,
whereas the later French realists had no influence upon him whatever.
"Crabbe was our first great English realist" Mr. Hardy would tell you if
only we could persuade him to speak from this platform, as unfortunately
he will not.

Lastly let us take Crabbe as a great story-teller. He has many more
ideas than most of the novelists. That is why we do well to recall the
hint of the writer who said that when a new work came out we should take
down an old one from our shelves. Instead of the "un-idead" novels, that
come out by the dozen and are so popular. I wish we could agree to read
Crabbe's novels in verse. Unhappily their form is against them in the
present age. But it would not be at all a misfortune if we could make
Crabbe's _Tales_ once more the vogue. They are good stories, absorbingly
interesting. They leave a very vivid impression on the mind. Once read
they are unforgettable.

I have seen it stated that these stories are old-fashioned both in manner
and in substance. In manner they may be, but in substance I maintain
they are intensely modern, alive with the spirit of our time. Any latter-
day novelist might envy Crabbe his power of developing a story. It is
this essential modernity that is to make Crabbe's place in English
literature secure for generations yet to come.

Finally, Crabbe's place in English literature is as the bridge between
the eighteenth and nineteenth century. With him begins that "enthusiasm
of humanity" which the eighteenth century so imperfectly understood.
Byron and Wordsworth, disliking each other cordially, did well to praise
him, for he was their forerunner. A master of pathos, you may find in
his work incentive to tears and laughter, although sometimes the humour,
as in _The Learned Boy_, is sadly unconscious.

But I must bring these rambling remarks to a close, and in doing so I
must once again quote that other Suffolk worthy to whom many of us are
very much attached, I mean Edward FitzGerald. When Sir Leslie Stephen
wrote what is to my mind a singularly infelicitous essay on Crabbe in the
_Cornhill_, he quoted the remark, which seemed to be new to FitzGerald,
as to Crabbe being a "pope in worsted stockings"--a remark made by Horace
Smith of _Rejected Addresses_, although I have seen it ascribed to Byron
and others. "Pope in worsted stockings," exclaimed FitzGerald, "why I
could cite whole paragraphs of as fine a texture as Moliere; 'incapable
of epigram,' the jack