May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.”
“Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.”
[13.] George Crabbe (1754-1832), the poet of the poor, was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on Christmas Eve of the year 1754. He stands thus midway between Goldsmith and Wordsworth—midway between the old and the new school of poetry. His father was salt-master—or collector of salt duties—at the little seaport. After being taught a little at several schools, it was agreed that George should be made a surgeon. He was accordingly apprenticed; but he was fonder of writing verses than of attending cases. His memory for poetry was astonishing; he had begun to write verses at the age of fourteen; and he filled the drawers of the surgery with his poetical attempts. After a time he set up for himself in practice at Aldborough; but most of his patients were poor people and poor relations, who paid him neither for his physic nor his advice. In 1779 he resolved “to go to London and venture all.” Accordingly, he took a berth on board of a sailing-packet, carrying with him a little money and a number of manuscript poems. But nothing succeeded with him; he was reduced to his last eightpence. In this strait, he wrote to the great statesman, Edmund Burke; and, while the answer was coming, he walked all night up and down Westminster Bridge. Burke took him in to his own house and found a publisher for his poems.
[14.] In 1781 The Library appeared; and in the same year Crabbe entered the Church. In 1783 he published The Village—a poem which Dr Johnson revised for him. This work won for him an established reputation; but, for twenty-four years after, Crabbe gave himself up entirely to the care of his parish, and published only one poem—The Newspaper. In 1807 appeared The Parish Register; in 1810, The Borough; in 1812, Tales in Verse; and, in 1819, his last poetical work, Tales of the Hall. From this time, till his death in 1832—thirteen years after—he produced no other poem. Personally, he was one of the noblest and kindest of men; he was known as “the gentleman with the sour name and the sweet countenance;” and he spent most of his income on the wants of others.
[15.] Crabbe’s poetical work forms a prominent landmark in English literature. His style is the style of the eighteenth century—with a strong admixture of his own; his way of thinking, and the objects he selects for description, belong to the nineteenth. While Pope depicted “the town,” politics, and abstract moralities, Crabbe describes the country and the country poor, social matters, real life—the lowest and poorest life, and more especially, the intense misery of the village population of his time in the eastern counties—
“the wild amphibious race
With sullen woe displayed in every face.”
He does not paint the lot of the poor with the rose-coloured tints used by Goldsmith; he boldly denies the existence of such a village as Auburn; he groups such places with Eden, and says—