Book: Crabbe, (George)

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When Crabbe had completed his revisions to his own satisfaction and his
adviser's, Burke suggested the publication of _The Library_ and _The
Village_, and the former poem was laid before Mr. Dodsley, who only a
few months before had refused a poem from the same hand. But
circumstances were now changed, and Burke's recommendation and support
were all-sufficient. Dodsley was all politeness, and though he declined
to incur any risk--this was doubtless borne by Burke--he promised his
best endeavours to make the poem a success. _The Library_ was published,
anonymously, in June 1781. The _Monthly_ and the _Critical Reviews_
awarded it a certain amount of faint praise, but the success with the
general public seems only to have been slight.

When Burke selected this poem to lay before Dodsley, he had already read
portions of _The Village,_ and it seems strange that he should have
given _The Library_ precedence, for the other was in every respect the
more remarkable. But Burke, a conservative in this as in other matters,
probably thought that a new poet desiring to be heard would be wiser in
not at once quitting the old paths. The readers of poetry still had a
taste for didactic epigram varied by a certain amount of florid
rhetoric. And there was little beyond this in Crabbe's moralisings on
the respective functions of theology, history, poetry, and the rest, as
represented on the shelves of a library, and on the blessings of
literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of
life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had
caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as
fluent and copious--as skilful in spreading a truism over a dozen
well-sounding lines--as any of his predecessors. There is little new in
the way of ideas. Crabbe had as yet no wide insight into books and
authors, and he was forced to deal largely in generalities. But he
showed that he had already some idea of style; and if, when he had so
little to say, he could say it with so much semblance of power, it was
certain that when he had observed and thought for himself he would go
further and make a deeper mark. The heroic couplet controlled him to the
end of his life, and there is no doubt that it was not merely timidity
that made him confine himself to the old beaten track. Crabbe's thoughts
ran very much in antithesis, and the couplet suited this tendency. But
it had its serious limitations. Southey's touching stanzas--

"My days among the dead are passed,"

though the ideas embodied are no more novel than Crabbe's, are worth
scores of such lines as these--

"With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:
'The dead!' methinks a thousand tongues reply;
'These are the tombs of such as cannot die!
Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
And laugh at all the little strife of Time'"




CHAPTER III


FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

(1781-1783)

Thus far I have followed the guidance of Crabbe's son and biographer,
but there is much that is confused and incomplete in his narrative. The
story of Crabbe's life, as told by the son, leaves us in much doubt as
to the order of events in 1780-1781. The memorable letter to Burke was,
as we have seen, without a date. The omission is not strange, for the
letter was written by Crabbe in great anguish of mind, and was left by
his own hand at Burke's door. The son, though he evidently obtained from
his father most of the information he was afterwards to use, never
extracted this date from him. He tells us that up to the time of his
undertaking the Biography, he did not even know that the original of the
letter was in existence. He also tells us that until he and his brother
saw the letter they had little idea of the extreme poverty and anxiety
which their father had experienced during his time in London. Obviously
Crabbe himself had been reticent on the subject even with his own
family. From the midsummer of 1780, when the "Journal to Mira" comes to
an end, to the February or March of the following year, there is a blank
in the Biography which the son was unable to fill. At the time the
fragment of Diary closes, Crabbe was apparently at the very end of his
resources. He had pawned all his personal property, his books and his
surgical implements, and was still in debt. He had begged assistance
from many of the leading statesmen of the hour without success. How did
he contrive to exist between June 1780 and the early months of 1781?

The problem might never have been solved for us had it not been for the
accidental publication, four years after the Biography appeared, of a
second letter from Crabbe to Burke. In 1838, Sir Henry Bunbury, in an
appendix to the _Memoir and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer_
(Speaker of the House of Commons, and Shakspearian editor), printed a
collection of miscellaneous letters from distinguished men in the
possession of the Bunbury family. Among these is a letter of Crabbe to
Burke, undated save as to the month, which is given as June 26th. The
year, however, is obviously 1781, for the letter consists of further
details of Crabbe's early life, not supplied in the earlier effusion. At
the date of this second letter, Crabbe had been known to Burke three or
four months. During that time Crabbe had been constantly seeing Burke,
and with his help had been revising for the press the poem of _The
Library_, which was published by Dodsley in this very month, June 1781.
The first impression, accordingly, produced on us by the letter, is one
of surprise that after so long a period of intimate association with
Burke, Crabbe should still be writing in a tone of profound anxiety and
discouragement as to his future prospects. According to the son's
account of the situation, when Crabbe left Burke's house after their
first meeting, "he was, in the common phrase, 'a made man'--from that
hour." That short interview "entirely, and for ever, changed the nature
of his worldly fortunes." This, in a sense, was undoubtedly true, though
not perhaps as the writer meant. It is clear from the letter first
printed by Sir Henry Bunbury, that up to the end of June 1781, Crabbe's
future occupation in life was still unfixed, and that he was full of
misgivings as to the means of earning a livelihood.

The letter is of great interest in many respects, but is too long to
print as a whole in the text[1]. It throws light upon the blank space in
Crabbe's history just now referred to. It tells the story of a period of
humiliation and distress, concerning which it is easy to understand that
even in the days of his fame and prosperity Crabbe may well have
refrained from speaking with his children. After relating in full his
early struggles as an imperfectly qualified country doctor, and his
subsequent fortunes in London up to the day of his appeal to Burke,
Crabbe proceeds--"It will perhaps be asked how I could live near twelve
months a stranger in London; and coming without money, it is not to be
supposed I was immediately credited. It is not; my support arose from
another source. In the very early part of my life I contracted some
acquaintance, which afterwards became a serious connection, with the
niece of a Suffolk gentleman of large fortune. Her mother lives with her
three daughters at Beccles; her income is but the interest of fifteen
hundred pounds, which at her decease is to be divided betwixt her
children. The brother makes her annual income about a hundred pounds; he
is a rigid economist, and though I have the pleasure of his approbation,
I have not the good fortune to obtain more, nor from a prudent man could
I perhaps expect so much. But from the family at Beccles I have every
mark of their attention, and every proof of their disinterested regard.
They have from time to time supplied me with such sums as they could
possibly spare, and that they have not done more arose from my
concealing the severity of my situation, for I would not involve in my
errors or misfortunes a very generous and very happy family by which I
am received with unaffected sincerity, and where I am treated as a son
by a mother who can have no prudential reason to rejoice that her
daughter has formed such a connection. It is this family I lately
visited, and by which I am pressed to return, for they know the
necessity there is for me to live with the utmost frugality, and
hopeless of my succeeding in town, they invite me to partake of their
little fortune, and as I cannot mend my prospects, to avoid making them
worse." The letter ends with an earnest appeal to Burke to help him to
any honest occupation that may enable him to live without being a burden
on the slender resources of Miss Elmy's family. Crabbe is full of
gratitude for all that Burke has thus far done for him. He has helped
him to complete and publish his poem, but Crabbe is evidently aware that
poetry does not mean a livelihood, and that his future is as dark as
ever. The letter is dated from Crabbe's old lodging with the Vickerys in
Bishopsgate Street, and he had been lately staying with the Elmys at
Beccles. He was not therefore as yet a visitor under Burke's roof. This
was yet to come, with all the happy results that were to follow. It may
still seem strange that all these details remained to be told to Burke
four months after their acquaintance had begun. An explanation of this
may be found in the autobiographical matter that Crabbe late in life
supplied to the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1816. He there intimates that
after Burke had generously assisted him in other ways, besides enabling
him to publish _The Library_, the question had been discussed of
Crabbe's future calling. "Mr. Crabbe was encouraged to lay open his
views, past and present; to display whatever reading and acquirements he
possessed, to explain the causes of his disappointments, and the
cloudiness of his prospects; in short he concealed nothing from a friend
so able to guide inexperience, and so willing to pardon inadvertency."
Obviously it was in answer to such invitations from Burke that the
letter of the 26th of June 1781 was written.

It was probably soon after the publication of _The Library_ that Crabbe
paid his first visit to Beaconsfield, and was welcomed as a guest by
Burke's wife and her niece as cordially as by the statesman himself.
Here he first met Charles James Fox and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through
the latter soon became acquainted with Samuel Johnson, on whom he called
in Bolt Court. Later in the year, when in London, Crabbe had lodgings
hard by the Burkes in St. James's Place, and continued to be a frequent
guest at their table, where he met other of Burke's distinguished
friends, political and literary. Among these was Lord Chancellor Thurlow
to whom Crabbe had appealed, without success, in his less fortunate
days. On that occasion Thurlow had simply replied, in regard to the
poems which Crabbe had enclosed, "that his avocations did not leave him
leisure to read verses." To this Crabbe had been so unwise as to reply
that it was one of a Lord Chancellor's functions to relieve merit in
distress. But the good-natured Chancellor had not resented the
impertinence, and now hearing afresh from Burke of his old petitioner,
invited Crabbe to breakfast, and made him a generous apology. "The first
poem you sent me, Sir," he said, "I ought to have noticed,--and I
heartily forgive the second." At parting, Thurlow pressed a sealed
packet containing a hundred pounds into Crabbe's hand, and assured him
of further help when Crabbe should have taken Holy Orders.

For already, as the result of Burke's unceasing interest in his new
friend, Crabbe's future calling had been decided. In the course of
conversations at Beaconsfield Burke had discovered that his tastes and
gifts pointed much more clearly towards divinity than to medicine. His
special training for the office of a clergyman was of course deficient.
He probably had no Greek, but he had mastered enough of Latin to read
and quote the Latin poets. Moreover, his chief passion from early youth
had been for botany, and the treatises on that subject were, in Crabbe's
day, written in the language adopted in all scientific works. "It is
most fortunate," said Burke, "that your father exerted himself to send
you to that second school; without a little Latin we should have made
nothing of you: now, I think we shall succeed." Moreover Crabbe had been
a wide and discursive reader. "Mr. Crabbe," Burke told Reynolds,
"appears to know something of every thing." As to his more serious
qualifications for the profession, his natural piety, as shown in the
diaries kept in his days of trial, was beyond doubt. He was well read in
the Scriptures, and the example of a religious and much-tried mother had
not been without its influence. There had been some dissipations of his
earlier manhood, as his son admits, to repent of and to put away; but
the growth of his character in all that was excellent was unimpeachable,
and Burke was amply justified in recommending Crabbe as a candidate for
orders to the Bishop of Norwich. He was ordained on the 21st of December
1781 to the curacy of his native town.

On arriving in Aldeburgh Crabbe once more set up housekeeping with a
sister, as he had done in his less prosperous days as parish doctor. Sad
changes had occurred in his old home during the two years of his
absence. His mother had passed away after her many years of patient
suffering, and his father's temper and habits were not the better for
losing the wholesome restraints of her presence. But his attitude to his
clergyman son was at once changed. He was proud of his reputation and
his new-formed friends, and of the proofs he had given that the money
spent on his education had not been thrown away. But, apart from the
family pride in him, and that of Miss Elmy and other friends at Parham,
Crabbe's reception by his former friends and neighbours in Aldeburgh was
not of the kind he might have hoped to receive. He had left the place
less than three years before, a half-trained and unappreciated
practitioner in physic, to seek his fortune among strangers in London,
with the forlornest hopes of success. Jealousy of his elevated position
and improved fortunes set in with much severity. On the other hand, it
was more than many could tolerate that the hedge-apothecary of old
should be empowered to hold forth in a pulpit. Crabbe himself in later
life admitted to his children that his treatment at the hands of his
fellow-townsmen was markedly unkind. Even though he was happy in the
improved relations with his own family, and in the renewed opportunities
of frequent intercourse with Miss Elmy and the Tovells, Crabbe's
position during the few months at Aldeburgh was far from agreeable. The
religious influence, moreover, which he would naturally have wished to
exercise in his new sphere would obviously suffer in consequence. The
result was that in accordance with the assurances given him by Thurlow
at their last meeting, Crabbe again laid his difficulties before the
Chancellor. Thurlow quite reasonably replied that he could not form any
opinion as to Crabbe's present situation--"still less upon the
agreeableness of it"; and hinted that a somewhat longer period of
probation was advisable before he selected Crabbe for preferment in the
Church.

Other relief was however at hand, and once more through the watchful
care of Burke. Crabbe received a letter from his faithful friend to the
effect that he had mentioned his case to the Duke of Rutland, and that
the Duke had offered him the post of domestic chaplain at Belvoir
Castle, when he might be free from his engagements at Aldeburgh. That
Burke should have ventured on this step is significant, both as regards
the Duke and Duchess, and Crabbe. Crabbe's son remarks with truth that
an appointment of the kind was unusual, "such situations in the mansions
of that rank being commonly filled either by relations of the family
itself, or by college acquaintances, or dependents recommended by
political service and local attachment." Now Burke would certainly not
have recommended Crabbe for the post if he had found in his _protege_
any such defects of breeding or social tact as would have made his
society distasteful to the Duke and Duchess. Burke, as we have seen,
described him on their first acquaintance as having "the mind and
feelings of a gentleman." Thurlow, it is true, after one of Crabbe's
earlier interviews, had declared with an oath (_more suo_) that he was
"as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." But Thurlow was not merely
jesting. He knew that Fielding's immortal clergyman had also the "mind
and feelings of a gentleman," although his simplicity and ignorance of
the world put him at many social disadvantages. It was probably the same
obvious difference in Crabbe from the common type of nobleman's chaplain
of that day which made Crabbe's position at Belvoir, as his son admits,
full of difficulties. It is quite possible and even natural that the
guests and visitors at the Castle did not always accept Crabbe's talents
as making up for a certain want of polish--or even perhaps for a want of
deference to their opinions in conversation. The "pampered menials"
moreover would probably resent having "to say Amen" to a
newly-discovered literary adventurer from the great metropolis.

In any case Crabbe's experience of a chaplain's life at Belvoir was
not, by his son's admission, a happy one. "The numberless allusions," he
writes, "to the nature of a literary dependent's existence in a great
lord's house, which occur in my father's writings, and especially in the
tale of _The Patron_, are, however, quite enough, to lead any one who
knew his character and feelings to the conclusion that notwithstanding
the kindness and condescension of the Duke and Duchess themselves--which
were, I believe, uniform, and of which he always spoke with
gratitude--the situation he filled at Belvoir was attended with many
painful circumstances, and productive in his mind of some of the acutest
sensations of wounded pride that have ever been traced by any pen." It
is not necessary to hold Crabbe himself entirely irresponsible for this
result. His son, with a frankness that marks the Biography throughout,
does not conceal that his father's temper, even in later life, was
intolerant of contradiction, and he probably expressed his opinions
before the guests at Belvoir with more vehemence than prudence. But if
the rebuffs he met with were long remembered, they taught him something
of value, and enlarged that stock of worldly wisdom so prominent in his
later writings. In the story of _The Patron_, the young student living
as the rich man's guest is advised by his father as to his behaviour
with a fulness of detail obviously derived from Crabbe's own
recollections of his early deficiencies:--

"Thou art Religion's advocate--take heed.
Hurt not the cause thy pleasure 'tis to plead;
With wine before thee, and with wits beside,
Do not in strength of reasoning powers confide;
What seems to thee convincing, certain, plain,
They will deny and dare thee to maintain;
And thus will triumph o'er thy eager youth,
While thou wilt grieve for so disgracing truth.
With pain I've seen, these wrangling wits among,
Faith's weak defenders, passionate and young;
Weak thou art not, yet not enough on guard
Where wit and humour keep their watch and ward.
Men gay and noisy will o'erwhelm thy sense,
Then loudly laugh at Truth's and thy expense:
While the kind ladies will do all they can
To check their mirth, and cry '_The good young man!_'"

Meantime there were alleviations of the poet's lot. If the guests of the
house were not always convinced by his arguments and the servants did
not disguise their contempt, the Duke and Duchess were kind, and made
him their friend. Nor was the Duke without an intelligent interest in
Crabbe's own subjects. Moreover, among the visitors at Belvoir were many
who shared that interest to the full, such as the Duke of Queensberry,
Lord Lothian, Bishop Watson, and the eccentric Dr. Robert Glynn. Again,
it was during Crabbe's residence at Belvoir that the Duke's brother,
Lord Robert Manners, died of wounds received while leading his ship,
_Resolution_, against the French in the West Indies, in the April of
1782. Crabbe's sympathy with the family, shown in his tribute to the
sailor-brother appended to the poem he was then bringing to completion,
still further strengthened the tie between them. Crabbe accompanied the
Duke to London soon after, to assist him in arranging with Stothard for
a picture to be painted of the incident of Lord Robert's death. It was
during this visit that Crabbe received the following letter from Burke.
The letter is undated, but belongs to the month of May, for _The
Village_ was published in that month, and Burke clearly refers to that
poem as just received, but as yet unread. Crabbe seems to have been for
the time off duty, and to have proposed a short visit to the Burkes;--

"Dear Sir,--I do not know by what unlucky accident
you missed the note I left for you at my house. I wrote
besides to you at Belvoir. If you had received these two
short letters you could not want an invitation to a place
where every one considers himself as infinitely honoured and
pleased by your presence. Mrs. Burke desires her best
compliments, and trusts that you will not let the holidays
pass over without a visit from you I have got the poem;
but I have not yet opened it. I don't like the unhappy
language you use about these matters. You do not easily
please such a judgment as your own--that is natural; but
where you are difficult every one else will be charmed. I am,
my dear sir, ever most affectionately yours,

EDMUND BURKE."

The "unhappy language" seems to point to Crabbe having expressed some
diffidence or forebodings concerning his new venture. Yet Crabbe had
less to fear on this head than with most of his early poems. _The
Village_ had been schemed and composed in parts before Crabbe knew
Burke. One passage in it indeed, as we have seen, had first convinced
Burke that the writer was a poet. And in the interval that followed the
poem had been completed and matured with a care that Crabbe seldom
afterwards bestowed upon his productions. Burke himself had suggested
and criticised much during its progress, and the manuscript had further
been submitted through Sir Joshua Reynolds to Johnson, who not only
revised it in detail but re-wrote half a dozen of the opening lines.
Johnson's opinion of the poem was conveyed to Reynolds in the following
letter, and here at last we get a date:--

_March_ 4, 1783.

"Sir,--I have sent you back Mr. Crabbe's poem, which I
read with great delight. It is original, vigorous, and elegant.
The alterations which I have made I do not require him to
adopt; for my lines are perhaps not often better than his
own: but he may take mine and his own together, and
perhaps between them produce something better than either.
He is not to think his copy wantonly defaced: a wet sponge
will wash all the red lines away and leave the pages clean.
His dedication will be least liked: it were better to contract
it into a short, sprightly address. I do not doubt of Mr.
Crabbe's success. I am, Sir, your most humble servant,

SAMUEL JOHNSON."


Boswell's comment on this incident is as follows:--"The sentiments of
Mr. Crabbe's admirable poem as to the false notions of rustic happiness
and rustic virtue were quite congenial with Dr. Johnson's own: and he
took the trouble not only to suggest slight corrections and variations,
but to furnish some lines when he thought he could give the writer's
meaning better than in the words of the manuscript." Boswell went on to
observe that "the aid given by Johnson to the poem, as to _The
Traveller_ and _Deserted Village_ of Goldsmith, were so small as by no
means to impair the distinguished merit of the author." There were
unfriendly critics, however, in Crabbe's native county who professed to
think otherwise, and "whispered that the manuscript had been so
_cobbled_ by Burke and Johnson that its author did not know it again
when returned to him." On which Crabbe's son rejoins that "if these kind
persons survived to read _The Parish Register_ their amiable conjectures
must have received a sufficient rebuke."

This confident retort is not wholly just. There can be no doubt that
some special mannerisms and defects of Crabbe's later style had been
kept in check by the wise revision of his friends. And again, when after
more than twenty years Crabbe produced _The Parish Register_, that poem,
as we shall see, had received from Charles James Fox something of the
same friendly revision and suggestion as _The Village_ had received from
Burke and Johnson.

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