364

CRABBE

JUSTIFIABLE MAN-HATING.

great feeling and beauty; - but it is difficult to make

extracts.

The prudent suitor of the milder and more serious sister, sneaks pitifully away when their fortune changes. The bolder lover of the more elate and gay, seeks to take a baser advantage.

"Then made he that attempt, in which to fail
Is shameful, still more shameful to prevail.
Then was there lightning in that eye that shed
Its beams upon him, and his frenzy fled;
Abject and trembling at her feet he laid,
Despis'd and scorn'd by the indignant maid,
Whose spirits in their agitation rose,
Him, and her own weak pity, to oppose:
As liquid silver in the tube mounts high,
Then shakes and settles as the storm goes by!".

The effects of this double trial on their different tempers are also very finely described. The gentler Lucy is the most resigned and magnanimous. The more aspiring Jane suffers far keener anguish and fiercer impatience; and the task of soothing and cheering her devolves on her generous sister. Her fancy, too, is at times a little touched by her afflictions and she writes wild and melancholy verses. The wanderings of her reason are represented in a very affecting manner; — but we rather choose to quote the following verses, which appear to us to be eminently beautiful, and make us regret that Mr. Crabbe should have indulged us so seldom with those higher lyrical effusions.

"Let me not have this gloomy view,

About my room, around my bed!
But morning roses, wet with dew,

To cool my burning brows instead.
Like flow'rs that once in Eden grew,
Let them their fragrant spirits shed,
And every day the sweets renew,

Till I, a fading flower, am dead!

"I'll have my grave beneath a hill,
Where only Lucy's self shall know;

Where runs the pure pellucid rill
Upon its gravelly bed below;

APPROACHES OF OLD AGE.

There violets on the borders blow,

And insects their soft light display,
Till as the morning sunbeams glow,
The cold phosphoric fires decay.

'There will the lark, the lamb, in sport,
In air, on earth, securely play,
And Lucy to my grave resort,

As innocent, but not so gay.

"O! take me from a world I hate,

Men cruel, selfish, sensual, cold;
And, in some pure and blessed state,
Let me my sister minds behold:
From gross and sordid views refin'd,
Our heaven of spotless love to share,
For only generous souls design'd

And not a Man to meet us there."-vol i.

365

p. 212 - 215. "The Preceptor Husband" is exceedingly well ma naged but it is rather too facetious for our present mood. The old bachelor, who had been five times on the brink of matrimony, is mixed up of sorrow and mirth; but we cannot make room for any extracts, except the following inimitable description of the first coming on of old age, though we feel assured, somehow, that this malicious observer has mistaken the date of these ugly symptoms; and brought them into view nine or ten, or, at all events, six or seven years too early.

"Six years had pass'd and forty ere the six,
When time began to play his usual tricks!
The locks once comely in a virgin's sight,

Locks of pure brown, display'd th' encroaching white;
The blood once fervid now to cool began,

And Time's strong pressure to subdue the man :

I rode or walk'd as I was wont before,

But now the bounding spirit was no more;
A moderate pace would now my body heat,
A walk of moderate length distress my feet.
I show'd my stranger-guest those hills sublime,
But said, 'the view is poor, we need not climb!'
At a friend's mansion I began to dread
The cold neat parlour, and the gay glazed bed;
At home I felt a more decided taste,

And must have all things in my order placed;
I ceas'd to hunt; my horses pleased me less,
My dinner more! I learn'd to play at chess;

366

CRABBE SIR OWEN DALE.

I took my dog and gun, but saw the brute
Was disappointed that I did not shoot;
My morning walks I now could bear to lose,

And bless'd the shower that gave me not to choose:
In fact, I felt a languor stealing on;

The active arm, the agile hand were gone;

Small daily actions into habits grew,

And new dislike to forms and fashions new ;

I lov'd my trees in order to dispose,

I number'd peaches, look'd how stocks arose,
Told the same story oft-in short, began to prose.'

vol. i. p. 260, 261.

"The Maid's Story" is rather long-though it has many passages that must be favourites with Mr. Crabbe's admirers. "Sir Owen Dale" is too long also; but it is one of the best in the collection, and must not be discussed so shortly. Sir Owen, a proud, handsome man, is left a widower at forty-three, and is soon after jilted by a young lady of twenty; who, after amusing herself by encouraging his assiduities, at last meets his longexpected declaration with a very innocent surprise at finding her familiarity with "such an old friend of her father's" so strangely misconstrued! The knight, of course, is furious; and, to revenge himself, looks out for a handsome young nephew, whom he engages to lay siege to her, and, after having won her affections, to leave her, - as he had been left. The lad rashly engages in the adventure; but soon finds his pretended passion turning into a real one- and entreats his uncle, on whom he is dependent, to release him from the unworthy part of his vow. Sir Owen, still mad for vengeance, rages at the proposal; and, to confirm his relentless purpose, makes a visit to one, who had better cause, and had formerly expressed equal thirst for revenge. This was one of the higher class of his tenantry - an intelligent, manly, good-humoured farmer, who had married the vicar's pretty niece, and lived in great comfort and comparative elegance, till an idle youth seduced her from his arms, and left him in rage and misery. It is here that the interesting part of the story begins; and few things can be more powerful or striking than the scenes that ensue. Sir Owen inquires whether

MISERY AND PITY.

367

he had found the objects of his just indignation. He at first evades the question; but at length opens his heart, and tells him all. We can afford to give but a small part of the dialogue.

ere I my victims found:

But I did find them, in the dungeon's gloom

Of a small garret ·

a precarious home;
The roof, unceil'd in patches, gave the snow
Entrance within, and there were heaps below;
I pass'd a narrow region dark and cold,
The strait of stairs to that infectious hold;
And, when I enter'd, misery met my view
In every shape she wears, in every hue,
And the bleak icy blast across the dungeon flew.
There frown'd the ruin'd walls that once were white;
There gleam'd the panes that once admitted light;
There lay unsavoury scraps of wretched food;
And there a measure, void of fuel, stood.
But who shall, part by part, describe the state
Of these, thus follow'd by relentless fate?
All, too, in winter, when the icy air
Breathed its black venom on the guilty pair.

"And could you know the miseries they endur'd,
The poor, uncertain pittance they procur'd;
When, laid aside the needle and the pen,
Their sickness won the neighbours of their den,
Poor as they are, and they are passing poor,
To lend some aid to those who needed more!
Then, too, an ague with the winter came,
And in this state- that wife I cannot name!

Brought forth a famish'd child of suffering and of shame!

"This had you known, and traced them to this scene, Where all was desolate, defiled, unclean,

A fireless room, and, where a fire had place,
The blast loud howling down the empty space,
You must have felt a part of the distress,

Forgot your wrongs, and made their suffering less!"

In that vile garret--which I cannot paint

The sight was loathsome, and the smell was faint;
And there that wife, whom I had lov'd so well,
And thought so happy! was condemn'd to dwell;
The gay, the grateful wife, whom I was glad
To see in dress beyond our station clad,
And to behold among our neighbours, fine,
More than perhaps became a wife of mine:

368

CRABBE

UTTER WRETCHEDNESS EXPIATES.

And now among her neighbours to explore,
And see her poorest of the very poor!
There she reclin'd unmov'd, her bosom bare
To her companion's unimpassion'd stare,
And wild wonder:
my

-

Seat of virtue! chaste
As lovely once! O! how wert thou disgrac'd!
Upon that breast, by sordid rags defil'd,
Lay the wan features of a famish'd child;
That sin-born babe in utter misery laid,
Too feebly wretched even to cry for aid;
The ragged sheeting, o'er her person drawn,
Serv'd for the dress that hunger placed in pawn.
"At the bed's feet the man reclin'd his frame:
Their chairs had perish'd to support the flame
That warm'd his agued limbs; and, sad to see,
That shook him fiercely as he gaz'd on me, &c.
"She had not food, nor aught a mother needs,
Who for another life, and dearer, feeds :
I saw her speechless; on her wither'd breast
The wither'd child extended, but not prest,
Who sought, with moving lip and feeble cry,
Vain instinct! for the fount without supply.

6.6

Sure it was all a grievous, odious scene,
Where all was dismal, melancholy, mean,

Foul with compell'd neglect, unwholesome, and unclean;
the cold, the sunken cheek

That arm

that eye

Spoke all! Sir Owen

"'And you

--

reliev'd?'

"If hell's seducing crew

Had seen that sight, they must have pitied too,'

46 4

Revenge was thine

-

thou hadst the power the right;

To give it up was Heav'n's own act to slight.'

"Tell me not, Sir, of rights, and wrongs, or powers!

Then did you freely from your soul forgive?'

"Sure as I hope before my Judge to live,
Sure as I trust his mercy to receive,
Sure as his word I honour and believe,
Sure as the Saviour died upon the tree
For all who sin for that dear wretch, and me
Whom, never more on earth, will I forsake

66

Sir Owen softly to his bed adjourn'd!

Sir Owen quickly to his home return'd;
And all the way he meditating dwelt
On what this man in his affliction felt;

or see!'