the scene of now ruined happiness, and, moreover, Goldsmith's
delicate humour guards him instinctively from laying on his rose-colour
too thickly. Crabbe, however, will have nothing to do with rose-colour,
thick or thin. There is one explicit reference in the poem to his
predecessor's work, and it is significant. Everybody remembers, or ought
to remember, Goldsmith's charming pastor, to whom it can only be
objected that he has not the fear of political economists before his
eyes. This is Crabbe's retort after describing a dying pauper in need of
spiritual consolation:--

And does not he, the pious man, appear,
He, 'passing rich with forty pounds a year?'
Ah! no; a shepherd of a different stock,
And far unlike him, feeds this little flock:
A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task
As much as God or man can fairly ask;
The rest he gives to loves and labours light,
To fields the morning, and to feasts the night.
None better skilled the noisy pack to guide,
To urge their chase, to cheer them, or to chide;
A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day,
And, skilled at whist, devotes the night to play.

This fox-hunting parson (of whom Cowper has described a duplicate) lets
the pauper die as he pleases; and afterwards allows him to be buried
without attending, performing the funerals, it seems, in a lump upon
Sundays. Crabbe admits in a note that such negligence was uncommon, but
adds that it is not unknown. The flock is, on the whole, worthy of the
shepherd. The old village sports have died out in favour of smuggling
and wrecking. The poor are not, as rich men fancy, healthy and well fed.
Their work makes them premature victims to ague and rheumatism; their
food is

Homely, not wholesome, plain, not plenteous, such
As you who praise would never deign to touch.

The ultimate fate of the worn-out labourer is the poorhouse, described
in lines of which it is enough to say that Scott and Wordsworth learnt
them by heart, and the melancholy deathbed already noticed. Are we
reading a poem or a Blue Book done into rhyme? may possibly be the
question of some readers. The answer should perhaps be that a good many
Blue Books contain an essence which only requires to be properly
extracted and refined to become genuine poetry. If Crabbe's verses
retain rather too much of the earthly elements, he is capable of
transmuting his minerals into genuine gold, as well as of simp