Book: Crabbe, (George)

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This account of matters is rather mixed. The "early period" pointed to
by young Crabbe is that at which he himself first had distinct
recollection of his father, and his doings. Putting that age at six
years old, the year would be 1791; and it may be inferred that as the
whole family paid a visit of many months to Suffolk in the year 1790, it
was during that visit that he had the decisive attack in the streets of
Ipswich. The account may be continued in the son's own words:--

"Having left my mother at the inn, he walked into the
town alone, and suddenly staggered in the street, and fell.
He was lifted up by the passengers" (probably from the stagecoach
from which they had just alighted), "and overheard
some one say significantly, 'Let the gentleman alone, he will
be better by and by'; for his fall was attributed to the
bottle. He was assisted to his room, and the late Dr. Clubbe
was sent for, who, after a little examination, saw through the
case with great judgment. 'There is nothing the matter with
your head,' he observed, 'nor any apoplectic tendency; let
the digestive organs bear the whole blame: you must take
opiates.' From that time his health began to amend rapidly,
and his constitution was renovated; a rare effect of opium,
for that drug almost always inflicts some partial injury, even
when it is necessary; but to him it was only salutary--and
to a constant but slightly increasing dose of it may be attributed
his long and generally healthy life."

The son makes no reference to any possible effects of this "slightly
increasing dose" upon his father's intellect or imagination. And the
ordinary reader who knows the poet mainly through his sober couplets may
well be surprised to hear that their author was ever addicted to the
opium-habit; still more, that his imagination ever owed anything to its
stimulus. But in FitzGerald's copy there is a MS. note, not signed
"G.C.," and therefore FitzGerald's own. It runs thus: "It" (the opium)
"probably influenced his dreams, for better or worse" To this FitzGerald
significantly adds, "see also the _World of Dreams_, and _Sir Eustace
Grey_."

As Crabbe is practically unknown to the readers of the present day, _Sir
Eustace Grey_ will be hardly even a name to them. For it lies, with two
or three other noticeable poems, quite out of the familiar track of his
narrative verse. In the first place it is in stanzas, and what Browning
would have classed as a "Dramatic Lyric." The subject is as follows: The
scene "a Madhouse," and the persons a Visitor, a Physician, and a
Patient. The visitor has been shown over the establishment, and is on
the point of departing weary and depressed at the sight of so much
misery, when the physician begs him to stay as they come in sight of the
"cell" of a specially interesting patient, Sir Eustace Grey, late of
Greyling Hall. Sir Eustace greets them as they approach, plunges at once
into monologue, and relates (with occasional warnings from the doctor
against over-excitement) the sad story of his misfortunes and consequent
loss of reason. He begins with a description of his happier days:--

"Some twenty years, I think, are gone
(Time flies, I know not how, away),
The sun upon no happier shone
Nor prouder man, than Eustace Grey.
Ask where you would, and all would say,
The man admired and praised of all,
By rich and poor, by grave and gay,
Was the young lord of Greyling Hall.

"Yes! I had youth and rosy health,
Was nobly formed, as man might be;
For sickness, then, of all my wealth,
I never gave a single fee:
The ladies fair, the maidens free.
Were all accustomed then to say,
Who would a handsome figure see,
Should look upon Sir Eustace Grey.

"My lady I--She was all we love;
All praise, to speak her worth, is faint;
Her manners show'd the yielding dove,
Her morals, the seraphic saint:
She never breathed nor looked complaint;
No equal upon earth had she:
Now, what is this fair thing I paint?
Alas! as all that live shall be.

"There were two cherub-things beside,
A gracious girl, a glorious boy;
Yet more to swell my fall-blown pride,
To varnish higher my fading joy,
Pleasures were ours without alloy,
Nay, Paradise,--till my frail Eve
Our bliss was tempted to destroy--
Deceived, and fated to deceive.

"But I deserved;--for all that time
When I was loved, admired, caressed,
There was within each secret crime,
Unfelt, uncancelled, unconfessed:
I never then my God addressed,
In grateful praise or humble prayer;
And if His Word was not my jest--
(Dread thought!) it never was my care."

The misfortunes of the unhappy man proceed apace, and blow follows blow.
He is unthankful for his blessings, and Heaven's vengeance descends on
him. His wife proves faithless, and he kills her betrayer, once his
trusted friend. The wretched woman pines and dies, and the two children
take some infectious disease and quickly follow. The sufferer turns to
his wealth and his ambitions to drug his memory. But "walking in pride,"
he is to be still further "abased." The "Watcher and the Holy One" that
visited Nebuchadnezzar come to Sir Eustace in vision and pronounce his
fate:

"Full be his cup, with evil fraught--
Demons his guides, and death his doom."

Two fiends of darkness are told off to tempt him. One, presumably the
Spirit of Gambling, robs him of his wealth, while the Spirit of Mania
takes from him his reason, and drags him through a hell of horriblest
imaginings. And it is at this point that what has been called the
"dream-scenery" of the opium-eater is reproduced in a series of very
remarkable stanzas:

Upon that boundless plain, below,
The setting sun's last rays were shed,
And gave a mild and sober glow,
Where all were still, asleep, or dead;
Vast ruins in the midst were spread,
Pillars and pediments sublime,
Where the grey moss had form'd a bed,
And clothed the crumbling spoils of time.

"There was I fix'd, I know not how,
Condemn'd for untold years to stay:
Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_
Endured no change of night or day;
The same mild evening's sleepy ray
Shone softly-solemn and serene,
And all that time I gazed away,
The setting sun's sad rays were seen.

"At length a moment's sleep stole on,--
Again came my commission'd foes;
Again through sea and land we're gone,
No peace, no respite, no repose:
Above the dark broad sea we rose,
We ran through bleak and frozen land;
I had no strength their strength t' oppose,
An infant in a giant's hand.

"They placed me where those streamers play,
Those nimble beams of brilliant light;
It would the stoutest heart dismay,
To see, to feel, that dreadful sight:
So swift, so pure, so cold, so bright,
They pierced my frame with icy wound;
And all that half-year's polar night,
Those dancing streamers wrapp'd me round

"Slowly that darkness pass'd away,
When down, upon the earth I fell,--
Some hurried sleep was mine by day;
But, soon as toll'd the evening bell,
They forced me on, where ever dwell
Far-distant men in cities fair,
Cities of whom no travellers tell,
Nor feet but mine were wanderers there

"Their watchmen stare, and stand aghast,
As on we hurry through the dark;
The watch-light blinks as we go past,
The watch-dog shrinks and fears to bark;
The watch-tower's bell sounds shrill; and, hark!
The free wind blows--we've left the town--
A wide sepulchral ground I mark,
And on a tombstone place me down.

"What monuments of mighty dead!
What tombs of various kind are found!
And stones erect their shadows shed
On humble graves, with wickers bound;
Some risen fresh, above the ground,
Some level with the native clay:
What sleeping millions wait the sound,
'Arise, ye dead, and come away!'

Alas! they stay not for that call;
Spare me this woe! ye demons, spare!--
They come! the shrouded shadows all,--
'Tis more than mortal brain can bear;
Rustling they rise, they sternly glare
At man upheld by vital breath;
Who, led by wicked fiends, should dare
To join the shadowy troops of death!"

For about fifteen stanzas this power of wild imaginings is sustained,
and, it must be admitted, at a high level as regards diction. The reader
will note first how the impetuous flow of those visionary recollections
generates a style in the main so lofty and so strong. The poetic diction
of the eighteenth century, against which Wordsworth made his famous
protest, is entirely absent. Then again, the eight-line stanza is
something quite different from a mere aggregate of quatrains arranged in
pairs. The lines are knit together; sonnet-fashion, by the device of
interlacing the rhymes, the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh lines
rhyming. And it is singularly effective for its purpose, that of
avoiding the suggestion of a mere ballad-measure, and carrying on the
descriptive action with as little interruption as might be.

The similarity of the illusions, here attributed to insanity, to those
described by De Quincey as the result of opium, is too marked to be
accidental. In the concluding pages of his _Confessions_, De Quincey
writes: "The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were
both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in
proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive ... This
disturbed me very much less than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I
seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night."

Compare Crabbe's sufferer:--

"There was I fix'd, I know not how,
Condemn'd for untold years to stay
Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_
Endured no change of night or day."

Again, the rapid transition from one distant land to another, from the
Pole to the Tropics, is common to both experiences. The "ill-favoured
ones" who are charged with Sir Eustace's expiation fix him at one moment

"--on the trembling ball
That crowns the steeple's quiv'ring spire"

just as the Opium-Fiend fixes De Quincey for centuries at the summit of
Pagodas. Sir Eustace is accused of sins he had never committed:--

"Harmless I was: yet hunted down
For treasons to my soul unfit;
I've been pursued through many a town
For crimes that petty knaves commit."

Even so the opium-eater imagines himself flying from the wrath of
Oriental Deities. "I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a
deed, they said, which the Ibis and the Crocodile trembled at." The
morbid inspiration is clearly the same in both cases, and there can be
little doubt that Crabbe's poem owes its inception to opium, and that
the frame work was devised by him for the utilisation of his dreams.


But a curious and unexpected _denouement_ awaits the reader. When Sir
Eustace's condition, as he describes it, seems most hopeless, its
alleviation arrives through a religious conversion. There has been
throughout present to him the conscience of "a soul defiled with every
stain." And at the same moment, under circumstances unexplained, his
spiritual ear is purged to hear a "Heavenly Teacher." The voice takes
the form of the touching and effective hymn, which has doubtless found a
place since in many an evangelical hymn-book, beginning

"Pilgrim, burthen'd with thy sin,
Come the way to Zion's gate;
There, till Mercy let thee in,
Knock and weep, and watch and wait.
Knock!--He knows the sinner's cry.
Weep!--He loves the mourner's tears.
Watch!--for saving grace is nigh
Wait,--till heavenly light appears."

And the hymn is followed by the pathetic confession on the sufferer's
part that this blessed experience, though it has brought him the
assurance of heavenly forgiveness, still leaves him, "though elect,"
looking sadly back on his old prosperity, and bearing, but unresigned,
the prospect of an old ago spent amid his present gloomy surroundings.
And yet Crabbe, with a touch of real imaginative insight, represents him
in his final utterance as relapsing into a vague hope of some day being
restored to his old prosperity:

"Must you, my friends, no longer stay?
Thus quickly all my pleasures end;
But I'll remember, when I pray,
My kind physician and his friend:

And those sad hours you deign to spend
With me, I shall requite them all.
Sir Eustace for his friends shall send,
And thank their love at Greyling Hall."[4]



The kind physician and his friend then proceed to diagnose the patient's
condition--which they agree is that of "a frenzied child of grace," and
so the poem ends. To one of its last stanzas Crabbe attached an
apologetic note, one of the most remarkable ever penned. It exhibits the
struggle that at that period must have been proceeding in many a
thoughtful breast as to how the new wine of religion could be somehow
accommodated to the old bottles:--

"It has been suggested to me that this change from restlessness to
repose in the mind of Sir Eustace is wrought by a methodistic call; and
it is admitted to be such: a sober and rational conversion could not
have happened while the disorder of the brain continued; yet the verses
which follow, in a different measure," (Crabbe refers to the hymn) "are
not intended to make any religious persuasion appear ridiculous; they
are to be supposed as the effect of memory in the disordered mind of the
speaker, and though evidently enthusiastic in respect to language, are
not meant to convey any impropriety of sentiment."

The implied suggestion (for it comes to this) that the sentiments of
this devotional hymn, written by Crabbe himself, could only have brought
comfort to the soul of a lunatic, is surely as good a proof as the
period could produce of the bewilderment in the Anglican mind caused by
the revival of personal religion under Wesley and his followers.

According to Crabbe's son _Sir Eustace Grey_ was written at Muston in
the winter of 1804-1805. This is scarcely possible, for Crabbe did not
return to his Leicestershire living until the autumn of the latter year.
Probably the poem was begun in Suffolk, and the final touches were added
later. Crabbe seems to have told his family that it was written during a
severe snow-storm, and at one sitting. As the poem consists of
fifty-five eight-lined stanzas, of somewhat complex construction, the
accuracy of Crabbe's account is doubtful. If its inspiration was in some
degree due to opium, we know from the example of S.T. Coleridge that the
opium-habit is not favourable to certainty of memory or the accurate
presentation of facts. After Crabbe's death, there was found in one of
his many manuscript note-books a copy of verses, undated, entitled _The
World of Dreams_, which his son printed in subsequent editions of the
poems. The verses are in the same metre and rhyme-system as _Sir
Eustace_, and treat of precisely the same class of visions as recorded
by the inmate of the asylum. The rapid and continuous transition from
scene to scene, and period to period, is the same in both. Foreign kings
and other potentates reappear, as with De Quincey, in ghostly and
repellent forms:--

"I know not how, but I am brought
Into a large and Gothic hall,
Seated with those I never sought--
Kings, Caliphs, Kaisers--silent all;
Pale as the dead; enrobed and tall,
Majestic, frozen, solemn, still;
They make my fears, my wits appal,
And with both scorn and terror fill."

This, again, may be compared, or rather contrasted, with Coleridge's
_Pains of Sleep_, and it can hardly be doubted that the two poems had a
common origin.

The year 1805 was the last of Crabbe's sojourn in Suffolk, and it was
made memorable in the annals of literature by the appearance of the _Lay
of the Last Minstrel_. Crabbe first met with it in a bookseller's shop
in Ipswich, read it nearly through while standing at the counter, and
pronounced that a new and great poet had appeared.

This was Crabbe's first introduction to one who was before long to prove
himself one of his warmest admirers and friends. It was one of Crabbe's
virtues that he was quick to recognise the worth of his poetical
contemporaries. He had been repelled, with many others, by the weak side
of the _Lyrical Ballads_, but he lived to revere Wordsworth's genius.
His admiration for Burns was unstinted. But amid all the signs of a
poetical _renaissance_ in progress, and under a natural temptation to
tread the fresh woods and pictures new that were opening before him, it
showed a true judgment in Crabbe that he never faltered in the
conviction that his own opportunity and his own strength lay elsewhere.
Not in the romantic or the mystical--not in perfection of form or melody
of lyric verse, were his own humbler triumphs to be won. Like
Wordsworth, he was to find a sufficiency in the "common growth of
mother-earth," though indeed less in her "mirth" than in her "tears,"
Notwithstanding his _Eustace Grey_, and _World of Dreams_, and the
really powerful story of Aaron the Gipsy (afterwards to appear as the
_The Hall of Justice_), Crabbe was returning to the themes and the
methods of _The Village_. He had already completed _The Parish
Register_, and had _The Borough_ in contemplation, when he returned to
his Leicestershire parish. The woods of Belvoir, and the rural charms of
Parham and Glemham, had not dimmed the memory of the sordid little
fishing-town, where the spirit of poetry had first met him, and thrown
her mantle round him.

And now the day had come when the mandate of the bishop could no longer
be ignored. In October 1805, Crabbe with his wife and two sons returned
to the Parsonage at Muston. He had been absent from his joint livings
about thirteen years, of which four had been spent at Parham, five at
Great Glemham, and four at Rendham, all three places lying within a
small area, and within reach of the same old friends and relations. No
wonder that he left the neighbourhood with a reluctance that was
probably too well guessed by his parishioners in the Vale of Belvoir.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Richard Turner of Yarmouth was a man of considerable
culture, and belonged to a family of scholars. His eldest brother was
Master of Pembroke, Cambridge, and Dean of Norwich: his youngest son was
Sir Charles Turner, a Lord Justice of Appeal; and Dawson Turner was his
nephew. Richard Turner was the intimate friend of Dr. Parr, Paley, and
Canning.]

[Footnote 4: Readers of Lockhart's Biography will remember that in one
of Scott's latest letters to his son-in-law, before he left England for
Naples, he quoted and applied to himself this stanza of _Sir Eustace
Grey_. The incident is the more pathetic that Scott, as he wrote the
words, was quite aware that his own mind was failing.]




CHAPTER VI


THE PARISH REGISTER

(1805-1809)

"When in October, 1805, Mr. Crabbe resumed the charge of his own parish
of Muston, he found some changes to vex him, and not the less because he
had too much reason to suspect that his long absence from his incumbency
had been, partly at least, the cause of them. His cure had been served
by respectable and diligent clergymen, but they had been often changed,
and some of them had never resided within the parish; and he felt that
the binding influence of a settled and permanent minister had not been
withdrawn for twelve years with impunity. A Wesleyan missionary had
formed a thriving establishment in Muston, and the congregations at the
parish church were no longer such as they had been of old. This much
annoyed my father; and the warmth with which he began to preach against
dissent only irritated himself and others, without bringing back
disciples to the fold."

So writes Crabbe's son with his wonted frankness and good judgment.
Moreover, besides the Wesleyan secession, the mischievous extravagances
of William Huntington (S.S.) had found their way into the parish. To
make matters worse, a former gardener of Crabbe's had set up as a
preacher of the doctrines of this fanatic, who was still attracting
crowds in London. Then, too, as another fruit of the rector's long
absence, strange stories of his political opinions had become current.
Owing, doubtless, to his renewed acquaintance with Dudley North at
Glemham, and occasional association with the Whig leaders at his house,
he had exposed himself to the terrible charge that he was a Jacobin!

Altogether Crabbe's clerical position in Leicestershire, during the next
nine years, could not have been very comfortable. But he was evidently
still, as always, the devout and kindly pastor of his flock, and happily
for himself, he was now to receive new and unexpected tributes to his
popularity in other fields. His younger son, John, now eighteen years of
age, was shortly to go up to Cambridge, and this fresh expense had to be
provided for. To this end, a volume of poems, partly old and partly new,
had been for some time in preparation, and in September 1807, it
appeared from the publishing house of John Hatchard in Piccadilly. In it
were included _The Library_, _The Newspaper_, and _The Village_. The
principal new poem was _The Parish Register_, to which were added _Sir
Eustace Grey_ and _The Hall of Justice_. The volume was prefaced by a
Dedication to Henry Richard Fox, third Lord Holland, nephew and sometime
ward of Charles James Fox, and the reason for such dedication is told at
greater length in the long autobiographical introduction that follows.

Twenty-two years had elapsed since Crabbe's last appearance as an
author, and he seems to have thought it due to his readers to give some
reason for his long abstention from the poet's 'idle trade.' He pleads a
higher 'calling,' that of his professional duties, as sufficient
excuse. Moreover, he offers the same excuse for his 'progress in the art
of versification' being less marked than his readers might otherwise
expect. He then proceeds to tell the story of the kindness he had
received from Burke (who had died in 1797); the introduction by him to
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through him again to Samuel Johnson. He gives
in full Johnson's note approving _The Village_, and after a further
laborious apology for the shortcomings of his present literary venture,
goes on to tell the one really relevant incident of its appearance.
Crabbe had determined, he says, now that his old valued advisers had
passed away, not to publish anything more--

"unless I could first obtain the sanction of such an opinion
as I might with some confidence rely upon. I looked for a
friend who, having the discerning taste of Mr. Burke and the
critical sagacity of Doctor Johnson, would bestow upon my
MS. the attention requisite to form his opinion, and would
then favour me with the result of his observations; and it
was my singular good fortune to obtain such assistance--the
opinion of a critic so qualified, and a friend so disposed to
favour me. I had been honoured by an introduction to the
Right Hon. Charles James Fox, some years before, at the
seat of Mr. Burke; and being again with him, I received a
promise that he would peruse any work I might send to him
previous to its publication, and would give me his opinion.
At that time I did not think myself sufficiently prepared;
and when afterwards I had collected some poems for his inspection,
I found my right honourable friend engaged by the
affairs of a great empire, and struggling with the inveteracy
of a fatal disease. At such time, upon such mind, ever disposed
to oblige as that mind was, I could not obtrude the
petty business of criticising verses; but he remembered the
promise he had kindly given, and repeated an offer which
though I had not presumed to expect, I was happy to receive.
A copy of the poems, now first published, was sent to him,
and (as I have the information from Lord Holland, and his
Lordship's permission to inform my readers) the poem which
I have named _The Parish Register_ was heard by Mr. Fox,
and it excited interest enough by some of its parts to gain for
me the benefit of his judgment upon the whole. Whatever he
approved, the reader will readily believe, I have carefully
retained: the parts he disliked are totally expunged, and
others are substituted, which I hope resemble those more
conformable to the taste of so admirable a judge. Nor can I
deny myself the melancholy satisfaction of adding that this
poem (and more especially the history of Phoebe Dawson,
with some parts of the second book) were the last compositions
of their kind that engaged and amused the capacious, the
candid, the benevolent mind of this great man."

It was, as we have seen, at Dudley North's residence in Suffolk that
Crabbe had renewed his acquaintance with Fox, and received from him
fresh offers of criticism and advice. And now the great statesman had
passed beyond reach of Crabbe's gratitude. He had died in the autumn of
1806, at the Duke of Devonshire's, at Chiswick. His last months wore of
great suffering, and the tedium of his latter days was relieved by being
read aloud to--the Latin poets taking their turn with Crabbe's pathetic
stories of humble life. In the same preface, Crabbe further expresses
similar obligations to his friend, Richard Turner of Yarmouth. The
result of this double criticism is the more discernible when we compare
_The Parish Register_ with, its successor, _The Borough_, in the
composition of which Crabbe admits, in the preface to that poem, that he
had trusted more entirely to his own judgment.

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