Crabbe's new volume—"Tales. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL.B."—was published by Mr. Hatchard of Piccadilly in the summer of 1812. It received a warm welcome from the poet's admirers, and was reviewed, most appreciatively, by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh for November. The Tales were twenty-one in number, and to each was prefixed a series, often four or five, of quotations from Shakespeare, illustrating the incidents in the Tales, or the character there depicted. Crabbe's knowledge of Shakespeare must have been in those days, when concordances were not, very remarkable, for he quotes by no means always from the best known plays, and he was not a frequenter of the theatre. Crabbe had of late studied human nature in books as well as in life.

As already remarked, the Tales are often built upon events in his own family, or else occurring within their knowledge. The second in order of publication, The Parting Hour, arose out of an incident in the life of the poet's own brother, which is thus related in the notes to the edition of 1834:

The story as developed by Crabbe is pathetic and picturesque, reminding us in its central interest of Enoch Arden. Allen Booth, the youngest son of his parents dwelling in a small seaport, falls early in love with a child schoolfellow, for whom his affection never falters. When grown up the young man accepts an offer from a prosperous kinsman in the West Indies to join him in his business. His beloved sees him depart with many misgivings, though their mutual devotion was never to fade. She does not see him again for forty years, when he returns, like Arden, to his "native bay,"

He finds his old love, who had been faithful to her engagement for ten years, and then (believing Allen to be dead) had married. She is now a widow, with grown-up children scattered through the world, and is alone. Allen then tells his sad story. The ship in which he sailed from England had been taken by the Spaniards, and he had been carried a slave to the West Indies, where he worked in a silver mine, improved his position under a kind master, and finally married a Spanish girl, hopeless of ever returning to England though still unforgetful of his old love. He accumulates money, and, like Crabbe's brother, incurs the envy of his Roman Catholic neighbours. He is denounced as a heretic, who would doubtless bring up his children in the accursed English faith. On his refusal to become a Catholic he is expelled the country, as the condition of his life being spared:

After many adventures he falls in with a ship bound for England, but again his return is delayed. He is impressed (it was war-time), and fights for his country; loses a limb, is again left upon a foreign shore where his education finds him occupation as a clerk; and finally, broken with age and toil, finds his way back to England, where the faithful friend of his youth takes care of him and nurses him to the end. The situation at the close is very touching—for the joy of re-union is clouded by the real love he feels for the Spanish wife and children from whom he had been torn, and who are continually present to him in his dreams.

Nor is the treatment inadequate. It is at once discernible how much Crabbe had already gained by the necessity for concentration upon the development of a story instead of on the mere analysis of character. The style, moreover, has clarified and gained in dignity: there are few, if any, relapses into the homelier style on which the parodist could try his hand. Had the author of Enoch Arden treated the same theme in blank-verse, the workmanship would have been finer, but he could hardly have sounded a truer note of unexaggerated pathos.

The same may be said of the beautiful tale of The Lover's Journey. Here again is the product of an experience belonging to Crabbe's personal history. In his early Aldeburgh days, when he was engaged to Sarah Elmy with but faint hope of ever being able to marry, it was one of the rare alleviations of his distressed condition to walk over from Aldeburgh to Beccles (some twenty miles distant), where his betrothed was occasionally a visitor to her mother and sisters. "It was in his walks," writes the son, "between Aldeburgh and Beccles that Mr. Crabbe passed through the very scenery described in the first part of The Lover's Journey; while near Beccles, in another direction, he found the contrast of rich vegetation introduced in the latter part of that tale; nor have I any doubt that the disappointment of the story figures out something that, on one of these visits, befell himself, and the feelings with which he received it.

For truth compels me to say, that he was by no means free from the less amiable sign of a strong attachment—jealousy." The story is of the slightest—an incident rather than a story. The lover, joyous and buoyant, traverses the dreary coast scenery of Suffolk, and because he is happy, finds beauty and charm in the commonest and most familiar sights and sounds of nature: every single hedge-row blossom, every group of children at their play. The poem is indeed an illustration of Coleridge's lines in his ode Dejection:

All along the road to his beloved's house, nature wears this "wedding-garment." On his arrival, however, the sun fades suddenly from the landscape. The lady is from home: gone to visit a friend a few miles distant, not so far but that her lover can follow,—but the slight, real or imaginary, probably the latter, comes as such a rebuff, that during the "little more—how far away!" that he travels, the country, though now richer and lovelier, seems to him (as once to Hamlet) a mere "pestilent congregation of vapours." But in the end he finds his mistress and learns that she had gone on duty, not for pleasure,—and they return happy again, and so happy indeed, that he has neither eyes nor thoughts for any of nature's fertilities or barrennesses—only for the dear one at his side.

I have already had occasion to quote a few lines from this beautiful poem, to show Crabbe's minute observation—in his time so rare—of flowers and birds and all that makes the charm of rural scenery—but I must quote some more:

And then follows a masterly description of a gipsy encampment on which the lover suddenly comes in his travels. Crabbe's treatment of peasant life has often been compared to that of divers painters—the Dutch school, Hogarth, Wilkie, and others—and the following curiously suggests Frederick Walker's fine drawing, The Vagrants:

The Patron, one of the most carefully elaborated of the Tales, is on an old and familiar theme. The scorn that "patient merit of the unworthy takes"; the misery of the courtier doomed "in suing long to bide";—the ills that assail the scholar's life,

are standing subjects for the moralist and the satirist. In Crabbe's poem we have the story of a young man, the son of a "Borough-burgess," who, showing some real promise as a poet, and having been able to render the local Squire some service by his verses at election time, is invited in return to pay a visit of some weeks at the Squire's country-seat. The Squire has vaguely undertaken to find some congenial post for the young scholar, whose ideas and ambitions are much in advance of those entertained for him in his home. The young man has a most agreeable time with his new friends. He lives for the while with every refinement about him, and the Squire's daughter, a young lady of the type of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, evidently enjoys the opportunity of breaking a country heart for pastime, "ere she goes to town." For after a while the family leave for their mansion in London, the Squire at parting once more impressing on his young guest that he will not forget him. After waiting a reasonable time, the young poet repairs to London and seeks to obtain an interview with his Patron. After many unsuccessful trials, and rebuffs at the door from the servants, a letter is at last sent out to him from their master, coolly advising him to abjure all dreams of a literary life and offering him a humble post in the Custom House. The young man, in bitterness of heart, tries the work for a short time; and then, his health and spirits having utterly failed, he returns to his parents' home to die, the father thanking God, as he moves away from his son's grave, that no other of his children has tastes and talents above his position:

Crabbe, who is nothing if not incisive in the drawing of his moral, and lays on his colours with no sparing hand, represents the heartless Patron and his family as hearing the sad tidings with quite amazing sang-froid:

The story, though it has no precise prototype in Crabbe's own history, is clearly the fruit of his experience of life at Belvoir Castle, combined with the sad recollection of his sufferings when only a few years before he, a young man with the consciousness of talent, was rolling butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay.

Much of the Tale is admirably and forcibly written, but again it may be said that it is powerful fiction rather than poetry—and indeed into such matters poetry can hardly enter. It displays the fine observation of Miss Austen, clothed in effective couplets of the school of Johnson and Churchill. Yet every now and then the true poet comes to the surface. The essence of a dank and misty day in late autumn has never been seized with more perfect truth than in these lines:

The scheme of these detached Tales had served to develop one special side of Crabbe's talent. The analysis of human character, with its strength and weakness (but specially the latter), finds fuller exercise as the poet has to trace its effects upon the earthly fortunes of the persons portrayed. The Tale entitled The Gentleman Farmer is a striking illustration in point. Jeffrey in his review of the Tales in the Edinburgh supplies, as usual, a short abstract of the story, not without due insight into its moral. But a profounder student of human nature than Jeffrey has, in our own day, cited the Tale as worthy even to illustrate a memorable teaching of St. Paul. The Bishop of Worcester, better known as Canon Gore to the thousands who listened to the discourse in Westminster Abbey, finds in this story a perfect illustration of what moral freedom is, and what it is often erroneously supposed to be:

The quotation shows that Crabbe, neglected by the readers of poetry to-day, is still cherished by the psychologist and divine. It is to the "graver mind" rather than to the "lighter heart" that he oftenest appeals. Newman, to mention no small names, found Crabbe's pathos and fidelity to Human Nature even more attractive to him in advanced years than in youth. There is indeed much in common between Crabbe's treatment of life and its problems, and Newman's. Both may be called "stern" portrayers of human nature, not only as intended in Byron's famous line, but in Wordsworth's use of the epithet when he invoked Duty as the "stern Daughter of the voice of God." A kindred lesson to that drawn by Canon Gore from The Gentleman Farmer is taught in the yet grimmer Tale of Edward Shore. The story, as summarised by Jeffrey, is as follows:

Jeffrey's abstract is fairly accurate, save in one particular. Edward Shore can hardly be said to feel an "ardent love of virtue." Rather is he perfectly confident of his respectability, and bitterly contemptuous of those who maintain the necessity of religion to control men's unruly passions. His own lofty conceptions of the dignity of human nature are sufficient for himself:

As motto for this story Crabbe quotes the fine speech of Henry V. on discovering the treachery of Lord Scrope, whose character had hitherto seemed so immaculate. The comparison thus suggested is not as felicitous as in many of Crabbe's citations. Had In Memoriam been then written, a more exact parallel might have been found in Tennyson's warning to the young enthusiast:

The story is for the most part admirably told. The unhappy man, reduced to idiocy of a harmless kind, and the common playmate of the village children, is encountered now and then by the once loved maid, who might have made him happy:

In striking contrast to the prevailing tone of the other Tales is the charming story, conceived in a vein of purest comedy, called The Frank Courtship. This Tale alone should be a decisive answer to those who have doubted Crabbe's possession of the gift of humour, and on this occasion he has refrained from letting one dark shadow fall across his picture. It tells of one Jonas Kindred, a wealthy puritanic Dissenter of narrowest creed and masterful temper. He has an only daughter, the pride of her parents, and brought up by them in the strictest tenets of the sect. Her father has a widowed and childless sister, with a comfortable fortune, living in some distant town; and in pity of her solitary condition he allows his naturally vivacious daughter to spend the greater part of the year with her aunt. The aunt does not share the prejudices of her brother's household. She likes her game of cards and other social joys, and is quite a leader of fashion in her little town. To this life and its enjoyments the beautiful and clever Sybil takes very kindly, and unfolds many attractive graces. Once a year the aunt and niece by arrangement spend a few weeks in Sybil's old home. The aunt, with much serpentine wisdom, arranges that she and her niece shall adapt themselves to this very different atmosphere—eschew cards, attend regularly at chapel, and comply with the tone and habits of the family. The niece, however, is really as good as she is pretty, and her conscience smites her for deceiving her father, of whom she is genuinely fond. She stands before him "pure, pensive, simple, sad,"—yet

As time wears on, however, this state of things must come to a close. Jonas is anxious that his daughter shall marry suitably, and he finds among his neighbours an admirable young man, a staunch member of the "persuasion," and well furnished in this world's goods. He calls his daughter home, that she may be at once introduced to her future husband, for the father is as certain as Sir Anthony Absolute himself that daughters should accept what is offered them and ask no questions. Sybil is by no means unwilling to enter the holy state, if the right man can be found. Indeed, she is wearying of the aimless life she lives with her worldly aunt, and the gradual change in her thoughts and hopes is indicated in a passage of much delicacy and insight:

The interview between Sybil and the young man is conceived with real skill and humour. The young lady receives her lover, prepared to treat him with gentle mockery and to keep him at a convenient distance. The young lover is not daunted, and plainly warns her against the consequences of such levity. But as the little duel proceeds, each gradually detects the real good that underlies the surface qualities of the other. In spite of his formalism, Sybil discerns that her lover is full of good sense and feeling; and he makes the same discovery with regard to the young lady's badinage. And then, after a conflict of wits that seems to terminate without any actual result, the anxious father approaches his child with a final appeal to her sense of filial duty:

All the characters in the story—the martinet father and his poor crushed wife, as well as the pair of lovers—are indicated with an appreciation of the value of dramatic contrast that might make the little story effective on the stage. One of the Tales in this collection, The Confidant, was actually turned into a little drama in blank verse by Charles Lamb, under the changed title of The Wife's Trial: or the Intruding Widow. The story of Crabbe's Confidant is not pleasant; and Lamb thought well to modify it, so as to diminish the gravity of the secret of which the malicious friend was possessed. There is nothing but what is sweet and attractive in the little comedy of The Frank Courtship, and it might well be commended to the dexterous and sympathetic hand of Mr. J.M. Barrie.