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So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving many to lament his departure. Indeed, malignity was so active in one quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome Crabbe's successor before Crabbe and his sons had quitted the house! For other reasons, perhaps, Crabbe prepared to leave his two livings with a sense of relief.
For this was what he had arrived at; nothing more nor less, and how it might be done haunted him continually as he walked by night on the frozen road, or sat at meals within sound of Crabbe's cynical and lettered humour, and within sight of Pauline's white hands on which gleamed a couple of new and handsome rings. She must not marry him!
But Crabbe's indulgence in this habit is never a mere concession to the reader's flippant taste. His epigrams often strike deeply home, as in this instance or in the line: "Too soon made happy, and made wise too late." The story that follows of Phoebe Dawson, which helped to soothe Fox in the last stage of his long disease, is no less powerful.
The typical clergyman, as drawn, for instance, in Crabbe's poems and Miss Austen's novels, is a well-bred, respectable, and kindly person, playing an agreeable part in the social life of his neighbourhood, and doing a secular work of solid value, but equally removed from the sacerdotal pretensions of the Caroline divines and from the awakening fervour of the Evangelical preachers.
Crabbe's sympathy with the family, shown in his tribute to the sailor-brother appended to the poem he was then bringing to completion, still further strengthened the tie between them. Crabbe accompanied the Duke to London soon after, to assist him in arranging with Stothard for a picture to be painted of the incident of Lord Robert's death.
As the title of Crabbe's poem stands for the bane and not the antidote, he could not adopt the same method, but he could not resist some other precedents of the epic sort, and begins thus, in close imitation of The Dunciad "The mighty spirit, and its power which stains The bloodless cheek and vivifies the brains, I sing"
John Tovell, at Parham, and moreover as this rural inland village played a considerable part in the development of Crabbe's poetical faculty, it may be well to quote his son's graphic account of the domestic circumstances of Miss Elmy's relatives. Mr. Tovell was, like Mr.
These portraits of the ignoble rich are balanced by one of the "noble peasant" Isaac Ashford, drawn, as Crabbe's son tells us, from a former parish-clerk of his father's at North Glemham. Coming to be past work through infirmities of age, the old man has to face the probability of the parish poorhouse, and reconciling himself to his lot is happily spared the sore trial:
The criticism on the latter is little more than a greatly over-drawn picture of Crabbe's choice of vice and misery for his subjects, and ignores entirely any other side of his genius, ending with the remark that he would long be "a thorn in the side of English poetry." Crabbe was wise in not attaching too much importance to Hazlitt's attack.
The next few days brought remarkable changes, veiled by great care and deliberation on Crabbe's part. He gave up the shack to Martin and had a bonfire of his effects. He read the Montreal advertisements of clothing, and sent for a complete wardrobe and two large trunks, yet his manner to the few at Poussette's was sufficiently repressed to discourage curiosity.
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