Journey;" while near Beccles, in another direction, he found the contrast of rich vegetation introduced in the latter part of that tale; nor have I any doubt that the disappointment of the story figures out something that, on one of these visits, befell himself, and the feelings with which he received it :

"Gone to a friend, she tells me.-I commend

Her purpose:-means she to a female friend?" &c. For truth compels me to say, that he was by no means free from the less amiable sign of a strong attachment-jealousy. The description of this self-torment, which occurs in the sixth book of "Tales of the Hall," could only have been produced by one who had undergone the pain himself; and the catastrophe which follows may be considered as a vivid representation of his happier hours at Beccles. Miss Elmy was then remarkably pretty; she had a lively disposition, and, having generally more than her share of attention in a mixed company, her behaviour might, without any coquettish inclination, occasion painful surmises in a sensitive lover, who could only at intervals join her circle.

In one of these visits to Beccles, my father was in the most imminent danger of losing his life. Having, on a sultry summer's day rowed his Sarah to a favourite fishing spot on the river Waveney, he left her busy with the rod and line, and withdrew to a retired place about a quarter of a mile off, to bathe. Not being a swimmer, nor calculating his depth, he plunged at once into danger; for his foot slid on the soft mud towards the centre of the stream. He made a rush for the bank, lost his footing, and the flood boiled over his head; he struggled, but in vain; and his own words paint his situa

tion :-

"An undefined sensation stopp'd my breath;
Disorder'd views and threat'ning signs of death
Met in one moment, and a terror gave

I cannot paint it-to the moving grave:
My thoughts were all distressing, hurried, mix'd,
On all things fixing, not a moment fix'd.
Brother, I have not-man has not-the power
To paint the horrors of that life-long hour;
Hour!-but of time I knew not-when I found

Hope, youth, life, love, and all they promised, drown'd."

Tales of the Hall.

My father could never clearly remember how he was saved. He at last found himself grasping some weeds, and by their aid reached the bank.

Mr. and Mrs. Crabbe, cordially approving their son's choice, invited Miss Elmy to pass some time beneath their roof at Aldborough; and my father had the satisfaction to witness the

kindness with which she was treated by both his parents, and the commencement of a strong attachment between her and his sister. During this visit3 he was attacked by a very dangerous

3 At this period the whole family were still living together. Some time after, my father and his sister had separate lodgings, at a Mr. Aldrich's.

fever; and the attention of his affianced wife was unwearied. So much was his mind weakened by the violence and pertinacity of this disorder, that, on his dawning convalescence, he actually cried like a child, because he was considerately denied the food which his renovated stomach longed for. I have heard them laugh heartily at the tears he shed, because Sarah and his sister refused him a lobster on which he had set his affections.

For a considerable time, he was unable to walk upright; but he was at length enabled to renew, with my mother, his favourite rambles-to search for fuci on the shore, or to botanise on the heath: and again he expresses his own feelings, in the following passage of "The Borough :"

"See! one relieved from anguish, and to-day
Allow'd to walk, and look an hour away.
Two months confined by fever, frenzy, pain,
He comes abroad, and is himself again.
He stops, as one unwilling to advance,
Without another and another glance. . .
With what a pure and simple joy he sees
Those sheep and cattle browsing at their ease!
Easy himself, there's nothing breathes or moves,
But he would cherish ;--all that lives he loves."

On Miss Elmy's return to Parham, she was seized with the same or a kindred disorder, but still more violent and alarming; and none of her friends expected her recovery. My father was kindly invited to remain in the house. A fearful delirium succeeded: all hope appeared irrational ; and then it was that he felt the bitterness of losing a fond and faithful heart. I remember being greatly affected, at a very early period, by hearing him describe the feelings with which he went into a small garden her uncle had given her, to water her flowers; intending, after her death, to take them to Aldborough, and keep them for ever. The disorder at last took a favourable turn.

But a calamity of the severest kind awaited her uncle and aunt. Their only child, a fine hale girl of fourteen, humoured by her mother, adored by her father, was cut off in a few days by an inflammatory sore throat. Her parents were bowed down to the earth; so sudden and unexpected was the blow. It made a permanent alteration at Parham. Mr. Tovell's health de

clined from that period, though he lived many years with a broken spirit. Mrs. Tovell, a busy, bustling character, who scorned the exhibition of what she termed "fine feelings," became for a time an altered woman, and, like Agag, describe his astonishment at learning, as he rode "walked softly." I have heard my father into the stable yard, that Miss Tovell was dead. did her life appear to her parents. He said he It seemed as if it must be a fiction, so essential that of entering the house on this occasion; for never recollected to have felt any dread equal to my mother might now be considered as, in part at least, Mr. Tovell's heir, and he anticipated

the reception he should meet with, and well
knew what she must suffer from the first bitter-
ness of minds too uncultivated to suppress their
feelings. He found it as painful as he had fore-
boded. Mr. Tovell was seated in his arm-chair,
in stern silence; but the tears coursed each other
over his manly face. His wife was weeping
violently, her head reclining on the table. One
or two female friends were there, to offer con-
solation. After a long silence, Mr. Tovell
observed," She is now out of every body's
way, poor girl!" One of the females re-
marked that it was wrong, very wrong, to grieve,
because she was gone to a better place.
"How
do I know where she is gone?
was the bitter
reply; and then there was another long silence.
But, in the course of time, these gloomy
feelings subsided. Mr. Crabbe was received as
usual, nay, with increased kindness; for he had
known their "dear Jane." But though the
hospitality of the house was undiminished, and
occasionally the sound of loud, joyous mirth was
heard, yet the master was never himself again.
Whether my
father's more frequent visits to
Parham, growing dislike to his profession, or
increasing attachment to poetical composition,
contributed most to his ultimate abandonment of
medicine, I do not profess to tell. I have said,
that his spirit was buoyed up by the inspiring
influence of requited affection; but this neces-
sarily led to other wishes, and to them the
obstacles appeared insuperable. Miss Elmy
was too prudent to marry, where there seemed to
be no chance of a competent livelihood; and he,
instead of being in a position to maintain a
family, could hardly, by labour which he
abhorred, earn daily bread for himself. He was
proud, too; and, though conscious that he had
not deserved success in his profession, he was
also conscious of possessing no ordinary abilities,
and brooded with deep mortification on his
failure. Meantime he had perused with atten-
tion the works of the British poets and of his
favourite Horace; and his desk had gradually
been filled with verses which he justly esteemed
more worthy of the public eye than" Inebriety."
He indulged, in short, the dreams of a young
poet :-

"A little time, and he should burst to light,
And admiration of the world excite;
And every friend, now cool and apt to blame
His fond pursuit, would wonder at his fame.
Fame shall be mine;-then wealth shall I possess ;—
And beauty next an ardent lover bless.'"

The Patron.

He deliberated often and long," resolved and re-resolved," and again doubted; but, well aware as he was of the hazard he was about to encounter, he at last made up his mind. One gloomy day, towards the close of the year 1779, he had strolled to a bleak and cheerless part of the cliff above Aldborough; called "The Marsh

Hill," brooding, as he went, over the humiliating necessities of his condition, and plucking every now and then, I have no doubt, the hundredth specimen of some common weed. He stopped opposite a shallow, muddy piece of water, as desolate and gloomy as his own mind, called the Leech-pond, and "it was while I gazed on it,”– he said to my brother and me, one happy morning," that I determined to go to London and venture all."

In one of his early note-books, under the date of December 31, 1779, I find the following entry. It is one upon which I shall offer no

disgrace, of disappointment and wrong, is now "The year of sorrow and care, of poverty and passing on to join the Eternal. Now, O Lord! let, I beseech thee, my afflictions and prayers be remembered;-let my faults and follies be forgotten!

"O thou, who art the Fountain of Happiness, give me better submission to thy decrees; better disposition to correct my flattering hopes; better courage to bear up under my state of oppression.

"The year past, O my God! let it not be to me again a torment-the year coming, if it is thy but as thou wilt. Whether I live or whether I die, will, be it never such. Nevertheless, not as I will, whether I be poor or whether I be prosperous, O my Saviour! may I be thine! Amen."

In the autobiographical sketch already quoted, my father thus continues his story:-"Mr. Crabbe, after as full and perfect a survey of the good and evil before him as his prejudices, inclinations, and little knowledge of the world enabled him to take, finally resolved to abandon his profession. His health was not robust, his spirits were not equal; assistance he could expect none, and he was not so sanguine as to believe he could do without it. With the best verses he could write, and with very little more, he quitted the place of his birth; not without the most serious apprehensions of the consequence of such a step-apprehensions which were conquered, and barely conquered, by the more certain evil of the prospect before him, should he remain where he was.

"When he thus fled from a gloomy prospect to one as uncertain, he had not heard of a youthful adventurer, whose fate it is probable would, in some degree, have affected his spirits, if it had not caused an alteration in his Of purpose. Chatterton, his extraordinary abilities, his enterprising spirit, his writing in periodical publications, his daring project, and his melancholy fate, he had yet learned nothing; otherwise it may be supposed that a warning of such a kind would have had no small influence upon a mind rather vexed with the present than expecting much from the future, and not sufficiently happy

and at ease to draw consolation from vanitymuch less from a comparison in which vanity would have found no trifling mortification." 4

When his father was at length informed that he felt it to be of no use to struggle longer against the difficulties of his situation, the old man severely reproached him with the expenses the family had incurred, in order to afford him an opening into a walk of life higher than their own; but when he, in return, candidly explained how imperfectly he had ever been prepared for the exercise of his profession, the Salt-master in part admitted the validity of his representation, and no further opposed his resolution.

But the means of carrying this resolution into effect were still to seek. His friends were all as poor as himself; and he knew not where to apply for assistance. In this dilemma, he at length addressed a letter to the late Mr. Dudley North, brother to the candidate for Aldborough, requesting the loan of a small sum; " and a very extraordinary letter it was," said Mr. North to his petitioner some years afterwards: "I did not hesitate for a moment."

The sum advanced by Mr. North, in compliance with his request, was five pounds; and, after settling his affairs at Aldborough, and embarking himself and his whole worldly substance 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. During the voyage he lived with the sailors of the vessel, and partook of their fare.

In looking back to the trifling incidents which I have related in this chapter, I feel how inadequate is the conception they will convey of feelings so deep and a mind so exuberant. These were the only circumstances that I heard him or others mention relative to that early period; but how different would have been the description, had he himself recorded the strongest of his early impressions! Joining much of his father's violence with a keen susceptibility of mortification, his mind must have been at times torn by tumultuous passions; always tempered, however, by the exceeding kindness of his heart. There can scarcely be a more severe trial than for one conscious of general superiority to find himself an object of contempt, for some real and palpable defects. With a mind infinitely above his circumstances, he was yet incompetent to his duties, both in talent and knowledge; and he felt that the opinion of the public, in this respect,

4"Talking," says my brother John, "of the difficulties of his early years, when, with a declining practice, riding from one cottage to another, and glad to relieve his mind by fixing it on the herbs that grew on the wayside, he often made the assertion, which I could never agree to, that it was necessity that drove him to be an author;-and more than once he quoted the line

'Some fall so hard that they rebound again.'"

was but too just. Nor were those the only trials he had to endure; but the strong and painful feelings to which he was subjected in the very outset of life, however distressing then, were unquestionably favourable to his education as a poet, and his moral character as a man.

The following lines, from a manuscript volume, appear to have been composed after he had, on this occasion, bidden farewell to Miss Elmy :"The hour arrived! I sigh'd and said,

How soon the happiest hours are fled ! On wings of down they lately flew, But then their moments pass'd with you; And still with you could I but be, On downy wings they 'd always flee. "Say, did you not, the way you went, Feel the soft balm of gay content? Say, did you not all pleasures find, Of which you left so few behind? I think you did for well I know My parting prayer would make it so. "May she, I said, life's choicest goods partake, Those, late in life, for nobler still forsakeThe bliss of one, th' esteem'd of many live, With all that Friendship would, and all that Love can give!"

I shall conclude this chapter with the stronger verses in which he, some months after, expressed the gloomier side of his feelings on quitting his native place-the very verses, he had reason to believe, which first satisfied Burke that he was a true poet :

"Here wand'ring long, amid these frowning fields
I sought the simple life that Nature yields;
Rapine, and wrong, and fear usurp'd her place,
And a bold, artful, surly, savage race,
Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe,
The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,
Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high,
On the tost vessel bend their eager eye,
Which, to their coast directs its vent'rous way,
Theirs or the ocean's miserable prey.

"As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand,
And wait for favouring winds to leave the land,
While still for flight the ready wing is spread
So waited I the favouring hour, and fled :
Fled from these shores where guilt and rapine reign,
And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain,—
Who still remain to hear the ocean roar,
Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore,
Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,
Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away;
When the sad tenant weeps from door to door,
And begs a poor protection from the poor."
The Village.

CHAPTER III.

1780.

Mr. Crabbe's Difficulties and Distresses in London-Publication of his Poem, "The Candidate"-His unsuccessful Applications to Lord North, Lord Shelburne, and other eminent Individuals-His "Journal to Mira."

ALTHOUGH the chance of his being so successful in his metropolitan début as to find in his literary

talents the means of subsistence must have appeared slender in the eyes of Mr. Crabbe's Suffolk friends, and although he himself was any. thing but sanguine in his anticipations ;-yet it must be acknowledged, that he arrived in London at a time not unfavourable for a new candidate in poetry. The field may be said to have lain open before him. The giants Swift and Pope had passed away, leaving each in his department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been so long imitated by inferior persons, that the world was not unlikely to welcome some one who should strike into a newer path. The strong and powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable Goldsmith, had also departed; and, more recently still, Chatterton had paid the bitter penalty of his imprudence, under circumstances which must surely have rather disposed the patrons of talent to watch the next opportunity that might offer itself of encouraging genius "by poverty depressed." The stupendous Johnson, unrivalled in general literature, had, from an early period, withdrawn himself from poetry. Cowper, destined to fill so large a space in the public eye, somewhat later, had not as yet appeared as an author; and as for Burns, he was still unknown beyond the obscure circle of his fellow-villagers. The moment, therefore, might appear favourable for Mr. Crabbe's meditated appeal and yet, had he foreseen all the sorrows and disappointments which awaited him in his new career, it is probable he would either have remained in his native place, or, if he had gone to London at all, engaged himself to beat the mortar in some dispensary. Happily his hopes ultimately prevailed over his fears: his Sarah cheered him by her approbation of his bold adventure; and his mind soared and exulted when he suddenly felt himself freed from the drudgery and anxieties of his hated profession.

In his own little biographical sketch he says, that, "on relinquishing every hope of rising in his profession, he repaired to the metropolis, and resided in lodgings with a family in the city: for reasons which he might not himself be able to assign, he was afraid of going to the west end of the town. He was placed, it is true, near to some friends of whose kindness he was assured, and was probably loth to lose that domestic and

1 Cowper's first publication was in 1782, when he was in the fiftieth year of his age.

2 I find these lines in one of his note-books for 1780.

"When summer's tribe, ner rosy tribe, are fled,

And drooping beauty mourns her blossoms shed,
Some humbler sweet may cheer the pensive swain,
And simpler beauties deck the withering plain.
And thus when Verse her wint'ry prospect weeps,
When Pope is gone, and mighty Milton sleeps,
When Gray in lofty lines has ceased to soar,
And gentle Goldsmith charms the town no more,
An humbler Bard the widow'd Muse invites,
Who led by hope and inclination writes:
With half their art he tries the soul to move,
And swell the softer strain with themes of love."

cheerful society which he doubly felt in a world of strangers."

The only acquaintance he had on entering London was a Mrs. Burcham, who had been in early youth a friend of Miss Elmy, and who was now the wife of a linen-draper in Cornhill. This worthy woman and her husband received him with cordial kindness; they invited him to make their house his home whenever he chose; and as often as he availed himself of this invitation, he was treated with that frank familiarity which cancels the appearance of obligation. It might be supposed, that with such friends to lean upon, he would have been secure against actual distress; but his was, in some points, a proud spirit: he never disclosed to them the extent of his difficulties. Nothing but sheer starvation could ever have induced him to do so; and not even that, as long as there was a poor-house in the land to afford him refuge. All they knew was, that he had come to town a literary adventurer: but though ignorant of the exact nature of his designs, as well as of the extreme narrowness of his pecuniary resources, they often warned him of the fate of Chatterton -of whose genius and misfortunes, as we have seen, he had never heard while he remained in Suffolk.

To be near these friends, he took lodgings close to the Exchange, in the house of Mr. Vickery, a hair-dresser, then or soon afterwards of great celebrity in his calling; and on the family's removing some months later to Bishopsgate-street, he accompanied them to their new residence. I may mention that, so little did he at first foresee the distress in which a shilling would be precious, that on taking up his quarters at Mr. Vickery's, he equipped himself with a fashionable tie-wig, which must have made a considerable hole in his three pounds. However, no sooner had he established himself here, than he applied, with the utmost diligence, to the pursuits for which he had sacrificed every other prospect. He had soon transcribed and corrected the poetical pieces he had brought with him from the country; and composed two dramas and a variety of prose essays, in imitation, some of Swift, others of Addison; and he was ere long in communication with various booksellers with a view to publication. this lodging," says the poet's own sketch, "he passed something more than one year, during which his chief study was to improve in versification, to read all such books as he could command, and to take as full and particular a view of mankind as his time and finances enabled him to do."

"In

While residing in the City he often spent his 3 Mr. Vickery is still in life, a most respectable octogenarian. He laments that his memory retains little of Mr. Crabbe, except that he was "a quiet, amiable, genteel young man; much esteemed by the family for the regularity of all his conduct."