Crabbe was a man of few interests. "He was not inter ested in politice, certainly not in the politics of the passing time. He was indifferent to scholarship and philisophy. Of painting, music andarchitecture he was equally care less...To military and moval s bjects, though he lived through the great war, we find scarcely a single allusion in either his biography or his poems. He was no sportsman."(1) "No one su old has left his world of sin, Crabbe's one hobby was natural history. He knew the plants in mountain, wood and mead; He knew the worms that on the foliage feed; He knew the small ribe that 'scape the careless eye And the small creature who on bark or bough Enjoy their changes, changed we know not how; But now th imperfect being scarcely moves, And now takes ing and seeks the sky it loves. He had no system, and forbore to read (1) Kebbel 104. (2) Crabbe III. 55. The learned labours of th' immortal Swede; But smiled to hear the creatures he had known So long, were now in class and order shown, 'Is it meet,'said he, 'This creature's name should one so sounding be? ''Tis but a fly'"------(1) Crabbe looked at human life much as he looked at animal life, through interested eyes, but without system or great depth of insight. Drunkenness in England. When Crabbe was twenty he published a poem called Inebriety. It is an imaginary picture, yet there are some grains of truth in it. One is reminded ofHogarth's drawings in the following lines: "See Inebriety: her wand she waves, And lo her pale, and lo: her purple slaves! Sots in embroidery, and sots in crape, In every order, station, rank and shape: The king, who nods upon his rattle throne; The staggering peer, to midnight revel prone, (1) Crabbe VI. 117 - 118. |