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around Ben-mac-Dhui ?), had (need we say?) the most exquisite eye for all picturesque and romantic aspects, in sea, shore, or sky; and in the quick perception of this element of the picturesque lay his principal, if not only descriptive power. Wordsworth, again, seems always to be standing above, though not stooping over, the objects he describes. He seldom looks up in wrapt admiration of what is above him; the bending furze-bush and the lowly broom-the nest lying in the level clover-field-the tarn sinking away seemingly before his eye into darker depths-the prospect from the mountain summit cast far beneath him: at highest, the star burning low upon the mountain's ridge, like an "untended watchfire" these are the objects which he loves to describe, and these may stand as emblems of his lowly yet aspiring genius-Crabbe, on the other hand, "stoops to conquer nay, goes down on his knees, that he may more accurately describe such objects as the marsh given over to desolation from immemorial time-the slush left by the sea, and revealing the dead body of the suicide-the bare crag and the stunted tree, diversifying the scenery of the saline wilderness-the house on the heath, creaking in the storm, and telling strange stories of misery and crime-the pine in some wintry wood, which had acted as the gallows of some miserable man-the gorse surrounding with yellow light the encampment of the Gipsies-the few timid flowers, or "weeds of glorious feature," which adorn the brink of ocean-the snow putting out the fire of the pauper, or lying unmelted on his pillow of death-the web of the spider blinding the cottager's window-the wheel turned by the meagre hand of contented or cursing penury-the cards trembling in the grasp of the desperate debauchee-the day stocking forming the cap by night, and the garter at midnight the dunghill becoming the accidental grave of the drunkard-the poor-house of forty years ago, with its patched windows, its dirty environs, its moist and miserable walls, its inmates all snuff, and selfishness, and sin-the receptacle of the outlawed members of English society (how different from "Poosie Nancy's !"), with its gin-gendered quarrels, its appalling blasphemies, its deep debauches, its ferocity without fun, its huddled murders, and its shrieks of disease dumb in the uproar around-the Bedlam of forty

years ago, with its straw on end under the restlessness of the insane; its music of groans, and shrieks and mutterings

stern, as the snow-covered cliffs above the wintry cataract; its songs dying away in despairing gurgles down the miserable throat; its cells how devoid of monastic silence; its "confusion worse confounded," of gibbering idiocy, monomania absorbed and absent from itself as well as from the world, and howling frenzy; its daylight saddened as it shines into the dim, vacant, or glaring eyes of those wretched men: and its moonbeams shedding a more congenial ray upon the solitude, or the sick-bed, or the death-bed of de

rangement-such familiar faces of want, guilt, and woe of nakedness, sterility, and shame, does Crabbe delight in showing us; and is, in very truth, "nature's sternest painter, yet the best." In his mode of managing his descriptions, Crabbe is equally peculiar. Objects, in themselves counted and even sublime, when surrounded by interesting circumstances when shown in the moonlight of memory-when linked to strong passion-or when touched by the ray of

or

disgusting, frequently become impressive,

imagination. Then, in Emerson's words, even the corpse is found to have added a solemn ornament to the house where it lay. But it is the peculiarity and the daring of this poet, that he often, not always, tries us with truth and nothing but truth, as if to bring the question to an issue-whether, in nature, absolute truth be not essential though severe poetry. On this question, certainly, issue was never so fully joined before. In even Wordsworth's eye there is a misty glimmer of imagination, through which all objects, low as well as

are seen.

high, through a light which comes not from themselves which comes, it may be, from the Great Bear, or Arcturus and his And when he does-as in some of his feebler verses

Even his "five blue eggs" gleam upon him

sons.

strive to see out of this medium, he drops his mantle, loses his vision, and describes little better than would his own caldron, and Burns in "haly table," are shockingly circumstantial; but the element of imagination creeps in amid all the disgusting details, and the light that never was on sea or shore disdains not to rest on 66 eye of newt," "" toe of frog,"

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"baboon's blood," the garter that strangled the babe, the gray hairs sticking to the haft of the parricidal knife, and all the rest of the fell ingredients; Crabbe, on the other hand, would have described the five blue eggs, and besides, the materials of the nest, and the kind of hedge where it was built, like a bird-nesting schoolboy; but he would never have given the gleam." He would as accurately as Hecate, Canidia, or Cuttysark, have given an inventory of the ingredients of the hell-broth, or of the curiosities on the " haly table," had they been presented to his eye: but could not have conceived them, nor would have slipped in that one flashing word, that single cross ray of imagination, which it required to elevate and startle them into high ideal life. And yet in reading his pictures of poor-houses, &c., we are compelled to say, "Well, that is poetry after all, for it is truth; but it is poetry of comparatively a low order—it is the last gasp of the poetic spirit: and, moreover, perfect and matchless as it is in its kind, it is not worthy of the powers of its author, who can, and has, at other times risen into much loftier ground."

We may illustrate still farther what we mean by comparing the different ways in which Crabbe and Foster (certainly a prose poet) deal with a library. Crabbe describes minutely and successfully the outer features of the volumes, their colors, clasps, the stubborn ridges of their bindings, the illustrations which adorn them, &c., so well that you feel yourself among them, and they become sensible to touch almost as to sight. But there he stops, and sadly fails, we think, in bringing out the living and moral interest which gathers around a multitude of books, or even around a single volume. This Foster has amply done. The speaking silence of a number of books, where, though it were the wide Bodleian or Vatican, not one whisper could be heard, and yet, where, as in an antechamber, so many great spirits are waiting to deliver their messagestheir churchyard stillness continuing even when their readers are moving to their pages, in joy or agony, as to the sound of martial instruments-their awaking, as from deep slumber, to speak with miraculous organ. like the shell which has only to be lifted, and "pleased it remembers its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs

there" their power of drawing tears, kindling blushes, awakening laughter, calming or quickening the motions of the life's blood, lulling to repose, or rousing to restlessness, often giving life to the soul, and sometimes giving death to the body-the meaning which radiates from their quiet countenances—the tale of shame or glory which their titlepages tell the memories suggested by the character of their authors, and of the readers who have throughout successive centuries perused them-the thrilling thoughts excited by the sight of names and notes inscribed on their margins or blank pages by hands long since mouldered in the dust, or by those dear to us as our life's blood, who had been snatched from our sides-the aspects of gayety or of gloom connected with the bindings and the age of volumes-the effects of sunshine playing as if on a congregation of happy faces, making the duskiest shine, and the gloomiest be glad-or of shadow suffusing a sombre air over all-the joy of the proprietor of a large library who feels that Nebuchadnezzar watching great Babylon, or Napoleon reviewing his legions, will not stand comparison with himself seated amid the broad maps, and rich prints, and numerous volumes which his wealth has enabled him to collect and his wisdom entitled him to enjoy all such hieroglyphics of interest and meaning has Foster included and interpreted in one gloomy but noble meditation, and his introduction to Doddridge is the true "Poem on the Library."

In Crabbe's descriptions the great want is of selection. He writes inventories. He describes all that his eye sees with cold, stern, lingering accuracy-he marks down all the items of wretchedness, poverty, and vulgar sin-counts the rags of the mendicant-and, as Hazlitt has it, describes a cottage like one who has entered it to distrain for rent. His copies, consequently, would be as displeasing as their originals, were it not that imagination is so much less vivid than eyesight, that we can endure in picture what we cannot in reality, and that our own minds, while reading, can cast that softening and ideal veil over disgusting objects which the poet himself has not sought, or has failed to do. as, in viewing even the actual scene, we might have seen it through the medium of imaginative illusion, so the same medium will more probably invest, and beautify its transcript in the pages of the poet.

Just

As a moral poet and sketcher of men, Crabbe is characterized by a similar choice of subject and the same stern fidelity. The mingled yarn of man's every-day life-the plain homely virtues, or the robust and burly vices of Englishmen-the quiet tears which fall on humble beds-the passions which flame up in lowly bosoms-the amari aliquid, the deep and permanent bitterness which lies at the heart of the down-trodden English poor-the comedies and tragedies of the fireside-the lovers' quarrels-the unhappy marriages-the vicissitudes of common fortunes-the early deaths the odd characters-the lingering superstitionsall the elements, in short, which make up the simple annals of lowly or middling society, are the materials of this poet's song. Had he been a Scottish clergyman we should have said that he had versified his Session-book; and certainly many curious chapters of human life might be derived from such a document, and much light cast upon the devious windings and desperate wickedness of the heart, as well as upon that inextinguishable instinct of good which resides in it. Crabbe, perhaps, has confined himself too exclusively to this circle of common things which he found lying around him. He has seldom burst its confines, and touched the loftier themes, and snatched the higher laurels which were also within his reach. He has contented himself with being a Lillo (with occasional touches of Shakspeare) instead of something far greater. He has, however, in spite of this self-injustice, effected much. He has proved that a poet, who looks resolutely around him-who stays at home-who draws the realities which are near him, instead of the phantoms that are afar-who feels and records the passion and poetry of his daily life-may found a firm and enduring reputation. With the dubious exception of Cowper, no one has made out this point so effectually as Crabbe.

And in his mode of treating such themes, what strikes us first is his perfect coolness. Few poets have reached that calm of his which reminds us of Nature's own great quiet eye, looking down upon her monstrous births, her strange anomalies, and her more ungainly forms. Thus Crabbe sees the loathsome, and does not loathe-handles the horrible, and shudders not feels with firm finger the palpitating pulse of the infanticide or the murderer-and snuffs a cer

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