hon
{97} has devoted to the subject a singleminded zeal to which one whose
profession is primarily that of a journalist can make no claim. Moreover
it has been well said that _the judgment of foreigners is the judgment of
posterity_, and I fully believe that where a writer has secured the
suffrages of men of another nation than his own, he has done more for his
ultimate fame than the passing and fickle favour of his countrymen can
secure for him. In any case Crabbe has been praised more eloquently than
almost any other modern, and this in spite of the fact that he was not
read by the generation succeeding his death, nor is he read much in our
own time.

If you want to read Crabbe to-day in his entirety, you must become
possessed of a huge and clumsy volume of sombre appearance, small type
and repellant double columns. For fully seventy years it has not paid a
publisher to reprint Crabbe's poems properly. {98} When this was
achieved in 1834, the edition in eight volumes was comparatively a
failure, and the promised two volumes of essays and sermons were not
forthcoming in consequence. Selections from Crabbe have been many, but
when all is said he has been the least read for the past sixty or seventy
years of all the authors who have claims to be considered classics. The
least read but perhaps the best praised--that is one point of certainty.
The praise began with the politicians--with the two greatest political
leaders of their age. The eloquent and noble Edmund Burke, the great-
hearted Charles James Fox. Burke "made" George Crabbe as no poet was
ever made before or since. To me there is no picture in all literature
more unflaggingly interesting than that of the great man, whose life was
so full of affairs, taking the poor young stranger by the hand, reading
through his abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting--as the poet
was quite unable to select--_The Library_ and _The Village_ as the most
suitable for publication, helping him to a publisher, introducing him to
friends, and proving himself quite untiring on his behalf. There is a
letter of Burke's printed in a little known book--_The Correspondence of
Sir Thomas Hanmer_, Speaker of the House of Commons--in which Burke takes
the trouble to defend Crabbe's moral character and to press his claims
for being admitted to holy orders. "Dudley North tells me," he
continues, "that he has the best character possible among those with whom
he has always lived, t