CRABBE'S LIFE.
Tins volume might have been truly entitled the Life of a Good Man. Distinctly, though not very forcibly or effectively, there is here brought before us the character of the man CRA BBE ; but we see little of the genius of the poet. We hear of him as a 'o'er: as an unwilling student of medicine, with iusuflicient memi:;; and afterwards as a country practitioner, with very scanty practice : occasionally we catch passing views of the distress he underwent, of the rebuffs • he experienced as a literary ad- venturer in London; and we are told enough of naked facts to fuel assured that those distresses must have been bitter and poignant: yet -never, from the time he first left home as an ap- prentice to a village apothecary—half surgeon halffarmer—till he was intreduced to public notice through the discriminating patron- age of BURKE, does he appear to have morally failed in any part be was called upon to play. When, through the great orator's fi iendship, he had acquired the opportunity of distinguishing him- self as a poet—had been ordained a clergyman, and was appointed chaplain to the Duke of ReereaND, with apartments and a cover at the table—his native simplicity of character, and his unbending integrity, never forsook him. To select a small, but striking in- stance—many a glass of salt and water was he doomed to swallow at the table of his patron, for refusing the Tory toasts of that boon com When be leftBelvoir Castle, for two poor livings, and a wife (let us say, in parenthesis, it was his first love), he appears in an equally amiable light, whether considered as a husband, a father, or a parish priest. In the last two diameters, indeed, he seems to have been a pattern man. His thorough simplicity of character endeared him to children, and rendered him in turn partial to their soeipany : pet laps, too, he delighted to study them : it was not, therefore, likely that he should be otherwise than paternal to his own. As a minister, whether in the country or subsequently at Ta brid;_e, his crdeduci was most exemplary ; his duty WZIS the first eoLisid,atiun to which every thing else—pleasure, friends, liipositicn—. are war. lies hi use and his hand were zilways open, to the extent of his means. In the online., he found the benefit of his early medical studies; being enabled to act as physi-
cian, and sometimes even as accoucheur to his pourer parishioners, in a place where proiessional advice was scarce. So attentive was he to his protessiunal duties, that for forty years he never missed performing service on the Sabbath ; so liberal, that he gave up his tithes, if he thought that he could better do without them than could the party frem whom they were due. With all his good-nature, however, he was inaceessible to soli- citation, reproach, or personal fear, where he believed himself in the right. We have seen how the Tories hired with him in his yam!). Many years afterwards, and on his first rem, vol to Trow- bridge, a hotly coatested election tcok place, and his candidaie was the unpopular one. His parishioners assailed him with hisses and the nwet virulent abuse ;" he replied by "rating them roundly."
" A riotous, tumult mint, and most appalling mob, at the time of electiun, besieged his home, when a chaise seas at the door, to prevent his going to the poll and giving Ids vote in favour of coy most worthy friend, John Ireoett if Pyl House, the present Member for the county. The mub threatened to destroy the chaise and tear him to pieces, if he attempted to set out. In the face of the furious assemblage, lie came out calmly, and told them they might hill him if they chose; but, whilst alive, nothing should prevent his givii4; a vote at the election, according to his promise and principles. And he set orf, undisturbed tual unhurt, to vote for Mr. Benett."
Even during his visits to London in later years, when his reputation introduced him in.o the " first circles," his simpli- city- still accompanied him. Nor was it till after his death, and the perusal of his Diary, that his family had any distinct idea as to the extent of his acquaintance amongst the great. His son mentions it as a proof of his humility. Might it not be of his pe- netration and good sense ? He had felt the real value of the pa- tronage of the great, when half-starving in London. He doubtless Perceived it was not ti3 himself, but to his reputation, that he was indebted for notice; and that although their society was neither to be slighted nor despised, it was to be rated at its true worth. Mr. CRABBE was too good a practical philosopher and a Christian to have suffered much from social evils. The only external ill winch seems to have disturbed him was the spread of Dissent. This, too, was in earlier life. Latterly he became more friendly to the respectable seceder—he was always friendly to the man. It would seem, however, from some expressions ef bie son, that he
was never thoroughly reconciled to the followers of the "Sinner Saved." On his return, after a long absence, to Muston, he found that the arch-heresy had intruded even into the parsonage, and infected a female servant and his ploughman. The "call" had rendered the first insolent, if not something more ; but the last
had started as a rival, and "setup for a Huntingtonian preacher himself." We do not hear whether any of the special mercies vouchsafed to the great master were extended to the disciple— whether the ploughman, like the S. S., ever found hares in his path, or fish floating torpid on the water.
As we have already observed, the character of the man is much more clearly developed than that of the poet. We learn, indeed,
that "he fancied autumn was on the whole the most favourable season for him in the composition of poetry"—that "latterly he worked chiefly at night, and had generally by him a glass of very weak spirits and water or negus." Earlier in life, "While search- ing for and examining plants or insects, he was moulding verses into measure and smoothness. No one who observed him at these times could doubt that he enjoyed exquisite pleasure in composing. He had a degree of action while thus walking and versifying, which I hardly ever observed when he was preaching or reading : the hand was moved up and down, the pace quickened. He was, nevertheless, fond of considering poetical composition as a species of task and labour; and would say, I have been hard at work, and have had a good morning.--We suspect Mr. CRABBE was right. The parent knew the mental throes which the offspring cost Min. Judging from his published poetry alone, it would, we think, be decided that the work was the result of severe labour; and this opinion will be confirmed by the perusal of his earlier efforts, and some hitherto unpublished specimens ill the volume before us, as well as by the extracts from his prose Journals. One point, however, in relation to his mental character, is pretty well brought out; we mean the early training, which, whilst it perhaps determined his style and subjects, gradually formed the soil that eventually produced them. Aldborough, his native place, was a bumble fishing-town; the majority of its male inhabitants were half-fishermen half-smugglers, the remainder were very humble trailers; the characters of their w ives may be conjectured; and there were several of those old beldames from which such places are never free, and with whom GEORGE was an especial fa- vourite. The landscape, too, was such as he afterwards delighted to depict : along the coast ran a strip of marsh, through which the Ald flowed parallel to the ocean, till it joined it at Orford; whilst, inland, nought was met with but "open commons and sterile farms, the soil poor and sandy, the herbage bare and tushy, the trees few and farbetween, and withered and stunted by the blink breezes of the sea." Add to this, his subsequent opportunities of viewing humbler life and nature as a country apothecary's boy—as an apo- thecary himself—as a distressed adventurer in London—and as a country clergyman ; and we see the manner in which his mind was stored with raw material, though we learn little as to the mode in which the skill of the workman was acquired, or the way in which he exercised his craft.
This volume does not aP.brd much matter for extract, as the erect produced is accomplished by a continuous perusal of the whole. The best of the passages capable of independent exhibi- tion, appeared, moreover, in the Quarterly Review a fortnight ago, and would now have little or to novelty for the readers of the Spectator.
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