h occasionally appeared in the
poet's corner of a certain 'Wheble's Magazine.' My Mira, said the young
surgeon, in a style which must have been rather antiquated even in
Aldborough--

My Mira, shepherds, is as fair
As sylvan nymphs who haunt the vale;
As sylphs who dwell in purest air,
As fays who skim the dusky dale.

Moreover, he won a prize for a poem on Hope, and composed an
'Allegorical Fable' and a piece called 'The Atheist reclaimed;' and, in
short, added plentifully to the vast rubbish-heap of old-world verses,
now decayed beyond the industry of the most persevering of Dryasdusts.
Nay, he even succeeded by some mysterious means in getting one of his
poems published separately. It was called 'Inebriety,' and was an
unblushing imitation of Pope. Here is a couplet by way of sample:--

Champagne the courtier drinks the spleen to chase,
The colonel Burgundy, and Port his Grace.

From the satirical the poet diverges into the mock heroic:--

See Inebriety! her wand she waves,
And lo! her pale, and lo! her purple slaves.

The interstices of the box of clothing which went with him from
Aldborough to London were doubtless crammed with much waste paper
scribbled over with these feeble echoes of Pope's Satires, and with
appeals to nymphs, muses, and shepherds. Crabbe was one of those men who
are born a generation after their natural epoch, and was as little
accessible to the change of fashion in poetry as in costume. When,
therefore, he finally resolved to hazard his own fate and Mira's upon
the results of his London adventure, the literary goods at his disposal
were already somewhat musty in character. The year 1780, in which he
reached London, marks the very nadir of English poetry. From the days of
Elizabeth to our own there has never been so absolutely barren a period.
People had become fairly tired of the jingle of Pope's imitators, and
the new era had not dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both recently dead,
serve to illustrate the condition in which the most exquisite polish and
refinement of language has been developed until there is a danger of
sterility. The 'Elegy' and the 'Deserted Village' are in their way
inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets
has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be
stimulated further without destroying all spontaneous impulse. The
reaction to a more masculine and passionate school was imminent; an