have mentioned, describes with a pathos that compensates for his severity towards the other members of her company. I might have seen this trembling girl, who, a moment before, was blazing in tinsel, amidst gas and gilding, stealing to her cold and shabby lodging; the paint washed from her cheek, and leaving the pallor of consumption in its stead; the mimic smile of gladness passed away, to be succeeded by real tears of nature; tears that now may flow in freedom, and flow in silence. Shame upon the soul, that could give her afflicted lot only a hard thought and a hard word; shame upon the pharisaism, that could discern no motive in her career but vanity, when charity, that "thinketh no evil," might suggest impulses more worthy, the necessities, perhaps, of a widowed mother, or a sickly father, or of helpless and orphaned brothers and sisters. Shame upon the unmanly insolence that impedes her way; shame upon the unmanly insult that crimsons her cheek; shame upon the dastardly sus picion, native to the meanness of a small soul, and to the filth of a corrupted heart, that supposes the unprotected always to be vicious, the poor to be without honor, and the weak to be proper objects of foul intentions.

I have given the character of Crabbe's poetry with. all the fidelity of one who has read it with interest, and

therefore read it with attention. Its special divisions I will now indicate, but cannot analyze. His two earliest poems were, "The Village," and "The Library." "The Village "has not the sweetness of Goldsmith, and "The Library " has not the learning of Parr; but the one gained him the patronage of Burke; the other was written under his roof, and obtained his approbation. “The Village ” has power and pathos, but it is in stoic opposition to the Arcadian poetry on villages. "The Library" contains some quaint and amusing ideas on the matter, the size, and the destiny of books. It would surely be a droll circumstance to the authors of many folios, to arise from the dead and behold the nonentities to which they have sunk. How indignant they must feel to know that their immense tomes had only made small talk for D'Israeli, and banter for George Crabbe.

“The Parish Register " and "The Borough,” were intermediate publications. They contain, however, all the essentials of Crabbe's genius, although he modified them afterwards, by shaping them into other poems, In "The Tales," Crabbe's power is concentrated and intense; in the "Tales of the Hall," diversified and softened; but still we find the same stoic description, and the same literal and inflexible pathos. Crabbe's pathos has an inveterate accuracy throughout; you can

never call it moonshine, and, to escape its pain, you must refuse to read. The reality you cannot contest. “The Parish Register" is drawn from his experience as a clergyman. It contains a large amount of reflection on the most solemn eras of individual history, "birth," "marriage," and "death." Generally, these pictures are sad, but with their sadness they have many hues of beauty; the smile of infancy as well as its suffering; the devotedness of maternity as well as its anguish; the affection of humble marriage as well as its afflictions; the peace of death as well as its fears; its triumphs as well as its despair.

The episode of "Phoebe Dawson" in this poem, has won enthusiastic applause from the critics; as its beauty and its pathos must have done, except critics had not hearts. It was one of the last things which Fox, that orator of manly soul, perused on his dying bed. Crabbe has been singularly fortunate in securing the appreciation of great men. Burke ushered him to

last sickness; Byron

notice; Fox read him in his regarded him with admiration; Scott revered him as a poet and a friend; and in the disconsolate hours which closed his mighty life, while able to study, he perused our poet's writings and the Bible.

"The Borough" is a poem of greater extent and of wider scope. It consists of those topics which an

English town affords; and of such materials as almost only an English town can furnish. Among the subjects in which he shows the greatest force and skill, I would instance, "The Alms House," "The Prisons," and "The Dwellings of the Poor." Two melancholy pictures he gives us in "The Alms House;" the poor outworn spendthrift, strutting still in fragments of olden finery; the antique beauty, unable, through all the discipline of sorrow, to forget her conquests; these we cannot contemplate without emotion. Much as we may despise folly that is proof against all experience, we cannot but feel for a weight of affliction that is too heavy, to allow even folly, to be always absurd. "The Prison" and its inmates, are described with especial power. In the dream of the condemned felon we have a fine illustration of the godliness of our nature, even in its guilt; the gleams of tenderness that shoot across the dreary wastes of sin; the recollection that transports the heavy heart from the starless night of its despair, to the sunny morning of its hope.

Alluding to "The Dwellings of the Poor," I would say that this is the special sphere in which Crabbe rules our feelings with a wizard and vindictive spell. In moral pathos, sometimes fearful, sometimes tender, his genius here becomes terrible and august. He leads us to homes of indigence, where the senses are

gross, the passions mad; where the affections are base or broken; where the intellect made for heaven, is buried in the grossness of the brute; where appetite holds undivided despotism; where fancy sheds no light, and faith no purity, and hope no consolation; where holiness has no sanctuary, and prayer no altar, and the Sabbath no sacrifice; where the morning sun gilds no grateful offering, and the evening hears no vesper praise; where intemperance makes a fiend of man, and cruelty a wreck of woman; where an old age of wretchedness closes a life of vice; where the weary spirit seeks a place to gasp its latest breath; or where the forlorn skeleton sits sullen or stupefied on the unwilling hearth; where beauty is turned to ashes; the gladness and the glory of life departed; the spirit broken and the soul forsaken. But it is not all thus in Crabbe's writings; thank God, it is not all thus, in the poorest homes; poverty has its limits of suffering, and sin its boundary of dominion; even in the view of our unromantic poet, humble homes have light from heaven, that also guides to heaven; sweetness of temper that no anguish can destroy; a reverence and love of goodness that no temptation can corrupt; charities undimned through years of struggle; piety that no woe can shake; patience, that, with a blessed alchemy, distils a balm from the most bitter worm