rsity_ he tells us that he had read
the poem thirty years earlier with extreme delight, "and have never lost
my love of it," and he goes on to plead that it is an absolute _classic_.

Not to have read Crabbe, therefore, is not to know one of the most
individual in the glorious muster-roll of English poets, and Crabbe was
pre-eminently an East Anglian, born and bred in East Anglia, and taking
in a peculiar degree the whole character of his environment, as only
Shakspere, Cowper and Wordsworth among our great poets, have done.

In conclusion, let me recapitulate that the names of Marryat, Sir Thomas
Browne, George Borrow, Margaret Paston, Horace Walpole, Sarah Austin,
Fanny Burney, Edward FitzGerald, and George Crabbe are those that I
prefer to associate with East Anglian Literature. We are well aware that
literature is but an aspect of our many claims on the gratitude of those
Englishmen who have not the good fortune to be East Anglians. We have
given to the Empire a great scholar in Porson, a great statesman in Sir
Robert Walpole, a great lawyer in Sir Edward Coke, great ecclesiastics in
Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Parker, great artists in Gainsborough,
Constable and Crome, and perhaps above all great sailors in Sir
Cloudesley Shovel and the ever memorable Lord Nelson. Personally I
admire a certain rebel, Kett the Tanner, as much as any of those I have
named.

Of all these East Anglian worthies the praise has often been sung, but
let me be pardoned if, on an occasion like this, I have dwelt rather at
length on the less familiar association of East Anglia with letters. That
I have but touched the fringe of the subject is obvious. What might not
be said, for example, concerning Norwich as a literary centre under
Bishop Stanley--the Norwich of the Taylors and the Gurneys, possessed of
as much real intellectual life as London can boast of to-day. What,
again, might not be said of the influence upon writers from afar. Read
Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_, Mr. Swinburne's _Midsummer Holiday_,
Charles Dickens' description of Yarmouth and Goldsmith's poetical
description in his _Deserted Village_, where clearly Houghton was
intended. {153} These, and a host of other memories touch the heart of
all good East Anglians, but that East Anglians do not forget the living
in doing honour to the dead is indicated by this gathering to-night. We
are grateful to Dr. Augustus Jessopp, to Mr. Walter Rye, to Mr. Edward
Clodd, and