"Why art thou so far from me, O my Lord? why hidest thou thy face? I am cast down; I am in poverty and affliction; be thou with me, O my God; let me not be wholly forsaken, O my Redeemer!
"Behold, I trust in thee, blessed Lord. Guide me, and govern me unto the end. O Lord, my salvation, be thou ever with me. Amen."
Unlike poor Chatterton, Crabbe had a firm trust in Providence, and was neither so passionate nor so reservedly haughty. He determined to leave no stone unturned; and at length he wrote to the only man of the age who was likely to lend him a kindly ear—that was Edmund Burke. From that moment his troubles were at an end, and his fortune made. Burke sent for him, looked at his manuscripts, perceived his claims to genius well founded, and received him to his own table. He then introduced him to Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the surly old Lord Chancellor Thurlow; the last of whom, though he had paid no attention to a letter he had before written to him, nor to a stinger which he had sent him in consequence, now sent for him, and told him that he ought to have noticed the first letter, and that he forgave the second, and that there was his reply. He put a sealed paper into Crabbe's hand, which on being opened contained a banknote, value one hundred pounds! Burke advised Crabbe to take orders, as they were walking together one day at Beaconsfield, whither Burke had invited him. This was soon managed; he was examined and admitted to priest's orders by the Bishop of Norwich, and was sent, to the astonishment of the natives, to officiate as curate in his native town. But Burke soon procured him the chaplaincy to the Duke of Rutland, and he went down to reside at Belvoir Castle. At this splendid establishment, and in a fine country, Crabbe did not enjoy himself. His son says: "The numberless allusions to the nature of a literary dependent's existence in a great lord's house, which occur in my father's writings, and especially in the tale of The Patron, are quite enough to lead any one that knew his character and feelings to the conclusion that, notwithstanding the kindness and condescension of the duke and duchess themselves—which were, I believe, uniform, and of which he always spoke with gratitude,—the situation he filled at Belvoir was attended with many painful circumstances, and productive in his mind of some of the acutest sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." He was always delighted to get away from the cold stateliness of Belvoir, with its troops of insolent menials, to the small seat of Chevely, about the period of the Newmarket races; or to Croxton, another small seat near Belvoir, where the family sometimes went to fish in the extensive ponds. Here the servants were few, ceremony was relaxed, and he could wander in the woods after his insects and his plants. Thurlow gave him two small livings in Dorsetshire, Frome St. Quintin, and Evershot; saying at the time, "By G—d, you are as much like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." He now published The Village, which was at once popular, and he got married.
Miss Sarah Elmy, to whom he became engaged at eighteen, had, through all his struggles in the metropolis, with unswerving affection, maintained the superiority of his talents, and encouraged him to persevere. The Duke of Rutland being appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the ducal family quitted Belvoir for Dublin, and Crabbe being left behind, was, on his proposed marriage, invited to bring his wife to the castle, and occupy certain apartments there. This was done; but the annoyance of another man's, and a great man's menials to attend on you, was too much for Crabbe, and he fled the castle, and took up his abode as curate of Stathern, in the humble parsonage there.
In this obscure parsonage Crabbe lived four years. He had three children born there—his two sons, George and John, and a daughter, who died in infancy. There he published, too, his poem, The Newspaper, which also was well received; and then he laid by his poetic pursuits for two-and-twenty years! Nay, his son says, that after this period of two-and-twenty years, he published The Parish Register, and again lay by from his thirty-first year till his fifty-second; and so completely did he bury himself in the obscurity of domestic and village life, that he was gradually forgotten as a living author, and the name of Crabbe only remembered through some passages of his poems in the Elegant Extracts.
Of the four years spent in Stathern, he used to speak as the very happiest of his life. He had won a pleasant retreat after his desperate clutch at fortune. His perseverance was rewarded by the society of her who had been the one faithful and congenial friend of his youth, and they could now ramble together at their ease amid the rich woods of Belvoir, without any of the painful feelings which had before checkered his enjoyment of the place. At home, a garden afforded him healthful exercise and unfailing amusement; and, as a mere curate, he was freed from any disputes with the villagers about him. Here he botanized, entomologized, and geologized to his heart's content. At one time he was tempted to turn sportsman, but neither his feelings nor his taste would allow him to continue one; and he employed his leisure hours much more to his satisfaction in exercising his medical skill to relieve the pains of his parishioners.
At the instance of the Duchess of Rutland,—Thurlow having exchanged the poet's Dorsetshire livings for those of Muston, in Leicestershire, and Allington, in Lincolnshire, but near each other,—Mr. Crabbe, in 1789, left Stathern, and entered on his rectory at Muston. Here his life continued much the same, but the country around was open and uninteresting. "Here," says his son, "were no groves, nor dry green lawns, nor gravel roads, to tempt the pedestrian in all weathers; but still, the parsonage and its premises formed a pretty little oasis in the clayey desert. Our front windows looked full on the church-yard, by no means like the common forbidding receptacles of the dead, but truly ornamental ground; for some fine elms partially concealed the small beautiful church and its spire, while the eye traveled through their stems, and rested on the banks of a stream, and a picturesque old bridge. The garden inclosed the other two sides of the church-yard; but the crown of the whole was a gothic archway, cut through a thick hedge and many boughs; for through this opening, as in the deep frame of a picture, appeared, in the center of the aerial canvas, the unrivaled Belvoir."
The home picture of Crabbe, at this period, is given by his son, with a glow of grateful remembrance of the happiness of the time to himself, then a child, that is beautiful. "Always visibly happy in the happiness of others, especially of children, our father entered into all our pleasures, and soothed and cheered us in all our little griefs, with such overflowing tenderness, that it was no wonder we almost worshiped him. My first recollection of him is, of his carrying me up to his private room to prayers, in the summer evenings, about sunset, and rewarding my silence and attention, afterward, with a view of the flower-garden through his prism. Then I recall the delight it was to me to be permitted to sleep with him during a confinement of my mother's—how I longed for the morning; because then he would be sure to tell me some fairy tale of his own invention, all sparkling with gold and diamonds, magic fountains, and enchanted princesses. In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at this period of his life; his fatherly countenance, unmixed with any of the less lovable expressions that, in too many faces, obscure that character—but preëminently fatherly; conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect, and purity; his manners grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his high and open forehead; his very attitudes, whether he sat absorbed in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects, or as he labored in his garden, until his naturally pale complexion acquired a tinge of fresh, healthy red, or as coming lightly toward us with some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke exultation in the foretaste of our raptures.
"But I think even earlier than these are my first recollections of my mother. I think the very earliest is of her combing my hair one evening, by the light of the fire, which hardly broke the long shadows of the room, and singing the plaintive air of 'Kitty Fell,' till, though I could not be more than two or three years old, my tears dropped profusely."
Equally charming is the writer's recollection of a journey into Suffolk with his father while a boy. This was to Parham, the house of Mrs. Crabbe's uncle Tovell, with whom she had been brought up. The picture presented of the life and establishment of a wealthy yeoman is so vivid, that I must take leave to add it to the passage already quoted.