[2] In 1834, after Crabbe's death, Wordsworth wrote to his son: "Your father's works ... will last, from their combined merit as poetry and truth, full as long as anything that has been expressed in verse since the date of their first appearance." A very different estimate by Wordsworth of Crabbe has been published in Mr. Clayden's Rogers and his Contemporaries. Here he argues at great length that "Crabbe's verses can in no sense be called poetry," and that "nineteen out of twenty of his pictures are mere matter of fact." It is fair to say that this was in 1808, before the appearance of "The Borough" and of almost all Crabbe's best work.

[3] Great Writers; Crabbe: by T. E. Kebbel. London, 1888.

[4] Although constantly patronised by the Rutland family in successive generations, and honoured by the attentions of "Old Q." and others, his poems are full of growls at patrons. These cannot be mere echoes of Oldham and Johnson, but their exact reason is unknown. His son's reference to it is so extremely cautious that it has been read as a confession that Crabbe was prone to his cups, and quarrelsome in them—a signal instance of the unwisdom of not speaking out.

[5] Rogers told Ticknor in 1838 that "Crabbe was nearly ruined by grief and vexation at the conduct of his wife for above seven years, at the end of which time she proved to be insane." But this was long after her death and Crabbe's, and it is not clear that while she was alive Rogers knew Crabbe at all. Nor is there the slightest reason for attaching to the phrase "vexation at the conduct" the sense which it would usually have. A quatrain found after Crabbe's death wrapped round his wife's wedding-ring is touching, and graceful in its old-fashioned way.

[6] See below, Essay on Hazlitt.

[7] For something more, however, see the Essay on Lockhart below.

[8] To speak of him in this way is not impertinence or familiarity. He was most generally addressed as "Mr. Sydney," and his references to his wife are nearly always to "Mrs. Sydney," seldom or never to "Mrs. Smith."

[9] See next Essay.

[10] To prevent mistakes it may be as well to say that Jeffrey's Contributions to the Edinburgh Review appeared first in four volumes, then in three, then in one.

[11] In the following remarks, reference is confined to the Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 1 vol. London, 1853. This is not merely a matter of convenience; the selection having been made with very great care by Jeffrey himself at a time when his faculties were in perfect order, and including full specimens of every kind of his work.

[12] For some further remarks on this duel as it concerns Lockhart see Appendix.

[13] Since this paper was first published Mr. Alexander Ireland has edited a most excellent selection from Hazlitt.

[14] Etude sur la Vie et les Œuvres de Thomas Moore; by Gustave Vallat. Paris: Rousseau. London: Asher and Co. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, and Co. 1887.

[15] If I accepted (a rash acceptance) the challenge to name the three very best things in Wilson I should, I think, choose the famous Fairy's Funeral in the Recreations, the Shepherd's account of his recovery from illness in the Noctes, and, in a lighter vein, the picture of girls bathing in "Streams."

[16] See Appendix A—De Quincey.

[17] The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey; edited by David Masson. In fourteen volumes; Edinburgh, 1889-90.

[18] See Appendix B—Lockhart.

[19] 1. The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, with a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. In two volumes. London, 1864. 2. Essays by Winthrop Mackworth Praed, collected and arranged by Sir George Young, Bart. London, 1887. 3. The Political and Occasional Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, edited, with Notes, by Sir George Young. London, 1888.

[20] Since I wrote this I have been reminded by my friend Mr. Mowbray Morris of Byron's

It is not impossible that this is the immediate original. But Praed has so improved on it as to deserve a new patent.