Jesse is the orphan of a poor clergyman, who | goes, upon her father's death, to live with a rich old lady who had been his friend; and Colin is a young farmer, whose father had speculated away an handsome property; and who, though living in a good degree by his own labour, yet wished the damsel (who half vished it also) to remain and share his humle lot. The rich lady proves to be suspicious, cverbearing, and selfish; and sets Jesse upon the ignoble duty of acting the spy and informer over the other dependents of her household; on the delineation of whose characters Mr. Crabbe has lavished a prodigious power of observation and correct description:-But this not suiting her pure and ingenuous mind, she suddenly leaves the splendid mansion, and returns to her native village, where Colin and his mother soon persuade her to form one of their happy family. There is a great deal of good-heartedness in this tale, and a kind of moral beauty, which has lent more than usual elegance to the simple pictures it presents. We are tempted to extract a good part of the denouement. 46 "The pensive Colin in his garden stray'd, And shar'd the comforts of our sylvan shade,' &c. Sighing he spake-but hark! he hears th' approach [sum Of rattling wheels! and lo! the evening-coach; No wishes to depart she felt, or feign'd; [main'd. "The Struggles of Conscience," though visibly laboured, and, we should suspect, a favourite with the author, pleases us less than any tale in the volume. It is a long account of a low base fellow, who rises by mean and dis honourable arts to a sort of opulence; and, without ever committing any flagrant erime, sullies his mind with all sorts of selfish, heart. less, and unworthy acts, till he becomes a prey to a kind of languid and loathsome remorse. "The Squire and the Priest" we do not like much better. A free living and free thinking squire had been galled by the public rebukes of his unrelenting pastor, and breeds up a dependent relation of his own to succeed to his charge. The youth drinks and jokes with his patron to his heart's content, during the progress of his education;-but just as the old censor dies, falls into the society of Saints, becomes a rigid and intolerant Methodist, and converts half the parish, to the infinite rage of his patron, and his own ultimate affliction. "The Confidant" is more interesting; though not altogether pleasing. A fair one makes a slip at the early age of fifteen, which is concealed from every one but her mother, and a sentimental friend, from whom she could conceal nothing. Her after life is pure and exemplary; and at twenty-five she is married to a worthy man, with whom she lives in perfect innocence and concord for many happy years. At last, the confidant of her childhood, whose lot has been less pros perous, starts up and importunes her for money-not forgetting to hint at the fatal secret of which she is the depository. After agonising and plundering her for years, she at last comes and settles herself in her house, and embitters her whole existence by her selfish threats and ungenerous extortions. The husband, who had been greatly disturbed at the change in his wife's temper and spirits, at last accidentally overhears enough to put him in possession of the fact; and resolving to forgive a fault so long past, and so well repaired, takes occasion to intimate his know ledge of it, and his disdain of the false confi dant, in an ingenious apologue-which, how. ever is plain enough to drive the pestilent visiter from his house, and to restore peace and confidence to the bosom of his grateful wife. "Resentment" is one of the pieces in which Mr. Crabbe has exercised his extraordinary powers of giving pain-though not gratuitously in this instance, nor without inculcating a strong lesson of forgiveness and compassion. A middle-aged merchant marries a lady of good fortune, and persuades her to make it all over to him when he is on the eve of bank ruptcy. He is reduced to utter beggary; and his wife bitterly and deeply resenting the wrong he had done her, renounces all con nection with him, and endures her own re verses with magnanimity. At last a distant relation leaves her his fortune; and she returns to the enjoyment of moderate wealth, and the exercise of charity-to all but her miserable husband. Broken by age and disease, he now begs the waste sand from the stone-cutters, and sells it on an ass through the streets : "And from each trifling gift Made shift to live-and wretched was the shift." tracts which composed his original stock in trade. This scandalises the brethren; and John, having no principles or knowledge, falls out with the sect, and can never settle in the creed of any other; and so lives perplexed and discontented-and dies in agitation and "The Convert" is rather dull-though it teaches a lesson that may be useful in these fanatic times. John Dighton was bred blackguard; and we have here a most lively and complete description of the items that go to the composition of that miscellaneous character; but being sore reduced by a long fever, falls into the hands of the Methodists, and becomes an exemplary convert. He is then set up by the congregation in a small stationer's The unrelenting wife descries him creep-adds' worldly literature to the evangelical shop; and, as he begins to thrive in business, 'ng through the wet at this miserable employment; but still withholds all relief; in spite of the touching entreaties of her compassionate handmaid, whose nature is as kind and yielding as that of her mistress is hard and inflexible. Of all the pictures of mendicant poverty that have ever been brought forward in prose or verse-in charity sermons or seditious harangues-we know of none half so moving or complete-so powerful and so true -as is contained in the following passages:— "A dreadful winter came; each day severe, Misty when mild, and icy-cold when clear; And still the humble dealer took his load, Returning slow, and shivering on the road: The Lady, still relentless, saw him come, And said, 'I wonder, has the Wretch a home!' A hut! a hovel!'-' Then his fate appears To suit his crime.'-'Yes, Lady, not his years; No! nor his sufferings-nor that form decay'd.'The snow,' quoth Susan, falls upon his bedIt blows beside the thatch-it melts upon his head.' 'Tis weakness, child, for grieving guilt to feel.' Oh! how those flakes of snow their entrance win pp. 320-322. The Lady at last is moved, by this pleading pity, to send him a little relief; but has no sooner dismissed her delighted messenger, than she repents of her weakness, and begins to harden her heart again by the recollection of his misconduct. "Thus fix'd, she heard not her Attendant glide terror. "The Brothers" restores us again to human "Cold as he grew, still Isaac strove to show, Gave to his injur'd feelings some redress; His good kind friend would of his presents eat: "Once in a week the Father came to say, "But, truly kind, the gentle Boy essay'd To cheer his Uncle, firm, although afraid; But now the Father caught him at the door, And, swearing- -yes, the Man in Office swore, And cried, 'Away!-How! Brother, I'm surpris'd, That one so old can be so ill advis'd,'" &c. pp. 370-371. ical readers will all be disposed to ank us. But considering Mr. Crabbe as, upon the whole, the most original writer who has ever come before us; and being at the same time of opinion, that his writings are destined to a still more extensive popularity than they have yet obtained, we could not resist the temptation of contributing our little aid to the fulfilment of that destiny. It is chiefly for the same reason that we have directed our remarks rather to the moral than the literary qualities of his works;-to his genius at least, rather than his taste-and to his thoughts rather than his figures of speech. By far the most remarkable thing in his writings, is the prodigious mass of original observations and reflections they every where exhibit; and that extraordinary power of conceiving and repre senting an imaginary object, whether physical or intellectual, with such a rich and complete accompaniment of circumstances and details, as few ordinary observers either perceive of remember in realities; a power which, though often greatly misapplied, must for ever entitle him to the very first rank among descriptive poets; and, when directed to worthy objects, to a rank inferior to none in the highest departments of poetry. In such an author, the attributes of style and versification may fairly be considered as secondary-and yet, if we were to go minutely into them, they would afford room for a still longer chapter than that which we are now concluding. He cannot be said to be After the catastrophe, he endures deserved uniformly, or even generally, an elegant writer. remorse and anguish. "He takes his Son, and bids the boy unfold All the good Uncle of his feelings told, All he lamented-and the ready tear Falls as he listens, sooth'd, and griev'd to hear. "Did he not curse me, child?''He never curs'd, But could not breathe, and said his heart would [pray; burst:' And so will mine! Then, Father, you must My Uncle said it took his pains away.'"-p. 374. The last tale in the volume, entitled, "The Learned Boy," is not the most interesting in the collection; though it is not in the least like what its title would lead us to expect. It is the history of a poor, weakly, paltry lad, who is sent up from the country to be a clerk in town; and learns by slow degrees to affect freethinking, and to practise dissipation. Upon the tidings of which happy conversion his father, a worthy old farmer, orders him down again to the country, where he harrows up the soul of his pious grandmother by his infidel prating and his father reforms him at once by burning his idle books, and treating him with a vigorous course of horse whipping. There is some humour in this tale; and a great deal of nature and art, especially in the delineation of this slender clerk's gradual corruption-and in the constant and constitutional predominance of weakness and folly, in all his vice and virtue-his piety and profaneness. We have thus gone through the better part of this volume with a degree of minuteness for which we are not sure that even our poet His style is not dignified-and neither very pure nor very easy. Its characters are force, precision, and familiarity;-now and then obscure-sometimes vulgar, and sometimes quaint. With a great deal of tenderness, and occasional fits of the sublime of despair and agony, there is a want of habitual fire, and of his writings. He seems to recollect rather a tone of enthusiasm in the general tenor of than invent; and frequently brings forward! his statements more in the temper of a cantious and conscientious witness, than of a fervent orator or impassioned spectator. His similes are almost all elaborate and ingenious, and rather seem to be furnished from the ef forts of a fanciful mind, than to be exhaled by the spontaneous ferment of a heated imagination. His versification again is frequently harsh and heavy, and his diction flat and prosaic-both seeming to be altogether neglected in his zeal for the accuracy and complete rendering of his conceptions. Thes defects too are infinitely greater in his recent than in his early compositions. "The Vil lage" is written, upon the whole, in a flowing and sonorous strain of versification; and "Sir Eustace Grey," though a late publication, is in general remarkably rich and melodious. It is chiefly in his narratives and curious descriptions that these faults of diction and measure are conspicuous. Where he is warmed by his subject, and becomes fairly indig nant or pathetic, his language is often very sweet and beautiful. He has no fixed system or manner of versification; but mixes several very opposite styles, as it were by accident, and not in general very judiciously;-what is peculiar to himself is not good, and strikes us as being both abrupt and affected. He may profit, if he pleases, by these hints -and, if he pleases, he may laugh at them. It is no great matter. If he will only write a few more Tales of the kind we have suggested at the beginning of this article, we shall en gage for it that he shall have our praises-and those of more fastidious critics-whatever be the qualities of his style or versification. July, 1819.) Tales of the Hall. By the Reverend GEORGE CRABBE. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 670. London: 1819. MR. CRABBE is the greatest mannerist, per- | but their combination-in such proportions at haps, of all our living poets; and it is rather least as occur in this instance-may safely be anfortunate that the most prominent features pronounced to be original. of his mannerism are not the most pleasing. The homely, quaint, and prosaic style-the flat, and often broken and jingling versification -the eternal full-lengths of low and worthless characters-with their accustomed garnishings of sly jokes and familiar moralisingare all on the surface of his writings; and are almost unavoidably the things by which we are first reminded of him, when we take up any of his new productions. Yet they are not the things that truly constitute his peculiar manner; or give that character by which he will, and ought to be, remembered with future generations. It is plain enough, indeed, that these are things that will make nobody remembered-and can never, therefore, be really characteristic of some of the most original and powerful poetry that the world has ever seen. Mr. C., accordingly, has other gifts; and those not less peculiar or less strongly marked than the blemishes with which they are contrasted; an unrivalled and almost magical power of observation, resulting in descriptions so true to nature as to strike us rather as transcripts than imitations-an anatomy of character and feeling not less exquisite and searching an occasional touch of matchless tenderness and a deep and dreadful pathetic, interspersed by fits, and strangely interwoven with the most minute and humble of his details. Add to all this the sure and profound sagacity of the remarks with which he every now and then startles us in the midst of very unambitious discussions;-and the weight and terseness of the maxims which he drops, like oracular responses, on occasions that give no promise of such a revelation;-and last, though not least, that sweet and seldom sounded chord of Lyrical inspiration, the lightest touch of which instantly charms away all harshness from his numbers, and all lowness from his themes-and at once exalts him to a level with the most energetic and inventive poets of his age. These, we think, are the true characteristics of the genius of this great writer; and it is in their mixture with the oddities and defects to which, we have already alluded, that the peeuliarity of his manner seems to us substantially to consist. The ingredients may all of them be found, we suppose, in other writers; Extraordinary, however, as this combination must appear, it does not seem very difficult to conceive in what way it may have arisen, and, so far from regarding it as a proof of singular humorousness, caprice, or affectation in the individual, we are rather inclined to hold that something approaching to it must be the natural result of a long habit of observation in a man of genius, possessed of that temper and disposition which is the usual accompaniment of such a habit; and that the same strangely compounded and apparently incongruous assemblage of themes and sentiments would be frequently produced under such circumstances-if authors had oftener the courage to write from their own impres sions, and had less fear of the laugh or wonder of the more shallow and barren part of their readers. A great talent for observation, and a delight in the exercise of it-the power and the practice of dissecting and disentangling that subtle and complicated tissue, of habit, and self-love, and affection, which constitute human characterseems to us, in all cases, to imply a contemplative, rather than an active disposition. It can only exist, indeed, where there is a good deal of social sympathy; for, without this, the occupation could excite no interest, and afford no satisfaction-but only such a measure and sort of sympathy as is gratified by being a spectator, and not an actor on the great theatre of life-and leads its possessor rather to look with eagerness on the feats and the fortunes of others, than to take a share for himself in the game that is played before him. Some stirring and vigorous spirits there are, no doubt, in which this taste and talent is combined with a more thorough and effective sympathy; and leads to the study of men's characters by an actual and hearty participation in their various passions and pursuits; though it is to be remarked, that when such persons embody their observations in writing, they will generally be found to exhibit their characters in action, rather than to describe them in the abstract; and to let their various personages disclose themselves and their peculiarities, as it were spontaneously, and without help or preparation, in their ordinary conduct and speech-of all which we have a very splendid and striking example in the Tales of My Landlord, and the other pieces | originally mingled in his composition.-Yel of that extraordinary writer. In the common satirists, we think, have not in general been case, however, a great observer, we believe, ill-natured persons and we are inclined ra will be found, pretty certainly, to be a person of a shy and retiring temper-who does not mingle enough with the people he surveys, to be heated with their passions, or infected with their delusions and who has usually been led, indeed, to take up the office of a looker on, from some little infirmity of nerves, or weakness of spirits, which has unfitted him from playing a more active part on the busy scene of existence. ther to ascribe this limited and uncharitable application of their powers of observation to their love of fame and popularity,-which are well known to be best secured by successful ridicule or invective-or, quite as probably, indeed, to the narrowness and insufficiency of the observations themselves, and the imperfection of their talents for their due conduct and extension. It is certain, at least, we think, that the satirist makes use but of half the discoveries of the observer; and teaches but half-and the worser half-of the lessons which may be deduced from his occupation. He puts down, indeed, the proud pretensions of the great and arrogant, and levels the vain distinctions which human ambition has es tablished among the brethren of mankind ;-he "Bares the mean heart that lurks beneath a Star,** Now, it is very obvious, we think, that this contemplative turn, and this alienation from the vulgar pursuits of mankind, must in the first place, produce a great contempt for most of those pursuits, and the objects they seek to obtain a levelling of the factitious distinctions which human pride and vanity have established in the world, and a mingled scorn and compassion for the lofty pretensions under which men so often disguise the nothingness of their chosen occupations. When the many--and destroys the illusions which would coloured scene of life, with all its petty agi-limit our sympathy to the forward and figurtations, its shifting pomps, and perishable ing persons of this world-the favourites of passions, is surveyed by one who does not mix in its business, it is impossible that it should not appear a very pitiable and almost ridiculous affair; or that the heart should not echo back the brief and emphatic exclamation of the mighty dramatist- "Life's a poor player, Who frets and struts his hour upon the stage, fame and fortune. But the true result of observation should be, not so much to cast down the proud, as to raise up the lowly;-not so much to diminish our sympathy with the powerful and renowned, as to extend it to all, who, in humbler conditions, have the same, or still higher claims on our esteem or affection. It is not surely the natural consequence of learning to judge truly of the characters of Or the more sarcastic amplification of it, in men, that we should despise or be indifferent the words of our great moral poet about them all—and, though we have learned to see through the false glare which plays "Behold the Child, by Nature's kindly law, round the envied summits of existence, and Pleas'd with a rattle, tickl'd with a straw! to know how little dignity, or happiness, or Some livelier plaything gives our Youth delight, worth, or wisdom, may sometimes belong to A little louder, but as empty quite : Scarfs, garters, gold our riper years engage; the possessors of power, and fortune, and And beads and prayer-books are the toys of Age learning and renown,-it does not follow, by Pleas'd with this bauble still as that before, any means, that we should look upon the Till tir'd we sleep-and Life's poor play is o'er!" whole of human life as a mere deceit and This is the more solemn view of the sub-imposture, or think the concerns of our species ject:-But the first fruits of observation are fit subjects only for scorn and derision. Our most commonly found to issue in Satire-the promptitude to admire and to envy will indeed unmasking the vain pretenders to wisdom, be corrected, our enthusiasm abated, and our and worth, and happiness, with whom society distrust of appearances increased;-but the is infested, and holding up to the derision of sympathies and affections of our nature will mankind those meannesses of the great, those continue, and be better directed-our love of miseries of the fortunate, and those "Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise," which the eye of a dispassionate observer so quickly detects under the glittering exterior by which they would fain be disguised-and which bring pretty much to a level the intellect, and morals, and enjoyments, of the great mass of mankind. This misanthropic end has unquestionably been by far the most common result of a habit of observation; and that in which its effects have most generally terminated: -Yet we cannot bring ourselves to think that it is their just or natural termination. Something, no doubt, will depend on the temper of the individual d the proportions in which the gall of human kindness have been our kind will not be diminished-and our indulgence for their faults and follies, if we read our lesson aright, will be signally strengthened and confirmed. The true and proper effect, therefore, of a habit of observation, and a thorough and penetrating knowledge of human character, will be, not to extinguish our sympathy, but to extend it-to turn, no doubt, many a throb of admiration, and many a sigh of love into a smile of derision or of pity; but at the same time to reveal much that commands our homage and excites our affec tion, in those humble and unexplored regions of the heart and understanding, which never engage the attention of the incurious,-and to bring the whole family of mankind nearer to a level, by finding out latent merits as well as latent defects in all its members, and com |