household that the poet found his Mira. Crabbe's own
father was apparently at a lower point of the social scale; and during
his later years took to drinking and to flinging dishes about the room
whenever he was out of temper. Crabbe always drew from the life; most of
his characters might have joined in his father's drinking bouts, or told
stories over Mr. Tovell's punchbowls. Doubtless a social order of the
same kind survived till a later period in various corners of the island.
The Tovells of to-day get their fashions from London, and their
labourers, instead of dining with them in their kitchen, have taken to
forming unions and making speeches about their rights. If, here and
there, in some remote nooks we find an approximation to the coarse,
hearty patriarchal mode of life, we regard it as a naturalist regards a
puny modern reptile, the representative of gigantic lizards of old
geological epochs. A sketch or two of its peculiarities, sufficiently
softened and idealised to suit modern tastes, forms a picturesque
background to a modern picture. Some of Miss Bronte's rough
Yorkshiremen would have drunk punch with Mr. Tovell; and the farmers in
the 'Mill on the Floss' are representatives of the same race, slightly
degenerate, in so far as they are just conscious that a new cause of
disturbance is setting into the quiet rural districts. Dandie Dinmont
again is a relation of Crabbe's heroes, though the fresh air of the
Cheviots and the stirring traditions of the old border life have
conferred upon him a more poetical colouring. To get a realistic picture
of country life as Crabbe saw it, we must go back to Squire Western, or
to some of the roughly-hewn masses of flesh who sat to Hogarth. Perhaps
it may be said that Miss Austen's delicate portrait of the more polished
society, which took the waters at Bath, and occasionally paid a visit to
London, implies a background of coarser manners and more brutal
passions, which lay outside her peculiar province. The question
naturally occurs to social philosophers, whether the improvement in the
external decencies of life and the wider intellectual horizon of modern
days prove a genuine advance over the rude and homely plenty of an
earlier generation. I refer to such problems only to remark that Crabbe
must be consulted by those who wish to look upon the seamy side of the
time which he describes. He very soon dropped his nymphs and shepherds,
and ceased to invoke the idyllic muse. In