"If from that unbottomed deep,

With wrinkled form and wreathed train, O'er the verge of Scarba's steep,

The sea-snake heave his snowy mane.

'Unwarp, unwind his oozy coils, Sea-green sisters of the main, And in the gulf where ocean boils,

The unwieldy wallowing monster chain.

'Softly blow, thou western breeze, Softly rustle through the sail! Soothe to rest the furrowed seas,

Before my love, sweet western gale!'

Thus all to soothe the chieftain's woe, Far from the maid he loved so dear, The song arose, so soft and slow,

He seemed her parting sigh to hear.

The lonely deck he paces o'er,

Impatient for the rising day, And still from Crinan's moonlight shore, He turns his eyes to Colonsay.

The moonbeams crisp the curling surge,
That streaks with foam the ocean green;
While forward still the rowers urge
Their course, a female form was seen.

That sea-maid's form, of pearly light,

Was whiter than the downy spray, And round her bosom, heaving bright, Her glossy yellow ringlets play.

Borne on a foamy crested wave,

She reached amain the bounding prow, Then clasping fast the chieftain brave,

She, plunging, sought the deep below.

Ah! long beside thy feignèd bier,

The monks the prayer of death shall say; And long for thee, the fruitless tear Shall weep the maid of Colonsay!

But downward like a powerless corse,
The eddying waves the chieftain bear;
He only heard the moaning hoarse
Of waters murmuring in his ear.

The murmurs sink by slow degrees,
No more the waters round him rave;
Lulled by the music of the seas,

He lies within a coral cave. . . .

No form he saw of mortal mould;

It shone like ocean's snowy foam; Her ringlets waved in living gold,

Her mirror crystal, pearl the comb.

Her pearly comb the siren took,

And careless bound her tresses wild; Still o'er the mirror stole her look, As on the wondering youth she smiled.

Like music from the greenwood tree,

Again she raised the melting lay: 'Fair warrior, wilt thou dwell with me, And leave the maid of Colonsay?

'Fair is the crystal hall for me With rubies and with emeralds set; And sweet the music of the sea

Shall sing, when we for love are met.

'How sweet to dance with gliding feet Along the level tide so green, Responsive to the cadence sweet

That breathes along the moonlight scene !

And soft the music of the main

Rings from the motley tortoise-shell, While moonbeams o'er the watery plain Seem trembling in its fitful swell.' . . Proud swells her heart! she deems at last To lure him with her silver tongue, And, as the shelving rocks she passed, She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.

In softer, sweeter strains she sung,
Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay,
When light to land the chieftain sprung,
To hail the maid of Colonsay.

O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,
And sadly sink remote at sea!
So sadly mourns the writhed shell
Of Jura's shore, its parent sea.

And ever as the year returns,

The charm-bound sailors know the day; For sadly still the Mermaid mourns

The lovely chief of Colonsay.

Leyden's Poetical Remains, with a Memoir, were published in 1819; at his centenary in 1875 two separate editions appeared, besides a reprint of the Scenes of Infancy, with a Life by the Rev. W. W. Tulloch. Scott's Memoir of him appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811; and there is much about him in Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873), as well as in Lockhart's Life of Scott.

George Crabbe,

in Byron's judgment Nature's sternest painter, yet the best,' was born at Aldeburgh in Suffolk, on the Christmas Eve of 1754. His father was collector of salt-duties, a clever, strong, violent man, who though poor exerted himself to give his boy a good education; he lived to witness his son's growing fame, and, with parental fondness, to transcribe in his own handwriting the poem of The Library. The mother was a meek, religious woman; of three younger brothers, one perished miserably with his whole crew, captain of a slaver whose cargo mutinied triumphantly, and another was lost sight of in Honduras. George got some schooling at Bungay and Stowmarket, and from 1768 to 1774 was surgeon's apprentice at Wickham-Brock and at Woodbridge. In his first place he had to help the ploughboy; in his second he fell in love with Sarah Elmy (Mira '), who lived with her uncle, a wealthy yeoman, at Parham. Then a spell of drudgery in his father's warehouse; nine months in London, picking up surgery cheaply; some three years' struggling practice at Aldeburgh; and at last in April 1780, with three pounds in his pocket, he sailed again for London, resolved to try his fortune in literature. Eight years before he had written

verses for Wheble's Magazine; he had published Inebriety, a Poem (Ipswich, 1775); and now his Candidate soon found a publisher, unluckily a bankrupt one. A season of penury dire as Chatterton's was borne by Crabbe with pious bravery; he had to pawn clothes and instruments; appeals to Lords Thurlow, North, Shelburne met no response; and early in 1781 he saw himself threatened with arrest for debt, when he made his case known to Burke. Forty-one years later he told Lockhart at Edinburgh how, having delivered his letter at Burke's door, he paced Westminster Bridge all night long until daybreak. Burke proved a generous patron; from the hour of their meeting Crabbe was a made man, and as guest at

GEORGE CRABBE.

From an Engraving after the Portrait by T. Phillips, R.A.

Beaconsfield, he met Fox, Dr Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others of the statesman's great friends. 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 £100. Dodsley that same year brought out the Library; and the very next winter Crabbe took orders, and was licensed to the curacy of his native parish of Aldeburgh. In 1782 Burke procured for him the post of chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle; thenceforward he was never in fear of want, but he seems to have felt all the ills of dependence on the great, and in 'The Patron' and other poems has strongly depicted them.

In 1783 appeared The Village, already read 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 at once took that place in our national literature they still retain. Thurlow presented him with two small Dorset livings in his gift, and congratulated him, with an oath, on his being as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen. In 1783 Crabbe married Miss Elmy; and in 1785, taking the curacy of Stathern, near Belvoir Castle, he bade adieu to the ducal mansion and transferred himself to the village parsonage. In 1787 he exchanged his two small Dorset livings for two of greater value in the Vale of Belvoir, one of them the rectory of Muston, and there he lived for a time; but the poet in him remained silent for many years. After thirteen happy years (17921805) in Suffolk, at Parham, Great Glenham, and Rendham, he returned to Muston, his Leicestershire rectory; and his wife having died there in 1813, exchanged it the next year for Trowbridge in Wiltshire. In 1807 he published his Parish Register, which secured an unprecedented success. The poem had been previously submitted to Fox; parts of it--especially the story of Phoebe Dawson -were among the last things that interested the great Whig on his deathbed. The Borough (1810) is similar in substance but more connected; the Tales in Verse (1812) contain perhaps his finest illustrations of life and character. Crabbe spent a great part of his income at Trowbridge (800 a year) in charity. He was still eagerly active in literary work, and in 1817-18 was engaged on his last notable undertaking, The Tales of the Hall (1819); for which and the remaining copyright of all the earlier poems Mr Murray gave £3000. In this connection Tom Moore has given an amusing illustration of his brother-poet's simplicity in money matters. Thomas Campbell commented on his mildness in literary argument, strange in so stern a poet of nature, and on his 'vigilant shrewdness that almost eluded you by keeping its watch so quietly. The Tales of the Hall were received with the approval due to an old favourite, but without enthusiasm. In 1822 the now venerable poet paid a visit to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh. He arrived the day Scott at Leith welcomed George IV. to Scotland; and it was in Scott's joy at greeting Crabbe as guest that he sat down on and smashed the glass out of which the king had a little before drunk his health, and which Scott had carried off in the skirt of his coat. It was noted that Crabbe soon got wearied of the New Town, but could amuse himself for ever in the Old. His latter years were spent in clerical duties, in social intercourse, and in fossil-hunting; at threescore and ten he was still busy, cheerful, and affectionate. He died at Trowbridge on 3rd February 1832.

The Village, the Parish Register, and the shorter tales of Crabbe were his most popular poems. The Tales of the Hall are less interesting, though Edward FitzGerald loved them; they deal with the higher ranks of life, and with them the poet of

the poor was hardly at home. Yet some of the episodes are in his best style: Sir Owen Dale, Ruth, Ellen, and other stories are marked with Crabbe's sign-manual-a fidelity to nature which redeems verses otherwise dull enough. His field of observation was narrow, his gift of description somewhat limited, but his pictures have a strong dramatic effect-they are visibly drawn direct from the life. They are often too true; human nature exhibited in its naked reality and with all its defects shocks our vanity and mortifies our pride. The life-experience of the poet gave the bent to his genius. He well knew how untrue and absurd were the pictures of rural life which regularly figured in poetry. His own youth was painfulspent amidst want and misery, changing only from gloom to passion; though in later years he had more of the amenities of refined and intellectual society at his command than Cowper, yet he did not, like Cowper, attempt to paint their manifold charms. When he took up his pen, his mind turned to Aldeburgh 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 while exhibiting to the life the hideous and hateful features, yet worked them into moving poetry. Like his own Sir Richard Monday, he never forgot the parish. True, village-life in England in its worst form, with the old poor-laws and game-laws, with a nonresident clergy, displayed a scale of marked contrasts, some bright, some gloomy, and Crabbe drew them all. His Isaac Ashford is as honourable to the humbler English poor as Scott's Jeanie Deans or Dandie Dinmont are to Scottish character. The faithful maid who watched over her dying sailor is a noble tribute to the power of true love amongst the lowly; 'The Parting Hour' and 'The Patron' are equally honourable to the poor and to the middle classes. But no doubt Crabbe was in general a gloomy painter of life; he was irrepressibly driven to depict the unlovely and unamiable; whether for poetic effect or from painful experience, he makes the evil in life predominate over the good; by nature or by force of circumstances, he was a pessimist—a realist, in the sense we associate with the work, in prose and verse, of moderns like Thomas Hardy. Even his pathos and tenderness are generally linked to something harsh, startling, or humiliating, to disappointed hopes or unavailing sorrow. The minuteness with which he dwells on such aspects of life 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 sake of completing the picture. In his higher

flights, where scenes of strong passion, vice, or remorse are depicted, Crabbe is a moralist-poet, purifying the heart by terror and pity, and by appalling realisations of the misery and desolation that mark the track of unbridled passion. His story of Sir Eustace Grey in this kind is told with almost terrific power, and with a lyrical cry in its verse. His usual vehicle is the Popian coupletHorace Smith dubbed him 'a Pope in worsted stockings'-much less flowing and melodious than its model, and often ending in points and quibbles. Thus his thrifty housewife, Widow Goe, falls down in sickness, Heaven in her eye, and in her hand her keys;' the apothecary 'carries fate and physic in his eye.' This kind of thing does really heighten the effect of his humorous and homely descriptions; but it is too much of a mannerism, and it mars the finer passages. As a painter of English scenery Crabbe is as original and forcible as in character-sketching. His seascapes are peculiarly striking; and he invests even sterile marshes and barren sands with interest. His objects are seldom picturesque; but he noted every weed and plantthe purple bloom of the heath, the dwarfish flowers among the wild gorse, the slender grass of the sheep-walk, and even the pebbles, seaweed, and shells amid 'the glittering waters on the shingles rolled;' and he passionately loved the sea. It will be remembered by all readers of Lockhart's Life of Scott how on his deathbed Scott insisted again and again on having something by Crabbe read to him, and how, though his memory had lost its grip, he listened always with pleasure to passages his son-in-law read to him from his old favourite. Cardinal Newman declared Tales of the Hall to be a poem, 'whether in conception or in execution, one of the most touching in our language;' proclaimed in The Idea of a University that he read it on its first publication 'with extreme delight, and had never lost his love of it;' and in successive editions still testified that on a re-reading he was 'even more touched by it than heretofore.'

Parish Workhouse and Apothecary. Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell who know no parents' care; Parents who know no children's love dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood-fears; The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! The moping idiot and the madman gay.

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 fill 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,
With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go;
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye;
A potent quack, long versed in human ills.
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murderous hand a drowsy bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.

Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
And, some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply, he rushes on the door;
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain ;
He ceases now the feeble help to crave
Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.

(From The Village.)

Isaac Ashford. Next to these ladies, but in nought allied, A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died. Noble he was, contemning all things mean, His truth unquestioned and his soul serene : Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid; At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed: Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace; Truth, simple truth, was written in his face; Yet while the serious thought his soul approved, Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved ; To bliss domestic he his heart resigned, And with the firmest, had the fondest mind : Were others joyful, he looked smiling on, And gave allowance where he needed none;

Good he refused with future ill to buy,
Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh;
A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast
No envy stung, no jealousy distressed—
Bane of the poor! it wounds their weaker mind
To miss one favour which their neighbours find-
Yet far was he from stoic pride removed;
He felt humanely, and he warmly loved :

I marked his action when his infant died,
And his old neighbour for offence was tried;
The still tears, stealing down that furrowed cheek,
Spoke pity plainer than the tongue can speak.
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride,
Who, in their base contempt, the great deride;
Nor pride in learning, though my clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed;
Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew
None his superior, and his equals few :
But if that spirit in his soul had place,
It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace;
A pride in honest fame, by virtue gained,
In sturdy boys to virtuous labours trained;
Pride in the power that guards his country's coast,
And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast;
Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied,
In fact a noble passion, misnamed pride.

He had no party's rage, no sectary's whim;
Christian and countryman was all with him;
True to his church he came; no Sunday-shower
Kept him at home in that important hour;
Nor his firm feet could one persuading sect
By the strong glare of their new light direct;
'On hope, in mine own sober light, I gaze,
But should be blind and lose it in your blaze."
In times severe, when many a sturdy swain
Felt it his pride, his comfort to complain,
Isaac their wants would soothe, his own would hide,
And feel in that his comfort and his pride.

At length he found, when seventy years were run, His strength departed and his labour done; When, save his honest fame, he kept no more; But lost his wife and saw his children poor: 'Twas then a spark of—say not discontent— Struck on his mind, and thus he gave it vent : 'Kind are your laws-'tis not to be denied— That in yon house for ruined age provide, And they are just; when young, we give you all, And then for comforts in our weakness call. Why then this proud reluctance to be fed, To join your poor and eat the parish bread? But yet I linger, loath with him to feed Who gains his plenty by the sons of need: He who by contract all your paupers took, And gauges stomachs with an anxious look: On some old master I could well depend; See him with joy, and thank him as a friend ; But ill on him who doles the day's supply, And counts our chances who at night may die : Yet help me, Heaven! and let me not complain Of what befalls me, but the fate sustain.'

Such were his thoughts, and so resigned he grew ; Daily he placed the workhouse in his view! But came not there, for sudden was his fate, He dropt expiring at his cottage-gate.

I feel his absence in the hours of prayer, And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there;

Two summers since I saw at Lammas fair
The sweetest flower that ever blossomed there;
When Phoebe Dawson gaily crossed the green,
In haste to see, and happy to be seen;
Her air, her manners all who saw admired,
Courteous though coy, and gentle though retired;
The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed,
And ease of heart her every look conveyed;
A native skill her simple robes expressed,
As with untutored elegance she dressed;
The lads around admired so fair a sight,
And Phoebe felt, and felt she gave, delight.
Admirers soon of every age she gained,

Her beauty won them and her worth retained;
Envy itself could no contempt display,

They wished her well, whom yet they wished away.
Correct in thought, she judged a servant's place
Preserved a rustic beauty from disgrace;
But yet on Sunday-eve, in freedom's hour,
With secret joy she felt that beauty's power;
When some proud bliss upon the heart would steal,
That, poor or rich, a beauty still must feel.

At length, the youth ordained to move her breast,
Before the swains with bolder spirit pressed;
With looks less timid made his passion known,
And pleased by manners most unlike her own ;
Loud though in love, and confident though young;
Fierce in his air, and voluble of tongue;
By trade a tailor, though, in scorn of trade,

He served the squire, and brushed the coat he made;
Yet now, would Phoebe her consent afford,
Her slave alone, again he 'd mount the board;
With her should years of growing love be spent,
And growing wealth: she sighed and looked consent.
Now through the lane, up hill, and cross the green-
Seen by but few, and blushing to be seen-
Dejected, thoughtful, anxious, and afraid—
Led by the lover, walked the silent maid:

Slow through the meadows roved they many a mile,
Toyed by each bank and trifled at each stile ;
Where, as he painted every blissful view,
And highly coloured what he strongly drew,
The pensive damsel, prone to tender fears,
Dimmed the false prospect with prophetic tears:
Thus passed the allotted hours, till, lingering late,
The lover loitered at the master's gate;
There he pronounced adieu! and yet would stay,
Till chidden-soothed-entreated-forced away!
He would of coldness, though indulged, complain,
And oft retire and oft return again;
When, if his teasing vexed her gentle mind,
The grief assumed compelled her to be kind!
For he would proof of plighted kindness crave,
That she resented first, and then forgave,

And to his grief and penance yielded more Than his presumption had required before :

Ah! fly temptation, youth; refrain! refrain ! Each yielding maid and each presuming swain ! Lo! now with red rent cloak and bonnet black, And torn green gown loose hanging at her back, One who an infant in her arms sustains,

And seems in patience striving with her pains;
Pinched are her looks, as one who pines for bread,
Whose cares are growing and whose hopes are fled;
Pale her parched lips, her heavy eyes sunk low,
And tears unnoticed from their channels flow;
Serene her manner, till some sudden pain
Frets the meek soul, and then she's calm again.

But who this child of weakness, want, and care?
'Tis Phoebe Dawson, pride of Lammas fair;
Who took her lover for his sparkling eyes,
Expressions warm, and love-inspiring lies:
Compassion first assailed her gentle heart
For all his suffering, all his bosom's smart :
'And then his prayers! they would a savage move,
And win the coldest of the sex to love :'
But ah! too soon his looks success declared,
Too late her loss the marriage-rite repaired;
The faithless flatterer then his vows forgot,
A captious tyrant or a noisy sot:

If present, railing till he saw her pained;

If absent, spending what their labours gained;
Till that fair form in want and sickness pined,
And hope and comfort fled that gentle mind.
Then fly temptation, youth; resist! refrain !
Nor let me preach for ever and in vain !
(From The Parish Register.)

The Felon's Dream.

Yes! e'en in sleep the impressions all remain,
He hears the sentence and he feels the chain;
He sees the judge and jury when he shakes,
And loudly cries, 'Not guilty,' and awakes:
Then chilling tremblings o'er his body creep,
Till worn-out nature is compelled to sleep.

Now comes the dream again: it shews each scene,
With each small circumstance that comes between-
The call to suffering, and the very deed—
There crowds go with him, follow, and precede;
Some heartless shout, some pity, all condemn,
While he in fancied envy looks at them;
He seems the place for that sad act to see,
And dreams the very thirst which then will be;
A priest attends-it seems the one he knew
In his best days, beneath whose care he grew.
At this his terrors take a sudden flight;
He sees his native village with delight;
The house, the chamber, where he once arrayed
His youthful person, where he knelt and prayed;
Then, too, the comforts he enjoyed at home,
The days of joy, the joys themselves, are come;
The hours of innocence, the timid look
Of his loved maid, when first her hand he took
And told his hope; her trembling joy appears,
Her forced reserve, and his retreating fears.
All now are present-'tis a moment's gleam
Of former sunshine-stay, delightful dream!
Let him within his pleasant garden walk,
Give him her arm, of blessings let them talk.

Yes! all are with him now, and all the while Life's early prospects and his Fanny's smile;