such opportunities? And who, in Pol- not Coila colour the genial soul of its lok's powerful but gloomy poem, may poet? Has not the scenery of his "own not detect the raven hue which a sterile romantic town" made much of the prose moorland scenery had left upon his mind? and poetry of Sir Walter Scott what it Have not, again, the glad landscape of is? So, is it mere fancy which traces the the Howe of the Mearns, and the pro- stream of Byron's poetry, in its light and spect from the surmounting Hill of Gar- its darkness, its bitterness and its brilvock, left a pleasing trace upon the liance, to this smitten rock in the wildermild pages of Beattie's "Minstrel?" Did ness-to the cliffs of Lochnagar?

GEORGE CRABBE.

To be the poet of the waste places of cumstances, besides, there had stolen Creation to adopt the orphans of the over his soul a shade of settled though mighty mother-to wed her dowerless subdued gloom. And for sympathy with daughters-to find out the beauty which this, he betook himself to the sterner has been spilt in tiny drops in her more and sadder aspects of nature, where he unlovely regions to echo the low music saw, or seemed to see, his own feelings which arises from even her stillest and reflected, as in a sea of melancholy faces, most sterile spots-was the mission of in dull skies, waste moorlands, the low Crabbe, as a descriptive poet. He pre- beach, and the waves moaning upon it, ferred the Leahs to the Rachels of as if weary of their eternal wanderings. nature and this he did not merely Such, too, at moments, was the feeling that his lot had cast him amid such of Burns, when he strode on the scaur scenes, and that early associations had of the Nith, and saw the waters red and taught him a profound interest in them, turbid below; or walked in a windy day but apparently from native taste. He by the side of a plantation, and heard the actually loved that beauty which stands "sound of a going" upon the tops of the shivering on the brink of barrenness-trees; or when he exclaimed, with a calm loved it for its timidity and its loneliness. simplicity of bitterness which is most afNay, he seemed to love barrenness itself; fectingbrooding over its dull page till there arose from it a strange lustre, which his eye distinctly sees, and which in part he makes visible to his readers. Oh! where, indeed, can the unhappy It was even as the darkness of cells repair, to escape from their own sorrows, has been sometimes peopled to the view or worse, from the unthinking glee or conof the solitary prisoner, and spiders stitutional cheerfulness of others, more seemed friends in the depths of his fitly than into the wastes and naked dungeon. We can fancy, in Crabbe's places of nature? She will not then mind, a feeling of pity for those unloved and there seem to insult them with spots, and those neglected glories. We her laughing luxuriance - her foliage can fancy him saying, "Let the gay and fluttering, as if in vain display, with the aspiring mate with nature in her the glossy gilding of her flowers, or the towering altitudes, and flatter her more sunny sparkle and song of her streamfavoured scenes; I will go after her into lets. But she will uplift a mightier her secret retirements, bring out her and older voice. She will soothe them bashful beauties, praise what none are by a sterner ministry. She will teach willing to praise, and love what there them "old truths, abysmal truths, awful are few to love." From his early cir- truths." She will answer their sighs by

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"The leafless trees my fancy please:
Their fate resembles mine."

the groans of the creation travelling in ing only upon objects already interesting pain; suck up their tears in the sweat or ennobled, upon battle-fields, castellated of her great agonies; reflect their tiny ruins, Italian palaces, or Alpine peaks. wrinkles in those deep stabs and scars This, at least, is true of his Childe

on her forehead, which speak of struggle Harold," and his earlier pieces. In the and contest; give back the gloom of later productions of his pen, he goes to their brows in the frowns of her forests, the opposite extreme, and alights, with a her mountain solitudes, and her waste daring yet dainty foot, upon all shunned midnight darkness; infuse something, and forbidden things-reminds us of the too, of her own sublime expectancy into raven in the Deluge, which found rest their spirits; and dismiss them from her for the sole of her foot upon carcasses, society, it may be sadder, but certainly where the dove durst not stand-rushes calmer and wiser men. How admirably in where modesty and reserve alike have is nature suited to all moods of all men! forbidden entrance-and ventures, though In spring, she is gay with the light- still not like a lost archangel, to tread the hearted; in summer, gorgeous as its sun burning marl of hell, the dim gulf of to those fiery spirits who seem made for Hades, the shadowy ruins of the prea warmer day; in autumn, she spreads Adamitic world, and the crystal paveover most hearts a mellow and unearth- ment of heaven. Moore practises a ly joy; and even in winter-when her principle of more delicate selection, retemple is deserted of the frivolous and sembling some nice fly which should the timid, who quit it along with the alight only upon flowers, whether nasmile of the sun-she attracts her own tural or artificial, if so that flowers they few but faithful votaries, who love her in seemed to be; thus, from sunny bowers, her naked sculpture, as well as in her and moonlit roses, and gardens, and glowing pictorial hues, and who enjoy blushing skies, and ladies' dresses, does her solenin communion none the less the Bard of Erin extract his finest that they enjoy it by themselves. To poetry. Shelley and Coleridge attach use the words of a forgotten poet,* addressing spring

themselves almost exclusively to the great understanding this term in a wide sense, as including much that is grotesque, and much that is homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates to a proper pitch of keeping with the rest. Their usual walk is swelling and buskined: their common talk is of great rivers, great forests, great seas, great continents; or else of comets, suns, constellations, and firmaments-as that of all half-mad, wholly miserable, and opium-fed genius is apt to be. Sir Walter Scott, who seldom grappled with the gloomier and grander features of his country's scenery (did he ever describe Glencoe or Foyers, or the wildernesses around Ben Macdhui ?), 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 stoop

ing over, the objects he describes. He on end under the restlessness of the inseldom looks up in rapt admiration of sane; its music of groans, and shrieks, what is above him; the bending furze- and mutterings of still more melancholy bush and the lowly broom-the nest meaning; its keepers cold and stern, as lying in the level clover-field-the tarn the snow-covered cliffs above the wintry sinking away seemingly before his eye cataract; its songs dying away in despairinto darker depths-the prospect from ing gurgles down the miserable throat; the mountain summit cast far beneath its cells how devoid of monastic silence; him; at highest, the star burning low its "confusion worse confounded," of gibupon the mountain's ridge, like an un-bering idiocy, monomania absorbed and tended watchfire:" these are the objects absent from itself as well as from the which he loves to describe, and these world, and howling frenzy; its daylight may stand as emblems of his lowly yet saddened as it shines into the dim, vaaspiring genius. Crabbe, on the other cant, or glaring eyes of those wretched hand, goes down on his knees, that he men: and its moonbeams shedding a may more accurately describe such ob- more congenial ray upon the solitude; jects as the marsh given over to desola- or the sick-bed, or the death-bed of detion from immemorial time-the slush rangement-such familiar faces of want, left by the sea, and revealing the dead guilt, and wo- - of nakedness, sterility, body of the suicide-the bare crag and and shame, does Crabbe delight in showthe stunted tree, diversifying the scenery ing us; and is, in very truth, "nature's of the saline wilderness-the house on sternest painter, yet the best." In his the heath, creaking in the storm, and mode of managing his descriptions, Crabbe telling strange stories of misery and is equally peculiar. Objects, in themcrime the pine in some wintry wood, selves counted commonplace or disgustwhich had acted as the gallows of some ing, frequently become impressive, and miserable man-the gorse surrounding even sublime, when surrounded by interwith yellow light the encampment of esting circumstances-when shown in the the gipsies-the few timid flowers, or moonlight of memory-when linked to "weeds of glorious feature," which adorn strong passion-or when touched by the the brink of ocean-the snow putting ray of imagination. But it is the pecuout the fire of the pauper, or lying un- liarity and the daring of this poet, that melted on his pillow of death-the web he often, not always, tries us with truth, of the spider blinding the cottager's win- and nothing but truth, as if to bring the dow-the wheel turned by the meagre question to an issue-whether, in nature, hand of contented or cursing penuryabsolute truth be not essential though the cards trembling in the grasp of the severe poetry. On this question, cerdesperate debauchee-the day stocking tainly, issue was never so fully joined forming the cap by night, and the garter before. In even Wordsworth's eye there at midnight-the dunghill becoming the is a misty glimmer of imagination, through accidental grave of the drunkard-the which all objects, low as well as high, are poorhouse of forty years ago, with its seen. Even his "five blue eggs" gleam patched windows, its dirty environs, its upon him through a light which comes moist and miserable walls, its inmates not from themselves-which comes, it all snuff, and selfishness, and sin-the re- may be, from the Great Bear, or Arcceptacle of the outlawed members of Eng-turus and his sons. And when he does lish society (how different from "Poosie-as in some of his feebler verses-strive Nancy's!"), with its gin-gendered quar- to see out of this medium, he drops his rels, its appalling blasphemies, its deep mantle, loses his vision, and describes debauches, its ferocity without fun, its little better than would his own "Old huddled murders, and its shrieks of dis- Cumberland Beggar." Shakspere in his ease dumb in the uproar around-the witches' caldron, and Burns in "haly Bedlam of forty years ago, with its straw table, are shockingly circumstantial; but

the element of imagination creeps in and yet where, as in an antechamber, so amid all the disgusting details, and the many great spirits are waiting to deliver light that never was on sea or shore dis- their messages-their churchyard stilldains not to rest on "eye of newt," "toe ness continuing even when their readers of frog," "baboon's blood," the garter are moving to their pages, in joy or that strangled the babe, the grey hairs agony, as to the sound of martial instrusticking to the haft of the parricidal ments their awaking, as from deep knife, and all the rest of the fell ingre- slumber, to speak with miraculous organ, dients. Crabbe, on the other hand, would like the shell which has only to be lifted, have described the five blue eggs, and, and "pleased it remembers its august besides, the materials of the nest, and abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murthe kind of hedge where it was built, murs there"-their power of drawing like a bird-nesting schoolboy; but he tears, kindling blushes, awakening laughwould not have given the "gleam." He ter, calming or quickening the motions of would as accurately as Hecate, Canidia, the life's-blood, lulling to repose, or rousor Cutty-sark, have made an inventory of ing to restlessness-the meaning which the ingredients of the hell-broth, or of radiates from their quiet countenancesthe curiosities on the "haly table," had the tale of shame or glory which their they been presented to his eye: but title-pages tell-the memories suggested could not have conceived them, nor by the character of their authors, and of would have slipped in that one flash- the readers who have throughout succesing word, that single cross-ray of ima- sive centuries perused them-the thrillgination, which it required to elevate ing thoughts excited by the sight of and startle them into high ideal life. names and notes inscribed on their marAnd yet, in reading his pictures of poor-gins or blank pages by hands long since houses, &c., we are compelled to say, mouldered in the dust, or by those dear "Well, that is poetry after all, for it is to us as our life's-blood, who had been truth; but it is poetry of comparatively snatched from our sides-the aspects of a low order-it is the last gasp of the gaiety or of gloom connected with 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."

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 We may illustrate still farther what over all-the joy of the proprietor of a we mean, by comparing the different ways large library, who feels that Nebuchadin which Crabbe and Foster (certainly a nezzar watching great Babylon, or Napoprose poet) deal with a library. Crabbe leon reviewing his legions, will not stand describes minutely and successfully the comparison with himself seated amid the outer features of the volumes, their co- broad maps, and rich prints, and numelours, clasps, the stubborn ridges of their rous volumes which his wealth has enbindings, the illustrations which adorn abled him to collect, and his wisdom enthem, so well that you feel yourself titled him to enjoy all such hieroglyamong them, and they become sensible phics of interest and meaning has Foster to touch almost as to sight. But there included and interpreted in one gloomy he stops, and sadly fails, we think, in but noble meditation, and his introducbringing out the living and moral inter- tion to Doddridge is the true "Poem on est which gathers around a multitude of the Library."

books, or even around a single volume. In Crabbe's descriptions, the great This Foster has amply done. The speak- want is of selection. He describes all ing silence of a number of books, where, that his eye sees with cold, stern, lingerthough it were the wide Bodleian or ing accuracy-he marks down all the Vatican, not one whisper could be heard, items of wretchedness, poverty, and vul

gar sin-counts the rags of the mendi- | with being a Lillo (with occasional touches cant-and, as Hazlitt has it, describes of Shakspere), instead of something far a cottage like one who has entered it greater. He has, however, in spite of to distrain for rent. His copies conse- this self-injustice, effected much. He quently would be as displeasing as their has proved that a poet, who looks reoriginals, were it not that imagination is solutely around him—who stays at home so much less vivid than eyesight, that we who draws the realities which are near can endure in picture what we cannot in him, instead of the phantoms that are reality, and that our own minds, while afar-who feels and records the passion reading, can cast that softening and ideal and poetry of his daily life—may found a veil over disgusting objects which the firm and enduring reputation. With the poet himself has not sought, or has exception of Cowper, no one has made out failed to do. Just as, in viewing even this point so effectually as Crabbe. 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.

This

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 As a moral poet and sketcher of men, down upon her monstrous births, her Crabbe is characterised by a similar choice strange anomalies, and her more ungainof subject, and the same stern fidelity. ly forms. Thus Crabbe sees the loathThe mingled yarn of man's everyday life some, and does not loathe-handles the -the plain homely virtues, or the ro- horrible, and shudders not-feels with bust and burly vices of Englishmen-the firm finger the palpitating pulse of the quiet tears which fall on humble beds infanticide or the murderer and snuffs the passions which flame up in lowly a certain sweet odour in the evil savours bosoms -the amari aliquid, the deep of putrefying misery and crime. and permanent bitterness which lies at delight, however, is not an inhuman, but the heart of the downtrodden English entirely an artistic delight—perhaps, inpoor-the comedies and tragedies of the deed, springing from the very strength fireside the lovers' quarrels-the un- and width of his sympathies. We adhappy marriages the vicissitudes of mire as well as wonder at that almost common fortunes-the early deaths- asbestos quality of his mind, through the odd characters-the lingering super- which he retains his composure and cristitions all the elements, in short, which tical circumspection so cool amid the conmake up the simple anuals of lowly or flagrations of passionate subjects, which middling society, are the materials of this might have burned others to ashes. Few, poet's song. Had he been a Scottish indeed, can walk through such fiery furclergyman, we should have said that he naces unscathed. But Crabbe—what an had versified his session-book; and cer- admirable physician had he made to a tainly, many curious chapters of human lunatic asylum! How severely would he life might be derived from such a docu- have "sifted out" every grain of poetry ment, and much light cast upon the de- from those tumultuous exposures of the vious windings and desperate wickedness human mind! What clean breasts had of the heart, as well as upon that inextin- he forced the patients to make! What guishable instinct of good which resides in tales had he wrung out from them, to it Crabbe, perhaps, has contined himself which Lewis's tales of terror were feeble too exclusively to this circle of common and trite! How he would have comthings which he found lying around him, manded them, by his mild, steady, and He has seldom burst its contines, and piercing eye! And yet how calm would touched the loftier themes, and snatched his brain have remained, when others, the higher laurels which were also with- even of a more prosaic mould, were reelin his reach. He has contented himself ing in sympathy with the surrounding