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feel forcibly my wants-patronage and bread. | Spirit-touching, and very piteous, w

I have no other claim on your Lordship, than my necessities-but they are great unless my muse, and she has, I am afraid, as few charms; nor is it a time for such to flourish in serener days, my Lord, I have produced some poetical compositions the public might approve, and your Lordship not disdain to patronize."

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The poor poet was again doomed to disappointment. His communication was disregarded; and he next addressed himself to Lord Chancellor Thurlow; " but," says his son, Iwith little better fortune. To the first letter, which enclosed a copy of verses, his Lordship returned for answer a cold polite note, regretting that his avocations did not leave him leisure to read verses," and of a second application he took no notice at all. This apparent neglect was, however, as we shall see, afterwards nobly atoned for; for notwithstanding his rough exterior and repulsive eccentricities, Thurlow was endowed with a noble nature and generous disposition. Meanwhile, his situation became every day more critical; his distresses more appalling. Heartsick and lonely in the great metropolis, his spirits at length gave way, and he must have keenly felt what he has so well expressed in his poem of the Library :—

"Hard is his fate who builds his peace of mind On the precarious mercies of mankind; Who hopes for wild and visionary things, And mounts o'er unknown seas with vent'rous wings."

How he lived at all is a mystery. His landlord, Mr. Vickery, treated him, it is evident, with great consideration, and his kind friend Burcham furnished him with an occasional meal. His journal to Mira was discontinued, as we have before intimated, after three months of his residence in London; perhaps it became too painful for him to record his daily troubles and keen vexations, and in the absence of any record, we can only guess at the extent of his misery and privations.

At length, early in the year 1781, a "propitious influence" induced him to address a despairing appeal to the great statesman whom he ever afterward regarded as the kindest, best, and greatest man of his generation,-whose ear was open to every cry of

poor poet's address to the great poli but we question whether many men Burke's position, immersed in public ness, and beset with daily applications, not have put it aside as an ordinary be letter. That great man, however, wi just and rare discrimination which re from an uncommon knowledge of ma saw at once that Crabbe was no Co applicant for charity. He read with est the details of his sufferings; they w truthfully and intelligently penned th could not doubt. The letter is too lo be quoted entire, but we cannot pass i without making a short extract. H portrayed his early hopes, struggles. takes, and disappointments, his pressin igencies and abject poverty, the frien poet thus concluded his appeal to the s

man:

"You will guess the purpose of so an introduction. I appeal to you, sir, good, and, let me add, a great man. I no other pretensions to your favor, than I am an unhappy one. It is not easy to

port the thoughts of confinement; and coward enough to dread such an end to suspense.

"Can you, sir, in any degree, aid me propriety? Will you ask any demons tions of my veracity? I have imposed u myself, but I have been guilty of no o imposition. Let me, if possible, inte your compassion. I know those of and fortune are teased with frequent tions, and are compelled to refuse the quests even of those whom they know to in distress; it is, therefore, with a' dist hope I ventured to solicit such favor; you will forgive me, sir, if you do not th proper to relieve. It is impossible that s timents like yours can proceed from any a humane and generous heart.

"I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, a if I have not the happiness to obtain cre with you, I must submit to my fate. existence is a pain to myself, and every near and dear to me is distressed in my tresses. My connexions, once the source happiness, now embitter the reverse of fortune, and I have only to hope a spee end to a life unpromisingly begun; in whi

Mr. Burke perused, and acting in- | eration, and congenial society, was sudden y on the impulses of his generous na- and unforeseen, and has no parallel in literahe appointed a day and hour for an in-ry history. His heart was filled with gratiw with the author. With trembling tude and pious thankfulness. In after life, y, but, we may imagine, with confident he could not speak of Burke's kindness to and many pleasing anticipations, the him without tears in his eyes. He was at adventurer knocked at the door of Mr. once introduced to the distinguished and ine's mansion. He was ushered into his tellectual circle by whom the statesman was nce, received with unexpected kindness, surrounded; amongst others, to Fox, Sir nally dismissed with assurances that Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Johnson. By the m no room to doubt that a bright fu- latter he was at first received with a growl, had dawned upon him. The readiest but afterward treated with substantial kindto aid the young author, thought Mr. ness. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow invited , was by the publication of his poems; him to breakfast, soon after the publication e accordingly selected the Village and of the Library, and at parting put into his Library from other compositions, and hand a £100 bank-note, at that time a most hem, in his most impressive manner, to acceptable present. ey, the publisher. The bookseller did el much confidence in the success of erses, but admitted their excellence. publication of the Library was at last d on, and Dodsley generously prothat all the profits should be approto the author.

In December, 1781, Crabbe was ordained by the Bishop of Norwich, having passed a creditable examination; and immediately prepared to officiate as a curate in his native town. With a swelling heart he took leave of his generous patron, and eminent associates; nor did he omit to bid a kind adieu to the linendraper in Cornhill, at whose hospitable table he had so often sat, when with

ke's kindness did not stop here. He und, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds, s new protégé "had the mind and feel-out the means of purchasing a meal. Ara gentleman;" and, in order to give sure for study, he invited him to his Beaconsfield, lavished on him every on, and laid plans for his future life. s in the course of one of their walks," e poet's son and biographer, "amidst assical shades of Beaconsfield, that after some conversation on general re, suggested by a passage of the cs, which he had happened to quote erving something that was going on in orite farm, passed to a more minute into my father's early days in Suffolk had before made, and drew from him owal, that, with respect to future afhe felt a strong partiality for the 'It is most fortunate,' said Mr. that your father exerted himself to ou to that second school; without a atin we should have made nothing of ow, I think we shall succeed." After nversation, "Mr. Burke," continues the her, "though well aware of the diffiof obtaining holy orders for any perregularly educated, exerted himself ure the assent, in this instance, of Dr. the then Bishop of Norwich; and in cked by the favorable, representations Dudley North and Mr. Charles Long,

rived at Aldborough, he received the congratulations of his friends, who now commended the imprudent step they had before so emphatically condemned. The father gloried in the unexpected success of his bookish son, and confessed that he had underrated his abilities. But one gentle voice the poet missed, whose lightest word of sympathy and congratulation would have gladdened him more than all; one approving smile which fondly and fervently he had hoped would have beamed upon him in the day of his triumph and success, was wanting to complete his happiness. His mother, the poor meek woman, whose heart would have leaped with joy at his good fortune, who would have gloried in his fame, as only a mother could, had died during his absence. The feelings which such a loss inspired, have been beautifully delineated in his poem of The Parish Register:"

eventually successful."

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"Arrived at home, how then he gazed around,
In ev'ry place, where she, no more, was found;—
The seat at table she was wont to fill;
The fire-side chair, still set, but vacant still;
The garden-walks, a labor all her own;
The latticed bower, with trailing shrubs o'er-

grown;

The Sunday-pew she fill'd with all her race—
Each place of hers was now a sacred place;

That while it call'd un sorrows in the eves

While officiating as a curate in his native town, the poet was subjected, it seems, to many annoyances. The good people of Aldborough were mystified and surprised by his strange good fortune, and many ill-natured rumors were invented and circulated to account for his success. It was, therefore, with no small delight that Crabbe accepted the post of domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, procured for him by the never-tiring kindness of his benefactor Burke. He immediately exchanged his humble quarters at Aldborough for aristocratic apartments in Belvoir Castle; and whilst residing there, in 1783, he published his poem of the Village.

In this poem were displayed all his most striking excellences. Without any affectation of originality, there was a freshness and vigor in his conceptions which took the reader by surprise. It is worthy of remark, that whilst carefully discarding the conventional images and affected phraseology that marked the common-place poetry of the age, in the mechanism of his verse, he followed the popular models, and scrupulously adhered to the fashionable standard. We need not

remind our readers that the great writers who had immediately preceded him, had used the metre of Pope with singular success:—Johnson, in his masterly imitations of Juvenal; Churchill, in his coarse but vigorous satires, and finally Oliver Goldsmith, in Traveler" and the "Deserted Vil

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lage." It is possible that the latter poem might have suggested to Crabbe a delineation of rural life of a somewhat different complexion; and in many of his descriptions

there is much of the manner of Goldsmith. The poem had been sent to Dr. Johnson, who honored it with his corrections, and heartily approved of its manly sentiment. The Doctor was undoubtedly pleased with its orthodox form, as well as with its originality and truth. Earnestness and reality were rare virtues in the verse-writers of the day; and many of the respectable readers of poetry must have been startled by the originality of Crabbe's delineations. His Village was no pastoral paradise. He depicted the manners of country people not as they might, or as they ought to have been, but as they

were. He did not subscribe to the notion that happiness and contentment were always to be found in the rural cottage, or that the

"Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to
Though the head droops not, that the h
well:
Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants
Or will you praise that homely, healthy fat
Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel
Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal;
Homely not wholesome, plain not plenteous
As you who praise would never deign to t

The description of the parish poor-ho such as parish poor-houses used to beits putrid vapors and walls of mud, is haps, the most powerful sketch in the Н but it is too familiar to bear quotation. a specimen of his forcible satire, we ca however, forbear inserting his portrait o village apothecary-a sketch from life :

"Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe

With speed that, entering, speaks his has

go;

He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye;
A potent quack, long versed in human ills.
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy bench pro
And whose most tender mercy is neglect."

At the latter end of the same yea which this successful poem was publish Crabbe was married to his early love, S Elmy, in the parish church of Beccl Amidst all the discouraging circumstance his early life, the ardor of their attachm had never cooled; and for many a long their wedded life was blest with all the fe ty which such sincere and well-tried at

tion deserved.

In 1785 was published the poem of "Newspaper," which can scarcely be said have added much to Crabbe's reputati and from that time for twenty-two years, muse was wholly silent.

In this interval, he held successively set ral church preferments, and sedulously voted himself to the duties of his professi In the society of his wife and children,simple and unassuming country clergyman, he pursued the even tenor of his way, u disturbed by visions of literary fame. the discharge of his duties, he evinced Parson Adams-like simplicity, which show how foreign to his character was every sp cies of affectation and pretence. Perha

some of his parishioners might have thoug

ccasionally wanting in dignity, and too ss of the proprieties of his profession. on observes that "he had the most ete exemption from fear or solicitude," tofficiating as a minister.) "I must some money, gentlemen,' he would stepping from the pulpit. This was ice of tithe-day. Once or twice, findgrow dark, he abruptly shut his seraying, 'Upon my word, I cannot see ; t give you the rest when we meet Or he would walk into a pew near a , and stand on the seat and finish his -, with the most admirable indifference remarks of his congregation." ough the Village and the Library had heir place amongst English classics, author was almost forgotten by the public, when in 1807 he published Parish Register," with some minor The new poems were received with lause they merited; all the peculiar ces of the Village were displayed in gister in still higher perfection; and it ident that time had matured and hened the poet's powers. There was me wonderful talent for minute des-the same singular adherence to the nd prosaic truth, blended with a pro- pathos, and still deeper insight into nature. His former poems contained ription equal in solemn and terrible o his sketch of the Village Infidel in part of the Register :

lone house, by Dead-man's Dyke-way

a nightly haunt in Lonely wood; lage inn has heard the ruffian boast believed in neither God nor ghost;' en the sod upon the sinner press'd, the saint, had everlasting rest; er priest believed his doctrines true, ld, for profit, own himself a Jew,

ip wood and stone, as honest heathen

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We will make one more extract from the "Register," and we trust our readers will pardon the length of the quotation. The portrait of Isaac Ashford,-an honest, manly English laborer, has always appeared to us not merely the most successful of Crabbe's delineations, but one of the most beauti-ful sketches in the whole range of our poetical literature.

We doubt whether the

bard of Auburn himself has written anything which leaves a more pleasing impression on the mind, or which, from its tranquil beauty and manly sentiment, is more worthy of citation.

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Next to these ladies, but in nought allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestion'd and his soul serene:
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid;
At no man's question Isaac look'd dismay'd:
Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace';
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face;
Yet while the serious thought his soul approved,
Cheerful he seem'd, and gentleness he loved;;
To bliss domestic he his heart resign'd,
And, with the firmest, had the fondest mind.

*

*

*

*

If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride,
Who, in their base contempt, the great deride;
Nor pride in learning, though my clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed;
Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew
None his superior, and his equals few:
But if that spirit in his soul had place,
It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace;
In sturdy boys to virtuous labors train'd;
A pride in honest fame, by virtue gain'd,
Pride in the power that guards his country's coast,
And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast;
Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied-
In fact, a noble passsion, misnamed pride.

Is alone on future worlds rely,
who die for faith deserve to die."
ommand of quaint and vigorous lan-
and terse, epigrammatic expression,
ver more fully displayed than in his
on of the dwelling-place of the an-
iden, whose death is recorded in the
rt of the "Parish Register." We
as a specimen of his excellence in He had no party's rage, no sect'ry's whim;

style:

Christian and countryman was all with him:
True to his church he came: no Sunday shower

I see no more those white locks, thinly spread
Round the bald polish of that honor'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."

"

That he committed many sins agains taste cannot be denied; that he is fre formal, flat, and prosaic, and that he too much on repulsive and disagreeab Like t jects-all this is admitted. faithful portrait-painter, he offends b minuteness, and rigid truth.

"His verse from Nature's face each feature Each lovely charm, each mole and wrinkle

In the Borough" (published in 1810, for the poet was now encouraged to proThe distinguished wit who with such ceed,) the reviewers discerned "greater cess parodied his style, conferred on hi beauties and greater blemishes," than in any nick-name of "Pope in worsted stocki of the former poems. The "Tales in Verse,' and the ludicrous appellation was en 1812, and the "Tales of the Hall," 1819, amongst the happy sayings of the day were still more popular; and amongst a segladly seized on by the numerous oppo lect few, at least, Crabbe was regarded as of his poetical creed. But his merits a one of the greatest poets of his age. His great to suffer from a few admitted e productions did not at first obtain a very his virtues were all his own; and as lo wide popularity; for they wanted the glare and glitter which attract a certain class of originality and genius are admired an vered, he will hold a distinguished verse readers; but they gradually grew upon public estimation, and, as a test of their amongst the poets of the last generation In the latter portion of Mr. Crabbe' worth, it may be mentioned that Mr. Murray he appears to have entered more into ge was induced to give him for the "Tales of the Hall," and the remaining copyright of London, where his genius and fame sec society. He made frequent journey his previous poems, the munificent sum of him admission into all the literary and £3,000. He was not a rapid writer; indeed, tinguished circles. In 1822 he paid it is probable, since he abstained from it so Walter Scott (who had always been a g long, that he felt severely the task of comine admirer of his poems,) a visit, at H position. He fancied," says his son,-and burgh. Mr. Lockhart has recorded a these small particulars are always interest- rious and characteristic anecdote conne ing "that autumn was, on the whole, the with this visit. "Mr. Crabbe," he say most favorable season for him in the compoa letter addressed to the poet's son, "ha sition of poetry; but there was something in presume, read the effect of a sudden fall of snow that ap-fore that excursion. little about Scotland very . . . . . I believe peared to stimulate him in a very extraordireally never had known, until then, th nary manner. It was during a great snow language radically distinct from the Eng storm, that, shut up in his room, he wrote almost currento calamo his Sir Eustace And this recalls a scene of high merrim was still actually spoken within the isla Grey." which occurred the very morning after arrival. When he came down into

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We have not enlarged upon Crabbe's striking poetical virtues, without being sensible of his faults; but, as a great critic has observed, his faults are more obvious and prominent, and "are all on the surface of his writings." His bald and homely phraseology has been excellently parodied in the "Rejected Addresses." The poet himself confessed that the young men had done him admirably;" though, he added, "it is easier to imitate style than to furnish matter." Our readers will readily recall some lines of this famous imitation; e. g.—

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"John William Richard Alexander Dwyer Was footman to Justinian Stubbs. Esquire :

breakfast parlor, Sir Walter had not yet peared there; and Mr. Crabbe had bef him two or three portly personages all the full Highland garb. These gentlem arrayed in a costume so novel, were talk in a language which he did not understan so he never doubted that they were foreig

ers.

Crabbe, dressed as he was in rather an o The Celts, on their part, conceived M fashioned style of clerical propriety-w buckles in his shoes, for instance-to some learned abbé, who had come on a grimage to the shrine of Waverly; and i result was, that when, a little afterwar

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