make a picture of sadness, that shall oppress you as a thing of sense.

His style corresponds to his thoughts; austere and simple, he entrusts entirely to the naked force of meaning, and that meaning it is impossible to mistake. The wickedness of sin, the wreck of passion, appear more fearful when they are not so much described as displayed by this colorless language, which, like the cloudless atmosphere, exhibits objects, without exhibiting itself.

Minuteness of touch is the characteristic

which critics commonly attribute to the moral pictures of Crabbe. Generally, this may be correct, yet no writer can suggest more than Crabbe does, at times, in few words, as where he describes the lady,

'wise, austere, and nice,

Who showed her virtue, by her scorn of vice;"

Or, when he sets before us the pliant parson, who pleased his parishioners by never offending them; one of those good easy souls, who never know the loss of appetite by the toils of thought; who bow and smile, and always say "yes;" whom an independent opinion would frighten, as a ghost from the dead; and who would as soon mount a forlorn hope, as venture on a sturdy contradiction.

"Fiddling and fishing were his arts; at times

He altered sermons, and he aimed at rhymes."

Crabbe's poetry is the tragedy of common life, and as tragedy we must judge it. The tragic elements are in rude forms as well as ideal ones; they are in humble conditions as well as in heroic situations. They belong to human nature in its essence, and the modes in which they show themselves are but the accidents of art or circumstances. The tragic genius naturally selects the sad and the terrible in our nature; most poets have associated these elements with exalted condition or extraordinary events. Crabbe has connected them with lowly individuals and unromantic incidents. If we, therefore, call Crabbe gloomy, why should we not so designate every writer who is purely tragic? Does Crabbe, in his terrible scenes, intend to give a general picture of common life? No, assuredly. He no more intends this, than the writer of romantic tragedy intends to represent his impersonations as the veracity of history, or as the counterparts of elevated rank. Crabbe, most certainly would no more imply that Peter Grimes, a vulgar, but gloomy and atrocious man was common among fishermen, than Massinger would have it understood that Sir Giles Overreach was a frequent character among private gentlemen. Peter Grimes is in essence a tragic character, as well as Sir Giles Overreach. In what sense, then, is Crabbe a gloomy writer in which Massinger is not also? Is it

that the personages of Crabbe are of low or every-day existence ?

Whether these are proper subjects for tragic story ́. a question of criticism, that I cannot here discuss, an the discussion of it is not necessary to my subject. The condition of the characteristics does not in any way affect the spirit which they embody. Admitti much of nature in that sympathy with the sorrows of those raised above us, which we so strongly feel, I think there is also in it somewhat of prejudice. Feelings more genuine and more true, would teach us not to destroy the difference but to lessen it. Some persons can feel for woe that weeps amidst gauze and gas F and faints most gracefully in a spangled robe, while they will turn away in disgusted selfishness from vulgar want. Yet the record of such want, the knowledge that such want has being, ought more to touch our hearts than the genteelest agony that was ever printed upon vellum. Sensibility, which is moral rather than imaginative, which has its glow in the affections, rather than in the fancy, can approach rude suffering in its coarseness, and it can bear it in description.

Crabbe dispelled many illusions which the fiction and falsehood of our literature had maintained in reference to humble life. Nor was it unkindness to the poor, but rather benevolence, to dispel such deceptions. The

region of laborious life was, to poets and their patrons, in enchanted Eden; a fairy land, where some light from the golden age continued yet to linger; where bpassions were asleep, where tastes were simple, and .where wants were few. The bards sang sweetly of poverty with blessed content; of innocence in rural zales, of shepherds that only dreamed of love, and thinds that whistled as they went for want of thought; of swains that tuned their oaten pipes, and maidens that listened in rapture to the sound; well pleased, the wealthy heard; sure never was lot so happy as the poor enjoyed; and while crime and misery were 1. 'their doors, they read only of contented Louisas and gentle Damons; then rushed to ball and banquet in the bliss of ignorance, and without one pang of charity.

Crabbe revealed other matters. He showed that sin and sorrow, guilt and passion, are doing their work at the base of society, as well as on its summit; he showed that the heart was much the same history in all conditions. This, so far, was novelty; and surely the novelty of truth is worth something, even when it is not so pleasant as we might desire; nor is that power manifested in vain, which shows us that the fearful strength of human nature which wrecks a throne, may spend

as terrible a fury on a cottage hearth.

As a matter of taste, we may object to the social grade of Crabbe's personages: as matter of principle, I see not that we can. Neither can we object to him that he connects them with dark and destructive passions. The passions are essentially the same, whether in high life or low; and with those which are dark and destructive the tragic writer deals, whether he places the catastrophe in palace or in tent. The envy of Iago, the jealousy of Othello, the ambition of Macbeth, and the cruelty of Richard, are all the same envy, jealousy, ambition, and cruelty in so many peasants; and in peculiarity of circumstances they might be equally as tragic. Will it be said, that Crabbe deals with such passions exclusively? It is not so; passages of greater sweetness, passages more loving, gentle, tender, beautiful, than numbers to be found in Crabbe, poet has seldom written. Take, for instance, the story of Phoebe Dawson; the sketch of the young girl towards the close of the "Parish Register," and her consumptive sailor lover; "The Parting Hour," and "Farmer Ellis ;" and if they have not moral truth and beauty, strong and devoted affections, I do not know what can be considered truth, beauty, or affection.

Crabbe is not ungentle, but he is sad. He has not the genial amplitude of Burns, and neither his constitu tion nor his circumstances tended to produce it. Burns,