THE NON-COUPLET POETRY OF CRABEE.

SOME months ago we combated the popular belief that Pope wrote nothing worth having except in the heroic couplet A similar superstition ens' ts as to the work of Crabbe, the poet who has been called a "Pope in worsted stockings." (This descriptive epigram must not be quoted without a reference to the delightful story of the high- school girl who, when asked in a " general knowledge" paper to justify the remark, wrote : " Crabbe was called a 'Pope in worsted stockings' because of his extreme High Church views and his carelessness in the matter of dress.") Some ninety per cent., or possibly ninety-nine per cent., of Crabbe's poetry is in the couplet, but for all that he left verse in other measures which can only be described as priceless—as part of the supreme treasure of our literature. We will endeavour to make good our assertion.

Orabbe's longest non-couplet poem is "Sir Eustace Grey," a terrible story of the madhouse, told in the most delicate, limpid, mellifluous, sometimes almost finicking, ectosyllabic iambic quatrains. No doubt the phraseology is open, as is Crabbe's achievement in the couplet, to the superficial charge of being prosaic, jejune, conventional. Yet everywhere there is the perfect mastery of the artist over his material. No doubt also here, as everywhere, Crabbe, to parody what was said of Virgil, disdains to say a plain thing except in a plain way. Yet look a little closer, and we find that what is ostentatiously labelled a kitchen garden is really ablaze with all the glories of the flower world.

"Sir Eustace Grey" begins with the ordinary reflections of the visitor at a madhouse on the terrors around him. The physician begs him, however, not to go before he has seen " the ruins of Sir Eustace Grey ":—

" That cell to him is Greyling Hall:— Approach ; he'll hid thee welcome there ; Will sometimes for his servant call, And sometimes point the vacant chair; He can with free and easy air, Appear attentive and polite; Can veil his woes in manners fair, And pity with respect excite."

At once the patient plunges into the tragedy of his life. It is the old story of the husband, the apparently loving wife, and the trusted friend. The lover falls by Sir Eustace's hand; the guilty wife dies, and the two children die also. Then comes Sir Enstace's madness. He becomes

"Like him who filled the eastern throne, To whom the Watcher cried aloud ; That royal wretch of Babylon, Who was so guilty and so proud."

We should like to give the marvellous and minute descrip- tion of Sir Eustace's delirium, and of how he scours the world scourged on by the two demons who hold him in thrall. Unfortunately the passage is too long to quote, but we are sure that any who have in them the sense of literature will be thankful for our signpost to this appalling yet gentle-voiced

poem.

More wonderful and much more modern in tone is the second of Crabbe's long poems not in the couplet It is entitled "The Hall of Justice," and tells with drastic realism the story of a vagrant, of a gypsy woman who is arrested for stealing food wherewith to feed a starving child —her owngrauddaughter. The interlocutors in this dramatic elegy are the Magistrate, the vagrant, and the constable. The vagrant tells how she was left an orphan and wandered with a crew of gypsies. She falls in love with a gypsy boy named Aaron

"A sturdy youth he was and tall, His looks would all his soul declare; His piercing eyes were deep and small, And strongly curled his raven hair."

Her love for Aaron was returned, but its course was darkened by a fatal influence

" His father was our party's chief,

And dark and dreadful was his look; His presence filled my heart with grief, Although to me he kindly spoke."

Soon the father's cruelty to the son drives him, an exile, from the gypsy clan, and then the father tells the wretched girl hie love. In two lines we learn the awful power of the gypsy chief over the girl, who has none to help or protect her. She knows herself to be absolutely at his mercy. The law can give no help to those who live with the lawless :— " The clan were all at his command Whatever his ecunmand might be."

The tragedy is told with a conciseness and a reticence, and yet an awful plainness, which rival the powers of Mr. Masefietd

when in his most potent mood :—

" The night was dark, the lanes were deep,

And one by one they took their way; He bade me lay me down and sleep, I only wept and wished for day.

Accursed be the love he bore, Accursed was the force he used, So let him of his God implore For mercy, and be so refused!"

It is this passage which won the admiration of Jeffrey, the Edinburgh. Reviewer. The crisis of the awful story can only

be adequately told in Crabbe'a own words :—

" The son came back—he found us wed,

Then dreadful was the oath he swore ;—

His way through Blackburn Forest led—

His father we beheld no more.

Of all our daring clan not one

Would on the doubtful subject dwell; For all esteemed the injured son, And feared the tale which he could tell."

The vagrant then marries her husband's murderer, and bears a child to the "father-husband," who had perished

by his own son's hand. When the child is born the husband takes it from the mother and sells it to another troop

of gypsies. The wretched woman sinks lower and lower. Her second husband dies. Her third forces her to prostitute herself, and then dies also. After many years the vagrant finds herself in prison, and there meets a woman as helpless, as hopeless, as wretched as herself„ and learns that this woman is her own daughter :—

"His father's child, whom Aaron_ gave

To wander with a distant elan, The miseries of the world to brave, And be the slave of vice and man.

She knew my name—we met in pain.

Our parting pangs can I express ?

She sailed a convict o'er the main, And left an heir to her distress.

This is that heir to shame and pain, For whom I only could descry

A world of trouble and disdain

Yet, could I bear to see her die, Or stretch her feeble hands in vain, And, weeping, beg of me supply No! though the fate thy mother knew Was shameful!' shameful though thy race Have wandered all a lawless mew, Outcasts despised in every place ; Yet as the dark and muddy tide, When far from its polluted source, Becomes more pure and purified, Flows in a clear and happy course ;

In thee, dear infant!' so may end

Our shame, in thee our sorrows cease!

And thy pure course will then. extend, In floods of joy, der vales of peace.

Ohl, by the God who loves te spare,

Deny me not the boon I crave ; Let this loved child your mercy share, And let me find a peaceful grave ;

Make her yet spotless soul your care, And let my sins their portion have; Her for a better fate prepare.

And punish whom 'twere sin to save!"

Crabbe, alone of poets, could have ended the poem as he ends it. The Magistrate, turned theologian, expounds to "the vagrant" in noble, we had almost said inspired, words the Evangelical view of repentance :—

"Magistrate :

Recall the word, renounce the thought, Command thy heart and bend thy knee. There is to all a pardon brought, A ransom rich, assured and free ; 'Tie full when found, 'tis found if sought, Oh! seek it, till 'tis sealed to thee.

Vagrant : But how my pardon shall I know P

Magistrate:

By feeling dread that 'tis not sent, By tears for sin that freely flow, By grief, that all thy tears are spent, By thoughts on that great debt we owe, With all the mercy God has lent, By suffering what thou caust not show. Yet showing how thine heart is rent, Till thou cause feel thy bosom glow, And say .My Saviour, I repent!"

Those who, in ignorance of the treasures of our literature, think that Mr. Masefield is a pioneer in this particular form

of poetry should not fail to read " The Hall of Justice." In saying this, however, we do not mean in the least to depreciate Mr. Masefield's undoubted powers as a poet, but simply to

show that it is impossible to make for him the supreme claim— the claim to originality. In his most tragic and awful vein Crabbe was before him, as Brown, the author of "Nancy Lee," was before him in his lyric utterance.

Another poem not in the couplet form which deserves special mention is that entitled "Reflections "—reflections, as the sub-title shows us, that experience is only a light at the stern of the vessel, which serves to indicate the course we have steered, but not the course we ought to steer. It is surprising that this suggestive and ironic poem should not have found its way into any of the anthologies. Yet even in the best of these one could find ten poems, all good in themselves, which might nevertheless have been sacrificed to make room for Crabbe's "Reflections." The poem begins with the following stanza

" When all the fiercer passions cease (The glory and disgrace of youth); When the deluded soul in peace Can listen to the voice of truth ; When we are taught in whom to trust, And how to spare, to spend, to give (Our prudence kind, our pity just), 'Tis then we rightly learn to live,"

One judges from this exordium that we are going to have some trite, if mellifluous, reflections upon the value of experi- ence. Not a bit of it. The stern poet of reality at once brings us down to earth and points out the uselessness of experience :—

" Yet thus, when we our way discern, And can upon our care depend. To travel safely, when we learn, Behold! we're near our journey's end. We've trod the maze of error round, Long wandering in the winding glade; And now the torch of truth is found, It only shows us where we strayed. Light for ourselves, what is it worth. When we no more our way can choose? For others, when we hold it forth, They, in their pride, the boon refuse."

The poet goes on to tell us of the compromises which the middle-aged and the old make with life, and how virtue, having striven a while for conquest, grows weary, and makes a compromise with the minor vices. But is there nothing that man can do P-

" Yes, we'll redeem the wasted time, And to neglected studies flee ; We'll build again the lofty rhyme, Or live, Philosophy, with thee ; For reasoning clear, for flight sublime, Eternal fame reward shall be; And to what glorious heights we'll climb, The admiring crowd shall envying Lee:* Alas! this notion of doing great things in the evening of life is a delusion. It is too late to be ambitious:— "Begin the song ! begin the theme I— Alen I and is Invention dead? Dream we no ntare the golden dream? Is Memory with her treasures fled? Yes, 'us too late—now Reason guides The mind, sole judge in all debate. And thus the important point decides, For laurels, 'tis, alas! too late.

What is possessed we may retain, But for now conquests strive in vain."

The poet now seems to have led us into a hopeless eel- dc-sac of impotent pessimism. And then suddenly, and when all endeavour appears useless, and the world not well lost but ill lost and for nothing, the poem soars up to heaven. A solution is found. The discord is resolved. It is not insanity, but the truest wisdom, to struggle on. To keep what we have got is worth while, because thereby we can make our souls and develop them for the world to come. If this world were the end, pessimistic inertia would be good sense. But it is not the end, but merely a stage in our spiritual preparation. Whatever we have kept and made good will still be ours :—

"For, all that's gained of all that's good, When time shall his weak frame destroy (Their use then rightly understood) Shall men, in happier state, enjoy.

Oh! argument for truth divine,

For study's CAMS, for virtue's strife;

To know the enjoyment will be thine, In that renewed, that endless life!"

For those who can and do believe in the immortality of the soul there need be no despair, no relaxation of effort. It was worth while to have fought, it is always worth while to fight, the good fight. Man can make and remake his own souL What he has achieved here is not lost, but saved, gained. assured. When the curtain rises on the next act we shall continue our place—in the story without an end.

Let us ask our readers to remember that the poem has lost greatly by summary and quotation. It must be read as a whole to be understood and appreciated. It must also be read often and closely to extract from it its true meaning. We venture to say that those who have patience will come to admit that, both for subject and for style, it is one of the most moving elegies in the English language, and will again thank us for a signpost put up to a road that passes through a noble stretch of poetry. And yet it is true that "you must love it ere to you it will seem worthy of your love." The judicious reader will also not fail to note that Matthew Arnold must hare read and re-read this poem. It clearly influenced him in the matter of style and expression. He has not imitated it, of course, but its special quality is infused into several of his early reflective poems. At least so it seems to the present writer. Matthew Arnold, if our recollection is not greatly at fault, in his letters refers to Crabbe with praise, and shows that, like Clough, he had come under the enchantment of this strongest of literary spell-binders.