he said, 'General, I believe the elephants on the Island of Ceylon are larger than those on the Continent.' The fact was, Canning never took kindly to the work at the India Board, as he did in after years at the Foreign Office; and these official dinners at the India House, were not much to his taste, and so he was in no good humor for conversation and interchange of wit.

But to return to our subject. Southey has never been so popular, as some of his brethren, as a poet, though he has some very fine passages in Thalaba, Madoc, and Kehama. Nor will his name live with posterity so much in consequence of his poetical

fame; but rather because of his prose works, in which his style is exceedingly chaste and simple. And specially will he be remembered for his "Life of Nelson," (a piece of biography hardly to be excelled in interest), and also for "The Doctor," and "The Book of the Church." He affected a great irregularity of metre in his poetry, introducing very long and very short lines, in close juxtaposition; and he is often obscure in his meaning, and there is a singularity in his diction. He is one of those poets whose style was imitated by Horace Smith and his brother, in the "Rejected Addresses"; and the Edinburgh Reviewer says that it is the best in the whole collection. "The imitation of the diction and the measure is nearly almost perfect; and the descriptions as good as the original." And I doubt not the imitation has been read by thousands who never read the original.

Crabbe was my predecessor in the living of Trowbridge, a large manufacturing town in the County of Wiltshire, with about 11,000 inhabitants in the parish. He was an exceedingly kind and benevolent old man, personally loved and respected. But he came to the parish as an old man; and having, until his 60th year, always officiated in a small country parish, he never was able to master the difficulties of his new position, ecclesiastically considered; or accommodate himself to the requirements of such a population, and the change in the nature of the pastoral work. There is a passage in one of his own poems, “The Parish Register," in which (whether designedly or not, I cannot say,) he gives, as his biogragrapher remarks, a similitude of himself, in all points, except in the subject of his lucubrations:

"Then came the Author Rector: his delight
Was all in books; to read them or to write.

Women and men he strove alike to shun,

And hurried homeward when his tasks were done:
Courteous enough, but careless what he said,
For points of learning he reserved his head;
And when addressing either poor or rich,
He knew no better than his cassock which.
He, like an osier, was of pleasant kind,
Erect by nature, but to bend inclined;
Not like a creeper falling to the ground,
Or meanly catching on the neighbours round.

Careless was he of surplice, hood and band,-
And kindly took them, as they came to hand :
Nor, like the Doctor, wore a world of hat,
As if he sought for dignity in that:-

He talk'd, he gave, but not with cautious rules,
Nor turn'd from gypsies, vagabonds or fools;
It was his nature, but they thought it whim;
And so our beaux and beauties turn'd from him.
Of questions much he wrote, profound and dark,—
How spake the serpent, and where stopp'd the ark;
From what far land the Queen of Sheba came;
Who Salem's priest, and what his father's name:
He made 'The Song of Songs' its mysteries yield,
And 'Revelations' to the world revealed.
He sleeps i' the aisle,-but not a stone records
His name or fame, his actions or his words."

Certainly it was most true of Crabbe himself that

"He talk'd, he gave, but not with cautious rules,
Nor turn'd from gypsies, vagabonds or fools."

His hand was ever open; and, like Goldsmith's Village Pastor, "His house was known to all the vagrant train,

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain:
Careless their merits, or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began."

One fact was told me by one of my old parishioners, who had been an intimate friend of Crabbe's, and which placed this feature of his character in a very pleasing light. This gentleman, whose name was Clark, was a fine musician, and, with some of his neighbours, had got up some very excellent concerts of instrumental music, under his own leadership. Mr. Crabbe neither knew, or cared in the least about music; but one day he made Mr. Clark a present of a fine and expensive edition of Handel's complete works, for which he had some time before put down his name as a subscriber. Mr. Clark having expressed his surprise at his subscribing to so expensive a work, on a subject in which he took no interest, Mr. Crabbe replied, that in early life, when he first went up to London with a manuscript of some of his poems in his pocket, he had known such real distress, and had felt so truly the

value of a subscription to his intended publication, that now, in altered circumstances, when he had himself the means, he made it a rule never to refuse to subscribe to any work that appeared upon the face of it to be a bond fide work deserving encouragement, and where a subscription would really be a kindness, and of use. It is not, however, true of himself, when he says of "The Author Rector" in his poem :—

"He sleeps i' th' aisle-but not a stone records
His name or fame, his actions or his words."

A public subscription was raised immediately after his death, and a beautiful marble monument, executed by Bailey, was erected over his grave, in the chancel of Trowbridge Church. It exhibits a recumbent figure admirably representing the dying poet, clasping in his hands the sacred volume, with an inscription from the pen of his friend and brother-poet, Rogers; and concluding with a statement, that " as a writer he is well described by a great contemporary, as

"Nature's sternest painter, yet her best."

It was Byron that thus wrote of Crabbe, and most truly is he thus described. And many are the deeply interesting pictures drawn by his pen in "The Parish Register," "The Borough," "The Tales of the Hall," &c., with a minuteness of detail, truthfulness of colouring, and humorous satire, that remind us of the paintings of the Dutch School, or rather of some of our own Hogarth's or Wilkie's happiest efforts. I dare say many of us here present this evening have often spent a good deal of time in reading many less interesting, less amusing, as well as less wholesome works, than the life and writings of Crabbe.

Roger's principal works are the "Pleasures of Memory," and "Italy;" but he has never attained, as a poet, a popularity equal to Imost of those I have named to you. Indeed it was said he was much mortified at the great sale of his "Italy," when the illustrated edition was published, which, when first published in a simpler form, had hung rather heavy on the hands of the publisher; and the editor of the " John Bull," newspaper (the well known

Theodore Hook) who wished to have a cut at Rogers, as a Whig, used to annoy him very much by constantly putting ridiculous jokes and bon mots into his mouth, and giving them out as the sayings of "our friend the witty Banker," (Rogers being a member of one of the city banking firms in London), ignoring as it were his character as a poet. But nevertheless there is much of true poetry in his writings, and he was a man of an elegant and refined taste, and his house was for many years the resort of all, who had any pretensions to a name in literature and the fine arts. As I said, I have constantly met him in general society, where he always appeared a favourite, but I was never personally acquainted with him. I will give you, as a specimen of his poetical powers, a short passage from "The Pleasures of Memory," towards the conclusion:

"Hail, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine,
From age to age, unnumbered treasures shine.
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And place and time are subject to thy sway.
Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone,
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air hope's summer visions fly,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober reason play,
Lo! Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away.
But can the wiles of art, the grasp of power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light:
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where virtue triumphs and her sons are blest."

It was early in the month of January, 1849, that I went to Scotland to spend three weeks at Abbotsford with Mr. and Mrs. Hope, who were then residing there; Mrs. Hope, with her brother, being the children of Mr. Lockhart, and grand children of Sir Walter Scott. The brother died soon afterwards; and Mrs. Hope, having with her husband taken the name of Scott, succeeded to the inheritance; and now we have heard, within the last few weeks, of her death, and that of her only son, and an infant daughter, leaving one other daughter, about six years old, as the sole surviving