“The Sum on Dress by this fair Creature spent
Would more than equal Colin’s yearly rent.”
Professor E. Dowden, LL.D., of Trinity College, Dublin, has added to previous obligations conferred on me in connexion with the present edition by allowing me the use of two small books belonging to him, in Crabbe’s handwriting (D.). One of these supplies the complete Tale of The Deserted Family, now for the first time printed (pp. [477]–488). The other contains drafts of Posthumous Tales VI-XVI and XXII; the more important variants offered by these are inserted in the list at the end of the present volume. From this MS. book are also taken the verses entitled The Prodigal Going (p. [517]).
The originals of certain pieces contained in the present volume are to be found in a book belonging to Mrs Mackay, of Trowbridge, which she has with the utmost liberality placed at my service. This interesting portion of Mrs Mackay’s collection (M.) contains a series of proof-engravings of Corbould’s, Westall’s and other illustrations of certain among the earlier editions of Crabbe’s Poems. It also includes a draft of a portion of The Sisters (Tales of the Hall, Bk. VIII; see Vol. II, and variants, ib.), and the lines To Lady Jersey (p. [435]), in a version, of which the variants have been duly noted. From this book are taken the following poems: the stanzas called by me The Flowers of the Spring (p. [508]), of which I have ventured to transpose the last two, and the fragment which I have named La Belle Dame sans Merci (p. [509]). Both pieces are here printed for the first time. Mrs Mackay’s collection also contains, written on separate leaves, the blank-verse lines entitled by me The Passionate Pilgrim (p. [496]), which are subscribed “Crabbe,” and of which the handwriting in several respects resembles that in Crabbe’s autograph of Midnight (see Vol. I), though less flowing than this; the couplets called by me Sorrow (p. [496]), which are not in the handwriting of Crabbe; and, finally, the lines To the Hon. Mrs Spencer (p. [503]), which are signed “Geo. Crabbe.”
Mr Buxton-Forman has most generously allowed me to print a series of pieces from his collection of MSS. (B.F.). It includes the verses which are entirely in Crabbe’s handwriting, as is perhaps the signature appended, and which I have called Hopeless Love (p. [510]); the fragment David Jones (p. [476]) of which the text may be, the title is certainly not, in Crabbe’s hand; and the fragment which I have called Robert and Catharine (p. [475]), as to which it seems uncertain whether the text is in Crabbe’s hand. It is manifestly an early draft of The Cousins (Posthumous Tales, XXI); but the actual phraseology in the two versions is very rarely the same. The following pieces are also derived from the same collection: those called by me Union (p. [511]) and Revival (ib.), of which latter the third stanza appears in a rather different form on a separate leaf; Metamorphosis (p. [512]); and Contentment (p. [493]), a fragment of a tale. Mr Buxton-Forman’s Crabbe MSS. also include memoranda for Tales and drafts of parts of The Will (Posthumous Tales, XX) and of Belinda Waters (ib. XV). In neither case are the variants offered by these drafts of importance.
Finally, the late Duke of Rutland was so kind as to allow several pieces of verse in Crabbe’s own handwriting preserved at Belvoir to be transcribed for insertion in the present edition (B). Some of these, I cannot but think, were transcribed by the Duke’s own hand. Most of them were exhibited at the Crabbe Celebration held at Aldborough in September, 1905, and successfully arranged and organised by Mr Charles Ganz. The Verses to the Duke of Rutland dated Belvoir, August, 1784, were most kindly transcribed for me after the death of the late Duke by his Grace’s Chaplain and Librarian, the Rev. F. W. Knox. Of these pieces, the Verses written for the Duke of Rutland’s Birthday (January 4, 1817) (p. [499]) and the lines entitled La Femme Jalouse (Teniers) (p. [507]) are here printed for the first time; to the latter a few variants have been furnished from an earlier copy in one of the MS. books in the possession of the University Press (U.P.). The stanzas For the Drawing of the Lady in the Green Mantle (p. [520]), and Brompton Park Cottage (p. [506]), are also printed for the first time, from transcripts made by the late Duke of Rutland, or by his Grace’s instructions, from the originals at Belvoir. In the former case the original states the “Fair Artist” who drew the picture to have been Miss Isabella Forrester. In the latter the drawing in question is stated to have been made by Lady Sophia Norman, the cottage having been lent to the Duke, when ill, by Mr Greenwood. In the former case the last three stanzas, and in the latter a few various readings, have been supplied from one of the Crabbe MS. books in the possession of the Cambridge University Press (U.P.). To the lines From Belvoir Castle (p. [389]), Storm and Calm (p. [396]), and To Sarah, Countess of Jersey, on her Birthday (p. [435]), previously printed in the 1834 edition, variants have been supplied from the Duke’s transcripts.
Of the Miscellaneous Verses previously printed reprinted in the present volume the two Poetical Epistles (April, 1780) are, by the kind permission of Mr Buxton-Forman, owner of the MSS., and of Dr W. Robertson Nicoll and Mr T. J. Wise, editors of Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century (1896), and of Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, reproduced at length from Vol. II of that work. Ten lines from the Epistle to Mira had already been printed in Vol. I (p. [67]) from the Life (p. [58]) in Vol. I of the 1834 edition.
From this edition also come, with the exception of the last but two and the last, all the remaining shorter pieces already published (some with variants, duly noted, from the University Press and Belvoir MSS., from the MSS. of Mrs Mackay, and from an article entitled Treasure Trove contributed by Miss M. Jourdain to The Book Monthly for May, 1906). This article, of which Miss Jourdain and her publishers (Messrs Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.) kindly allowed me to make use, consists of pieces printed from transcripts made at Belvoir Castle. In Miss Jourdain’s article is included stanza v of The Friend in Love (p. [437]), which is missing in the stanzas given in the Life (1834). A few variants in this version have been duly noted. I may add that between The World of Dreams and Sir Eustace Grey which in metre and otherwise are so closely associated with one another, no actual parallelisms either of sense or of form are noticeable. The exceptions referred to are the following. The Lines (Edinburgh, August 15, 1822) (p. [440]) are printed, without variants, from a separately printed leaflet in my possession: and the Lines addressed to the Dowager Duchess of Rutland (p. [441]) from The Casket (1829), with variants from Miss Jourdain’s article in The Book Monthly.
Of the Poems hitherto unpublished a list giving the source of each will be found at the close of the Bibliography in this volume. In the general sequence of these pieces I have so far as possible adopted a chronological order; the whole body of previously unpublished verse has however been divided into two groups—viz. tales and fragments of tales, and lyrical pieces; and, where there was no indication of date, the poems taken from the same collection of MSS. have been kept together.
It remains for me to return my sincere thanks to the possessors of Crabbe MSS. already mentioned, and to others who have in various ways aided me in making this concluding volume of Crabbe’s Poems, and therewith the edition as a whole, as complete as possible. I should like, in especial, to thank Professor Morfill of Oxford for enriching the Bibliography at the close of this volume by enabling us to refer to two works which attest the very curious and significant fact of the interest in Crabbe taken in Russia.