r, on
whom he had first built his style. Was Pope, then, not a poet? seeing
that he too has "no small portion of this actuality of relation, this
nudity of description, and poetry without an atmosphere"? Here again, of
course, Crabbe overlooks one essential difference between himself and
his model. Both were keen-sighted students of character, and both
described sordid and worldly ambitions. But Pope was strongest exactly
where Crabbe was weak. He had achieved absolute mastery of form, and
could condense into a couplet some truth which Crabbe expanded, often
excellently, in a hundred lines of very unequal workmanship. The
_Quarterly_ reviewer quotes, as admirable of its kind, the description
in _The Borough_ of the card-club, with the bickerings and ill-nature of
the old ladies and gentlemen who frequented it. It is in truth very
graphic, and no doubt absolutely faithful to life; but it is rather
metrical fiction than poetry. There is more of the essence of poetry in
a single couplet of Pope's:

"See how the world its veterans rewards--
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards."

For here the expression is faultless, and Pope has educed
an eternally pathetic truth, of universal application.

Even had the gentle remonstrances of the two reviewers never been
expressed, it would seem as if Crabbe had already arrived at somewhat
similar conclusions on his own account. At the time the reviews
appeared, the whole of the twenty-one _Tales_ to be published in August
1812 were already written. Crabbe had perceived that if he was to retain
the admiring public he had won, he must break fresh ground. Aldeburgh
was played out. It had provided abundant material and been an excellent
training-ground for Crabbe's powers. But he had discovered that there
were other fields worth cultivating besides that of the hard lots of the
very poor. He had associated in his later years with a class above
these--not indeed with the "upper ten," save when he dined at Belvoir
Castle, but with classes lying between these two extremes. He had come
to feel more and more the fascination of analysing human character and
motives among his equals. He had a singularly retentive memory, and the
habit of noting and brooding over incidents--specially of "life's little
ironies"--wherever he encountered them. He does not seem to have
possessed much originating power. When, a few years later, his friend
Mrs. Leadbeater inquired of him whether the characters i