s
his sufferings to some evil influence intrinsic in the locality:--

There were three places, where they ever rose--
The whole long river has not such as those--
Places accursed, where, if a man remain,
He'll see the things which strike him to the brain.

And then the malevolent ghosts forced poor Peter to lean on his oars,
and showed him visions of coming horrors. Grimes dies impenitent, and
fancying that his tormentors are about to seize him. Of all haunted men
in fiction, it is not easy to think of a case where the horror is more
terribly realised. The blood-boulter'd Banquo tortured a noble victim,
but scarcely tortured him more effectually. Peter Grimes was doubtless a
close relation of Peter Bell. Bell having the advantage of Wordsworth's
interpretation, leads us to many thoughts which lie altogether beyond
Crabbe's reach; but, looking simply at the sheer tragic force of the two
characters, Grimes is to Bell what brandy is to small beer. He would
never have shown the white feather like his successor, who,

After ten months' melancholy,
Became a good and honest man.

If, in some sense, Peter Grimes is the most effective of Crabbe's
heroes, he would, if taken alone, give a very distorted impression of
the general spirit of the poetry. It is only at intervals that he
introduces us to downright criminals. There is, indeed, a description of
a convicted felon, which, according to Macaulay, has made 'many a rough
and cynical reader cry like a child,' and which, if space were
unlimited, would make a striking pendant to the agony of the burdened
Grimes. But, as a rule, Crabbe can find motives enough for tenderness in
sufferings which have nothing to do with the criminal law, and of which
the mere framework of the story is often interesting enough. His
peculiar power is best displayed in so presenting to us the sorrows of
commonplace characters as to make us feel that a shabby coat and a
narrow education, and the most unromantic of characters, need not cut
off our sympathies with a fellow-creature; and that the dullest
tradesman who treads on our toes in an omnibus may want only a power of
articulate expression to bring before us some of the deepest of all
problems. The parish clerk and the grocer--or whatever may be the
proverbial epitome of human dulness--may swell the chorus of lamentation
over the barrenness and the hardships and the wasted energies and the
harsh discords of life which is a