the country fair, the very apple stall and wayside inn with an air of romance that can never leave those of us who have once come under the magnificent spell of Lavengro and the Romany Rye. Perhaps Borrow is pre-eminently the writer for those who sit in armchairs and dream of adventures they will never undertake. Perhaps he will never be the favourite author of the really adventurous spirit, who wants the real thing, the latest book of actual travel. But to be the favourite author of those who sit in arm-chairs is no small thing, and, as I have said already, Borrow stands with Carlyle and Dickens in our century, by which I mean the nineteenth century; with Defoe and Goldsmith in the eighteenth century, as one of the really great and imperishable masters of our tongue.
What then will Norwich do for George Borrow? I ask this question, although it would, perhaps, be an impertinence to ask it were I not a Norwich man. If you have read Dr. Knapp’s Life of Borrow, you will have seen more than one reference to Mrs. Borrow’s landlord, “old King,” “Tom King the carpenter,” and so on, who owned the house in Willow Lane in which Borrow
spent his boyhood. That ‘old King the carpenter’—I believe he called himself a builder, but perhaps this was when he grew more prosperous—was my great-great-uncle. One of his sons became physician to Prince Talleyrand and married a sister of John Stuart Mill. One of his great-nieces was my grandmother, and her mother’s family, the Parkers, had lived in Norwich for many generations. So on the strength of this little piece of genealogy let me claim, not only to be a good Borrovian, but also a good Norvicensian. Grant me then a right to plead for a practical recognition of Borrow in the city that he loved most, although he sometimes scolded it as it often scolded him. I should like to see a statue, or some similar memorial. If you pass through the cities of the Continent—French, German, or Belgian—you will find in well-nigh every town a memorial to this or that worthy connected with its literary or artistic fame. How many memorials has Norwich to the people connected with its literary or artistic fame? Nay, I am not rash and impetuous. I would beg any one of my hearers who thinks that Borrow might well have
a memorial in marble or bronze in your city to wait a while. You are busy with a statue to Sir Thomas Browne—a most commendable scheme. To attempt to raise one to Borrow at this moment would probably be to court disaster. Nor do I advocate a memorial by private subscription. Observation has shown me what that means: failure or half failure in nearly every case. The memorial when it comes must be initiated by the City Fathers in council assembled. That time is perhaps far distant. But let us all do everything we can to make secure the high and honourable achievement of George Borrow, to kindle an interest in him and his writings, to extend a taste for the undoubted beauties of his works among all classes of his fellow-citizens—that is to secure Borrow the best of all monuments. More durable than brass will be the memorial that is contained in the assurance that he possesses the reverence and the homage of all true Norfolk hearts.
IV. TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF GEORGE CRABBE
An Address delivered at the Crabbe Celebration at Aldeburgh in Suffolk on the 16th of September, 1905.
I have been asked to say something in praise of George Crabbe. The task would be an easier one were it not for the presence of the distinguished critic from the University of Nancy who is with us to-day. M. Huchon [97] has devoted to the subject a singleminded zeal to which one whose profession is primarily that of a journalist can make no claim. Moreover it has been well said that the judgment of foreigners is the judgment of posterity, and I fully believe that where a writer has secured the suffrages of men of another nation than his own, he has done more for his ultimate fame than the
passing and fickle favour of his countrymen can secure for him. In any case Crabbe has been praised more eloquently than almost any other modern, and this in spite of the fact that he was not read by the generation succeeding his death, nor is he read much in our own time.
If you want to read Crabbe to-day in his entirety, you must become possessed of a huge and clumsy volume of sombre appearance, small type and repellant double columns. For fully seventy years it has not paid a publisher to reprint Crabbe’s poems properly. [98] When this was achieved in 1834, the edition in eight volumes was comparatively a failure, and the promised two volumes of essays and sermons were not forthcoming in consequence. Selections from Crabbe have been many, but when all is said he has been the least read for the past sixty or seventy years of all the authors who have claims to be considered classics. The least read but perhaps the best praised—that is one point of certainty. The praise began
with the politicians—with the two greatest political leaders of their age. The eloquent and noble Edmund Burke, the great-hearted Charles James Fox. Burke “made” George Crabbe as no poet was ever made before or since. To me there is no picture in all literature more unflaggingly interesting than that of the great man, whose life was so full of affairs, taking the poor young stranger by the hand, reading through his abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting—as the poet was quite unable to select—The Library and The Village as the most suitable for publication, helping him to a publisher, introducing him to friends, and proving himself quite untiring on his behalf. There is a letter of Burke’s printed in a little known book—The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker of the House of Commons—in which Burke takes the trouble to defend Crabbe’s moral character and to press his claims for being admitted to holy orders. “Dudley North tells me,” he continues, “that he has the best character possible among those with whom he has always lived, that he is now working hard to qualify, and has not only Latin, but some smattering of Greek.” It had