Emmanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter, a safe employ!
And here is the original Crabbe:—
Swallow, a poor attorney, brought his boy
Up at his desk, and gave him his employ.
When boy cannot be made to rhyme with employ, Crabbe is very fond of dragging in a hoy. In the 'Parish Register' he introduces a narrative about a village grocer and his friend in these lines:—
Aged were both, that Dawkins, Ditchem this,
Who much of marriage thought and much amiss.
Or to quote one more opening of a story:—
Counter and Clubb were men in trade, whose pains,
Credit, and prudence, brought them constant gains;
Partners and punctual, every friend agreed
Counter and Clubb were men who must succeed.
But of such gems anyone may gather as many as he pleases by simply turning over Crabbe's pages. In one sense, they are rather pleasant than otherwise. They are so characteristic and put forward with such absolute simplicity that they have the same effect as a good old provincialism in the mouth of a genuine countryman. It must, however, be admitted that Crabbe's careful study of Pope had not initiated him in some of his master's secrets. The worsted stockings were uncommonly thick. If Pope's brilliance of style savours too much of affectation, Crabbe never manages to hit off an epigram in the whole of his poetry. The language seldom soars above the style which would be intelligible to the merest clodhopper; and we can understand how, when in his later years Crabbe was introduced to wits and men of the world, he generally held his peace, or, at most, let fall some bit of dry quiet humour. At rare intervals he remembers that a poet ought to indulge in a figure of speech, and laboriously compounds a simile which appears in his poetry like a bit of gold lace on a farmer's homespun coat. He confessed as much in answer to a shrewd criticism of Jeffrey's, saying that he generally thought of such illustrations and inserted them after he had finished his tale. Here is one of these deliberately-concocted ornaments, intended to explain the remark that the difference between the character of two brothers came out when they were living together quietly:—
As various colours in a painted ball,
While it has rest are seen distinctly all;
Till, whirl'd around by some exterior force,
They all are blended in the rapid course;
So in repose and not by passion swayed
We saw the difference by their habits made;
But, tried by strong emotions, they became
Filled with one love, and were in heart the same.
The conceit is ingenious enough in one sense, but painfully ingenious. It requires some thought to catch the likeness suggested, and then it turns out to be purely superficial. The resemblance of such a writer to Pope obviously does not go deep. Crabbe imitates Pope because everybody imitated him at that day. He adopted Pope's metre because it had come to be almost the only recognised means of poetical expression. He stuck to it after his contemporaries had introduced new versification, partly because he was old-fashioned to the backbone and partly because he had none of those lofty inspirations which naturally generate new forms of melody. He seldom trusts himself to be lyrical, and when he does his versification is nearly as monotonous as it is in his narrative poetry. We must not expect to soar with Crabbe into any of the loftier regions; to see the world 'apparelled in celestial light,' or to descry