e much more truly than of
Dryden (who carries the true if not the finest poetical undertone with
him even into the rant of Almanzor and Maximin, into the interminable
arguments of "Religio Laici" and "The Hind and the Panther") that he is
a classic of our prose.

Yet the qualities which are so noteworthy in him are all qualities which
are valuable to the poet, and which for the most part are present in
good poets. And I cannot help thinking that this was what actually
deceived some of his contemporaries and made others content for the most
part to acquiesce in an exaggerated estimate of his poetical merits. It
must be remembered that even the latest generation which, as a whole and
unhesitatingly, admired Crabbe, had been brought up on the poets of the
eighteenth century, in the very best of whom the qualities which Crabbe
lacks had been but sparingly and not eminently present. It must be
remembered too, that from the great vice of the poetry of the eighteenth
century, its artificiality and convention, Crabbe is conspicuously free.
The return to nature was not the only secret of the return to poetry;
but it was part of it, and that Crabbe returned to nature no one could
doubt. Moreover he came just between the school of prose fiction which
practically ended with _Evelina_ and the school of prose fiction which
opened its different branches with _Waverley_ and _Sense and
Sensibility_. His contemporaries found nowhere else the narrative power,
the faculty of character-drawing, the genius for description of places
and manners, which they found in Crabbe; and they knew that in almost
all, if not in all the great poets there is narrative power, faculty of
character-drawing, genius for description. Yet again, Crabbe put these
gifts into verse which at its best was excellent in its own way, and at
its worst was a blessed contrast to Darwin or to Hayley. Some readers
may have had an uncomfortable though only half-conscious feeling that if
they had not a poet in Crabbe they had not a poet at all. At all events
they made up their minds that they had a poet in him.

But are we bound to follow their example? I think not. You could play on
Crabbe that odd trick which used, it is said, to be actually played on
some mediaeval verse chroniclers and unrhyme him--that is to say, put
him into prose with the least possible changes--and his merits would,
save in rare instances, remain very much as they are now. You could put
other words in