le
to take down these seven volumes and read them right through--a thing I
have myself done twice, and many here also I doubt not. Rather would I
plead for a reprint of Edmund FitzGerald's Selections, or failing that I
would ask you to look at the volume of Selections made by Mr. Bernard
Holland, or that other admirable selection by the Rev. Anthony Deane. "I
must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular,"
wrote FitzGerald to Archbishop Trench. Well, perhaps the "large still
books" of the older writers are never destined to be popular again, but
they will always maintain with genuine book lovers their place in English
Literature, and if the adequate praise they have received from many good
judges is well kept to the front there will be constant accessions to the
ranks, and readers will want the whole of Crabbe's works in which to dig
for themselves. Crabbe's place in English Literature needed not such a
gathering as this to make it secure, but we want celebrations of our
literary heroes to keep alive enthusiasm, and to encourage the
faint-hearted.

In the glorious tradition of English Literature, then, Crabbe comes after
Cowper and before Wordsworth. There is a lineal descent as clear and
well-defined as any set forth in the peerages of "Burke" or "Debrett." We
read in vain if we do not fully grasp the continuity of creative work.
Cowper was born in 1731, Crabbe in 1754, and Cowper was called to the Bar
in the year that Crabbe was born. In spite of this disparity of years
they started upon their literary careers almost at the same time. _The
Village_ was published in 1783, and _The Task_ in 1785, yet Cowper is in
every sense the elder poet, inheriting more closely the traditions of
Pope and Dryden, coming less near to humanity than Crabbe, and being more
emphatically a child of the eighteenth century in its artificial aspects.
It is impossible to indict a whole century with all its varied
accomplishments, and the century that produced Swift and Cowper and
Crabbe had no lack of the finer instincts of brotherhood. Yet the
century was essentially a cruel one. Take as an example the attitude of
naturally kindly men to the hanging of Dr. Dodd for forgery. Even Samuel
Johnson, who did what he could for Dodd, did not find, as he should have
done, his whole soul revolted by such a punishment for a crime against
property. Cowper has immense claim upon our regard. He is one of the
truest of