must needs disappoint the over sanguine expectations of friends, and even play, to a certain extent, the game of their adversaries, by taking, from time to time, unpopular courses. Witness the Irish Coercion Bill, and one or two other measures forced upon the liberal cabinet,-most abhorrent to their principles, most alien to their wishes, and only adopted under the pressure of an instant and over-ruling necessity. From hence, and from the inevitable tendency of all popular excitement to subside, unless kept alive by a succession of changes, the inference has been hastily and most thoughtlessly drawn, that the present liberal ministry have no longer the confidence of the people. The way to try this would be to attempt removing them, and putting their adversaries in their room. When the removal of Mr Stanley and others gave some alarm of this kind, the calm of the country was profound; the coldness, we might add, was at its height; for measures expected had been put off, and proceedings little liked had been taken through necessity, and there was nothing immediately to excite any interest in the ministry's behalf; yet all men remember the universal explosion of delight which Lord Althorp's declaration that the government should be unchanged, produced; and the unprecedented uproar of assent which broke forth on his pronouncing the word "confidence," from the centre of the Treasury Bench. Who doubts that the announcement that Lord Grey's retirement was not to break up the government, which was hailed with equal rapture within the walls of Parliament, was as entirely acceptable to the whole country? We have never heard of any dissentients among those professing liberal opinions; unless it be from one or two newspapers, whose unintelligible hatred of liberal government, and strange desire to see the Tories in office, was signally frustrated by the formation of the present cabinet under Lord Melbourne. Those few, but noisy personages, have amused themselves and their readers during the dead season of the year,' with furious attacks and mournful prophecies; and their wishes and predictions upon the fate of the government are receiving about as much acceptance with the people, and are likely to be about as well fulfilled by the event, as their hostility and their forebodings were upon the Poor Law Bill.

It is only fair towards the Radical party to say, that with but a few inconsiderable exceptions, they have been exempt from the blame attaching to the unprincipled portion of the liberal press. They have rejected all the advances of the common enemy, and have held their own course regarding the government, but joining with their countrymen in feeling strong disgust at the conduct to which we have now, and in our last Number, adverted. The Tory press, however, is not free from great blame. Can the

spirit of factious spite go farther than the High Church and UltraTory organs have so shamefully done (with one or two most honourable exceptions) in joining the Radicals, to run down the minister for yielding to a sense of justice, and conscientiously refusing to countenance measures founded on no evidence, and attacking the private rights of individuals? Will it, can it be believed, that the members of the government who threw out the Warwick Bill, have been attacked for so doing, not only by the Radicals (in whom such a course was natural and consistent, though extremely ignorant and unreflecting) but by the High Tories, to destroy whom the bill was framed? Assuredly the objects of such an attack must be persons against whom it is singularly difficult to find matter of complaint, when their adversaries are reduced to such shifts. The result of all this, as far as regards the Newspaper press, has certainly been materially to lower its influence; and to verify, but in an unexpected degree, the predictions of those who foretold that the Reform in our Representation would lessen the power of that most important, but much abused instrument of public instruction. This was the inevitable tendency of the Reform; but the misconduct of the press since it passed, has prodigiously accelerated the downfall of its power, and brought about the event prophesied far more speedily and more completely than was necessary or could have been foreseen.

No. CXXII will be published in January.

Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne & Co., Paul's Work, Canongate.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1835.

No. CXXII.
No.

ART. I.-Life and Poems of the Rev. George Crabbe. 8 vols. Svo. London: 1834.

THE HE critics of human life and genius were cautioned of old to reserve their judgment till death had closed the account, and set upon it its final seal. In the case of Crabbe, the several conditions implied in the caution may be considered at present to be complied with. We are already standing at some little distance from his grave; and-while our materials for judging of the man and the poet are now (and only now) complete-impressions of an occasional or temporary nature (supposing that they may have once existed), must by this time have passed away.

The life of Crabbe was divided into two strongly contrasted periods; the events and complexion of which are soon described. The first twenty-eight years were years of distress and difficulty. There succeeded fifty of competence, honour, and repose. He was born at Aldborough in 1754, of humble parents-how humble may be seen in the frontispiece vignette of his father's cottage. The hazardous experiment of a more liberal education than his family had the means of completing, much less of following up by an adequate introduction into a profession, had nearly proved his ruin. The injudicious choice of his profession-that of a surgeon-left him scarce a chance; since a taste for botany could not supply every other deficiency and disadvantage. These disadvantages were so great, that neither of his early passions, love and poetry, can be made responsible for his failure. He began, however, betimes, his sacrifices to both. At the age of eighteen, the young apprentice fell in love with a Miss Elmy, a village beauty, and something better. This accident, so decisive on his future life, arose out of the frolic of a comrade, who wanted com

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pany in a love matter of his own. About the same time, his poetical reputation was established in his little circle as the successful candidate in the Lady's Magazine.' When he set up for himself, Aldborough was an unpromising spot to fix upon for the field of his professional operations. Divers poor relations, glad enough to quarter themselves on the cordials of cousin George's medicine chest, and a few old women who saw in his botanical rambles a collector of simples, which he ought to administer for nothing, were all the standing patients his native town afforded him. The short time that two militia regiments were stationed there, formed the brilliant season of his practice. But he probably got more from them in manners, and (strange to say) in Latin, than in fees. Colonel, afterwards Field-Marshal, Conway, gave him some Latin works on botany; and, if the hours which he now spent on Hudson's Flora Anglica' enabled him to enjoy Horace, and to pass with credit through certain examinations of an ⚫ after period,' it is most likely the first and last service of the kind that the Flora Anglica' has performed. The poetical revenge, which he afterwards lost no opportunity of taking on the art and its practitioners, was partly the satirical recollection of his own incompetent career. Two or three years of disappointment and destitution in the mortifying presence of his family and acquaintance was as much as he could endure. Long afterwards, one happy morning, he described to his children the gloom of the day, and the desolation of the scene, when, while gazing on the Marsh Hill above Aldborough, he suddenly, at the close of the year 1779, determined to go to London and venture all." It was a desperate resolution. His father, too poor, and perhaps too angry, to help him, remonstrated in vain; and his only means of carrying his project into execution was, writing for a small sum (five pounds) to Mr Dudley North, who happened to be politically connected with the place. After settling his affairs at Aldborough, and embarking himself and his whole worldly sub* stance on board a sloop at Slaughden, to seek his fortune in the • Great City, he found himself master of a box of clothes, a small case of surgical instruments, and three pounds in money. ring the voyage he lived with the sailors of the vessel, and partook of their fare. Thus the starved apothecary of a little venal borough found himself on a sudden a mendicant author in the streets of London. Miss Elmy had a friend there, the wife of a linen-draper. These were at first his only acquaintance; and their Sunday dinner, a leg of mutton baked in the pan, was his luxury of the week. From them he heard, for the first time, the name of Chatterton, whose tragic story was at that moment recent enough to be an event and moral for every class. The tale came

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to him too late to change his course; but the dread of it must have doubly darkened the melancholy of his position. Unknown and inexperienced, it is not so wonderful that the young adventurer had fifteen months of want and bitterness to struggle with, as that he should have manfully and honourably survived them. Miss Elmy had staid behind in Suffolk waiting the experiment. At this period, nothing but his love, and a deep sense of religion, which his mother, his mistress, and a recent illness, had all worked together to impress upon his heart, could have kept him right. He had come up to town with the best verses he could write. But, unfortunately, his poetical talents, if left to themselves, were not yet sufficiently developed and matured to attract the notice of the public. His writings rejected by the booksellers, his petitions unanswered by the great, his wardrobe sold, his watch pawned, he had obtained from his landlord, with much entreaty, and as the greatest favour, a week's forbearance, when he must pay his debt or prepare for prison. In his despair, he providentially applied to Burke. That extraordinary man, compassionating his distress, and discovering his genius, made the case his own. He not only wiped away the proud big tear of song' extorted bread,' and rescued him from the pale procession in which Budgell and Savage, Otway and Chatterton had perished, but kept fast hold of his hand until he had secured his fortune. He received him into his house; revised his poems; introduced him to his friends; assisted him into orders; recommended him as chaplain to the late Duke of Rutland; and procured for him the countenance and protection of Thurlow, then Lord Chancellor, by whom his personal application had been previously slighted. Burke found the leisure, the thought, and the heart for this, at a moment when the fever of politics was most upon him ; and when the stormy hopes and fears of the fiercest Parliamentary opposition England had ever witnessed, were at their height. The Duke of Rutland, within two years of Crabbe's appointment, went to Ireland as Lord-lieutenant. The chaplain remained

behind, married the lady of his early love, and settled on a curacy in the neighbourhood. The duke died suddenly, before he had done any thing for him. But the duchess soon afterwards prevailed on Thurlow to change the two small livings he had already given him in Dorsetshire, for the living of Muston, adjoining Belvoir. Our literary adventurer was now in smooth water; certain of competence, if not opulence, for the remainder of his days. These days were somewhat monotonous, perhaps; any thing, however, but few and evil. The illness of his wife-fits of protracted melancholy-appear to have been the only calamities which befell him at all out of the common course of things for forty years.