Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 2 (of 2)

HOMES AND HAUNTS
OF THE
MOST EMINENT BRITISH POETS.
WILLIAM HOWITT.
The Illustrations Engraved by H. W. Hewet.
An indissoluble sign of their existence has stamped itself on the abodes of all distinguished men, a sign which places all kindred spirits in communion with them. — The Citizen of Prague.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 1847.
Belvoir Castle
When a youth, with a voracious appetite for books, an old lady, who kindly supplied me with many, put one day into my hands Crabbe's Borough. It was my first acquaintance with him, and it occasioned me the most singular sensations imaginable. Intensely fond of poetry, I had read the great bulk of our older writers, and was enthusiastic in my admiration of the new ones who had appeared. The Pleasures of Hope, of Campbell, the West Indies and World before the Flood, of Montgomery, the first Metrical Romances of Scott, all had their due appreciation. The calm dignity of Wordsworth and the blaze of Byron had not yet fully appeared. Every thing, however, old or new, in poetry, had a certain elevation of subject and style which seemed absolutely necessary to give it the title of poetry. But here was a poem by a country parson; the description of a sea-port town, so full of real life, yet so homely and often prosaic, that its effect on me was confounding. Why, it is not poetry, and yet how clever! Why, there is certainly a resemblance to the style of Pope, yet what subjects, what characters, what ordinary phraseology! The country parson, certainly, is a great reader of Pope, but how unlike Pope's is the music of the rhythm—if music there be! What an opening for a poem in four-and-twenty Books!
Describe the Borough—though our idle tribe