affords an interesting illustration of his character. He had not prefixed his name to the work, nor acquainted his family with the secret of its composition, and taking a copy of the volume home with him one day, he left it on the table. His wife began reading it, while the sensitive author walked up and down the room; and at length she broke out into praise of the poem, adding: 'Ah, James, if you could but produce a poem like this!' The joyful acknowledgment of his being the author was then made, no doubt with the most exquisite pleasure on both sides. Grahame in some respects resembles Cowper. He has no humour or satire, it is true, and he has many prosaic lines, but the same powers of close and happy observation which the poet of Olney applied to English scenery, were directed by Grahame to that of Scotland, and both were strictly devout and national poets. There is no author, excepting Burns or Scott, whom an intelligent Scotsman, resident abroad, would read with more delight than Grahame. The ordinary features of the Scottish landscape he portrays truly and distinctly, without exaggeration, and often imparting to his descriptions a feeling of tenderness or solemnity. He was content with humble things; but he paints the charms of a retired cottage-life, the sacred calm of a Sabbath morning, a walk in the fields, or even a bird's nest, with such unfeigned delight and accurate observation, that the reader is constrained to see and feel with his author, to rejoice in the elements of poetry and meditation that are scattered around him, existing in the humblest objects, and in those humane and pious sentiments which impart to external nature a moral interest and beauty. The religion of Grahame was not sectarian; he was equally impressed with the lofty ritual of the English church, and the simple hill-worship of the Covenanters. He is sometimes gloomy in his seriousness, from intense religious anxiety or sympathy with his fellow-men suffering under oppression or misfortune, but he has less of this harsh fruit, Picked from the thorns and briers of reproof, than his brother-poet Cowper. His prevailing tone is that of implicit trust in the goodness of God, and enjoyment in his creation. From The Sabbath.' How still the morning of the hallowed day! The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale; With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods: Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, He hopes--yet fears presumption in the hope- The stated portion reads. A pause ensues. The people rising sing, with harp, with harp, And voice of psalms;' harmoniously attuned The various voices blend; the long-drawn aisles, At every close, the lingering strain prolong. ... Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne, The Sabbath service of the shepherd-boy! In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill, Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry, Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son ; Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold, And wonders why he weeps: the volume closed, With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned With meikle care beneath the lowly roof, Where humble lore is learnt, where humble worth Pines unrewarded by a thankless state. Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen, The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps, Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands Returning homeward from the house of prayer. In peace they home resort. Oh, blissful days! When all men worship God as conscience wills. Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew, A virtuous race to godliness devote. A Summer Sabbath Walk. Delightful is this loneliness; it calms Moaned from the forest's gloomiest retreat, That soon as loosed booms with full twang away- The treacherous surface, while the quick-eyed trout ... (Where safe and happily he might have lurked), 'Tis from yon heath-roofed shieling; now it dies An Autumn Sabbath Walk. When homeward bands their several ways disperse, Of rest, to wander round from tomb to tomb, Peace to thy spirit, that now looks on me A Winter Sabbath Walk. How dazzling white the snowy scene! deep, deep The flickering fall is o'er: the clouds disperse, But let me now explore the deep-sunk dell. To My Son. Twice has the sun commenced his annual round, Since first thy footsteps tottered o'er the ground; Since first thy tongue was tuned to bless mine ear, The Thanksgiving off Cape Trafalgar. Upon the high, yet gently rolling wave, The floating tomb that heaves above the brave, Soft sighs the gale that late tremendous roared, Whelming the wretched remnants of the sword. And now the cannon's peaceful thunder calls The victor bands to mount their wooden walls, And from the ramparts, where their comrades fell, The mingled strain of joy and grief to swell: Fast they ascend, from stem to stern they spread, And crowd the engines whence the lightnings sped : The white-robed priest his upraised hands extends; Hushed is each voice, attention leaning bends; Then from each prow the grand hosannas rise, Float o'er the deep, and hover to the skies. Heaven fills each heart; yet home will oft intrude, And tears of love celestial joys exclude. The wounded man, who hears the soaring strain, Lifts his pale visage, and forgets his pain; While parting spirits, mingling with the lay, On hallelujahs wing their heavenward way. GEORGE CRABBE. The REV. GEORGE CRABBE, whom Byron has characterised as 'Nature's sternest painter, yet the best,' was of humble origin, and born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the Christmas-eve of 1754. His father was collector of the salt-duties, or salt-master, as he was termed, and though of poor circumstances and violent temper, he exerted himself to give George a superior education. It is pleasing to know that the old man lived to reap his reward, in witnessing the celebrity of his son, and to transcribe, with parental fondness, in his own handwriting, the poem of The Library. Crabbe has described the unpromising scene of his nativity with his usual force and correctness : Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; The poet was put apprentice in his fourteenth year to a surgeon, and afterwards practised in Aldborough; but his prospects were so gloomy, that he abandoned his profession, and proceeded to London as a literary adventurer. His whole stock of money amounted to only three pounds. Having completed some poetical pieces, he offered them for publication, but they were rejected. In the course of the year, however, he issued a poetical epistle, The Candidate, addressed to the authors of the Monthly Review. It was coldly received, and his publisher failing at the same time, the young poet was plunged into great perplexity and want. He wrote to the premier, Lord North, to Lord-chancellor Thurlow, and to other noblemen, requesting assistance; but in no case was an answer returned. At length, when his affairs were desperate, he applied to Edmund Burke, and in a modest yet manly statement disclosed to him the situation in which he stood. Burke received him into his own house, and exercised towards him the most generous hospitality. While under his happy roof, the poet met Mr Fox, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others of the statesman's distinguished friends. In the same year (1781) he published his poem The Library, which was favourably noticed by the critics. Lord Thurlow-who now, as in the case of Cowper, came with tardy notice and ungraceful generosity-invited him to breakfast, and at parting presented him with a bank-note for a hundred pounds. Crabbe entered into sacred orders, and was licensed as curate to the rector of his native parish of Aldborough. In a short time, Burke procured for him the situation of chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle. This was a great advancement for the poor poet, and he never afterwards was in fear of want. He seems, however, to have felt all the ills of dependence on the great, and in his poem of The Patron, and other parts of his writings, has strongly depicted the evils of such a situation. In 1783 appeared The Village, which had been seen and corrected by Johnson and Burke. Its success was instant and complete. Some of the descriptions in the poem-as that of the parish workhouse -were copied into all the periodicals, and took that place in our national literature which they still retain. Thurlow presented him with two small livings then in his gift, telling him at the fear," he said, "of his losing them, and he must shew them to his son John." Another poetical friend, Thomas Campbell, who met him at this time in London, remarks of him: 'His mildness in literary argument struck me with surprise in so stern a poet of nature, and I could not but contrast the unassumingness of his manners with the originality of his powers. In what may be called the ready-money small-talk of conversation, his facility might not perhaps seem equal to the known calibre of his talents; but in the progress of conversation, I recollect remarking that there was a vigilant shrewdness that almost eluded you, by keeping its watch so quietly.' This fine remark is characteristic of Crabbe's genius, as well as of his manners. It gathered its materials slowly and silently with intent but unobtrusive observation. The Tales of the Hall were received with that pleasure and approbation due to an old and established favourite, but with less enthusiasm venerable poet paid a visit to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh; and it is worthy of remark, that, as to the city itself, he soon got wearied of the New Town, but could amuse himself for ever in the Old. His latter years were spent in the discharge of his clerical duties, and in the enjoyment of social intercourse. His attachment to botany and geology seemed to increase with age; and at three-score and ten, he was busy, cheerful, and affectionate. His death took place at Trowbridge on the 3d of February 1832, and his parishioners erected a monument to his memory in the church of that place, where he had officiated for nineteen years. A complete collection of his works, with some new pieces and an admirable memoir, was published in 1834 by his son, the Rev. G. Crabbe. same time, with an oath, that he was as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen. The poet now married a young lady of Suffolk, the object of an early attachment, and taking the curacy of Stathern, adjoining Belvoir Castle, he bade adieu to the ducal mansion, and transferred himself to the humble parsonage in the village. Four happy years were spent in this retirement, when the poet obtained the exchange of his two small livings in Dorsetshire for two of superior value in the vale of Belvoir. Crabbe remained silent as a poet for many years. 'Out of doors,' says his son, he had always some object in view-a flower, or a pebble, or his note-book in his hand; and in the house, if he was not writing, he was reading. He read aloud very often, even when walking, or seated by the side of his wife in the huge old-fashioned onehorse chaise, heavier than a modern chariot, in which they usually were conveyed in their little excursions, and the conduct of which he, from awkwardness and absence of mind, prudently re-than some of his previous works. In 1822, the now linquished to my mother on all occasions.' In 1807 he published his Parish Register, which had been previously submitted to Mr Fox, and parts of this poem-especially the story of Phoebe Dawson-were the last compositions of their kind that 'engaged and amused the capacious, the candid, the benevolent mind of this great man.' The success of this work was not only decided, but nearly unprecedented. In 1810 he came forward with The Borough, a poem of the same class, and more connected and complete; and two years afterwards he produced his Tales in Verse, containing perhaps the finest of all his humble but happy delineations of life and character. The public voice,' says his biographer, 'was again highly favourable, and some of these relations were spoken of with the utmost warmth of commendation, as, The Parting Hour, The Patron, Edward Shore, and The Confidant.' In 1814, the Duke of Rutland appointed him to the living of Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, and he went thither to reside. His income amounted to about £800 per annum, a large portion of which he spent in charity. He still continued his attachment to literature, and in 1817 and 1818 was engaged on his last great work, The Tales of the Hall. He fancied that autumn was, on the whole, the most favourable season for him in the composition of poetry; but there was something in the effect of a sudden fall of snow that appeared to stimulate him in a very extraordinary manner.' In 1819, the Tales were published by Mr Murray, who, for them and the remaining copyright of all Crabbe's previous poems, gave the munificent sum of £3000. In an account of the negotiation for the sale of these copyrights, written by Moore for the life of his brother-poet, we have the following amusing illustration of Crabbe's simplicity of manner: 'When he received the bills for £3000, we-Moore and Rogersearnestly advised that he should, without delay, deposit them in some safe hands; but no-he must "take them with him to Trowbridge, and shew them to his son John. They would hardly believe in his good-luck at home if they did not see the bills." On his way down to Trowbridge, a friend at Salisbury, at whose house he restedMr Everett, the banker-seeing that he carried these bills loosely in his waistcoat pocket, requested to be allowed to take charge of them for him; but with equal ill success. "There was no The Village, Parish Register, and shorter tales of Crabbe, are his most popular productions. The Tales of the Hall are less interesting. They relate principally to the higher classes of society, and the poet was not so happy in describing their peculiarities as when supporting his character of the poet of the poor. Some of the episodes, however, are in his best style-Sir Owen Dale, Ruth, Ellen, and other stories, are all marked with the peculiar genius of Crabbe. The redeeming and distinguishing feature of that genius was its fidelity to nature, even when it was dull and unprepossessing. His power of observation and description might be limited, but his pictures have all the force of dramatic representation, and may be compared to those actual and existing models which the sculptor or painter works from, instead of vague and general conceptions. They are often too true, and human nature being exhibited in its naked reality, with all its defects, and not through the bright and alluring medium of romance or imagination, our vanity is shocked and our pride mortified. The personal circumstances and experience of the poet affected the bent of his genius. He knew how untrue and absurd were the pictures of rural life which figured in poetry. His own youth was dark and painfulspent in low society, amidst want and misery, irascible gloom and passion. Latterly, he had more of the comforts and elegancies of social life at his command than Cowper, his rival as a domestic painter. He not only could have 'wheeled his sofa round,' 'let fall the curtains, and, with the bubbling and loud hissing urn' on the table, 'welcome peaceful evening in,' but the amenities of refined and intellectual society were constantly present with him, or at his call. Yet he did not, like Cowper, attempt to describe them, or to paint their manifold charms. When he took up his pen, his mind turned to Aldborough and its wild amphibious race-to the parish workhouse, where the wheel hummed doleful through the day-to erring damsels and luckless swains, the prey of overseers or justices-or to the haunts of desperate poachers and smugglers, gipsies and gamblers, where vice and misery stalked undisguised in their darkest forms. He stirred up the dregs of human society, and exhibited their blackness and deformity, yet worked them into poetry. Like his own Sir Richard Monday, he never forgot the parish. It is true that village-life in England in its worst form, with the old poor and game laws and nonresident clergy, was composed of various materials, some bright and some gloomy, and Crabbe drew them all. His Isaac Ashford is as honourable to the lowly English poor as the Jeanie Deans or Dandie Dinmont of Scott are to the Scottish character. His story of the real mourner, the faithful maid who watched over her dying sailor, is a beautiful tribute to the force and purity of humble affection. In The Parting Hour and The Patron are also passages equally honourable to the poor and middle classes, and full of pathetic and graceful composition. It must be confessed, however, that Crabbe was in general a gloomy painter of life-that he was fond of depicting the unlovely and unamiable-and that, either for poetic effect or from painful experience, he makes the bad of life predominate over the good. His pathos and tenderness are generally linked to something coarse, startling, or humiliating to disappointed hopes or unavailing sorrow Still we tread the same coarse way, The minuteness with which he dwells on such subjects sometimes makes his descriptions tedious, and apparently unfeeling. He drags forward every defect, every vice and failing, not for the purpose of educing something good out of the evil, but, as it would seem, merely for the purpose of completing the picture. In his higher flights, where scenes of strong passion, vice, or remorse are depicted, Crabbe is a moral poet, purifying the heart, as the object of tragedy has been defined, by terror and pity, and by fearful delineations of the misery and desolation caused by unbridled passion. His story of Sir Eustace Grey is a domestic tragedy of this kind, related with almost terrific power, and with lyrical energy of versification. His general style of versification is the couplet of Pope-he has been wittily called 'Pope in worsted stockings'-but less flowing and melodious, and often ending in points and quibbles. Thus, in describing his cottage furniture, he says No wheels are here for either wool or flax, His thrifty housewife, Widow Goe, falls down in sickness Heaven in her eye, and in her hand her keys. This jingling style heightens the effect of his humorous and homely descriptions; but it is too much of a manner, and mars the finer passages. Crabbe has high merit as a painter of English scenery. He is here as original and forcible as in delineating character. His marine landscapes are peculiarly fresh and striking; and he invests even the sterile fens and barren sands with interest. His objects are seldom picturesque ; but he noted every weed and plant-the purple bloom of the heath, the dwarfish flowers among the wild gorse, the slender grass of the sheepwalk, and even the pebbles, sea-weed, and shells amid The glittering waters on the shingles rolled. He was a great lover of the sea, and once, as his son relates, after being some time absent from it, mounted his horse and rode alone sixty miles from his house, that he might inhale its freshness and gaze upon its waters. The Parish Workhouse and Apothecary. Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought amid the scenes of grief, to grieve, Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamours of the crowd below; Here sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man : Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide, And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride embitters what it can't deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance With timid eye, to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain and that alone can cure ; How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between ; Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, Or promise hope till sickness wears a smile. But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls; Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit, |