The Newspaper is full of platitudes and pumped-up thought. It is a satire unrecommended by the force and brilliancy which alone can make satire endurable. The minor poems are simply unreadable. The Library, indeed, was published under the auspices of Burke; but if upon this poem alone he had formed his estimate of the author's genius, one would have said either that he had a very low idea of the requisites of poetry, or an almost supernatural insight into the germs of future success which lay hidden in the poem in question. But it seems it was on some very different lines, in The Village, that Burke rested his high opinion of the powers of his young client. They are lines which amply justify the prophecy of success; and, indeed, The Village stands quite alone among Crabbe's earlier writings. In it he spoke straight from his own personal convictions, he described directly what he had seen and known. The complexion of it differs from that of his other poems. It alone of his writings may with some degree of justice be called stern and gloomy. The struggle and the painful experience through which he was himself passing coloured the medium through which he looked. His picture of the life and sufferings of the poor in this poem leaves an indelible impression on the mind of every reader. It is not only that it is uncompromising, that it tears off and scornfully casts aside the old stage-costume of Corydon and Phyllis; but that it keeps aloof from all the sources of comfort and consolation, the common assuagements which are not denied even to the lowest aspects of human life, and builds in its forcible lines so sad a picture of unrequited and incessant toil, deserted old age, and miserable death, as none can look at without a shudder. And when, in the second part, he turns professedly to contemplate the "Gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose," the subject leads him instantly to the vices which form or accompany the amusements of the poor, and he immediately becomes absorbed in this, to him, more attractive subject. For force, aptness of language, fervour, and directness, the first part of The Village stands unapproached among Crabbe's early poems. The Borough, with many parts and detached passages of first-class excellence, is a very unequal performance; and it is not until the first series of The Tales that Crabbe's genius displays itself in its full power, and maintains a sustained and unwavering flight. It is on The Village, on detached parts of The Borough, and on The Tales (the second series of which is less fresh, graphic, and pointed than the first), that the permanent reputation of Crabbe rests. The posthumous poems cannot be said to be destitute of his peculiar merits; but they must be confessed, on the other hand, to be very unworthy of what had preceded them. The common feature throughout all his works which gives this author his hold upon his readers is his singular insight into the minute working of character, his wondrous familiarity with so vast a number of various dispositions, and the unerring fidelity with which he traces their operations and discerns their attitudes under every sort of circumstance. It would be difficult in the whole range of literature to point to more than two or three who have rivalled him in this respect. Chaucer is one; and a curious and not uninteresting comparison might be instituted between the two, though the old poet far surpasses the modern one in love of beauty, liveliness of fancy, and breadth of genius. Crabbe knew where his own strength lay, and in some lines in The Borough has aptly described both the bent and the animus of his poetic powers: "For this the poet looks the world around, Where form and life and reasoning man are found; And all the manners of the changing race; take, Silent he walks the road of life along, Yet none with rancour, none with scorn pursue : 'Here the strong lines of malice we behold.'' One great source of his strength is, that he dared to be true to himself, and to work with unhesitating confidence his own peculiar vein. This originality is not only great, but always genuine. A never-failing charm lies in the clear simplicity and truthfulness of nature which shines through all his writings. Nothing false or meretricious ever came from his pen; and if his works want order and beauty, neither they nor his life are destitute of the higher harmony which springs from a character naturally single and undeteriorated by false aims and broken purposes. 222 UNIDEAL FICTION: DE FOE.* [October 1856.] THE modern novel is the characteristic literature of modern times. It is not difficult to detect some of the leading sources of its growth in the conditions and tendencies of modern society, especially in England. Increase of personal liberty has given increased scope and a greater common importance to individual life and character. A diminishing political and social restraint over men's lives, and a less urgent necessity for active personal engagement in political affairs, combined with a less formal and exigent code of manners in society, have endowed men with both more room and more leisure for the conscious determination of their own lives and characters. The sphere of human duty is not less wide and important than it used to be but it is more voluntary-less under the law; its claims are less engrossing and less exacting; the relations to God are less distracted-less mediatemore comprehensive. A man may either live that he may act in a certain way, or he may so act that he may live a certain life and be a certain sort of thing. facilities for the latter arrangement of existence are probably greater now in England than they have ever hitherto been in the world; and the effects of a growing tendency in this direction are visible enough in our literature. An increased interest in our own characters has naturally given us an increased interest in the individual characters The *Bohn's British Classics. De Foe's Works. Vols. I.-IV. London, Henry G. Bohn. 1854, 1855. of others; and the examination and representation of character has been the most universal object of modern imaginative literature, its most special characteristic, and its highest excellence. The limits of the drama have not sufficed for its wants: it requires to display not only statical forms of character, but its development under the most varied and protracted circumstances; and an intimate union of the dramatic and narrative modes of delineation has been contrived, to give scope to the new requirements of art. The same tendencies may be observed in other sorts of writing. They have somewhat warped history from its true model and objects, and they have given a higher and truer character to biography. The distinguishing use of history lies in the light_it throws on the political and social nature of man. Its lessons are for the statesman and the citizen. It investigates, or should investigate, the principles of common human action in communities, and furnishes its students with comprehensive grounds for judging the tendencies and estimating the value of legislative changes. Its function is to supply men with guiding knowledge in their capacity as the members of a state. The object of biography is, or should be, to furnish as complete as possible a view of the whole character and life of its subject, both for the sake of its own interest, and as making additions to that sort of knowledge of individual men which may subserve others in moulding their own individual lives and characters. Modern history, as we might expect, tends too much to become biographical in its character ; while biography is far less content than it used to be with stringing together the events of a man's life, and aims at as searching as possible an examination and exhibition of the whole nature of the man. The same reasons that have tended to make character a more universal subject of study have also tended to give it a form which has made newer and more exhaustive methods of treating it more necessary for its exhibition. There are fewer |