"Is Crabbe then, whatever shape he may take, worth
making room for in our over-crowded heads and libraries?
If the verdict of such critics as Jeffrey and Wilson be set
down to contemporary partiality or inferior 'culture,' there is
Miss Austen, who is now so great an authority in the representation
of genteel humanity, so unaccountably smitten with
Crabbe in his worsted hose that she is said to have pleasantly
declared he was the only man whom she would care to marry.
If Sir Walter Scott and Byron are but unaesthetic judges of the
poet, there is Wordsworth who was sufficiently exclusive in
admitting any to the sacred brotherhood in which he still
reigns, and far too honest to make any exception out of
compliment to any one on any occasion—he did nevertheless
thus write to the poet's son and biographer in 1834: 'Any
testimony to the merit of your revered father's works would,
I feel, be superfluous, if not impertinent. They will last
from their combined merits as poetry and truth, full as long as anything that has been expressed in verse since they first
made their appearance'—a period which, be it noted, includes
all Wordsworth's own volumes except Yarrow Revisited, The Prelude,
and The Borderers. And Wordsworth's living successor
to the laurel no less participates with him in his
appreciation of their forgotten brother. Almost the last time
I met him he was quoting from memory that fine passage in
Delay has Danger, where the late autumn landscape seems to
borrow from the conscience-stricken lover who gazes on it the
gloom which it reflects upon him; and in the course of further
conversation on the subject Mr. Tennyson added, 'Crabbe has
a world of his own'; by virtue of that original genius, I
suppose, which is said to entitle and carry the possessor to
what we call immortality."
Besides the stories selected for abridgment in the volume there were passages, from Tales not there included, which FitzGerald was never weary of citing in his letters, to show his friends how true a poet was lying neglected of men. One he specially loved is the description of an autumn day in The Maid's Story:—
"There was a day, ere yet the autumn closed,
When, ere her wintry wars, the earth reposed;
When from the yellow weed the feathery crown,
Light as the curling smoke, fell slowly down;
When the winged insect settled in our sight,
And waited wind to recommence her flight;
When the wide river was a silver sheet,
And on the ocean slept th' unanchor'd fleet,
When from our garden, as we looked above,
There was no cloud, and nothing seemed to move."
Another passage, also in Crabbe's sweeter vein, forms the conclusion of the whole poem. It is where the elder brother hands over to the younger the country house that is to form the future home of his wife and children:—
"It is thy wife's, and will thy children's be,
Earth, wood, and water! all for thine and thee.
There wilt thou soon thy own Matilda view,
She knows our deed, and she approves it too;
Before her all our views and plans were laid,
And Jacques was there to explain and to persuade.
Here on this lawn thy boys and girls shall run,
And play their gambols when their tasks are done,
There, from that window shall their mother view
The happy tribe, and smile at all they do;
While thou, more gravely, hiding thy delight
Shalt cry, 'O! childish!' and enjoy the sight."
FitzGerald's selections are made with the skill and judgment we should expect from a critic of so fine a taste, but it may be doubted whether any degree of skill could have quite atoned for one radical flaw in his method. He seems to have had his own misgivings as to whether he was not, by that method, giving up one real secret of Crabbe's power. After quoting Sir Leslie Stephen's most true remark that "with all its short-and long-comings Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can, while so many a more splendid vision of the fancy slips away, leaving scarce a mark behind." FitzGerald adds: "If this abiding impression result (as perhaps in the case of Richardson or Wordsworth) from being, as it were, soaked in through the longer process by which the man's peculiar genius works, any abridgement, whether of omission or epitome, will diminish from the effect of the whole." FitzGerald is unquestionably in sight of a truth here. The parallel with Wordsworth is indeed not exact, for the best of Wordsworth's poetry neither requires nor admits of condensation. The Excursion might benefit by omission and compression, but not The Solitary Reaper, nor The Daffodils. But the example of Richardson is fairly in point. Abridgments of Clarissa Harlowe have been attempted, but probably without any effect on the number of its readers. The power of Richardson's method does actually lie in the "soaking process" to which FitzGerald refers. Nor is it otherwise with Crabbe. The fascination which his readers find in him—readers not perhaps found in the ranks of those who prefer their poetry on "hand-made paper"—is really the result of the slow and patient dissection of motive and temptation, the workings of conscience, the gradual development of character. These processes are slow, and Crabbe's method of presenting them is slow, but he attains his end. A distinction has lately been drawn between "literary Poetry," and "Poetry which is Literature." Crabbe's is rarely indeed that of the former class. It cannot be denied that it has taken its place in the latter.
The apology for Crabbe's lengthiness might almost be extended to the singular inequalities of his verse. FitzGerald joins all other critics in regretting his carelessness, and indeed the charge can hardly be called harsh. A poet who habitually insists on producing thirty lines a day, whether or no the muse is willing, can hardly escape temptations to carelessness. Crabbe's friends and other contemporaries noted it, and expressed surprise at the absence in Crabbe of the artistic conscience. Wordsworth spoke to him on the subject, and ventured to express regret that he did not take more pains with the workmanship of his verse, and reports that Crabbe's only answer was "it does not matter." Samuel Rogers had related to Wordsworth a similar experience. "Mr. Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his later works so much less correctly than in his earlier. 'Yes,' replied he, 'but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.'" This is of course very sad, and, as has already been urged, Crabbe's earlier works had the advantage of much criticism, and even correction from his friends. But however this may be, it may fairly be urged that in a "downright" painter of human life, with that passion for realism which Crabbe was one of the first to bring back into our literature, mere "polish" would have hindered, not helped, the effects he was bent on producing. It is difficult in polishing the heroic couplet not to produce the impression of seeking epigrammatic point. In Crabbe's strenuous and merciless analyses of human character his power would have been often weakened, had attention been diverted from the whole to the parts, and from the matter to the manner. The "finish" of Gray, Goldsmith, and Rogers suited exquisitely with their pensive musings on Human Life. It was otherwise with the stern presentment of such stories of human sin and misery as Edward Shore or Delay has Danger.