“Hard is the task who edits—thankless job!—
A Sunday journal for the factious mob
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest;
Condemn’d, this week, rash rancour to instil,
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will:
Alike undone or if he praise or rail
(For this affects his safety, that his sale),
He sinks at last, in luckless limbo set,
If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.”
They were, however, never printed; being, on reflection, considered too serious for the occasion.
It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write with such rigour, should descend to such lines as the following:—
“Something bad happen’d wrong about a bill
Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill,
So, to amend it, I was told to go
And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.”
Surely “Emanuel Jennings,” compared with the above, rises to sublimity.
[“‘The Theatre,’ by the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, is the best piece in the collection. It is an exquisite and most masterly imitation, not only of the peculiar style, but of the taste, temper, and manner of description of that most original author; and can hardly be said to be in any respect a caricature of that style or manner—except in the excessive profusion of puns and verbal jingles—which, though undoubtedly to be ranked among his characteristics, are never so thick sown in his original works as in this admirable imitation. It does not aim, of course, at any shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity, but seems to us to be a singularly faithful copy of his passages of mere description,”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.]
[88] You were more feeling than I was, when you read the excellent parodies of the young men who wrote the “Rejected Addresses.” There is a little ill-nature—and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature—in their prefatory address; but in their versification they have done me admirably. They are extraordinary men; but it is easier to imitate style than to furnish matter.—Crabbe (Works, 1 vol. Ed., p. 81).
[91] A street and parish in Lime Street Ward, London—chiefly inhabited by Jews.
[93] “We come next to three ludicrous parodies—of the story of The Stranger, of George Barnwell, and of the dagger-scene in Macbeth, under the signature of Momus Medlar. They are as good, we think, as that sort of thing can be, and remind us of the happier efforts of Colman, whose less successful fooleries are professedly copied in the last piece in the volume.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Renew.
[96] A translation from Kotzebue by Thompson, and first acted at Drury Lane, 24th March, 1798. Mrs. Siddons was famous in the part of Mrs. Haller.