ardinal Newman said that Crabbe "pleased and touched him at
thirty years' interval," and pleaded that this answers to the
"accidental definition of a classic." Most certainly; but not
necessarily to that of a poetical classic. Jeffrey thought him
"original and powerful." Granted; but there are plenty of original and
powerful writers who are not poets. Wilson gave him the superlative for
"original and vivid painting." Perhaps; but is Hogarth a poet? Jane
Austen "thought she could have married him." She had not read his
biography; but even if she had would that prove him to be a poet? Lord
Tennyson is said to single out the following passage, which is certainly
one of Crabbe's best, if not his very best:--

Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh
On the red light that filled the eastern sky;
Oft had he stood before, alert and gay,
To hail the glories of the new-born day;
But now dejected, languid, listless, low,
He saw the wind upon the water blow,
And the cold stream curled onward as the gale
From the pine-hill blew harshly down the vale;
On the right side the youth a wood surveyed,
With all its dark intensity of shade;
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move
In this, the pause of nature and of love
When now the young are reared, and when the old,
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold:
Far to the left he saw the huts of men,
Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen:
Before him swallows gathering for the sea,
Took their short flights and twittered o'er the lea;
And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done,
And slowly blackened in the sickly sun;
All these were sad in nature, or they took
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look
And of his mind--he pondered for a while,
Then met his Fanny with a borrowed smile.

It is good: it is extraordinarily good: it could not be better of its
kind. It is as nearly poetry as anything that Crabbe ever did--but is it
quite? If it is (and I am not careful to deny it) the reason, as it
seems to me, is that the verbal and rhythmical music here, with its
special effect of "transporting" of "making the common as if it were
uncommon," is infinitely better than is usual with Crabbe, that in fact
there is music as well as meaning. Hardly anywhere else, not even in the
best passages of the story of Peter Grimes, shall we find such music;
and in its absence it may be said of Crabb