3

tion to his petitions and in his extremity he applied to Edmund Burke, writing to him, "I am one of those outcasts on the world, who are without a friend, without employment and without bread..... I appeal to you, sir, as a good and let me add, a great man. I have no other pretentions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one.

Let me if possible interest your compassion. (1) Burke was deeply affected by this letter and though not very busy and not very well off he immediately appointed

a time for Crabbe to call. The interview that ensued

entirely and forever, changed the nature of Crabbe's

worldly fortunes. man from that hour.

took his poems to

He was in the common phrase, "a made

(2) Burke invited him to his home,

odsley, the publisher, got him into

orders and at last found a patron for him in the Duke of Rutland, who after the good old fashion made him his chaplain at Belvoir castle.

Crabbe's Early Life.

Crabbe was born at Aldborough on Christmass eve 1754

(1) Crabbe I. 90-92. (2) Ibid. 93.

His father was a man of little education, first a warehouse keeper and afterward collector of the salt duties. Aldborough is a little seaport town in Suffolk, now a

resort but then containing only a few houses. It lies between a low hill or cliff and the beach of the German Crabbe has described it accurately in the open

Ocean.

ing lines of the Village.

Lo where the earth, with withering brake grown o'er,
Lends the light turfs that warms the neighbouring

From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears;
And weeds that every art and care defy,

Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye;
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,

And to the ragged infant threaten war. (1)

(poor;

Though Crabbe lived in after years in more beautiful parts of England his scenes are always laid in Suffolk. "His landscape is always marvelously exact, the strokes selected with extraordinary skill 'ad hoc' so as to show autumn rather than spring, failure rather than hope, the (1) Crabbe II. 77.

riddle of the painful earth rather than the joy of living (1) All things were sad in nature or they took sadness from him, the likeness of his look and of his mind. (2) Crabbe was taught to read by an old dame very like

the one he describes in the Borough.

a deaf, poor, patient widow sits,

...

And awaes some thirty infants as she knits;
At the good matron's hut the children meet,
Who thus becomes the mother of the street;
Her room is small, they cannot wildly stray,-
Her threshold high, the y cannot run away:
Though deaf, she sees the rebel-heroes shout,-
Though lame, her white rod nimbly walks about;
With band of yarn she keeps offenders in,
And to her gown the sturdest rogue can pin:
Aided by these and spells and tell-tale birds,
Her power they dread and reverence her words. (3)

Crabbe was in a great measure self taught. His father gave him a better education than fell to the lot

(1) Saintsbury, Essays in English Literature 1780-1860, pp. 4-5. (2) Crabbe VII. 70. (3) Ibid. IV. 77-78.