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We do not entirely know, perhaps, but we can conjecture how a reader in Crabbe's late eighteenth century, looking in Milton for authority for all that he unluckily and vainly admired, would well find it. He would find the approval of Young's "Night Thoughts" did he search for it, as we who do not search for it may not readily understand.
In Crabbe's strenuous and merciless analyses of human character his power would have been often weakened, had attention been diverted from the whole to the parts, and from the matter to the manner. The "finish" of Gray, Goldsmith, and Rogers suited exquisitely with their pensive musings on Human Life.
But though the course of this true love was to run more and more smooth, the question of Crabbe's future means of living seemed as hopeless of solution as ever. And yet the enforced idleness of these following years was far from unprofitable. The less time occupied in the routine work of his profession, the more leisure he had for his favourite study of natural history, and especially of botany.
Two years before, Southey, in answer to a friend who had made some reference to Crabbe and his poetry, writes: Southey's letter was written in September 1808, before either The Borough or the Tales was published, which may account for the inadequacy of his criticism on Crabbe's poetry.
The noble melancholy of his words and gestures was abundantly convincing, and suddenly the situation, at one time threatening to become unpleasantly melodramatic, became normal. The reversion to the light commonplaces and glib phrases of society was felt in Crabbe's careless tones as he spoke of the weather, adding: "'Tis never too late to be polite.
The manner of which intimacy, and the consequences thereof, we now proceed to relate. Reuben and Rachel, though as fond as doves, Were yet discreet and cautious in their loves, Nor would attend to Cupid's wild commands, Till cool reflection bade them join their hands; When both were poor, they thought it argued ill Of hasty love to make them poorer still. Crabbe's Parish Register.
During three days in June, Crabbe's attention is diverted from his own distresses by the Lord George Gordon Riots, of which his journal from June 8th contains some interesting particulars. He was himself an eye-witness of some of the most disgraceful excesses of the mob, the burning of the governor of Newgate's house, and the setting at liberty of the prisoners.
Crabbe's poems. With the imitative and realistic tendencies of his day he had no sympathy and he tells us frankly that his great admiration for Fuseli was largely due to the fact that the little Swiss did not consider it necessary that an artist should paint only what he sees.
It would perhaps be doubly unsafe to take for granted that many of our readers have both turned over the pages of Crabbe's Borough, and carried away in their minds from that moderately affecting poem, the description of Eusebius That pious moralist, that reasoning saint! Can I of worth like thine, Eusebius, speak? The man is willing, but the muse is weak.
The typical clergyman in English pictures of the manners of the day, in the Vicar of Wakefield, in Miss Austen's novels, in Crabbe's Parish Register, is represented, often quite unsuspiciously, as a kindly and respectable person, but certainly not alive to the greatness of his calling. He was often much, very much, to the society round him.
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