"
She always maintained that A Life for a Life' was her best
book, a judgment shared by many of her friends and critics.
She always maintained that A Life for a Life' was her best
book, a judgment shared by many of her friends and critics.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v07 - Cic to Cuv
Unwin belong the verses and the
sonnet inscribed To Mary. '
Lives of Cowper are numerous. His old friend, John Newton,
attempted one immediately after his death, but this was not com-
pleted; and the first to appear was a life by Hayley (1803-6),
extended in the 'Life and Letters of Cowper,' by T. S. Grimshawe
(1835). There are also Cowper's own 'Memoirs' (a description of
his mental derangement and religious experiences), published in 1816;
'Life and Letters of Cowper' by Southey in 1835; and two books by
T. Wright, The Town of Cowper' (1886); and Life of Cowper'
(1892). An interesting biography has also been written by Goldwin
Smith, in the series of 'English Men of Letters,' in which he
says:-
-
"In all his social judgments Cowper is at a wrong point of view. He is
always deluded by the idol of his cave. He writes perpetually on the two-
fold assumption that a life of retirement is more favorable to virtue than a
life of action, and that God made the country and man made the town. '
His flight from the world was rendered necessary by his malady and
respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight and not a victory. His
misconception was fostered and partly produced by a religion which was
essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to characters of the highest
and most energetic beneficence, represented salvation too little as the reward
of effort, too much as the reward of passion, belief, and of spiritual emotion. "
## p. 4110 (#488) ###########################################
4110
WILLIAM COWPER
Yet despite this gloom, Cowper possessed the humor which finds
admirable expression in many small poems, in 'John Gilpin' and in
his 'Letters. ' These are the real mirror of his life. Southey con-
siders his letters the most delightful in the language. They contain
nothing but the details of his daily life, and such happenings as the
flowering of pinks, the singing of birds in the apple-blossoms, the
falling of the dew on the grass under his window, the pranks of his
pets, the tricks of the Spaniel Beau, the frolics of the tortoise-shell
kitten, the flight of his favorite hare, and the excitements of a morn-
ing walk when the once nodding grass is "fledged with icy feathers. "
Their English is so easy and graceful, and their humor so spontane-
ous, that the reader feels a sense of friendship with the modest poet
of 'The Task,' who, despite his platitudes, wins a certain respectful
admiration.
THE CRICKET
ITTLE inmate, full of mirth,
on my kitchen hearth,
Wheresoe'er be thine abode,
Always harbinger of good,
Pay me for thy warm retreat
With a song more soft and sweet;
In return thou shalt receive
Such a strain as I can give.
Thus thy praise shall be expressed,
Inoffensive, welcome guest!
While the rat is on the scout,
And the mouse with curious snout,
With what vermin else infest
Every dish, and spoil the best;
Frisking thus before the fire,
Thou hast all thine heart's desire.
Though in voice and shape they be
Formed as if akin to thee,
Thou surpassest, happier far,
Happiest grasshoppers that are;
Theirs is but a summer song-
Thine endures the winter long,
Unimpaired and shrill and clear,
Melody throughout the year.
## p. 4111 (#489) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
4111
THE WINTER WALK AT NOON
From The Task>
HE night was winter in his roughest mood;
THE The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendor of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;
And through the trees I view the embattled tower
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though movable through all its length,
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed;
And intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed:
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
## p. 4112 (#490) ###########################################
4112
WILLIAM COWPER
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.
Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced;
While sloth seduces them, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,-
Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation,- seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED
OLL for the brave-
TOLL
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset-
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.
-
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone;
His last sea fight is fought,
His work of glory done.
## p. 4113 (#491) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
VII-258
It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon a rock.
His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charged with England's thunder,
And plow the distant main.
But Kempenfelt is gone-
His victories are o'er;
And he and his eight hundred
Shall plow the waves no more.
IMAGINARY VERSES OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK
DURING HIS SOLITARY ABODE ON JUAN FERNANDEZ
AM monarch of all I survey –
I
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
I am out of humanity's reach;
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech —
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.
4113
## p. 4114 (#492) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
4114
Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man!
O, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth-
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.
Religion! What treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word! -
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford;
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when the Sabbath appeared.
Ye winds that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more!
My friends- do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
Oh tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is the glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-wingèd arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the sea-fowl has gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy-encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
EX
SO
## p. 4115 (#493) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
THE IMMUTABILITY OF HUMAN NATURE
From a Letter to William Unwin (1780)
4115
WHE
HEN we look back upon our forefathers, we seem to look
back upon the people of another nation; almost upon
creatures of another species. Their vast rambling man-
sions, spacious halls, and painted casements, the Gothic porch
smothered with honeysuckles, their little gardens and high walls,
their box-edgings, balls of holly, and yew-tree statues, are become
so entirely unfashionable now, that we can hardly believe it
possible that a people who resemble us so little in their taste
should resemble us in anything else. But in everything else, I
suppose, they were our counterparts exactly; and time, that has
sewed up a slashed sleeve and reduced the large trunk-hose to a
neat pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just where it
found it.
The inside of the man at least has undergone no change.
His passions, appetites, and aims are just what they ever were.
They wear perhaps a handsomer disguise than they did in the
days of yore, for philosophy and literature will have their effect
upon the exterior; but in every other respect a modern is only
an ancient in a different dress.
FROM A LETTER TO REV. JOHN NEWTON
OLNEY, NOVEMBER 30TH, 1783.
My dear Friend: -
-―
I
HAVE neither long visits to pay nor to receive, nor ladies to
spend hours in telling me that which might be told in five
minutes; yet often find myself obliged to be an economist of
time, and to make the most of a short opportunity. Let our
station be as retired as it may, there is no want of playthings
and avocations, nor much need to seek them, in this world of
ours. Business, or what presents itself to us under that impos-
ing character, will find us out even in the stillest retreat, and
plead its importance, however trivial in reality, as a just demand
upon our attention. It is wonderful how by means of such real
or seeming necessities my time is stolen away. I have just time
to observe that time is short, and by the time I have made the
observation, time is gone.
## p. 4116 (#494) ###########################################
4116
WILLIAM COWPER
I have wondered in former days at the patience of the ante-
diluvian world, that they could endure a life almost millenary,
and with so little variety as seems to have fallen to their share.
It is probable that they had much fewer employments than we.
Their affairs lay in a narrower compass; their libraries were in-
differently furnished; philosophical researches were carried on
with much less industry and acuteness of penetration, and fid-
dles perhaps were not even invented. How then could seven
or eight hundred years of life be supported? I have asked this
question formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it; but I think
I can answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand
years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun;
I worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's
milk and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to
my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of
age, having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all
the feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them. The morning
is thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it is become neces-
sary that I should dine. I dig up my roots; I wash them; boil
them; I find them not done enough, I boil them again; my wife
is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but in the mean time
the fire goes out, and must be kindled again.
All this is very
amusing.
I hunt; I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend
an old coat, or I make a new one. By this time the day is far
spent; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, what
with tilling the ground and eating the fruit of it, hunting, and
walking, and running, and mending old clothes, and sleeping
and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the primeval
world so much occupied as to sigh over the shortness of life,
and to find, at the end of many centuries, that they had all
slipped through his fingers and were passing away like a
shadow. What wonder then that I, who live in a day of so
much greater refinement, when there is so much more to be
wanted and wished, and to be enjoyed, should feel myself now
and then pinched in point of opportunity, and at some loss for
leisure to fill four sides of a sheet like this?
## p. 4117 (#495) ###########################################
4117
GEORGE CRABBE
(1754-1832)
EORGE CRABBE was born at Aldborough in Suffolk, the son of
a customs officer. He received a fair education for a vil-
lage lad, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a
country surgeon. He early showed an inclination toward letters,
versifying much while a schoolboy. In 1778 he abandoned his pro-
fession of medicine, in which he was not successful, and came up to
London with a few pounds and some manuscript in his pocket,
determined to make his way in literature. He met with the usual
reverses of a beginner without reputation
or patronage, and soon was desperately in
need of money. He wrote many letters
to well-known people, without response.
In his extremity he applied to Burke,
who, although a stranger, received him
most kindly into his own house, gave him
advice and criticism, recommended him to
Dodsley the publisher, and introduced him
to many notable men of the day, among
them Reynolds, Johnson, and Fox.
During this time Crabbe wrote The
Library and the 'The Village'; and also
at the suggestion of his patron qualified
himself for the ministry. He took holy
orders in 1782, and became shortly after chaplain to the Duke of
Rutland. Subsequently he held a number of small livings, procured
for him by his friends. The last of these, the rectory of Trowbridge,
given him in 1813, he held until his death in 1832.
'The Village,' published in 1783, made the poet's reputation. His
next work, The Newspaper,' published two years later, was much
inferior. For twenty years thereafter he wrote and destroyed vast
quantities of manuscript. Not until 1809 did he publish again. 'The
Parish Register,' coming out in that year, was even more successful
than his first work. In 1810 appeared 'The Borough,' containing his
best work; 'Tales in Verse' following in 1812. With Tales of the
Hall,' appearing in 1819, he took leave of the public.
Crabbe is an important link in the transition period between the
poetry of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Men were
GEORGE CRABBE
## p. 4118 (#496) ###########################################
4118
GEORGE CRABBE
growing tired of the artificiality and the conventional frigidity
of the current verse in the hands of the imitators of Pope. A feel-
ing for change was in the air, manifested in the incipient romantic
movement and in what is called "the return to nature. " Gold-
smith was one of the first to lead the way back to simplicity, but
he enveloped in a tender, somewhat sentimental idealism whatever
he touched. Then came Thomson with his generalizations of nature,
Cowper, a more faithful painter of rural scenes, and Burns, who
sang of the thought and feeling of the common man. The work
of these poets was a reaction against the poetry of town life, too apt
to become artificial with its subject. Yet, being poets and singers,
they expressed not so much the reality as what lies behind — its
beauty and its tenderness. To give the right perspective to this
return to nature, there was needed a man who should paint life as it
is, in its naked realism, unveiled by the glamour of poetic vision.
Crabbe was this man. The most uncompromising realist, he led
poetry back to human life on its stern dark side. Born and bred
among the poor, he described, as no one else in the whole range of
English verse has done, the sordid existences among which he had
grown up. He dispelled all illusions about rural life, and dealt the
death-blow to the Corydons and Phillises of pastoral poetry. He
showed that the poor man can be more immoral and even more
unprincipled than the rich, because his higher spiritual nature is
hopelessly dwarfed in the desperate struggle to keep the wolf from
the door. He supplied harrowing texts to the social economist. He
is a gloomy poet, especially in the first part of his work, for he
paints principally the shadows that hang over the lives of the lowly;
he does not deal with that life imaginatively as Wordsworth and
Burns do, but realistically, narrating with photographic
what he saw. He excels in graphic delineations of external facts,
but is also a powerful painter of the passions, especially the more
violent ones, such as remorse and despair. Sir Eustace Grey' is a
masterful portrayal of madness.
Crabbe has at times been denied the name of poet. There is little
music in his verse, little of that singing quality that goes with all
true poetry. His versification is often slipshod and careless. His
lack of taste and artistic feeling shows itself not only in the manner
but also in the matter of his work. He dwells by preference on the
unlovely; he does not choose his details as an artist would. He is
too minute, too like those Dutch painters who bestow as much care
on the refuse as on the burnished platters of their interiors. And
again he is trivial or too literal. But the steady admiration his
poetry has excited in men of the most different tastes for several
generations shows that it has deeper qualities. The truth is, that his
## p. 4119 (#497) ###########################################
GEORGE CRABBE
4119
mean and squalid details are not mere heaps of unrelated things, nor
irrelevant to his story; they are not even mere "scenery. " They
are part of the history, in general the tragedy, of human hearts and
souls; and owe their validity as poetic material, and their power of
interesting us, to their being part of the influences that bear on the
history.
Scott had Crabbe's poems read aloud in his last illness. Horace
Smith called him "Pope in worsted stockings. " Jane Austen said
she "could fancy being Mrs. Crabbe. " Cardinal Newman read the
'Tales of the Hall' with extreme delight on their first appearance,
and fifty years later still thought well of them. These different
opinions testify that whatever the shortcomings of Crabbe as crafts-
man, the earnestness and the genuineness of his work give him a
secure place among English poets.
NEX
ISAAC ASHFORD
From The Parish Register'
EXT to these ladies, but in naught allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned and his soul serene:
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid;
At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed;
Shame knew he not; he dreaded no disgrace;
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face:
Yet while the serious thought his soul approved,
Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved;
To bliss domestic he his heart resigned,
And with the firmest had the fondest mind.
Were others joyful, he looked smiling on,
And gave allowance where he needed none;
Good he refused with future ill to buy,
Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh;
A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast
No envy stung, no jealousy distressed;
(Bane of the poor! it wounds their weaker mind
To miss one favor which their neighbors find. )
Yet far was he from stoic pride removed;
He felt humanely, and he warmly loved.
I marked his action when his infant died,
And his old neighbor for offense was tried:
## p. 4120 (#498) ###########################################
4120
GEORGE CRABBE
The still tears, stealing down that furrowed cheek,
Spoke pity plainer than the tongue can speak.
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride
Who in their base contempt the great deride;
Nor pride in learning: though my Clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed;
Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew
None his superior, and his equals few:
But if that spirit in his soul had place,
It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace;
A pride in honest fame, by virtue gained,
In sturdy boys to virtuous labors trained:
Pride in the power that guards his country's coast,
And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast;
Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied
In fact a noble passion, misnamed Pride.
He had no party's rage, no sectary's whim;
Christian and countryman was all with him:
True to his church he came; no Sunday shower
Kept him at home in that important hour;
Nor his firm feet could one persuading sect
By the strong glare of their new light direct;
"On hope in mine own sober light I gaze,
But should be blind and lose it, in your blaze. "
-
In times severe, when many a sturdy swain
Felt it his pride, his comfort, to complain,
Isaac their wants would soothe, his own would hide,
And feel in that his comfort and his pride.
I feel his absence in the hours of prayer,
And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there:
I see no more those white locks thinly spread
Round the bald polish of that honored head;
No more that awful glance on playful wight,
Compelled to kneel and tremble at the sight,
To fold his fingers, all in dread the while,
Till Mr. Ashford softened to a smile:
No more that meek and suppliant look in prayer,
Nor the pure faith (to give it force), are there;-
But he is blest, and I lament no more
A wise, good man, contented to be poor.
## p. 4121 (#499) ###########################################
GEORGE CRABBE
4121
THE PARISH WORKHOUSE AND APOTHECARY
From The Village›
TH
HEIRS is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapors flagging play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell who know no parents' care;
Parents who know no children's love dwell there;
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood-fears;
The lame, the blind, and-far the happiest they! —
The moping idiot and the madman gay.
Here too the sick their final doom receive,
Here brought amid the scenes of grief to grieve,
Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,
Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below;
Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,
And the cold charities of man to man:
Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide,
And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;
But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,
And pride embitters what it can't deny.
Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
With timid eye, to read the distant glance;
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,
To name the nameless ever-new disease;
Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure:
How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
How would ye bear to draw your latest breath
Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?
Such is that room which one rude beam divides,
And naked rafters form the sloping sides;
Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,
And lath and mud are all that lie between;
## p. 4122 (#500) ###########################################
4122
GEORGE CRABBE
Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way
To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day:
Here on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread,
The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;
For him no hand the cordial cup applies,
Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes;
No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile,
Or promise hope till sickness wears a smile.
But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,
Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls.
Anon a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and conceit,
With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go;
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye:
A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murderous hand a drowsy bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.
Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
And some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply he rushes to the door:
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain;
He ceases now the feeble help to crave
Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.
## p. 4123 (#501) ###########################################
4123
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
(1826-1887)
LTHOUGH the daughter of a clergyman of the Established
Church, Dinah Mulock was not herself a Churchwoman,
and in her earlier works she frequently declares her belief
in freedom of religious thought and action. She was led to take this
attitude by her conviction that her mother was unkindly treated by
her father, who in her opinion did not live up to the principles he
professed. In a blaze of youthful indignation she carried her deli-
cate mother and younger brothers away from their home at Stoke-
on-Trent, Staffordshire, and undertook to
support them all by her pen. The Ogil-
vies,' her first novel, was published in 1849,
and her first struggle was successful. But
she was soon deprived of the cause which
she had gone forth to champion. Her
mother and one of her brothers died, and
she was left alone with her youngest
brother to continue her work. Her loving
description of her mother in My Mother
and I' will be remembered as the picture
of a pure, tender, and gentle woman.
'Olive' and 'The Head of the Family'
soon followed The Ogilvies,' and in the
second of these stories she showed highly
imaginative and dramatic qualities, though the plot is simplicity
itself. After 'Agatha's Husband' was issued in 1852, no other work
of consequence appeared from her pen until the publication in 1857
of John Halifax, Gentleman,' her most popular novel. It was the
portraiture of a gentleman by instinct, though not by social position.
He is a middle-class business man, an inventor who has solved cer-
tain problems of capital and labor, and upholds "a true aristocracy,"
which he defines as "the best men of the country. " "These," he
says, "ought to govern and will govern one day, whether their
patent of nobility be birth and titles or only honesty and brains.
"
She always maintained that A Life for a Life' was her best
book, a judgment shared by many of her friends and critics. 'John
Halifax,' however, continues to hold the heart and imagination
of the many most strongly; perhaps on account of its democratic
DINAH M. M. CRAIK
## p. 4124 (#502) ###########################################
4124
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
principles. Mrs. Craik was an earnest advocate of legalizing mar-
riage with a deceased wife's sister, and 'Hannah,' a strong but
painful story, deals with this subject. She published between forty
and fifty works,-novels, tales for the young, volumes of travel, and
poems. She is a writer of the best sort of English domestic novels,
full of strong moral purpose. She avoids over-romantic or over-
emotional themes, but the tender and poetical ideals of ordinary
womanhood find in her a satisfactory exponent. As a poet her posi-
tion, though not a high one, is lasting. Her versification is good,
and her sentiment is always tender, truthful, and noble. Perhaps
her best verses are those given below. In 1865 she made a happy
marriage, and as her life grew larger and fuller her home became
the centre of a group of affectionate friends,- artists, literary men,
musicians, and many others full of intellectual interests and aspira-
tions. She died suddenly but peacefully at her home at Shortlands,
Kent, near London, on October 12th, 1887.
THE NIGHT ATTACK
From John Halifax, Gentleman'
I
COULD not sleep-all my faculties were preternaturally alive;
my weak body and timid soul became strong and active, able
to compass anything. For that one night at least I felt
myself a man.
My father was a very sound sleeper. I knew nothing would
disturb him till daylight; therefore my divided duty was at an
end. I left him and crept down-stairs into Sally Watkins's
kitchen. It was silent; only the faithful warder Jem dozed
over the dull fire. I touched him on the shoulder, at which he
collared me, and nearly knocked me down.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Phineas-hope I didn't hurt 'ee, sir! "
cried he, all but whimpering; for Jem, a big lad of fifteen, was
the most tender-hearted fellow imaginable. "I thought it were
some of them folk that Mr. Halifax ha' gone among. "
"Where is Mr. Halifax ? "
"Doan't know, sir; wish I did! wouldn't be long a-finding out,
though-on'y he says: 'Jem, you stop here wi' they,'" (pointing
his thumb up the staircase). "So, Master Phineas, I stop. "
And Jem settled himself, with a doggedly obedient but most
dissatisfied air, down by the fireplace. It was evident nothing
would move him thence; and he was as safe a guard over my
poor old father's slumber as the mastiff in the tan-yard, who was
## p. 4125 (#503) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
4125
as brave as a lion and as docile as a child. My last lingering
hesitation ended.
"Jem, lend me your coat and hat; I'm going out into the
town. "
Jem was so astonished that he stood with open mouth while
I took the said garments from him and unbolted the door. At
last it seemed to occur to him that he ought to intercept me.
"But sir, Mr. Halifax said — »
"I am going to look for Mr. Halifax. "
And I escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did
not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the doorsill and gazed
after me with a hopeless expression.
"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said,
'Jem, you stop y'ere,' and y'ere I stop. "
He went in, and I heard him bolting the door with a sullen
determination, as if he would have kept guard behind it - wait-
ing for John- until doomsday.
I stole along the dark alley into the street.
It was very
silent-I need not have borrowed Jem's exterior in order to
creep through a throng of maddened rioters. There was no
sign of any such, except that under one of the three oil-lamps
that lit the night-darkness of Norton Bury lay a few smolder-
ing hanks of hemp, well rosined. They then had thought of
that dreadful engine of destruction-fire. Had my terrors been
true? Our house-and perhaps John within it!
On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur which I fancied I
heard; but still there was no one in the street- no one except
the abbey watchman, lounging in his box. I roused him and
asked if all was safe- where were the rioters ?
"What rioters? "
"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now
"Ay. I think they be. "
-
-
"And will not one man in the town help him-
no law? "
――――
no constables,
"Oh, he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers. '
That was the truth, in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle
names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of
the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand.
was turned against them.
I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So,
wasting no more words, I flew along the churchyard until I
>>
## p. 4126 (#504) ###########################################
4126
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
saw, shining against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light.
It was one of the hempen torches. Now at last I had got in
the midst of that small body of men-"the rioters. "
A mere handful they were, not above twoscore; apparently
the relic of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a
few plow-lads from the country round. But they were desperate;
they had come up the Coltham road so quietly that, except this
faint murmur, neither I nor any one in the town could have told
they were near. Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet
they had not attacked my father's house; it stood upon the other
side of the road, barred, black, silent.
I heard a muttering, "Th' old man bean't there" - "Nobody
knows where he be. " No, thank God!
"Be us all y'ere? " said the man with the torch, holding it up
SO as to see round him. It was well then that I appeared as
Jem Watkins. But no one noticed me, except one man who
skulked behind a tree, and of whom I was rather afraid, as he
was apparently intent on watching.
"Ready, lads? Now for the rosin!
Blaze 'un out! "
But in the eager scuffle the torch, the only one light, was
knocked down and trodden out. A volley of oaths arose, though
whose fault it was no man seemed to know: but I missed my
man from behind the tree-nor found him till after the angry
throng had rushed on to the nearest lamp. One of them was
left behind, standing close to our own railings. He looked round
to see if none were by, and then sprung over the gate.
Dark as
it was, I thought I recognized him.
"John? »
"Phineas? "
He was beside me in a bound. "How could
you do ->
"I could do anything to-night. But you are safe
has harmed you. Oh, thank God, you are not hurt! "
And I clung to his arm my friend whom I had missed so
long, so sorely.
―
no one
He held me tight- his heart felt as mine, only more silently;
and silent hearts are strong.
"Now, Phineas, we have not a minute's time. I must have
you safe-
we must get into the house. "
"Who is there? "
"Jael; she is as good as a staff of constables; she has braved
them once to-night, but they're back again, or will be directly. "
## p. 4127 (#505) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
"And the mill? "
"Safe, as yet; I have had three of the tan-yard men there
since yesterday morning, though your father did not know. I
have been going to and fro all night between there and here,
waiting till the rioters should come back from the Severn mills.
Hist! there they are-I say, Jael. "
He tapped at the window. In a few seconds Jael had
unbarred the door, let us in, and closed it again securely;
mounting guard behind it with something that looked very like
my father's pistols, though I would not discredit her among our
peaceful society by positively stating the fact.
4127
"Bravo! " said John, when we stood all together in the barri-
caded house and heard the threatening murmur of voices and
feet outside. «< Bravo, Jael! The wife of Heber the Kenite was
no braver woman than you. "
She looked gratified, and followed John obediently from room
to room.
-
"I have done all as thee bade me-
John Halifax. We are secure, I think. "
Secure? Bolts and bars secure against fire? For that was
threatening us now.
"They can't mean it-surely they can't mean it," repeated
John, as the cry of "Burn 'un out! rose louder and louder.
But they did mean it. From the attic window we watched
them light torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the
house but it fell harmless against the staunch oaken door, and
blazed itself out on our stone steps. All it did was to show,
more plainly than even daylight had shown, the gaunt ragged
forms and pinched faces, furious with famine.
John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.
"I'll speak to them," he said. “Unbar the window, Jael;
and before I could hinder he was leaning right out.
there! "
"Halloo,
-
thee art a sensible lad,
At his loud and commanding voice a wave of upturned faces
surged forward, expectant.
"My men, do you know what you are about? To burn down
a gentleman's house is-hanging. "
There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.
"Not a Quaker's! Nobody'll get hanged for burning out a
Quaker!
>>>>
## p. 4128 (#506) ###########################################
4128
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
"That be true enough," muttered Jael between her teeth.
"We must e'en fight, as Mordecai's people fought, hand to hand,
until they slew their enemies. "
“Fight! ” repeated John half to himself, as he stood at the
now closed window, against which more than one blazing torch
began to rattle.
――
"Fight with these? -What are you doing, Jael? " For she
had taken down a large book - the last book in the house she
would have taken under less critical circumstances, and with it
was trying to stop up a broken pane.
"No, my good Jael, not this;" and he carefully put back the
volume in its place-that volume, in which he might have read,
as day after day, year after year, we Christians generally do
read such plain words as these: "Love your enemies;" "Bless
them that curse you;
«< Pray for them that despitefully use you
and persecute you. "
A minute or two John stood by the book-shelves, thinking.
Then he touched me on the shoulder.
"Phineas, I am going to try a new plan-at least one so old
that it is almost new. Whether it succeeds or no, you'll bear
me witness to your father that I did it for the best, and did it
because I thought it right. Now for it. "
To my horror, he threw up the window wide, and leaned
out.
"My men, I want to speak to you. "
He might as well have spoken to the roaring sea. The only
answer was a shower of missiles, which missed their aim. The
rioters were too far off —our spiked iron railing, eight feet high
or more, being a barrier which none had yet ventured to climb.
But at length one random shot hit John on the chest.
I pulled him in; but he declared he was not hurt. Terrified,
I implored him not to risk his life.
"Life is not always the first thing to be thought of,” said
he, gently. "Don't be afraid; I shall come to no harm. But I
must do what I think right, if it is to be done. "
While he spoke, I could hardly hear him for the bellowings
outside. More savage still grew the cry:
They be only Quakers! "
"Burn 'em out! burn 'em out!
"There's not a minute to lose.
that a pistol? "
Stop, let me think-Jael, is
## p. 4129 (#507) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
4129
"Loaded," she said, handing it over to him with a kind of
stern delight. Certainly Jael was not born to be a Friend.
John ran down-stairs, and before I guessed his purpose had
unbolted the hall door, and stood on the top of the flight of
steps in full view of the mob.
There was no bringing him back, so of course I followed. A
pillar sheltered me; I do not think he saw me, though I stood
close behind him.
So sudden had been his act that even the rioters did not seem
to have noticed, or clearly understood it till the next lighted
torch showed them the young man standing there, with his back
to the door-outside the door.
The sight fairly confounded them. Even I felt for the
moment he was safe. They were awed
They were awed-nay, paralyzed, by his
daring.
But the storm raged too fiercely to be lulled, except for one
brief minute. A confusion of voices burst out afresh.
"No, he
"Who be thee? " "It's one o' the Quakers. "
bean't. " "Burn 'un anyhow. " "Touch 'un, if ye dare! "
There was evidently a division rising. One big man, who had
made himself very prominent all along, seemed trying to calm.
the tumult.
John stood his ground.
stooped and picked it up.
back again, but he did not;
it out safely with his foot.
effect on the crowd.
The big fellow advanced to the gate, and called John by his
name.
Once a torch was flung at him-he
I thought he was going to hurl it
he only threw it down and stamped
This simple action had a wonderful
"Is that you, Jacob Baines? I am sorry to see you here. "
"Be ye, sir? »
"What do you want? "
"Naught wi' thee. We want Abel Fletcher.
Where is 'un? "
"I shall certainly not tell you. "
As John said this, again the noise arose, and again Jacob
Baines seemed to have power to quiet the rest.
John Halifax never stirred. Evidently he was pretty well
known. I caught many a stray sentence, such as "Don't hurt
the lad;" "He were kind to my lad, he were;" "He be a real
gentleman;" "No, he comed here as poor as us," and the like.
At length one voice, sharp and shrill, was heard above the rest.
VII-259
## p.
sonnet inscribed To Mary. '
Lives of Cowper are numerous. His old friend, John Newton,
attempted one immediately after his death, but this was not com-
pleted; and the first to appear was a life by Hayley (1803-6),
extended in the 'Life and Letters of Cowper,' by T. S. Grimshawe
(1835). There are also Cowper's own 'Memoirs' (a description of
his mental derangement and religious experiences), published in 1816;
'Life and Letters of Cowper' by Southey in 1835; and two books by
T. Wright, The Town of Cowper' (1886); and Life of Cowper'
(1892). An interesting biography has also been written by Goldwin
Smith, in the series of 'English Men of Letters,' in which he
says:-
-
"In all his social judgments Cowper is at a wrong point of view. He is
always deluded by the idol of his cave. He writes perpetually on the two-
fold assumption that a life of retirement is more favorable to virtue than a
life of action, and that God made the country and man made the town. '
His flight from the world was rendered necessary by his malady and
respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight and not a victory. His
misconception was fostered and partly produced by a religion which was
essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to characters of the highest
and most energetic beneficence, represented salvation too little as the reward
of effort, too much as the reward of passion, belief, and of spiritual emotion. "
## p. 4110 (#488) ###########################################
4110
WILLIAM COWPER
Yet despite this gloom, Cowper possessed the humor which finds
admirable expression in many small poems, in 'John Gilpin' and in
his 'Letters. ' These are the real mirror of his life. Southey con-
siders his letters the most delightful in the language. They contain
nothing but the details of his daily life, and such happenings as the
flowering of pinks, the singing of birds in the apple-blossoms, the
falling of the dew on the grass under his window, the pranks of his
pets, the tricks of the Spaniel Beau, the frolics of the tortoise-shell
kitten, the flight of his favorite hare, and the excitements of a morn-
ing walk when the once nodding grass is "fledged with icy feathers. "
Their English is so easy and graceful, and their humor so spontane-
ous, that the reader feels a sense of friendship with the modest poet
of 'The Task,' who, despite his platitudes, wins a certain respectful
admiration.
THE CRICKET
ITTLE inmate, full of mirth,
on my kitchen hearth,
Wheresoe'er be thine abode,
Always harbinger of good,
Pay me for thy warm retreat
With a song more soft and sweet;
In return thou shalt receive
Such a strain as I can give.
Thus thy praise shall be expressed,
Inoffensive, welcome guest!
While the rat is on the scout,
And the mouse with curious snout,
With what vermin else infest
Every dish, and spoil the best;
Frisking thus before the fire,
Thou hast all thine heart's desire.
Though in voice and shape they be
Formed as if akin to thee,
Thou surpassest, happier far,
Happiest grasshoppers that are;
Theirs is but a summer song-
Thine endures the winter long,
Unimpaired and shrill and clear,
Melody throughout the year.
## p. 4111 (#489) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
4111
THE WINTER WALK AT NOON
From The Task>
HE night was winter in his roughest mood;
THE The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendor of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;
And through the trees I view the embattled tower
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though movable through all its length,
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed;
And intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed:
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
## p. 4112 (#490) ###########################################
4112
WILLIAM COWPER
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.
Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced;
While sloth seduces them, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,-
Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation,- seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED
OLL for the brave-
TOLL
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset-
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.
-
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone;
His last sea fight is fought,
His work of glory done.
## p. 4113 (#491) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
VII-258
It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon a rock.
His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charged with England's thunder,
And plow the distant main.
But Kempenfelt is gone-
His victories are o'er;
And he and his eight hundred
Shall plow the waves no more.
IMAGINARY VERSES OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK
DURING HIS SOLITARY ABODE ON JUAN FERNANDEZ
AM monarch of all I survey –
I
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
I am out of humanity's reach;
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech —
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.
4113
## p. 4114 (#492) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
4114
Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man!
O, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth-
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.
Religion! What treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word! -
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford;
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when the Sabbath appeared.
Ye winds that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more!
My friends- do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
Oh tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is the glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-wingèd arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the sea-fowl has gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy-encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
EX
SO
## p. 4115 (#493) ###########################################
WILLIAM COWPER
THE IMMUTABILITY OF HUMAN NATURE
From a Letter to William Unwin (1780)
4115
WHE
HEN we look back upon our forefathers, we seem to look
back upon the people of another nation; almost upon
creatures of another species. Their vast rambling man-
sions, spacious halls, and painted casements, the Gothic porch
smothered with honeysuckles, their little gardens and high walls,
their box-edgings, balls of holly, and yew-tree statues, are become
so entirely unfashionable now, that we can hardly believe it
possible that a people who resemble us so little in their taste
should resemble us in anything else. But in everything else, I
suppose, they were our counterparts exactly; and time, that has
sewed up a slashed sleeve and reduced the large trunk-hose to a
neat pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just where it
found it.
The inside of the man at least has undergone no change.
His passions, appetites, and aims are just what they ever were.
They wear perhaps a handsomer disguise than they did in the
days of yore, for philosophy and literature will have their effect
upon the exterior; but in every other respect a modern is only
an ancient in a different dress.
FROM A LETTER TO REV. JOHN NEWTON
OLNEY, NOVEMBER 30TH, 1783.
My dear Friend: -
-―
I
HAVE neither long visits to pay nor to receive, nor ladies to
spend hours in telling me that which might be told in five
minutes; yet often find myself obliged to be an economist of
time, and to make the most of a short opportunity. Let our
station be as retired as it may, there is no want of playthings
and avocations, nor much need to seek them, in this world of
ours. Business, or what presents itself to us under that impos-
ing character, will find us out even in the stillest retreat, and
plead its importance, however trivial in reality, as a just demand
upon our attention. It is wonderful how by means of such real
or seeming necessities my time is stolen away. I have just time
to observe that time is short, and by the time I have made the
observation, time is gone.
## p. 4116 (#494) ###########################################
4116
WILLIAM COWPER
I have wondered in former days at the patience of the ante-
diluvian world, that they could endure a life almost millenary,
and with so little variety as seems to have fallen to their share.
It is probable that they had much fewer employments than we.
Their affairs lay in a narrower compass; their libraries were in-
differently furnished; philosophical researches were carried on
with much less industry and acuteness of penetration, and fid-
dles perhaps were not even invented. How then could seven
or eight hundred years of life be supported? I have asked this
question formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it; but I think
I can answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand
years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun;
I worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's
milk and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to
my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of
age, having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all
the feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them. The morning
is thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it is become neces-
sary that I should dine. I dig up my roots; I wash them; boil
them; I find them not done enough, I boil them again; my wife
is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but in the mean time
the fire goes out, and must be kindled again.
All this is very
amusing.
I hunt; I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend
an old coat, or I make a new one. By this time the day is far
spent; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, what
with tilling the ground and eating the fruit of it, hunting, and
walking, and running, and mending old clothes, and sleeping
and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the primeval
world so much occupied as to sigh over the shortness of life,
and to find, at the end of many centuries, that they had all
slipped through his fingers and were passing away like a
shadow. What wonder then that I, who live in a day of so
much greater refinement, when there is so much more to be
wanted and wished, and to be enjoyed, should feel myself now
and then pinched in point of opportunity, and at some loss for
leisure to fill four sides of a sheet like this?
## p. 4117 (#495) ###########################################
4117
GEORGE CRABBE
(1754-1832)
EORGE CRABBE was born at Aldborough in Suffolk, the son of
a customs officer. He received a fair education for a vil-
lage lad, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a
country surgeon. He early showed an inclination toward letters,
versifying much while a schoolboy. In 1778 he abandoned his pro-
fession of medicine, in which he was not successful, and came up to
London with a few pounds and some manuscript in his pocket,
determined to make his way in literature. He met with the usual
reverses of a beginner without reputation
or patronage, and soon was desperately in
need of money. He wrote many letters
to well-known people, without response.
In his extremity he applied to Burke,
who, although a stranger, received him
most kindly into his own house, gave him
advice and criticism, recommended him to
Dodsley the publisher, and introduced him
to many notable men of the day, among
them Reynolds, Johnson, and Fox.
During this time Crabbe wrote The
Library and the 'The Village'; and also
at the suggestion of his patron qualified
himself for the ministry. He took holy
orders in 1782, and became shortly after chaplain to the Duke of
Rutland. Subsequently he held a number of small livings, procured
for him by his friends. The last of these, the rectory of Trowbridge,
given him in 1813, he held until his death in 1832.
'The Village,' published in 1783, made the poet's reputation. His
next work, The Newspaper,' published two years later, was much
inferior. For twenty years thereafter he wrote and destroyed vast
quantities of manuscript. Not until 1809 did he publish again. 'The
Parish Register,' coming out in that year, was even more successful
than his first work. In 1810 appeared 'The Borough,' containing his
best work; 'Tales in Verse' following in 1812. With Tales of the
Hall,' appearing in 1819, he took leave of the public.
Crabbe is an important link in the transition period between the
poetry of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Men were
GEORGE CRABBE
## p. 4118 (#496) ###########################################
4118
GEORGE CRABBE
growing tired of the artificiality and the conventional frigidity
of the current verse in the hands of the imitators of Pope. A feel-
ing for change was in the air, manifested in the incipient romantic
movement and in what is called "the return to nature. " Gold-
smith was one of the first to lead the way back to simplicity, but
he enveloped in a tender, somewhat sentimental idealism whatever
he touched. Then came Thomson with his generalizations of nature,
Cowper, a more faithful painter of rural scenes, and Burns, who
sang of the thought and feeling of the common man. The work
of these poets was a reaction against the poetry of town life, too apt
to become artificial with its subject. Yet, being poets and singers,
they expressed not so much the reality as what lies behind — its
beauty and its tenderness. To give the right perspective to this
return to nature, there was needed a man who should paint life as it
is, in its naked realism, unveiled by the glamour of poetic vision.
Crabbe was this man. The most uncompromising realist, he led
poetry back to human life on its stern dark side. Born and bred
among the poor, he described, as no one else in the whole range of
English verse has done, the sordid existences among which he had
grown up. He dispelled all illusions about rural life, and dealt the
death-blow to the Corydons and Phillises of pastoral poetry. He
showed that the poor man can be more immoral and even more
unprincipled than the rich, because his higher spiritual nature is
hopelessly dwarfed in the desperate struggle to keep the wolf from
the door. He supplied harrowing texts to the social economist. He
is a gloomy poet, especially in the first part of his work, for he
paints principally the shadows that hang over the lives of the lowly;
he does not deal with that life imaginatively as Wordsworth and
Burns do, but realistically, narrating with photographic
what he saw. He excels in graphic delineations of external facts,
but is also a powerful painter of the passions, especially the more
violent ones, such as remorse and despair. Sir Eustace Grey' is a
masterful portrayal of madness.
Crabbe has at times been denied the name of poet. There is little
music in his verse, little of that singing quality that goes with all
true poetry. His versification is often slipshod and careless. His
lack of taste and artistic feeling shows itself not only in the manner
but also in the matter of his work. He dwells by preference on the
unlovely; he does not choose his details as an artist would. He is
too minute, too like those Dutch painters who bestow as much care
on the refuse as on the burnished platters of their interiors. And
again he is trivial or too literal. But the steady admiration his
poetry has excited in men of the most different tastes for several
generations shows that it has deeper qualities. The truth is, that his
## p. 4119 (#497) ###########################################
GEORGE CRABBE
4119
mean and squalid details are not mere heaps of unrelated things, nor
irrelevant to his story; they are not even mere "scenery. " They
are part of the history, in general the tragedy, of human hearts and
souls; and owe their validity as poetic material, and their power of
interesting us, to their being part of the influences that bear on the
history.
Scott had Crabbe's poems read aloud in his last illness. Horace
Smith called him "Pope in worsted stockings. " Jane Austen said
she "could fancy being Mrs. Crabbe. " Cardinal Newman read the
'Tales of the Hall' with extreme delight on their first appearance,
and fifty years later still thought well of them. These different
opinions testify that whatever the shortcomings of Crabbe as crafts-
man, the earnestness and the genuineness of his work give him a
secure place among English poets.
NEX
ISAAC ASHFORD
From The Parish Register'
EXT to these ladies, but in naught allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned and his soul serene:
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid;
At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed;
Shame knew he not; he dreaded no disgrace;
Truth, simple truth, was written in his face:
Yet while the serious thought his soul approved,
Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved;
To bliss domestic he his heart resigned,
And with the firmest had the fondest mind.
Were others joyful, he looked smiling on,
And gave allowance where he needed none;
Good he refused with future ill to buy,
Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh;
A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast
No envy stung, no jealousy distressed;
(Bane of the poor! it wounds their weaker mind
To miss one favor which their neighbors find. )
Yet far was he from stoic pride removed;
He felt humanely, and he warmly loved.
I marked his action when his infant died,
And his old neighbor for offense was tried:
## p. 4120 (#498) ###########################################
4120
GEORGE CRABBE
The still tears, stealing down that furrowed cheek,
Spoke pity plainer than the tongue can speak.
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride
Who in their base contempt the great deride;
Nor pride in learning: though my Clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed;
Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew
None his superior, and his equals few:
But if that spirit in his soul had place,
It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace;
A pride in honest fame, by virtue gained,
In sturdy boys to virtuous labors trained:
Pride in the power that guards his country's coast,
And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast;
Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied
In fact a noble passion, misnamed Pride.
He had no party's rage, no sectary's whim;
Christian and countryman was all with him:
True to his church he came; no Sunday shower
Kept him at home in that important hour;
Nor his firm feet could one persuading sect
By the strong glare of their new light direct;
"On hope in mine own sober light I gaze,
But should be blind and lose it, in your blaze. "
-
In times severe, when many a sturdy swain
Felt it his pride, his comfort, to complain,
Isaac their wants would soothe, his own would hide,
And feel in that his comfort and his pride.
I feel his absence in the hours of prayer,
And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there:
I see no more those white locks thinly spread
Round the bald polish of that honored head;
No more that awful glance on playful wight,
Compelled to kneel and tremble at the sight,
To fold his fingers, all in dread the while,
Till Mr. Ashford softened to a smile:
No more that meek and suppliant look in prayer,
Nor the pure faith (to give it force), are there;-
But he is blest, and I lament no more
A wise, good man, contented to be poor.
## p. 4121 (#499) ###########################################
GEORGE CRABBE
4121
THE PARISH WORKHOUSE AND APOTHECARY
From The Village›
TH
HEIRS is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapors flagging play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell who know no parents' care;
Parents who know no children's love dwell there;
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood-fears;
The lame, the blind, and-far the happiest they! —
The moping idiot and the madman gay.
Here too the sick their final doom receive,
Here brought amid the scenes of grief to grieve,
Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,
Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below;
Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,
And the cold charities of man to man:
Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide,
And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;
But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,
And pride embitters what it can't deny.
Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
With timid eye, to read the distant glance;
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,
To name the nameless ever-new disease;
Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure:
How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
How would ye bear to draw your latest breath
Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?
Such is that room which one rude beam divides,
And naked rafters form the sloping sides;
Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,
And lath and mud are all that lie between;
## p. 4122 (#500) ###########################################
4122
GEORGE CRABBE
Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way
To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day:
Here on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread,
The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;
For him no hand the cordial cup applies,
Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes;
No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile,
Or promise hope till sickness wears a smile.
But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,
Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls.
Anon a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and conceit,
With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go;
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye:
A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
Whose murderous hand a drowsy bench protect,
And whose most tender mercy is neglect.
Paid by the parish for attendance here,
He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
And some habitual queries hurried o'er,
Without reply he rushes to the door:
His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain;
He ceases now the feeble help to crave
Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.
## p. 4123 (#501) ###########################################
4123
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
(1826-1887)
LTHOUGH the daughter of a clergyman of the Established
Church, Dinah Mulock was not herself a Churchwoman,
and in her earlier works she frequently declares her belief
in freedom of religious thought and action. She was led to take this
attitude by her conviction that her mother was unkindly treated by
her father, who in her opinion did not live up to the principles he
professed. In a blaze of youthful indignation she carried her deli-
cate mother and younger brothers away from their home at Stoke-
on-Trent, Staffordshire, and undertook to
support them all by her pen. The Ogil-
vies,' her first novel, was published in 1849,
and her first struggle was successful. But
she was soon deprived of the cause which
she had gone forth to champion. Her
mother and one of her brothers died, and
she was left alone with her youngest
brother to continue her work. Her loving
description of her mother in My Mother
and I' will be remembered as the picture
of a pure, tender, and gentle woman.
'Olive' and 'The Head of the Family'
soon followed The Ogilvies,' and in the
second of these stories she showed highly
imaginative and dramatic qualities, though the plot is simplicity
itself. After 'Agatha's Husband' was issued in 1852, no other work
of consequence appeared from her pen until the publication in 1857
of John Halifax, Gentleman,' her most popular novel. It was the
portraiture of a gentleman by instinct, though not by social position.
He is a middle-class business man, an inventor who has solved cer-
tain problems of capital and labor, and upholds "a true aristocracy,"
which he defines as "the best men of the country. " "These," he
says, "ought to govern and will govern one day, whether their
patent of nobility be birth and titles or only honesty and brains.
"
She always maintained that A Life for a Life' was her best
book, a judgment shared by many of her friends and critics. 'John
Halifax,' however, continues to hold the heart and imagination
of the many most strongly; perhaps on account of its democratic
DINAH M. M. CRAIK
## p. 4124 (#502) ###########################################
4124
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
principles. Mrs. Craik was an earnest advocate of legalizing mar-
riage with a deceased wife's sister, and 'Hannah,' a strong but
painful story, deals with this subject. She published between forty
and fifty works,-novels, tales for the young, volumes of travel, and
poems. She is a writer of the best sort of English domestic novels,
full of strong moral purpose. She avoids over-romantic or over-
emotional themes, but the tender and poetical ideals of ordinary
womanhood find in her a satisfactory exponent. As a poet her posi-
tion, though not a high one, is lasting. Her versification is good,
and her sentiment is always tender, truthful, and noble. Perhaps
her best verses are those given below. In 1865 she made a happy
marriage, and as her life grew larger and fuller her home became
the centre of a group of affectionate friends,- artists, literary men,
musicians, and many others full of intellectual interests and aspira-
tions. She died suddenly but peacefully at her home at Shortlands,
Kent, near London, on October 12th, 1887.
THE NIGHT ATTACK
From John Halifax, Gentleman'
I
COULD not sleep-all my faculties were preternaturally alive;
my weak body and timid soul became strong and active, able
to compass anything. For that one night at least I felt
myself a man.
My father was a very sound sleeper. I knew nothing would
disturb him till daylight; therefore my divided duty was at an
end. I left him and crept down-stairs into Sally Watkins's
kitchen. It was silent; only the faithful warder Jem dozed
over the dull fire. I touched him on the shoulder, at which he
collared me, and nearly knocked me down.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Phineas-hope I didn't hurt 'ee, sir! "
cried he, all but whimpering; for Jem, a big lad of fifteen, was
the most tender-hearted fellow imaginable. "I thought it were
some of them folk that Mr. Halifax ha' gone among. "
"Where is Mr. Halifax ? "
"Doan't know, sir; wish I did! wouldn't be long a-finding out,
though-on'y he says: 'Jem, you stop here wi' they,'" (pointing
his thumb up the staircase). "So, Master Phineas, I stop. "
And Jem settled himself, with a doggedly obedient but most
dissatisfied air, down by the fireplace. It was evident nothing
would move him thence; and he was as safe a guard over my
poor old father's slumber as the mastiff in the tan-yard, who was
## p. 4125 (#503) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
4125
as brave as a lion and as docile as a child. My last lingering
hesitation ended.
"Jem, lend me your coat and hat; I'm going out into the
town. "
Jem was so astonished that he stood with open mouth while
I took the said garments from him and unbolted the door. At
last it seemed to occur to him that he ought to intercept me.
"But sir, Mr. Halifax said — »
"I am going to look for Mr. Halifax. "
And I escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did
not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the doorsill and gazed
after me with a hopeless expression.
"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said,
'Jem, you stop y'ere,' and y'ere I stop. "
He went in, and I heard him bolting the door with a sullen
determination, as if he would have kept guard behind it - wait-
ing for John- until doomsday.
I stole along the dark alley into the street.
It was very
silent-I need not have borrowed Jem's exterior in order to
creep through a throng of maddened rioters. There was no
sign of any such, except that under one of the three oil-lamps
that lit the night-darkness of Norton Bury lay a few smolder-
ing hanks of hemp, well rosined. They then had thought of
that dreadful engine of destruction-fire. Had my terrors been
true? Our house-and perhaps John within it!
On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur which I fancied I
heard; but still there was no one in the street- no one except
the abbey watchman, lounging in his box. I roused him and
asked if all was safe- where were the rioters ?
"What rioters? "
"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now
"Ay. I think they be. "
-
-
"And will not one man in the town help him-
no law? "
――――
no constables,
"Oh, he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers. '
That was the truth, in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle
names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of
the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand.
was turned against them.
I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now. So,
wasting no more words, I flew along the churchyard until I
>>
## p. 4126 (#504) ###########################################
4126
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
saw, shining against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light.
It was one of the hempen torches. Now at last I had got in
the midst of that small body of men-"the rioters. "
A mere handful they were, not above twoscore; apparently
the relic of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a
few plow-lads from the country round. But they were desperate;
they had come up the Coltham road so quietly that, except this
faint murmur, neither I nor any one in the town could have told
they were near. Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet
they had not attacked my father's house; it stood upon the other
side of the road, barred, black, silent.
I heard a muttering, "Th' old man bean't there" - "Nobody
knows where he be. " No, thank God!
"Be us all y'ere? " said the man with the torch, holding it up
SO as to see round him. It was well then that I appeared as
Jem Watkins. But no one noticed me, except one man who
skulked behind a tree, and of whom I was rather afraid, as he
was apparently intent on watching.
"Ready, lads? Now for the rosin!
Blaze 'un out! "
But in the eager scuffle the torch, the only one light, was
knocked down and trodden out. A volley of oaths arose, though
whose fault it was no man seemed to know: but I missed my
man from behind the tree-nor found him till after the angry
throng had rushed on to the nearest lamp. One of them was
left behind, standing close to our own railings. He looked round
to see if none were by, and then sprung over the gate.
Dark as
it was, I thought I recognized him.
"John? »
"Phineas? "
He was beside me in a bound. "How could
you do ->
"I could do anything to-night. But you are safe
has harmed you. Oh, thank God, you are not hurt! "
And I clung to his arm my friend whom I had missed so
long, so sorely.
―
no one
He held me tight- his heart felt as mine, only more silently;
and silent hearts are strong.
"Now, Phineas, we have not a minute's time. I must have
you safe-
we must get into the house. "
"Who is there? "
"Jael; she is as good as a staff of constables; she has braved
them once to-night, but they're back again, or will be directly. "
## p. 4127 (#505) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
"And the mill? "
"Safe, as yet; I have had three of the tan-yard men there
since yesterday morning, though your father did not know. I
have been going to and fro all night between there and here,
waiting till the rioters should come back from the Severn mills.
Hist! there they are-I say, Jael. "
He tapped at the window. In a few seconds Jael had
unbarred the door, let us in, and closed it again securely;
mounting guard behind it with something that looked very like
my father's pistols, though I would not discredit her among our
peaceful society by positively stating the fact.
4127
"Bravo! " said John, when we stood all together in the barri-
caded house and heard the threatening murmur of voices and
feet outside. «< Bravo, Jael! The wife of Heber the Kenite was
no braver woman than you. "
She looked gratified, and followed John obediently from room
to room.
-
"I have done all as thee bade me-
John Halifax. We are secure, I think. "
Secure? Bolts and bars secure against fire? For that was
threatening us now.
"They can't mean it-surely they can't mean it," repeated
John, as the cry of "Burn 'un out! rose louder and louder.
But they did mean it. From the attic window we watched
them light torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the
house but it fell harmless against the staunch oaken door, and
blazed itself out on our stone steps. All it did was to show,
more plainly than even daylight had shown, the gaunt ragged
forms and pinched faces, furious with famine.
John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.
"I'll speak to them," he said. “Unbar the window, Jael;
and before I could hinder he was leaning right out.
there! "
"Halloo,
-
thee art a sensible lad,
At his loud and commanding voice a wave of upturned faces
surged forward, expectant.
"My men, do you know what you are about? To burn down
a gentleman's house is-hanging. "
There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.
"Not a Quaker's! Nobody'll get hanged for burning out a
Quaker!
>>>>
## p. 4128 (#506) ###########################################
4128
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
"That be true enough," muttered Jael between her teeth.
"We must e'en fight, as Mordecai's people fought, hand to hand,
until they slew their enemies. "
“Fight! ” repeated John half to himself, as he stood at the
now closed window, against which more than one blazing torch
began to rattle.
――
"Fight with these? -What are you doing, Jael? " For she
had taken down a large book - the last book in the house she
would have taken under less critical circumstances, and with it
was trying to stop up a broken pane.
"No, my good Jael, not this;" and he carefully put back the
volume in its place-that volume, in which he might have read,
as day after day, year after year, we Christians generally do
read such plain words as these: "Love your enemies;" "Bless
them that curse you;
«< Pray for them that despitefully use you
and persecute you. "
A minute or two John stood by the book-shelves, thinking.
Then he touched me on the shoulder.
"Phineas, I am going to try a new plan-at least one so old
that it is almost new. Whether it succeeds or no, you'll bear
me witness to your father that I did it for the best, and did it
because I thought it right. Now for it. "
To my horror, he threw up the window wide, and leaned
out.
"My men, I want to speak to you. "
He might as well have spoken to the roaring sea. The only
answer was a shower of missiles, which missed their aim. The
rioters were too far off —our spiked iron railing, eight feet high
or more, being a barrier which none had yet ventured to climb.
But at length one random shot hit John on the chest.
I pulled him in; but he declared he was not hurt. Terrified,
I implored him not to risk his life.
"Life is not always the first thing to be thought of,” said
he, gently. "Don't be afraid; I shall come to no harm. But I
must do what I think right, if it is to be done. "
While he spoke, I could hardly hear him for the bellowings
outside. More savage still grew the cry:
They be only Quakers! "
"Burn 'em out! burn 'em out!
"There's not a minute to lose.
that a pistol? "
Stop, let me think-Jael, is
## p. 4129 (#507) ###########################################
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK
4129
"Loaded," she said, handing it over to him with a kind of
stern delight. Certainly Jael was not born to be a Friend.
John ran down-stairs, and before I guessed his purpose had
unbolted the hall door, and stood on the top of the flight of
steps in full view of the mob.
There was no bringing him back, so of course I followed. A
pillar sheltered me; I do not think he saw me, though I stood
close behind him.
So sudden had been his act that even the rioters did not seem
to have noticed, or clearly understood it till the next lighted
torch showed them the young man standing there, with his back
to the door-outside the door.
The sight fairly confounded them. Even I felt for the
moment he was safe. They were awed
They were awed-nay, paralyzed, by his
daring.
But the storm raged too fiercely to be lulled, except for one
brief minute. A confusion of voices burst out afresh.
"No, he
"Who be thee? " "It's one o' the Quakers. "
bean't. " "Burn 'un anyhow. " "Touch 'un, if ye dare! "
There was evidently a division rising. One big man, who had
made himself very prominent all along, seemed trying to calm.
the tumult.
John stood his ground.
stooped and picked it up.
back again, but he did not;
it out safely with his foot.
effect on the crowd.
The big fellow advanced to the gate, and called John by his
name.
Once a torch was flung at him-he
I thought he was going to hurl it
he only threw it down and stamped
This simple action had a wonderful
"Is that you, Jacob Baines? I am sorry to see you here. "
"Be ye, sir? »
"What do you want? "
"Naught wi' thee. We want Abel Fletcher.
Where is 'un? "
"I shall certainly not tell you. "
As John said this, again the noise arose, and again Jacob
Baines seemed to have power to quiet the rest.
John Halifax never stirred. Evidently he was pretty well
known. I caught many a stray sentence, such as "Don't hurt
the lad;" "He were kind to my lad, he were;" "He be a real
gentleman;" "No, he comed here as poor as us," and the like.
At length one voice, sharp and shrill, was heard above the rest.
VII-259
## p.
