behind the chairs, and hands the golden dishes of the great.

the trunk of a tree gives to its smallest, its remotest, to even its withered leaves. And yet, without apparent intention, Crabbe has done good moral service. He has shed much light upon the condition of the poor. He has spoken in the name and stead of the poor dumb mouths that could not tell their own sorrows or sufferings to the world. He has opened the "mine," which Ebenezer Elliott and others, going to work with a firmer and more resolute purpose, have dug to its depths.

2dly, His originality. This has been questioned by some critics. He has been called a version, in coarser paper and print, of Goldsmith, Pope, and Cowper. His pathos comes from Goldsmith-his wit and satire from Pope-and his minute and literal description from Cowper. If this were true, it were as complimentary to him as his warmest admirer could wish. To combine the characteristic excellences of three true poets is no easy matter. But Crabbe has not combined them. His pathos wants altogether the naiveté of sentiment and curiosa felicitas of expression which distinguish Goldsmith's "Deserted Village.' He has something of Pope's terseness, but little of his subtlety, finish, or brilliant malice. And the motion of Cowper's mind and style in description differs as much from Crabbe's as the playful leaps and gambols of a kitten from the measured, downright, and indomitable pace of a houndthe one is the easiest, the other the severest, of describers. Resemblances, indeed, of a minor kind are to be found; but still, Crabbe is as distinct from Goldsmith, Cowper, and Pope, as Byron from Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.

We have not space nor time to dilate on his other works individually. We prefer, in glancing back upon them as a whole, trying to answer the following questions; 1st, What was Crabbe's object as a moral poet? 2dly, How far is he original as an artist? 3dly, What is his relative position to his great contemporaries? And, 4thly, what is likely to be his fate with posterity-1st, his object.-The great distinction between man and man, and author and author, is purpose. It is the edge and point of character; it is the stamp and the superscription of genius; it is the direction on the letter of talent. Character without it is blunt and torpid. Talent without it is a letter, which, undirected, goes no whither. Genius without it is bullion, sluggish, splendid, uncirculating. Purpose yearns after and secures artistic culture. It gathers as by a strong suction, all things which it needs into itself. It often invests art with a moral and religious aspect. This was strongly impressed upon us when lately seeing Macaulay and Wilson on one platform. How great the difference in point of native powers! How greater, alas! in point of purpose and cultivation! There is in Wilson's great, shaggy soul and body, what might make many Macaulays. But it has never been fully evolved. He has not done with his might what his hand found to do. He has been little else than a vast, lazy earth-god, pelting nuts in the summer woods, or gathering pebbles on the margins of the summer waters; or, rather, he rises up before his worshippers glorious and idle as Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. But, since Shakspeare, no clearer, larger, sunnier soul has existed among men. And yet Macaulay, though manifestly belonging to an inferior race, mounted on this pedestal of We do not decide whether the purpose, stands higher than he. Crabbe's first of these implies an act of absolute creaartistic object is tolerably clear, and has tion; it implies all we can conceive in an been already indicated. His moral purpose act of creative power, from elements bearis not quite so apparent. Is it to satirize, ing to the result the relation which the or is it to reform vice? Is it pity, or is it Alphabet does to the "Iliad"-genius contempt, that actuates his song? What brings forth its bright progeny, and we feel are his plans for elevating the lower classes it to be new. In this case you can no more in the scale of society? Has he any, or anticipate the effect from the elements than does he believe in the possibility of their you can, from the knowledge of the letters, permanent elevation? Such questions are anticipate the words which are to be commore easily asked than answered. We pounded out of them. In the other kind must say that we have failed to find in him of originality, the materials bear a larger any one overmastering and earnest object, proportion to the result-they form an apsubjugating everything to itself, and pro- preciable quantity in our calculations of ducing that unity in all his works which what it is to be. They are found for the poet,

i

Originality consists of two kinds--one, the power of inventing new materials; and the other, of dealing with old materials in a new way.

and all he has to do is, with skill and ener- tuent parts; but there will be some one elegy, to construct them. Take, for instance, ment which escapes them-laughing, as it Shakspeare's "Tempest," and Coleridge's leaps away, at their baffled sagacity, and "Anciente Marinere "of what more crea-proclaiming the original power of its Creative act can we conceive than is exemplified tor; as in the chemical analysis of an in these? Of course, we have all had be- Aerolite, amid the mere earthly constituents forehand ideas similar to a storm, a desert there will still be something which declares island, a witch, a magician, a mariner, a its unearthly origin. Take Creation as hermit, a wedding-guest; but these are only meaning, not so much Deity bringing somethe Alphabet to the spirits of Shakspeare thing out of nothing, as filling the void with and Coleridge. As the sun, from the invi-his Spirit, and genius will seem a lower sible air, draws up in an instant all pomps form of the same power. of cloudy forms-paradises brighter than The other kind of originality is, we think, Eden mirrored in waters, which blush and that of Crabbe. It is magic at secondtremble as their reflection falls wooingly hand. He takes, not makes, his materials. upon them-mountains which seem to bury He finds a good foundation-wood and their snowy or rosy summits in the very stone in plenty-and he begins laboriously, heaven of heavens-throne-shaped splen-successfully, and after a plan of his own, to dors, worthy of angels to sit on them, flush-build. If in any of his works he approaching and fading in the west-seas of aerial es to the higher property, it is in "Eustace blood and fire-momentary cloud-crowns Grey," who moves here and there, on his and golden avenues, stretching away into wild wanderings, as if to the rubbing of the azure infinite beyond them;-so, from Aladdin's lamp.

such stuff as dreams are made of, from the This prepares us for coming to the third mere empty air, do these wondrous ma-question, what is Crabbe's relative position gicians build up their new worlds, where to his great contemporary poets? We are the laws of nature are repealed-where all compelled to put him in the second class. things are changed without any being con- He is not a philosophic poet, like Wordsfused-where sound becomes dumb and worth. He is not, like Shelley, a Vates, silence eloquent-where the earth is empty, moving upon the uncertain but perpetual and the sky is peopled--where material and furious wind of his inspirations. He is beings are invisible, and where spiritual not, like Byron, a demoniac exceeding beings become gross and palpable to sense- fierce, and dwelling among the tombs. He where the skies are opening to show riches is not, like Keats, a sweet and melancholy -where the isle is full of noises where voice, a tune bodiless, bloodless-dying beings proper to this sphere of dream are away upon the waste air, but for ever to be met so often that you cease to fear them, remembered as men remember a melody however odd or monstrous-where magic they have heard in youth. He is not, like has power to shut now the eyes of kings Coleridge, all these almost by turns, and, and now the great bright eye of ocean- besides, a Psalmist, singing at times strains where, at the bidding of the poet, new, so sublime and holy, that they might seem complete, beautiful mythologies, down at snatches of the song of Eden's cherubim, one time sweep across the sea, and anon or caught in trance from the song of Moses dance from the purple and mystic sky-and the Lamb. To this mystic brotherwhere all things have a charmed life, the hood Crabbe must not be added. He ranks listening ground, the populous air, the still or the vexed sea, the human or the imaginary beings--and where, as in deep dreams, the most marvellous incidents are most easily credited, slide on most softly, and seem most native to the place, the circumstances, and the time. "This is crea-ful cluster. tion," we exclaim; nor did Ferdinand We are often tempted to pity poor posseem to Miranda a fresher and braver crea-terity on this score. ture than does to us each strange settler, whom genius has planted upon its own favorite isle. Critics may, indeed, take these imaginary beings such as Caliban and Ariel-and analyse them into their consti

with a lower but still loftier band-with Scott (as a poet), and Moore, and Hunt, and Campbell, and Rogers, and Bowles, and James Montgomery, and Southey; and surely they nor he need be ashamed of each other, as they shine in one soft and peace

How is it to manage

with the immense number of excellent works which this age has bequeathed, and is bequeathing to it? How is it to economise its time so as to read a tithe of them? And should it in mere self-defence proceed

to decimate, with what principle shall the We have tried to draw his mental, but process be carried on, and who shall be ap- not his physical likeness. And yet it has pointed to preside over it? Critics of the all along been blended with our thoughts, twenty-second century, be merciful as well like the figure of one known from childas just. Pity the disjecta membra of those hood, like the figure of our own beloved we thought mighty poets. Respect and and long-lost father. We see the venerable fulfil our prophecies of immortality. If ye old man, newly returned from a botanical must carp and cavil, do not, at least, in excursion, laden with flowers and weeds mercy, abridge. Spare us the prospect of (for no one knew better than he that every this last insult, an abridged copy of the weed is a flower-it is the secret of his "Pleasures of Hope," or " Don Juan," a new poetry), with his high narrow forehead, his abridgment. If ye must operate in this way, grey locks, his glancing shoe-buckles, his be it on "Madoc," " Kehama, or the clean dress somewhat ruffled in the woods, "Couse of Time." Generously leave room for his mild countenance, his simple abstracted "O'Connor's Child" in the poet's corner of a air. We, too, become abstracted as we journal, or for" Eustace Grey" in the space gaze, following in thought the outline of his of a crown piece. Surely, living in the Mil-history-his early struggle-his love-his lennium, and resting under your vines and adventures in London-his journal, where, fig-trees, you will have more time to read than on the brink of starvation, he wrote the we, in this bustling age, who move, live, affecting words "O Sally for you--"his eat, drink, sleep and die, at railway speed, rescue by Burke-his taking orders-his If not, we fear the case of many of our return to his native place-his mounting poets is hopeless, and that others, besides the pulpit stairs, not caring what his old Satan Montgomery and the author of enemies thought of him or his sermon-his "Silent Love," would be wise to enjoy marriage-the entry, more melancholy by their present laurels, for verily there are far than the other, made years after in renone else for them. ference to it," yet happiness was denied" Seriously, we hope that much of Crabbe's the publication of his different workswriting will every year become less and the various charges he occupied-his childless readable, and less and less easily like surprise at getting so much money for understood; till, in the milder day, men the "Tales of the Hall"-his visit to shall have difficulty in believing that such Scotland-his mistaking the Highland physical, mental, and moral degradation, as he describes, ever existed in Britain; and till, in future Encyclopædias, his name be found recorded as a powerful but barbarous writer, writing in a barbarous age. The like may be the case with many, who have busied themselves more in recalling the past or picturing the present, than in anticipating the future. But there are, or have been among us, a few who have plunged beyond their own period, nay, beyond"all ages"-who have seen and shown us the coming eras:

"As in a cradled Hercules you trace

The lines of empire in his infant face." And their voice must go down, in tones becoming more authoritative as they last, and in volume becoming vaster as it rolls, like mighty thunderings and many waters, through the minster of all future time; in lower key, concerting with those now awful voices from within the veil, which have already shaken earth, and which uttered "once more," shall shake not earth only, but also Heaven. High destiny! but not his whose portrait we have now drawn.

chiefs for foreigners, and bespeaking them in bad French-his figure as he went, dogged by the caddie through the lanes of the auld town of Edinburgh, which he preferred infinitely to the new-the "aul' fule" he made of himself in pursuit of a second wife, &c., &c. ; so absent do we become in thinking over all this, that it disturbs his abstraction, he starts, stares, asks us into his parsonage, and we are about to accept the offer, when we awake, and, lo! it is a dream.

ANECDOTE OF SIMPSON. Simpson, the actor, I would never take medicine; and his medical man was often obliged to resort to some stratagem to impose a dose upon him. There was a piece--I do not recollect the name-in which the hero is sentenced in prison to drink a cup of poison. Harry Simpson was playing his character one night, and had given directions to have it filled with port wine, but what was his horror when he came to drink it, to find it contained a dose of senna! He could not throw it away, as he had to hold the goblet upside down, to show his persecutors he had drunk every slowness of a poisoned martyr; but he never forgave drop of it. Simpson drank the medicine with the his medical man this trick, as he fully proved at his death-for he died without paying him his bill.

From Bentley's Miscellany.

THE LATE BISHOP OF NORWICH, AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

BY ONE OF HIS DAUGHTERS.

Lady Dacre-Mathias-Nicholini-Dr. Parr-Wilberforce-Gurney-Mrs. Fry-Mrs. Opie Charlotte Smith--Hannah More-Lord Byron-Miss Millbank-Queen Caroline.

NEXT to Shakspeare, my father admired, | Gibbon, perhaps, with the sole exception of almost adored, the sublime writings of Mitford, whose simplicity of style and Milton, especially the sonnets and smaller strict adherence to the text of his Greek poems, and his prose works; and he ob- authorities satisfied his classical taste. served it was not the vanity of a little In speaking of Literature, which must mind, but the conscious power of a great occupy so large a space in any Biography one, with the unaffected confession of that of my father, I ought to have commenced power, which induced Milton to express his with his earliest studies, I mean those to certainty that "whether in prosing or in which the public schools in England are versing there was in his writings that which exclusively devoted; the ancient classics, would live for ever." The prejudices of Greek and Latin, being the two main oblater life, and the unwillingness with which jects at Winchester, where memory leads to my father ever turned to novelty,- -an un- every distinction. He of course acquired willingness which extended itself even to a full knowledge of both, particularly the the minute details of his domestic affairs, latter, in which he was a perfectly accomand induced him almost to suffer any in-plished scholar; he wrote both in prose and convenience rather than change a servant, verse, and conversed in that language fluand to feel pain even at the altered arrange-ently; he had learnt Hebrew of a Jew, and ment of the furniture-led him to under-read the Bible in its own original tongue; value modern poesy. Byron was not likely he had acquired a perfect knowledge of to suit him, a genius too earthly for my Italian, and delighted himself in the store father's refined and spiritual mind: he of its poetical riches, such, at least, as he admired the lament of "Tasso," more be- so considered them, for he much admired cause it reminded him of his favorite Petrarch, and particularly Dante. From Torquato. Shelley became known only in the latter he often repeated the story of his very last years; doubtless he would Count Ugolino in the Tower of Famine, and have appreciated his mighty genius which had so often told it, that he believed it soared into, and sang from the spiritual himself true, how the Count had heard with world. With Moore's smaller poems, those despair the heavy fall of the prison key, beautiful effusions of feeling and of tender- and the splash of the waters, as the jailor, ness set to the music of the Irish melodies after locking the portal, flung that key into -he was much touched. Southey, Cole- the Arno, thus barring for ever all hope of ridge, and Wordsworth, he neither much rescue. It was a splendid idea, and I studied, nor much admired. Many were question whether Dante would not have the vain attempts exercised by Lady Beau- adopted it, had it occurred to him, or had mont to inoculate him with one spark of he thought it possible to increase the horher enthusiasm for the latter poet, while rors of the scene.

Sir George at the same time entreated her The Canzones of Petrarch, as translated "not to ride her hobby-horse so very hard." by his friend Lady Dacre, and which afterI remember upon one occasion her muslin wards appeared in Ugo Foscolo's life of scarf catching fire when she was declaiming, that poet, were much admired by the Bishop, and my father with some difficulty extin- who considered these translations to surpass guishing the flames. any attempts of the kind.

My father's taste for the Belles Lettres, They were first made public by Mathias, like his poetical inclinations, leant also, who, with his friend Nicholls, better known and naturally, towards "the works of his own by the name of Nicholini, on account of his day;" he would allow of no writers later than love for Italy, was my father's frequent Johnson, Addison, Swift, Sterne, Burke, guest. Mathias printed them at Naples at Arbuthnot; no historian after Hume and his own expense, and, of course, with the