s which have been published, as in
anecdotes of him by others. Perhaps the famous story of his politely
endeavouring to talk French to divers Highlanders, during George the
Fourth's visit to Edinburgh, is slightly embroidered--Lockhart, who
tells it, was a mystifier without peer. If he did gently but firmly
extinguish a candle-snuff while Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont were
indulging in poetic ecstasies over the beautiful undulations of the
smoke, there may have been something to say for him as Anne Scott, to
whom Wordsworth told the story, is said to have hinted, from the side of
one of the senses. His life, no less than his work, speaks him a man of
amiable though by no means wholly sweet temper, of more common sense
than romance, and of more simplicity than common sense. His nature and
his early trials made him not exactly sour, but shy, till age and
prosperity mellowed him; but simplicity was his chief characteristic in
age and youth alike.

The mere facts of his strictly literary career are chiefly remarkable
for the enormous gap between his two periods of productiveness. In early
youth he published some verses in the magazines and a poem called
"Inebriety," which appeared at Ipswich in 1775. His year of struggle in
London saw the publication of another short piece "The Candidate," but
with the ill-luck which then pursued him, the bookseller who brought it
out became bankrupt. His despairing resort to Burke ushered in "The
Library," 1781, followed by "The Village," 1783, which Johnson revised
and improved not a little. Two years later again came "The Newspaper,"
and then twenty-two years passed without anything appearing from
Crabbe's pen. It was not that he was otherwise occupied, for he had
little or nothing to do, and for the greater part of the time, lived
away from his parish. It was not that he was idle, for we have his son's
testimony that he was perpetually writing, and that holocausts of
manuscripts in prose and verse used from time to time to be offered up
in the open air, for fear of setting the house on fire by their mass. At
last, in 1807, "The Parish Register" appeared, and three years later
"The Borough"--perhaps the strongest division of his work. The
miscellaneous Tales came in 1812, the "Tales of the Hall" in 1819.
Meanwhile and afterwards, various collected editions appeared, the last
and most complete being in 1829--a very comely little book in eight
volumes. His death led to the issue of so