his long portrait gallery
there are plenty of virtuous people, and some people intended to be
refined; but features indicative of coarse animal passions, brutality,
selfishness, and sensuality are drawn to the life, and the development
of his stories is generally determined by some of the baser elements of
human nature. 'Jesse and Colin' are described in one of the Tales; but
they are not the Jesse and Colin of Dresden china. They are such rustics
as ate fat bacon and drank 'heavy ale and new;' not the imaginary
personages who exchanged amatory civilities in the old-fashioned
pastorals ridiculed by Pope and Gay.

Crabbe's rough style is indicative of his general temper. It is in
places at least the most slovenly and slipshod that was ever adopted by
any true poet. The authors of the 'Rejected Addresses' had simply to
copy, without attempting the impossible task of caricaturing. One of
their familiar couplets, for example, runs thus:--

Emmanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter, a safe employ!

And here is the original Crabbe:--

Swallow, a poor attorney, brought his boy
Up at his desk, and gave him his employ.

When boy cannot be made to rhyme with employ, Crabbe is very fond of
dragging in a hoy. In the 'Parish Register' he introduces a narrative
about a village grocer and his friend in these lines:--

Aged were both, that Dawkins, Ditchem this,
Who much of marriage thought and much amiss.

Or to quote one more opening of a story:--

Counter and Clubb were men in trade, whose pains,
Credit, and prudence, brought them constant gains;
Partners and punctual, every friend agreed
Counter and Clubb were men who must succeed.

But of such gems anyone may gather as many as he pleases by simply
turning over Crabbe's pages. In one sense, they are rather pleasant than
otherwise. They are so characteristic and put forward with such absolute
simplicity that they have the same effect as a good old provincialism in
the mouth of a genuine countryman. It must, however, be admitted that
Crabbe's careful study of Pope had not initiated him in some of his
master's secrets. The worsted stockings were uncommonly thick. If Pope's
brilliance of style savours too much of affectation, Crabbe never
manages to hit off an epigram in the whole of his poetry. The language
seldom soars above the style which would be intelligible to the merest
clodhopper; and we can understand ho