allel to the beach, from which a dreary stripe of marsh and
waste alone divides it, until it at length finds its embouchure
at Orford. The scenery of this river has been celebrated
as lovely and delightful, in a poem called Slaughden Vale,
written by Mr. James Bird, a friend of my father's; and
old Camden talks of 'the beautiful vale of Slaughden.' I
confess, however, that though I have ever found an inde-
scribable charm in the very weeds of the place, I never
could perceive its claims to beauty. Such as it is, it has
furnished Mr. Crabbe with many of his happiest and most
graphical descriptions; and the same may be said of the
whole line of coast from Orford to Dunwich, every feature
of which has, somewhere or other, been reproduced in his
writings. The quay of Slaughden, in particular, has been
painted with all the minuteness of a Dutch landscape:-
'Here samphire banks and saltwort bound the flood,
There stakes and sea-weeds withering on the mud;
And higher up a range of all things base,

Which some strong tide has rolled upon the place....
Yon is our quay! those smaller hoys from town,

Its various wares for country use bring down,' etc.

*

He was

"For one destined to distinction as a portrayer of character," continues his son, "few scenes could have been more favorable than that of his infancy and boyhood. cradled among the rough sons of the ocean-a daily witness of unbridled passions, and of manners remote from the sameness and artificial smoothness of polished society. At home, as has already been hinted, he was subject to the caprices of a stern and imperious, though not unkindly nature; and probably few whom he could familiarly approach but had passed through some of those dark tragedies in which his future strength was to be exhibited. The common people of Aldborough in those days are described as'A wild, amphibious race,

With sullen woe displayed in every face;

Who far from civil arts and social fly,

And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye.""

Crabbe, though imbibing every thing relating to the sea, and sailors, and fishermen, was by no means disposed to be one of this class himself. He early exhibited a bookish turn, and was reckoned effeminate; but his father saw his talent, and gave him a good education. He was then put apprentice to a surgeon, who was also a farmer, and George alternately pounded the pestle and worked in the fields, till he was removed to another surgeon at Woodbridge. Here he became a member of a small literary club, which gave a new stimulus to his love of poetry, already sufficiently strong, and in his eighteenth year he fell in love with the young lady who was destined to be his wife. Before the expiration of his apprenticeship he had published a volume of poems. His apprenticeship terminated, he set out for London; but unfurnished with money to attend the hospitals, he remained awhile in mean lodgings in Whitechapel, and then returned to Aldborough, and after engaging himself as an assistant for a short time, commenced practice for himself. It would not do, however, his practice was profitless; and as he filled up his leisure time by botanizing in the country, the people got a notion that he gathered his medicine out of the ditches. At length, starved out, he resolved to return to London as a literary adventurer. With £5 in his pocket, a present for the purpose, from Dudley North, brother to the candidate for Aldborough, he took his passage in a sloop for town.

In thinking of Crabbe, we generally picture him to ourselves as the well-to-do clergyman, comfortably inditing his verse in a goodly parsonage; but Crabbe commenced as a regular hack-author about town, and went through all the racking distress of that terrible life, utterly without funds, without patrons, or connections. Chatterton had perished in the desperate undertaking just before, and it appeared likely enough for a long time that Crabbe might perish too. In vain he wrote, nobody would publish; in vain he addressed ministers of state in verse and prose, nobody would hear

him. He maintained this fearful struggle for twelve months. He had lodgings at a Mr. Vickery's, a hairdresser, near the Exchange, who afterward removed to Bishopsgate-street, whither he accompanied them. The people appeared to behave well to him, and gave him more trust than is usual with such people, though at length even their patience seems to have been exhausted, and he was threatened with a prison.

While he resided there he often spent his evenings at a small coffee-house near the Exchange, where he became acquainted with several clever young men, then beginning the world like himself. One of these was Bonnycastle, afterward master of the military academy at Woolwich; another was Isaac Dalby, afterward professor of mathematics in the military college of Marlowe; and a third, Reuben Burrow, who rose to high distinction in the service of the East India Company, and died in Bengal. To obtain healthy exercise, he used to walk much in the daytime; and would accompany Mr. Bonnycastle on his visits to different schools in the suburbs; but more frequently stole off alone into the country, with a small edition of Ovid, Horace, or Catullus, in his pocket. Two or three of these little volumes remained in his possession in later days, and he set a high value on them, saying they were his companions in his adversity. His favorite haunt was Hornsey wood, where he sought for plants and insects. On one occasion he had strolled too far from town to return, and having no money he was compelled to lodge on a mow of hay, beguiling the time while it was light with reading Tibullus, and in the morning returned to town.

Of the depth of distress to which Crabbe was reduced, his journal, kept through that dark time, testified, but nothing more so than this prayer:—

"My God, my God, I put my trust in thee; my troubles increase, my soul is dismayed; I am heavy and in distress; all day long I call upon thee; O be thou my helper in the needful time of trouble.

'Why art thou so far from me, O my Lord? why hidest thou thy face? I am cast down; I am in poverty and affliction; be thou with me, O my God; let me not be wholly forsaken, O my Redeemer!

66

'Behold, I trust in thee, blessed Lord. Guide me, and govern me unto the end. O Lord, my salvation, be thou

Unlike poor Chatterton, Crabbe had a firm trust in Providence, and was neither so passionate nor so reservedly haughty. He determined to leave no stone unturned; and at length he wrote to the only man of the age who was likely to lend him a kindly ear-that was Edmund Burke. From that moment his troubles were at an end, and his fortune made. Burke sent for him, looked at his manuscripts, perceived his claims to genius well founded, and received him to his own table. He then introduced him to Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the surly old Lord Chancellor Thurlow; the last of whom, though he had paid no attention to a letter he had before written to him, nor to a stinger which he had sent him in consequence, now sent for him, and told him that he ought to have noticed the first letter, and that he forgave the second, and that there was his reply. He put a sealed paper into Crabbe's hand, which on being opened contained a banknote, value one hundred pounds! Burke advised Crabbe to take orders, as they were walking together one day at Beaconsfield, whither Burke had invited him. This was soon managed; he was examined and admitted to priest's orders by the Bishop of Norwich, and was sent, to the astonishment of the natives, to officiate as curate in his native town. But Burke soon procured him the chaplaincy to the Duke of Rutland, and he went down to reside at Belvoir Castle. At this splendid establishment, and in a fine country, Crabbe did not enjoy himself. His son says: "The numberless allusions 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 quite enough to lead any one that 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." He was always delighted to get away from the cold stateliness of Belvoir, with its troops of insolent menials, to the small seat of Chevely, about the period of the Newmarket races; or to Croxton, another small seat near Belvoir, where the family sometimes went to fish in the extensive ponds. Here the servants were few, ceremony was relaxed, and he could wander in the woods after his insects and his plants. Thurlow gave him two small livings in Dorsetshire, Frome St. Quintin, and Evershot; saying at the time, "By G-d, you are as much like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." He now published The Village, which was at once popular, and he got married.

Miss Sarah Elmy, to whom he became engaged at eighteen, had, through all his struggles in the metropolis, with unswerving affection, maintained the superiority of his talents, and encouraged him to persevere. The Duke of Rutland being appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the ducal family quitted Belvoir for Dublin, and Crabbe being left behind, was, on his proposed marriage, invited to bring his wife to the castle, and occupy certain apartments there. This was done; but the annoyance of another man's, and a great man's menials to attend on you, was too much for Crabbe, and he fled the castle, and took up his abode as curate of Stathern, in the humble parsonage there.

In this obscure parsonage Crabbe lived four years. He had three children born there-his two sons, George and John, and a daughter, who died in infancy. There he