Mr. Woodberry does not see all this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that other Autumnal one in ‘Delay has Danger,’ beginning—
Early he rose, and look’d with many a sigh,
On the red Light that fill’d the Eastern sky, etc.
Where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in—nay, as it were, to take a reflection from—the Hero’s troubled Soul. In the Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes, [282] and contrasts with those of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative representation of the scene have been out of character with the English Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further—
While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees
The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease,
But to his own reflections made reply,
And said aloud—‘Yes, doubtless we must die.’οίη περ φυλλων yενεη—
This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.
One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly ‘priggish’ candle case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know. We all know that of Crabbe’s ‘Village’ one passage was one of the first that struck young Wordsworth: and when Crabbe’s son was editing his Father’s Poems in 1834, old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been written since, including Wordsworth’s own. And Wordsworth was too honest, as well as too exclusive, to write so much even to a Son of the dead Poet, without meaning all he said.
I should not have written all this were it not that I think so much of Mr. Woodberry’s Paper; but I doubt I could not persuade him to think more of my old Man than he sees good to think for himself. I rejoice that he thinks even so well of the Poet: even if his modified Praise does not induce others to try and think likewise. The verses he quotes—
Where is that virtue which the generous boy, etc. [283]
made my heart glow—yes, even out at my Eyes—though so familiar to me. Only in my private Copy, instead of
When Vice had triumph—who his tear bestow’d
On injured merit—