portions of _The Village,_ and it seems strange that he should have
given _The Library_ precedence, for the other was in every respect the
more remarkable. But Burke, a conservative in this as in other matters,
probably thought that a new poet desiring to be heard would be wiser in
not at once quitting the old paths. The readers of poetry still had a
taste for didactic epigram varied by a certain amount of florid
rhetoric. And there was little beyond this in Crabbe's moralisings on
the respective functions of theology, history, poetry, and the rest, as
represented on the shelves of a library, and on the blessings of
literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of
life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had
caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as
fluent and copious--as skilful in spreading a truism over a dozen
well-sounding lines--as any of his predecessors. There is little new in
the way of ideas. Crabbe had as yet no wide insight into books and
authors, and he was forced to deal largely in generalities. But he
showed that he had already some idea of style; and if, when he had so
little to say, he could say it with so much semblance of power, it was
certain that when he had observed and thought for himself he would go
further and make a deeper mark. The heroic couplet controlled him to the
end of his life, and there is no doubt that it was not merely timidity
that made him confine himself to the old beaten track. Crabbe's thoughts
ran very much in antithesis, and the couplet suited this tendency. But
it had its serious limitations. Southey's touching stanzas--

"My days among the dead are passed,"

though the ideas embodied are no more novel than Crabbe's, are worth
scores of such lines as these--

"With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:
'The dead!' methinks a thousand tongues reply;
'These are the tombs of such as cannot die!
Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
And laugh at all the little strife of Time'"

CHAPTER III

FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

(1781-1783)

Thus far I have followed the guidance of Crabbe's son and biographer,
but there is much that is confused and incomplete in his narrative. The
story of Crabbe's life, as told by the son, leaves us in much doubt as
to the order of events in 1780-1781. The memorable letter to Burke was,
as we have see