scinating prose, and still more fascinating metrical
versatility, Crabbe's resolute and plodding couplets might often seem
tame and wearisome. Indeed, at this juncture, the rhymed heroic couplet,
as a vehicle for the poetry of imagination, was tottering to its fall,
though it lingered for many years as the orthodox form for university
prize poems, and for occasional didactic or satirical effusions. Crabbe,
very wisely, remained faithful to the metre. For his purpose, and with
his subjects and special gifts, none probably would have served him
better. For narrative largely blended with the analytical and the
epigrammatic method neither the stanza nor blank-verse (had he ever
mastered it) would have sufficed. But in Crabbe's last published volumes
it was not only the metre that was to seem flat and monotonous in the
presence of new proofs of the boundless capabilities of verse. The
reader would not make much progress in these volumes without
discovering that the depressing incidents of life, its disasters and
distresses, were still Crabbe's prevailing theme. John Murray in the
same season published Rogers's _Human Life_ and Crabbe's _Tales of the
Hall_. The publisher sent Crabbe a copy of the former, and he
acknowledged it in a few lines as follows:

"I am anxious that Mr. Rogers should have all the
success he can desire. I am more indebted to him than I
could bear to think of, if I had not the highest esteem. It
will give me great satisfaction to find him cordially admired.
His is a favourable picture, and such he loves so do I, but
men's vices and follies come into my mind, and spoil my
drawing."

Assuredly no more striking antithesis to Crabbe's habitual impressions
of human life can be found than in the touching and often beautiful
couplets of Rogers, a poet as neglected today as Crabbe. Rogers's
picture of wedded happiness finds no parallel, I think, anywhere in the
pages of his brother-poet:--

"Across the threshold led,
And every tear kissed off as soon as shed,
His house she enters, there to be a light
Shining within, when all without is night;
A guardian angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing!
How oft her eyes read his; her gentle mind
To all his wishes, all his thoughts, inclined;
Still subject--ever on the watch to borrow
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till