personages who exchanged amatory civilities in the old-fashioned pastorals ridiculed by Pope and Gay. Crabbe's rough style is indicative of his general temper. It is in places at least the most slovenly and slipshod that was ever adopted by any true poet. The authors of the 'Rejected Addresses' had simply to copy, without attempting the impossible task of caricaturing. One of their familiar couplets, for example, runs thus:-- Emmanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy Up as a corn-cutter, a safe employ! And here is the original Crabbe:-- Swallow, a poor attorney, brought his boy Up at his desk, and gave him his employ. When boy cannot be made to rhyme with employ, Crabbe is very fond of dragging in a hoy. In the 'Parish Register' he introduces a narrative about a village grocer and his friend in these lines:-- Aged were both, that Dawkins, Ditchem this, Who much of marriage thought and much amiss. Or to quote one more opening of a story:-- Counter and Clubb were men in trade, whose pains, Credit, and prudence, brought them constant gains; Partners and punctual, every friend agreed Counter and Clubb were men who must succeed. But of such gems anyone may gather as many as he pleases by simply turning over Crabbe's pages. In one sense, they are rather pleasant than otherwise. They are so characteristic and put forward with such absolute simplicity that they have the same effect as a good old provincialism in the mouth of a genuine countryman. It must, however, be admitted that Crabbe's careful study of Pope had not initiated him in some of his master's secrets. The worsted stockings were uncommonly thick. If Pope's brilliance of style savours too much of affectation, Crabbe never manages to hit off an epigram in the whole of his poetry. The language seldom soars above the style which would be intelligible to the merest clodhopper; and we can understand how, when in his later years Crabbe was introduced to wits and men of the world, he generally held his peace, or, at most, let fall some bit of dry quiet humour. At rare intervals he remembers that a poet ought to indulge in a figure of speech, and laboriously compounds a simile which appears in his poetry like a bit of gold lace on a farmer's homespun coat. He confessed as much in answer to a shrewd criticism of Jeffrey's, saying that he generally thought of such illustrations and inserted them after he had finished his tale. Here is one of these deliberately-concocted ornaments, intended to explain the remark that the difference between the character of two brothers came out when they were living together quietly:--