place. "We turn to poetry," he says, "not that we may see and feel what
we see and feel in our daily experience, but that we may be refreshed by
other emotions, and fairer prospects, that we may take shelter from the
realities of life in the paradise of Fancy."

The appearance of these two prominent reviews to a certain extent
influenced the direction of Crabbe's genius for the remainder of his
life. He evidently had given them earnest consideration, and in the
preface to the _Tales_, his next production, he attempted something like
an answer to each. Without mentioning any names he replies to Jeffrey in
the first part of his preface, and to the _Quarterly_ reviewer in the
second. Jeffrey had expressed a hope that Crabbe would in future
concentrate his powers upon some interesting and connected story. "At
present it is impossible not to regret that so much genius should be
wasted in making us perfectly acquainted with individuals of whom we are
to know nothing but their characters." Crabbe in reply makes what was
really the best apology for not accepting this advice. He intimates that
he had already made the experiment, but without success. His peculiar
gifts did not fit him for it. As he wrote the words, he doubtless had in
mind the many prose romances that he had written, and then consigned to
the flames. The short story, or rather the exhibition of a single
character developed through a few incidents, he felt to be the method
that fitted his talent best.

Crabbe then proceeds to deal with the question, evidently implied by the
_Quarterly_ reviewer, how far many passages in _The Borough_, when
concerned with low life, were really poetry at all. Crabbe pleads in
reply the example of other English poets, whose claim to the title had
never been disputed. He cites Chaucer, who had depicted very low life
indeed, and in the same rhymed metre. "If all that kind of satire
wherein character is skilfully delineated, must no longer be esteemed as
genuine poetry," then what becomes of the author of _The Canterbury
Tales_? Crabbe could not supply, or be expected to supply, the answer to
this question. He could not discern that the treatment is everything,
and that Chaucer was endowed with many qualities denied to himself--the
spirit of joyousness and the love of sunshine, and together with these,
gifts of humour and pathos to which Crabbe could make no pretension.
From Chaucer, Crabbe passes to the great but very different maste