rallel between the type of Crabbe's personages and the
fauna and flora of his native district. Declining a task which might
lead to fanciful conclusions, I may assume that the East Anglian
character is sufficiently familiar, whatever the causes by which it has
been determined. To define Crabbe's poetry we have simply to imagine
ourselves listening to the stories of his parishioners, told by a
clergyman brought up amongst the lower rank of the middle classes,
scarcely elevated above their prejudices, and not willingly leaving
their circle of ideas. We must endow him with that simplicity of
character which gives us frequent cause to smile at its proprietor, but
which does not disqualify him from seeing a great deal further into his
neighbours than they are apt to give him credit for doing. Such insight,
in fact, is due not to any great subtlety of intellect, but to the
possession of deep feeling and sympathy. Crabbe saw little more of Burke
than would have been visible to an ordinary Suffolk farmer. When
transplanted to a ducal mansion, he only drew the pretty obvious
inference, embodied in a vigorous poem, that a patron is a very
disagreeable and at times a very mischievous personage. The joys and
griefs which really interest him are of the very tangible and solid kind
which affect men and women to whom the struggle for existence is a stern
reality. Here and there his good-humoured but rather clumsy ridicule may
strike some lady to whom some demon has whispered 'have a taste;' and
who turns up her nose at the fat bacon on Mr. Tovell's table. He pities
her squeamishness, but thinks it rather unreasonable. He satirises too
the heads of the rustic aristocracy; the brutal squire who bullies his
nephew the clergyman for preaching against his vices, and corrupts the
whole neighbourhood; or the speculative banker who cheats old maids
under pretence of looking after their investments. If the squire does
not generally appear in Crabbe in the familiar dramatic character of a
rural Lovelace, it is chiefly because Crabbe has no great belief in the
general purity of the inferior ranks of rural life. But his most
powerful stories deal with the tragedies--only too life-like--of the
shop and the farm. He describes the temptations which lead the small
tradesman to adulterate his goods, or the parish clerk to embezzle the
money subscribed in the village church, and the evil influence of
dissenting families in fostering a spiritual pride whi