‘“Him now they follow to his grave, and stand
Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand”—
worth nearly all the rest of his verses put together, and an unanswerable condemnation of their general tendency and spirit. It is images, such as these, that the polished mirror of the poet’s mind ought chiefly to convey; that cast their soothing, startling reflection over the length of human life, and grace with their amiable innocence its closing scenes; while its less alluring and more sombre tints sink in, and are lost in an absorbent ground of unrelieved prose. Poetry should be the handmaid of the imagination, and the foster-nurse of pleasure and beauty: Mr. Crabbe’s Muse is a determined enemy to the imagination, and a spy on nature.
‘Before we proceed, we shall just mark a few of those quaintnesses of expression, by which our descriptive poet has endeavoured to vary his style from common prose, and so far has succeeded. Speaking of Quarle he says:
‘“Of Hermit Quarle we read, in island rare,
Far from mankind and seeming far from care;
Safe from all want, and sound in every limb;
Yes! there was he, and there was care with him.”[[87]]
· · · · ·
‘“Here are no wheels for either wool or flax,