o try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in
case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the
'stern Painter' softened by his Grand Climacteric, removed from the gloom
and sadness of his early associations, and looking to the Follies rather
than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a
Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were
almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression
behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all
this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and
perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that
Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having
Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the
phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to
suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue
could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that
other Autumnal one in 'Delay has Danger,' beginning--

Early he rose, and look'd with many a sigh,
On the red Light that fill'd the Eastern sky, etc.

Where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in--nay,
as it were, to take a reflection from--the Hero's troubled Soul. In the
Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes, {282} and contrasts with those
of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative
representation of the scene have been out of character with the English
Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more
evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further--

While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees
The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease,
But to his own reflections made reply,
And said aloud--'Yes, doubtless we must die.'

[Greek text]--

This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.

One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth
condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly 'priggish' candle
case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know. We all know that
of Crabbe's 'Village' one passage was one of the first that struck young
Wordsworth: and when Crabbe's son was editing his Father's Poems in 1834,
old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and
Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been
written since,