ear lulling his other faculties asleep for the moment; even in his Battle of the Baltic, for instance, what can be worse than the two lines

But the might of England flushed
To anticipate the scene?

And a similar use of fine words with little or no meaning, or with a meaning which can only be forced out of them by torture, is occasional in all his early compositions. In the Pleasures of Hope, especially, swell of sound without any proportionate quantity of sense, is of such frequent occurrence as to be almost a characteristic of the poem. All his later poetry, however, is of much purer execution; and some of it is of exquisite delicacy and grace of form. A little incident was never, for example, more perfectly told than in the following verses :

The ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded,
And sad pale Adelgitha came,

When forth a valiant champion bounded,

And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;

But, when he knelt to claim her glove—
"Seek not," she cried, "oh! gallant stranger,
For hapless Adelgitha's love.

"For he is in a foreign far land

Whose arm should now have set me free;

And I must wear the willow garland

For him that's dead or false to me."

"Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!"
He raised his vizor-at the sight

She fell into his arms and fainted;

It was indeed her own true knight.

Equally perfect, in a higher, more earnest style, is the letter to her absent husband, dictated and signed by Constance in her last moments, which closes the tale of Theodric:

"Theodric, this is destiny above

Our power to baffle; bear it then, my love!
Rave not to learn the usage I have borne,

For one true sister left me not forlorn;
And, though you're absent in another land,
Sent from me by my own well-meant command,
Your soul, I know, as firm is knit to mine

As these clasped hands in blessing you now join:

Shape not imagined horrors in my fate-
Even now my sufferings are not very great;
And, when your grief's first transports shall subside,
I call upon your strength of soul and pride
To pay my memory, if 'tis worth the debt,
Love's glorying tribute-not forlorn regret:
I charge my name with power to conjure up
Reflection's balmy, not its bitter, cup.

My pardoning angel, at the gates of heaven,
Shall look not more regard than you have given
To me; and our life's union has been clad

In smiles of bliss as sweet as life e'er had.

Shall gloom be from such bright remembrance cast?
Shall bitterness outflow from sweetness past?
No! imaged in the sanctuary of your breast,

There let me smile, amidst high thoughts at rest;
And let contentment on your spirit shine,
As if its peace were still a part of mine:
For, if you war not proudly with your pain,
For you I shall have worse than lived in vain.
But I conjure your manliness to bear
My loss with noble spirit-not despair;
I ask you by our love to promise this,

And kiss these words, where I have left a kiss,—
The latest from my living lips for yours."

Words that will solace him while life endures:
For, though his spirit from affliction's surge
Could ne'er to life, as life had been, emerge,
Yet still that mind, whose harmony elate
Rang sweetness even beneath the crush of fate,-
That mind in whose regard all things were placed
In views that softened them, or light that graced,—
That soul's example could not but dispense

A portion of its own blest influence;

Invoking him to peace and that self-sway

Which fortune cannot give, nor take away;

And, though he mourned her long, 'twas with such woe

As if her spirit watched him still below.

It is difficult to find a single passage, not too long for quotation, which will convey any tolerable notion of the power and beauty of Crabbe's poetry, where so much of the effect lies in the conduct of the narrative—in the minute and prolonged but wonderfully skilful as well as truthful pursuit and exposition of the course and vicissitude of passions and circumstances; but we will give so much of the story of the Elder Brother, in the Tales of

the Hall, as will at least make the catastrophe intelligible. We select this tale, among other reasons, for its containing one of those pre-eminently beautiful lyric bursts which seem to contrast so strangely with the general spirit and manner of Crabbe's poetry. After many years, the narrator, pursuing another inquiry, accidentally discovers the lost object of his heart's passionate but pure idolatry living in infamy :

Will you not ask, how I beheld that face,
Or read that mind, and read it in that place?
I have tried, Richard, ofttimes, and in vain,
To trace my thoughts, and to review their train—
If train there were-that meadow, grove, and stile,
The fright, the escape, her sweetness, and her smile;
Years since elapsed, and hope, from year to year,
To find her free-and then to find her here!

But is it she?-O! yes; the rose is dead,
All beauty, fragrance, freshness, glory, fled;
But yet 'tis she-the same and not the same-
Who to my bower a heavenly being came;
Who waked my soul's first thought of real bliss,
Whom long I sought, and now I find her—this.
I cannot paint her-something I had seen
So pale and slim, and tawdry and unclean;
With haggard looks, of vice and woe the prey,
Laughing in languor, miserably gay:

Her face, where face appeared, was amply spread,

By art's warm pencil, with ill-chosen red,

The flower's fictitious bloom, the blushing of the dead:
But still the features were the same, and strange

My view of both-the sameness and the change,
That fixed me gazing, and my eye enchained,
Although so little of herself remained;
It is the creature whom I loved, and yet
Is far unlike her-would I could forget

The angel or her fall; the once adored

Or now despised! the worshipped or deplored!

"O! Rosabella!" I prepared to say,

"Whom I have loved;" but Prudence whispered, Nay,

And Folly grew ashamed-Discretion had her day.

She gave her hand; which, as I lightly pressed,
The cold but ardent grasp my soul oppressed;
The ruined girl disturbed me, and my eyes
Looked, I conceive, both sorrow and surprise.

If words had failed, a look explained their style; She could not blush assent, but she could smile: Good heaven! I thought, have I rejected fame, Credit, and wealth, for one who smiles at shame ? She saw me thoughtful-saw it, as I guessed, With some concern, though nothing she expressed. "Come, my dear friend, discard that look of care," &c.

Thus spoke the siren in voluptuous style, While I stood gazing and perplexed the while, Chained by that voice, confounded by that smile. And then she sang, and changed from grave to gay, Till all reproach and anger died away.

And then she moved my pity; for she wept,
And told her miseries, till resentment slept;
For, when she saw she could not reason blind,
She poured her heart's whole sorrows on my mind,
With features graven on my soul, with sighs
Seen, but not heard, with soft imploring eyes,
And voice that needed not, but had, the aid
Of powerful words to soften and persuade.
"O! I repent me of the past;" &c.

Softened, I said, "Be mine the hand and heart,
If with your world you will consent to part."
She would-she tried.-Alas! she did not know
How deeply-rooted evil habits grow:

She felt the truth upon her spirits press,
But wanted ease, indulgence, show, excess,
Voluptuous banquets, pleasures—not refined,
But such as soothe to sleep the opposing mind-
She looked for idle vice, the time to kill,
And subtle, strong apologies for ill.
And thus her yielding, unresisting soul
Sank, and let sin confuse her and control:
Pleasures that brought disgust yet brought relief,
And minds she hated helped to war with grief.

I had long lost her; but I sought in vain
To banish pity;-still she gave me pain.

There came at length request
That I would see a wretch with grief oppressed,
By guilt affrighted-and I went to trace
Once more the vice-worn features of that face,
That sin-wrecked being! and I saw her laid
Where never worldly joy a visit paid:
That world receding fast! the world to come
Concealed in terror, ignorance, and gloom;
Sin, sorrow, and neglect; with not a spark
Of vital hope,—all horrible and dark.—
It frightened me!-I thought, and shall not I
Thus feel?-thus fear?-this danger can I fly?
Do I so wisely live that I can calmly die?

Still as I went came other change-the frame
And features wasted, and yet slowly came
The end; and so inaudible the breath,

And still the breathing, we exclaimed-Tis death!
But death it was not: when indeed she died

I sat and his last gentle stroke espied :
When as it came-or did my fancy trace
That lively, lovely flushing o'er the face?
Bringing back all that my young heart impressed!

It came--and went!—She sighed, and was at rest!

From Moore, whose works are more, probably, than those of any of his contemporaries in the hands of all readers of poetry, we will make only one short extract- a specimen of his brilliant Orientalism, which may be compared with the specimen of Southey's in a preceding page. Here is the exquisitely beautiful description in