I must thank you for the Crabbe Review {281} you sent me, though, had it been your own writing, I should probably not tell you how very good I think it. I am somewhat disappointed that Mr. Woodberry dismisses Crabbe's 'Trials at Humour' as summarily as Mr. Leslie Stephen does; it was mainly for the Humour's sake that I made my little work: Humour so evident to me in so many of the Tales (and Conversations), and which I meant to try and get a hearing for in the short Preface I had written in case the Book had been published. I thought these Tales showed the 'stern Painter' softened by his Grand Climacteric, removed from the gloom and sadness of his early associations, and looking to the Follies rather than to the Vices of Men, and treating them often in something of a Moliere way, only with some pathetic humour mixt, so as these Tales were almost the only one of his Works which left an agreeable impression behind them. But if so good a Judge as Mr. Woodberry does not see all this, I certainly could not have persuaded John Bull to see it: and perhaps am wrong myself in seeing what is not there. I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry is quite right in what he says of Crabbe not having Imagination to draw that Soul from Nature of which he enumerates the phenomena: but he at any rate does so enumerate and select them as to suggest something more to his Reader, something more than mere catalogue could suggest. He may go yet further in such a description, as that other Autumnal one in 'Delay has Danger,' beginning-- Early he rose, and look'd with many a sigh, On the red Light that fill'd the Eastern sky, etc. Where, as he says, the Decay and gloom of Nature seem reflected in--nay, as it were, to take a reflection from--the Hero's troubled Soul. In the Autumn Scene which Mr. Woodberry quotes, {282} and contrasts with those of other more imaginative Poets, would not a more imaginative representation of the scene have been out of character with the English Country Squire who sees and reflects on it? As would have been more evident if Mr. W. had quoted a line or two further-- While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees The Squire beheld not with his wonted ease, But to his own reflections made reply, And said aloud--'Yes, doubtless we must die.' [Greek text]-- This Dramatic Picture touches me more than Mr. Arnold.