er," the twenty-four Letters of "The Borough," some of which have
single and others grouped subjects, and the sixty or seventy pieces
which make up the three divisions of Tales, consist almost exclusively
of heroic couplets, shorter measures very rarely intervening. They are
also almost wholly devoted to narratives, partly satirical, partly
pathetic, of the lives of individuals of the lower and middle class
chiefly. Jeffrey, who was a great champion of Crabbe and allotted
several essays to him, takes delight in analysing the plots or stories
of these tales; but it is a little amusing to notice that he does it for
the most part exactly as if he were criticising a novelist or a
dramatist. "The object," says he, in one place, "is to show that a man's
fluency of speech depends very much upon his confidence in the
approbation of his auditors": "In Squire Thomas we have the history of a
mean, domineering spirit," and so forth. Gifford in one place actually
discusses Crabbe as a novelist. I shall make some further reference to
this curious attitude of Crabbe's admiring critics. For the moment I
shall only remark that the singularly mean character of so much of
Crabbe's style, the "style of drab stucco," as it has been unkindly
called, which is familiar from the wicked wit that told how the youth at
the theatre

Regained the felt and felt what he regained,

is by no means universal. The most powerful of all his pieces, the
history of Peter Grimes, the tyrant of apprentices, is almost entirely
free from it, and so are a few others. But it is common enough to be a
very serious stumbling-block. In nine tales out of ten this is the
staple:--

Of a fair town where Dr. Rack was guide,
His only daughter was the boast and pride.

Now that is unexceptionable verse enough, but what is the good of
putting it in verse at all? Here again:--

For he who makes me thus on business wait,
Is not for business in a proper state.

It is obvious that you cannot trust a man who, unless he is intending a
burlesque, can bring himself to write like that. Crabbe not only brings
himself to it, but rejoices and luxuriates in the style. The tale from
which that last luckless distich is taken, "The Elder Brother," is full
of pathos and about equally full of false notes. If we turn to a far
different subject, the very vigorously conceived "Natural Death of
Love," we find a piece of strong and true satire, the best thing of its
kind