full competition with the giants of the new
school, whose ideals and whose education were utterly different from
his. While "The Library" and "The Village" came to a public which still
had Johnson, which had but just lost Goldsmith, and which had no other
poetical novelty before it than Cowper, "The Borough" and the later
Tales entered the lists with "Marmion" and "Childe Harold," with
"Christabel" and "The Excursion," even with "Endymion" and "The Revolt
of Islam." Yet these later works of Crabbe met with the fullest
recognition both from readers and from critics of the most opposite
tendencies. Scott, the most generous, and Wordsworth,[2] the most
grudging, of all the poets of the day towards their fellows, united in
praising Crabbe; and unromantic as the poet of "The Village" seems to us
he was perhaps Sir Walter's favourite English bard. Scott read him
constantly, he quotes him incessantly; and no one who has read it can
ever forget how Crabbe figures in the most pathetic biographical pages
ever written--Lockhart's account of the death at Abbotsford. Byron's
criticism was as weak as his verse was powerful, but still Byron had no
doubt about Crabbe. The utmost flight of memory or even of imagination
can hardly get together three contemporary critics whose standards,
tempers, and verdicts, were more different than those of Gifford,
Jeffrey, and Wilson. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that they are
all in a tale about Crabbe. In this unexampled chorus of eulogy there
rose (for some others who can hardly have admired him much were simply
silent) one single note, so far as I know, or rather one single rattling
peal of thunder on the other side. It is true that this was significant
enough, for it came from William Hazlitt.

Yet against this chorus, which was not, as has sometimes happened, the
mere utterance of a loud-voiced few, but was echoed by a great multitude
who eagerly bought and read Crabbe, must be set the almost total
forgetfulness of his work which has followed. It is true that of living
or lately living persons in the first rank of literature some great
names can be cited on his side; and what is more, that these great names
show the same curious diversity in agreement which has been already
noticed as one of Crabbe's triumphs. The translator of Omar Khayyam, his
friend the present Laureate, and the author of "The Dream of Gerontius,"
are men whose literary ideals are known to be different enough; yet they