Transcriber's Notes: Underscores "_" before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ in the original text. Equals signs "=" before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold= in the original text. Small capitals have been converted to BLOCK capitals. Antiquated spellings have been preserved. Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered. Where double quotes have been repeated at the beginnings of consecutive stanzas, they have been omitted for clarity. CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH CLASSICS Poems by George Crabbe In Three Volumes GEORGE CRABBE Born, 1754 Died, 1832 _GEORGE CRABBE_ POEMS EDITED BY ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD Litt.D., Hon. LL.D., F.B.A. Master of Peterhouse [Illustration] Volume II CAMBRIDGE: at the University Press 1906 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE C. F. CLAY, Manager. _London:_ FETTER LANE, E.C. _Glasgow:_ 50, WELLINGTON STREET. [Illustration] _Leipzig:_ F. A. BROCKHAUS. _New York:_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. _Bombay and Calcutta:_ MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. [_All Rights reserved_] PREFACE. The poems contained in this volume, which comprise the whole of the _Tales_ and the first eleven of the _Tales of the Hall_, are without exception printed from the edition of 1823, the last of Crabbe’s works published in this country in his lifetime. The _Variants_ in the _Tales_ are from the first edition (1812) and from the ‘Original MS.’ readings given as footnotes in the younger Crabbe’s edition of his father’s _Life and Poems_ (1834). The _Variants_ in the _Tales of the Hall_ are from the first edition (1819); from the ‘Original MS.’ readings as above; from the Crabbe MSS. in the possession of the Cambridge University Press (which will be described in the Preface to Vol. III, where a much fuller use will be made of them), and from the MSS. in the valuable collection of Mrs Mackay of Trowbridge, most kindly lent by her for examination and use (to which the same remark applies). In the present volume will also be found certain _Addenda_ to the _Variants_ in Vol. I, from the ‘Original MS.’ readings printed by the younger Crabbe. Among the _Errata_ in this volume are included a considerable number of quotations from Shakespeare with wrong indications of acts or scenes, and occasionally even of the plays from which the passages are taken. A large proportion of the quotations are in themselves imperfect, or otherwise incorrect. Perhaps it is stretching a point to treat all these defects as oversights; sometimes Crabbe may have made intentional changes, and more frequently he may have been wilfully careless. No readings which he could have found in any current edition of Shakespeare have been altered.