workhouse, where the wheel hummed doleful through the day-to erring damsels and luckless swains, the prey of overseers or justices -or to the haunts of desperate poachers and smugglers, gipsies and gamblers, where vice and misery stalked undisguised in their darkest forms.

He stirred up the dregs of human society, and exhibited their blackness and deformity, yet worked them into poetry. Like his own Sir Richard Monday, he never forgot the parish. It is true that village-life in England in its worst form, with the old poor and game laws and non-resident clergy, was composed of various materials, some bright and some gloomy, and Crabbe drew them all. His Isaac Ashford is as honourable to the lowly English poor as the Jeanie Deans or Dandie Dinmont of Scott are to the Scottish character. His story of the real mourner, the faithful maid who watched over her dying sailor, is a beautiful tribute to the force and purity of humble affection. In The Parting Hour and The Patron are also passages equally honourable to the poor and middle classes, and full of pathetic and graceful composition. It must be confessed, however, that Crabbe was in general a gloomy painter of life-that he was fond of depicting the unlovely and unamiable-and that, either for poetic effect or from painful experience, he makes the bad of life predominate over the good. His pathos and tenderness are generally linked to something coarse, startling, or humiliating to disappointed hopes or unavailing sorrow

Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.

The minuteness with which he dwells on such subjects sometimes makes his descriptions tedious, and apparently unfeeling. He drags forward every defect, every vice and failing, not for the purpose of educing something good out of the evil, but, as it would seem, merely for the purpose of completing the picture. In his higher flights,. where scenes of strong passion, vice, or remorse are depicted, Crabbe is a moral poet, purifying the heart, as the object of tragedy has been defined, by terror and pity, and by fearful delineations of the misery and desolation caused by unbridled passion. His story of Sir Eustace Grey is a domestic tragedy of this kind, related with almost terrific power, and with lyrical energy of versification. His general style of versification is the couplet of Pope-he has been wittily called Pope in worsted stockings'-but less flowing and melodious, and often ending in points and quibbles. Thus, in describing his cottage fur niture, he says

No wheels are here for either wool or flax,
But packs of cards made up of sundry packs.

His thrifty housewife, Widow Goe, falls down in sickness→→

Heaven in her eye, and in her hand her keys.

This jingling style heightens the effect of his humorous and homely descriptions; but it is too much of a manner, and mars the finer passages. Crabbe has high merit as a painter of English scenery. He is here as original and forcible as in delineating character. His marine landscapes are peculiarly fresh and striking; and he invests even the sterile fens and barren sands with interest. His objects are seldom picturesque; but he noted every weed and plant-the purple bloom of the heath, the dwarfish flowers among the wild gorse, the slender grass of the sheepwalk, and even the pebbles, sea-weed, and shells amid

The glittering waters on the shingles rolled.

He was a great lover of the sea, and once, as his son relates, after being some time absent from it, mounted his horse and rode alone sixty miles from his house, that he might inhale its freshness and gaze upon its waters.

Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bears the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell who know no parents' care;
Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there;
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears

And crippled age with more than childhood fears;
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they !
The moping idiot and the madman gay.

Here too the sick their final doom receive,

Here brought amid the scenes of grief, to grieve,

Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,
Mixed with the clamours of the crowd below;

Here sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,
And the cold charities of man to man:

Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide,

And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;
But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,

And pride embitters what it can't deny.

Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes,

Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;

Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
With timid eye, to read the distant glance;

Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,

To name the nameless ever-new disease;

Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure,
How would ye bear in real pain to lie,

Despised, neglected, left alone to die?

How would ye bear to draw your latest breath

Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?

Such is that room which one rude beam divides,

And naked rafters form the sloping sides;

Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,
And lath and mud are all that lie between;

Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way
To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day:
Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread,
The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;
For him no hand the cordial cup applies,
Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes;
No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile,
Or promise hope till sickness wears a smile.
But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,
Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls;
Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,

All pride and business, bustle and conceit,
With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go;
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye;

A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murderous hand a drowsy bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.

Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
And, some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply, he rushes on the door;
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,

And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain ;
He ceases now the feeble help to crave

Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.

Isaac Ashford, a Noble Peasant.—From the Parish Register.'

Next to these ladies, but in nought allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned and his soul serene;
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid;

At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed;
Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace:
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face;
Yet while the serious thought his soul approved,
Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved;
To bliss domestic he his heart resigned,
And with the firmest, had the fondest mind;
Were others joyful, he looked smiling on,
And gave allowance where he needed none;
Good he refused with future ill to buy,
Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh;
A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast

No envy stung, no jealousy distressed

Bane of the poor! it wounds their weaker mind
To miss one favour which their neighbors find-
Yet far was he from stoic pride removed;
He felt humanely, and he warmly loved:
I marked his action when his infant died,
And his old neighbour for offence was tried;

The still tears, stealing down that furrowed cheek,
Spoke pity plainer than the tongue can speak.
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride,
Who, in their base contempt, the great deride;

Nor pride in learning, though my clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed;
Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew
None his superior, and his equals few:
But if that spirit in his soul had place,
It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace;
A pride in honest fame, by virtue gained,
In sturdy boys to virtuous labours trained;

Pride in the power that guards his country's coast,
And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast;
Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied,
In fact, a noble passion, misnamed pride.
He had no party's rage, no sect'ry's whim;
Christian and countryman was all with him;
True to his church he came; no Sunday-shower
Kept him at home in that important hour;
Nor his firm feet could one persuading sect
By the strong glare of their new light direct;
'On hope, in mine own sober light, I gaze,
But should be blind and lose it in your blaze.'

In times severe, when many a sturdy swain
Felt it his pride, his comfort to complain,
Isaac their wants would soothe, his own would hide,
And feel in that his comfort and his pride.

At length he found, when seventy years were run,
His strength departed and his labour done;
When, save his honest fame, he kept no more;
But lost his wife and saw his children poor;
"Twas then a spark of-say not discontent-
Struck on his mind, and thus he gave it vent:
'Kind are your laws-'tis not to be denied-
That in yon house for ruined age provide,
And they are just; when young, we give you all,
And then for comforts in our weakness call.
Why then this proud reluctance to be fed,
To join your poor and eat the parish bread?
But yet I linger, loath with him to feed
Who gains his plenty by the sons of need;
He who, by contract, all your paupers took,
And gauges stomachs with an anxious look:
On some old master I could well depend:
See him with joy, and thank him as a friend;
But ill on him who doles the day's supply,
And counts our chances who at night may die:
Yet help me, Heaven! and let me not complain
Of what befalls me, but the fate sustain.'

Such were his thoughts, and so resigned he grew;
Daily he placed the workhouse in his view!
But came not there, for sudden was his fate,
He dropt expiring at his cottage-gate.

I feel his absence in the hours of prayer,
And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there;
I see no more those white locks thinly spread
Round the bald polish of that honoured head
No more that awful glance on playful wight
Compelled to kneel and tremble at the sight;
To fold his fingers all in dread the while,
Till Mister Ashford softened to a smile;
No more that meek and suppliant look in prayer,
Nor the pure faith-to give it force-are there..
But he is blest, and I lament no more,

A wise good man contented to be poor.

Phoebe Dawson.-From the Parish Register.'

Two summers since, I saw at Lammas fair,
The sweetest flower that ever blossomed there;
When Phoebe Dawson gaily crossed the green,
In haste to see, and happy to be seen;

Her air, her manners, all who saw, admired,
Courteous though coy, and gentle though retired;
The joy of you h and health her eyes displayed,
And ease of heart her every look conveyed;
A native skill her simple robes expressed,
As with untutored elegance she dressed;
The lads around admired so fair a sight,
And Phoebe felt, and felt she gave, delight.
Admirers soon of every age she gained,
Her beauty won them and her worth retained;
Envy itself could no contempt display,

They wished her well, whom yet they wished away.
Correct in thought, she judged a servant's place
Preserved a rustic beauty from disgrace;
But yet on Sunday-eve, in freedom's hour,
With secret joy she felt that beauty's power;
When some proud bliss upon the heart would steal,
That, poor or rich, a beauty still must feel.

At length, the youth ordained to move her breast,
Before the swains with bolder spirit pressed;
With looks less timid made his passion known,
And pleased by manners, most unlike her own:
Loud though in love, and confident though young;
Fierce in his air, and voluble of tongue,

By trade a tailor, though, in scorn of trade,

He served the squire, and brushed the coat he made;

Yet now, would Phoebe her consent afford,

Her slave alone, again he'd mount the board;

With her should years of growing love be spent,

And growing wealth: she sighed and looked consent.
Now, through the lane, up hill, and cross the green-
Seen by but few, and blushing to be seen-
Dejected, thoughtful, anxious, and afraid-
Led by the lover, walked the silent maid:

Slow through the meadows roved they many a mile.
Toyed by each bank and trifled at each stile;
Where as he painted every blissful view,
And highly coloured what he strongly drew,
The pensive damsel, prone to tender fears,
Dimmed the false prospect with prophetic tears:
Thus passed the allotted hours, till, lingering late,
The lover loitered at the master's gate;
There he pronounced adieu! and yet would stay,
Till chidden-soothed-entreated-forced away!
He would of coldness, though indulged, complain,
And oft retire and oft return again;

When, if his teasing vexed her gentle mind,
The grief assumed compelled her to be kind!
For he would proof of plighted kindness crave,
That she resented first, and then forgave,
And to his grief and penance yielded more
Than his presumption had required before:

Ah! fly temptation, youth; refrain ! refrain !
Each yielding maid and each presuming swain!.
Lo! now with red rent cloak and bonnet black,
And torn green gown loose hanging at her back,