d, these stories belong to the
category of fiction as well as of poetry, and the duration of their
power to attract was affected not only by the appearance of greater
poets, but of prose story-tellers with equal knowledge of the human
heart, and with other gifts to which Crabbe could make no claim. His
knowledge and observation of human nature were not perhaps inferior to
Jane Austen's, but he could never have matched her in prose fiction. He
certainly was not deficient in humour, but it was not his dominant gift,
as it was hers. Again, his knowledge of the life and social ways of the
class to which he nominally belonged, does not seem to have been
intimate. Crabbe could not have written prose fiction with any
approximation to the manners of real life. His characters would have
certainly _thou'ed_ and _thee'ed_ one another as they do in his verse,
and a clergyman would always have been addressed as "Reverend Sir!"

Surely, it will be argued, all this is sufficient to account for the
entire disappearance of Crabbe from the list of poets whom every
educated lover of poetry is expected to appreciate. Yet the fact
remains, as FitzGerald quotes from Sir Leslie Stephen, that "with all
its short-and long-comings, Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the
reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can," and almost all
English poets and critics of mark, during his time and after it, have
agreed in recognising the same fact. We know what was thought of him by
Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson. Critics differing as
widely in other matters as Macaulay, John Henry Newman, Mr. Swinburne,
and Dr. Gore, have found in Crabbe an insight into the springs of
character, and a tragic power of dealing with them, of a rare kind. No
doubt Crabbe demands something of his readers. He asks from them a
corresponding interest in human nature. He asks for a kindred habit of
observation, and a kindred patience. The present generation of
poetry-readers cares mainly for style. While this remains the habit of
the town, Crabbe will have to wait for any popular revival. But he is
not so dead as the world thinks. He has his constant readers still, but
they talk little of their poet. "They give Heaven thanks, and make no
boast of it." These are they to whom the "unruly wills and affections"
of their kind are eternally interesting, even when studied through the
medium of a uniform and monotonous metre.

A Trowbridge friend wrote to Cra